NAIAS exhibiting manufacturers include: Acura, AMG, Audi, Bentley, BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, CODA Automotive, Dodge, Falcon Motor Sports, Fiat, Ford, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jeep, Kia, Lexus, Lincoln, Maserati, Maybach, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Nissan, Porsche, Ram, Scion, Shelby American, Smart, SRT, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Vehicle Production Group, Volkswagen, and Volvo.

NAIAS will be open to the public Jan. 14-22, 2012. NAIAS is a fascinating visual circus that is highly entertaining every year — even for a non-car guy like myself. I’ll try to keep you updated and share some pictures throughout the week.

Enticed by High’s slogan, “One Brand. Full Bar,” Silveri agreed to sample the four product lines. Upon tasting each spirit, Silveri was impressed with the natural flavor of each, and their classy, modern packaging. He believed the products would be a great fit for the restaurant, and Atlas’ bartenders would enjoy liquor that works well with mixed drinks, but also on the rocks.

High Liquors co-founders, Brad Wright and Chris Lawson, developed the idea for High Liquors in 2009, when, over cocktails, they discussed the gap in the market for one brand carrying a full line of ultra-premium spirits. “We were frustrated with the vast differences in quality that all of the premium alcohol brands possessed,” says Lawson. “If there was a vodka brand that you love, but you also like tequila, you had to go the extremely expensive route of trying all the tequilas out there in hopes of matching the quality of the vodka brand you enjoy. That’s because your favorite vodka brand only makes vodka.”

Wright and Lawson were determined to produce the highest quality product in each category, so they did not limit themselves to one distillery for their whole line. Instead, they spent almost two years sampling spirits from the most renowned independent distilleries in the world, ensuring that the products they produced were made from the highest quality ingredients. Ultimately, they selected four distinct distilleries for their spirits; High Rum is distilled in Trinidad and Tobago, High Vodka in Ketchum, Idaho, High Tequila in Tequila, Mexico, and High Whiskey in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Currently, High Liquors is distributed in Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and launching in several new markets, including Atlanta, in 2012.

Despite the current economic climate, and the restaurant’s normal ups and downs, Atlas has grown about 3-5% each year since 2009. Located in the Cultural Theater District, the restaurant caters to an eclectic crowd of students, artists, locals, and business people. The venue reflects a style one would typically see in Chicago or New York, so stands out against other restaurants in Detroit, offering a non-pretentious, but upscale dining experience.

“High Liquors was in line with what Atlas represents: offering unique, high quality products to all walks of life,” explains Silveri. “And, High spirits come from all over the world, so they fit with our global cuisine and perspective.” The products are selling well, and continue to do better as Atlas’ bartenders educate their guests about the brand, and the liquor is featured on the cocktail menu. Silveri also chose to display the line in High Liquors’ Glorifier, a unique, lighted display for the four High bottles, which draws attention to the brand.
For those interested in enjoying High Liquors from home, the brand is available at beverage stores in Michigan, including Super Fine Wines and M.L. Spirits. For more information about the brand, visit www.highliquors.com.

Atlas Global Bistro is open Monday-Friday for lunch from 11:00am-3:00pm; Monday-Wednesday for dinner from 4:30pm – 10:00pm; Thursday from 4:30pm – 11:00pm; Friday-Saturday from 4:30pm – 12am; and Sundays, for brunch from 10:00am-3:00pm, and dinner from 4:30pm – 9pm. More information is available at www.atlasglobalbistro.com.

My student was quiet.  But he loved to complete each project. 

At one point, Sister Nancyann decorated the main eating area (which was the main area in the building) with all of the students’ work.  The students’ parents, grandparents, or other guardians came and were treated to a light dinner and a small celebration for the students.  My student’s grandmother sought me out. 

She told me how my little guy went from being quiet and depressed to energetic and hopeful.  He spoke often of our time together. The Capuchin’s art program broke down certain barriers and allowed this kid to be a kid.  It allowed him to take joy in the everyday.  Yet the art projects accomplished this goal quietly.  Even I was unaware.

Art therapy is a theraputic use of the art making process to . . . . Art therapy is a process where trained therapists use a psychotherapy process to …. Art therapy is where a mental health professional deciphers artwork to delve ….

Art therapy is difficult to define.  I believe it captures some of the energy and importance highlighted last week in our focus on art education, yet it takes the scientific processes a step farther.  I believe it works, because I’ve seen it work with my own eyes.  So this week we will compile as much information about art therapy as we can to better define art therapy so that we can better know its uses and successes.

Carol was struck by the lecture by Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Maestro Leonard Slatkin.  He talked about how an arts education shaped his life, and he talked about the overall importance of an arts education. 

WDET’s Rob St. Mary wrote a great article about the lecture here. 

This lecture made Carol think about her program, and she shared the following observation with us:

Why support the Arts?  Just Do It!  While I  listened to Leonard Slatkin speak about the need for people to demand arts programming, students were in an art class because of Art Road Nonprofit.  Art Road brought art to students just like Maestro Slatkin’s art teacher Mrs. Otto inspired him.  Our students were being taught by Ms. Carrie, who is a Fulbright Scholar and Cranbrook Academy of Art Graduate.  At that very moment in time at the TEDx, Ms. Carrie taught the students how to paint Starry Night by Van Gogh, and the students’ teacher said he was so proud of the art that he was going to hang all of the artwork in the hall for all to see.  Another teacher told Ms. Carrie that she had no idea how talented her students were.

Just Do It!  What ever your passion is, just do it.  This is my take away from the TEDx Detroit speakers yesterday, they are all having fun filling a need and just doing it in their own way.

Walking into Atlas we were promptly greeted and seated in their spacious dining area, where the surrounding windows offer natural lighting and great views of the surrounding midtown corridor. An ideal place for a casual business luncheon, or an intimate dinner with friends and loved ones.

Besides its charm, Atlas Global Bistro had a variety of unique dishes for their DRW menu. For those that may not be familiar with the Detroit Restaurant Week menu, you order three dishes (appetizer, entrée, and dessert) for $28 per person. Don’t flinch at the price, it’s actually a great deal considering you would probably spend about $50 – $60 per person at some of these dining establishments.

An unexpected twist on this prix fixe menu, as our waitress explained, was the fact that Atlas would allow you to choose any three dishes off the DRW menu for $28. So you could order 2 appetizers and an entrée, or 2 entrées and dessert, or three desserts for that matter. What a brilliant idea! I was tempted to order two apps and an entrée, but I decided to stick with the traditional format of appetizer, entrée, and dessert.

Now, moving onto the highlight of our meal – the food!

Decisions. Decisions. What to order? So many great selections. I decided to start with the House-cured Salmon Gravlax, then for my entrée I ordered the Pan-roasted Muscovy Duck Breast, and ended my meal with a slice of Sweet Potato Cake.

Let me start out by saying that each dish was beautifully presented, carefully crafted, and tasted wonderful!

Salmon Gravlax (Served with sweet corn cakes, red onion relish, apple-celery root-fennel salad and grainy mustard vinaigrette) – Great cured salmon, without being overly salty. The seasonal veggies (apple, celery, & fennel), onion relish, along with the delectable corn cakes paired nicely with the salmon. There was a great harmony of flavors in this dish!

Muscovy Duck Breast (Confit of leg ravioli, braised baby fennel and orange-red peppercorn sabayon) – A smaller portion size than I was expecting, but it ended up being the ideal serving size. I left the meal full without feeling stuffed. The duck was perfectly cooked, the flavors from the sabayon were fantastic, and the fennel and carrots were perfect compliments to the pan-roasted duck. Great balance of flavors!

Sweet Potato Cake – A perfect Fall dessert. Hints of cinnamon & nutmeg surrounded this lush sweet potato cake, and the pie crust had a nice contrasting texture.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Atlas Global Bistro DRW dining experience. The food was fab, the service was attentive without being overbearing or pretentious, and we were in and out within 45 minutes, awesome!

For more insight from Detroit Foodie, click here.

Saltwater offers Seared Sea Scallops that are prepared with sherried corn purée, bacon, and haricot vert; the Wolfgang Puck Grille offers a Sautéed Salmon served with fingerling potatoes, confit bacon, and whole-grain mustard sauce; and The Caucus Club offers a Classic Wedge Salad served with creamy blue cheese, bacon, and tomato.  You cannot go wrong!

I admit that I do not have the most sophisticated palate, and I am a tad obsessed with the powers of bacon (sorry to all of our readers that are vegetarians).  So I enlisted the help of Cliff Bells , which is a new stop for this year’s Restaurant Week, to help with our coverage of Restaurant Week.  I have also enlisted the help of Detroit’s resident foodie Maria of The Detroit Foodie blog.  I am sure that their insights will go beyond bacon.

So check back here often for reviews and suggestions for this year’s Restaurant Week, and email me with any suggestions or reviews that you have during this year’s Restaurant Week.

  The New York Times has a constant stream of articles about Detroit (mostly positive), and (at least lately) the national press in general seems to gravitate more towards the “City on the rebound fueled by the young and hip” narrative, rather than the “post-City of abandoned buildings” narrative.  These publications seem to recognize that creatives are living in or coming to Detroit to “start something,” and these creatives are fed by an energy to “start something” that started before the Great Recession, and this energy continues to build on itself.  Zap … did you feel that.

            Here are some of my favorite examples of people that are encouraging Detroit’s new narrative:

*     Detroit Lives!  Philip Lauri presents multimedia products and projects that push Detroit’s new, hip image

*    Lemonade Detroit – Erik Proulx and Peter Nelson are shooting a positive documentary about the real Detroit, and everyone can be a producer

*    The People of Detroit – Noah Stephens continues to take beautiful pictures of the beautiful people of Detroit

And in case you do not want to take my word for it, Chrysler spent bags of gold coins to run a commercial for its Chrysler 200 during last year’s Super Bowl.  You know the commercial.  Chrysler was cool, because it was imported from Detroit.  I thought the commercial was brilliant.  And so did some other people: It just won an Emmy: http://allhiphop.com/stories/news/archive/2011/09/11/22878614.aspx

Ian Swanson’s one night site-specific performance, BRB/Total Id Pigs, explores the relationship between ordinary objects and the ideas, people, places and events attached to them. Borrowing elements of various ritual paradigms, the performance is designed to remind us how commerce and ephemera shape our reality, asking us to consider how we define ourselves, and how history defines us.

Gallery visitors are strongly encouraged, although not required, to bring with them an object which holds personal value of a particular size; preferably of or under what could fit in the palm of a single hand. Material value is not a consideration. They will be asked to donate these objects for inclusion in the performance. They will not be returned. Instructions will be provided to attendees upon arrival.

With BRB/Total Id Pigs, Swanson explores again a common thread that connects his work in all media: the use of his creative process to investigate his own personal and cultural identity, layering and deconstructing to expose the “tenuous relationship between what we reveal and what remains unseen,” inviting viewers to embark on their own explorations of existing references and conventions.

**The performance will begin promptly at 7:45, please arrive on time if you don’t want to miss it. Additional works by the artist will be on display in Re:view’s alternate gallery space during the performance.

*Music will be provided after the performance by Jennifer Paull of nospectacle).

*In addition, there will be a gallery talk with the artist the following day from 4:00-6:00 pm in Re:View’s Exhibitions Gallery.”

Re:View Contemporary Gallery is located at 444 W.Willis, Detroit, MI 48201

It’s basically the most unapologetic and direct defense of sprawl I’ve ever read:

(L)et me state it unequivocally: I love sprawl.  I need it.  I promote it.  Oakland County can’t get enough of it… Sprawl is not evil. In fact, it is good. It is the inevitable result of a free people exercising their cherished, constitutionally protected rights as inpiduals to pursue their dreams when choosing where to live, where to work, where to educate, and where to recreate…

The anti-American Dreamers would have you believe that suburban growth is at the root of all problems that beset our cities, both in Michigan and across our country.  They seem to believe that citizens left thriving cities, and that it was their departure that caused high crime, high taxes, invisible public services, and failing public school systems…

Sprawl did not cause the decline of the cities. Cities declined because they squandered their assets. High crime rates, high taxes, failing schools, foul air and a lack of open green spaces forced people to move.

Sprawlers, like me, simply wanted a home with green grass on a safe, well maintained street, a quality neighborhood school that actually educated their children, a good job, nearby parks and recreational spaces, and a local government that actually delivers the services their taxes paid for. In other words, they wanted a place like today’s Oakland County.

I don’t know about you, but by the end of his post I was stunned by how convincing it was. Everything L. Brooks wrote made sense, even as it contradicted all of my own personal beliefs and assumptions about sprawl.  And it made me realize that I needed to dig down and analyze my own feelings and beliefs about it.

Why did it seem so difficult — almost impossible — to me to argue with L. Brooks’ logic?

Part of it is I’m just a real soft sell.  But I think there’s something else.  Whether you see things the way L. Brooks does —  which, let’s face it, is the norm in metro Detroit, outside of the city itself — or are disgusted by sprawl, as I am, depends on a few differences in key values and beliefs:

1.    Whether you identify with your region, or your community:  L. Brooks and his fellow travelers do not see metro areas as a single unit; they see them as a collection of separate places.  For L. Brooks, Oakland County can flourish even while the city of Detroit crumbles.  Urbanists, on the other hand, view the entire metropolitan area as a single unit; we are troubled when the largest city fails, even though its suburbs may be thriving.

2.   Aesthetic preferences: This includes walkability and love of historic — old buildings, old neighborhoods, etc.  I get off on neighborhoods filled with hundred-year-old houses crammed close together.  (It is part of why I find Cincinnati one of the most special cities in the Midwest — its built environment is just so damn old compared to everywhere else.)  L. Brooks gets off on big homes, big parking lots, and big, green lawns.  Our instinctive idea of what makes a place beautiful are different.

3.   Dependence on car travel: In order to live in sprawl, you need cheap gas, enough income to support a vehicle, enough income for a round trip by cab every time you want to go out drinking, the physical ability to drive.  For most of my twenties, I had one of these things (the physical ability to drive) but lacked the other three.  In the trade off between cost and convenience that comes with the decision to own a car, people who are poor or frugal (I was both) tend to weigh cost more heavily.

4.   Environmentalism: This partly stems from #3.  If you are the type of person who worries about their carbon footprint, you are more likely to worry about sprawl.  I am fairly sure that this is not a big concern for L. Brooks, as a septuagenarian Republican.

These four differences go a substantial way in shaping how we feel about sprawl.  They are largely driven by our age and lifestyles too:

• Parents with kids need those bigger homes and big green lawns just to maintain a semblance of privacy and to keep from going insane, whereas as one-half of a DINK couple, my two-bedroom condo feels more than spacious enough for our needs.
• Seniors generally hate walking long distances (unless they are doing it in a mall).  They are  less likely to go out drinking with friends, and are less likely to believe in climate change, let alone worry about their carbon footprint.  Excepting the most dyed-in-the-wool liberals, you can lecture someone over the age of sixty all day about climate change and the environment, and it will not change their minds one whit; it is simply not on their radar.
• A huge amount of 20-somethings’ preference for city living comes from our relationship with cars.  They are just not worth as much to us as they are to old people.  We prefer to spend more money on going out and drinking with friends, and less on paying for gas, car insurance, car repairs, and parking.  Car insurance is cheaper for older people; they drive slower so they spend less on gas; they have a lifetime of knowledge of how to care for a car and trusting relationships with their local mechanics.  Simply put, they can better afford the tremendous costs of driving.
• There’s also a gulf between how our generations feel about public transportation.  As a middle-class kid from a small town, the only buses I had to ride on were school buses; my peers and I have been getting around by car since age 16.  In order to ride a train in a city, you had to go to Chicago.  Subways, streetcars, and other forms of intracity rail have always been exotic to me; it’s how people get around in glamorous, exciting places like New York, Washington, DC, Boston, San Francisco.  Older people see the inverse.  They grew up at a time when car ownership was more expensive; they associate driving with status, and bus ridership with poverty.

It’s difficult to argue with sprawl lovers like L. Brooks on the basis of aesthetic preferences or environmental beliefs, because there simply isn’t much common ground on these topics — we inhabit different planets.

There is one area which I think tends to get the least attention from the anti-sprawl lobby, however, and that is the financial hit that taxpayers take because of sprawl.  Aaron Renn details it in an excellent recent screed at Urbanophile.com titled “This Is Why We’re Broke.”  I think this is the one area we can all agree on, because of its very concrete fiscal consequences:

• Road maintenance:  It is a truth universally acknowledged that Michigan roads and bridges are in atrocious condition, and Oakland County is no exception.  The biggest reason?  Sprawl.  More miles of roads = money for upkeep spread more thinly.
• Other infrastructure:  More miles of sewer, electric and gas lines, internet cable, and other utilities are spread over the same number of taxpayers, resulting in higher costs for upkeep per taxpayer, and neglect of necessary maintenance.  (An excellent example of the costs of deferred sewer maintenance in today’s Detroit News.)
• Public safety:  How many police and fire departments in Oakland County are facing layoffs? Do local governments have enough money to salt and plow the roads in a timely manner when there is an unusually snowy winter?   Again, the more widely these services have been dispersed across the metro region, with its stagnant population, the harder it is to adequately finance them.

County-wide leaders might also take note that greenfield construction cannibalizes existing communities within their jurisdiction.  You would expect L. Brooks to acknowledge this truth, but as a Republican his electoral base does not come from the oldest inner ring suburbs in southeast Oakland County (with the exception of Birmingham).   Ferndale, Hazel Park, Southfield are growing blacker and more Democratic each year; Huntington Woods is affluent but staunchly Democratic; and Royal Oak is stemming its population decline with young Democratic-leaning professionals.  L. Brooks doesn’t care if Detroitification seeps into the inner suburbs, because they vote against him; what does it matter to him if they begin to fall apart?

I suspect there’s only one argument that stands the remotest chance with old-school, sprawl-loving suburban leaders like L. Brooks.  Not history; not “social justice”; not the environment; not aesthetics; not identity.  Just the cold hard numbers on municipal balance sheets.

- Andy H.

Andy H. blogs at ”Motown to Tree Town”, A blog about Detroit, Ann Arbor, and the forty miles between.

I noted a couple of weeks ago on Motown to TreeTown that I would be following up with more posts on Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City, which I finished reading in Austin while I was attending South by Southwest. Throughout the book, Glaeser emphasizes education as one of the crucial determinants of urban success. Unfortunately, he contends, the American system of locally autonomous school districts puts large central cities at a disadvantage:

In the United States, public school monopolies have ensured that central cities often have poorly functioning school districts. Suburbs are smaller and more competitive, attracting more prosperous parents.

While Glaeser is on the right track, I think it’s not just that suburbs can be more competitive and thereby attract more prosperous parents, but also that suburbs are better able to exclude poor families, whose children typically require more intensive intervention by educators. Moreover, while some suburban districts demonstrate success, a lot of Detroit suburbs have wretched school systems too. It’s not that central cities don’t have to compete; it’s just that the poor are typically a captive audience, so they are not going to shop around like affluent parents do.

Glaeser reiterates an argument I’d first heard from Janet Abu-Lughod, that the well-intentioned attempts toward integration of schools through busing in the 1970s actually increased segregation in large American cities:

Enemies of busing, and that included more than 90 percent of America, saw it as an intrusion that destroyed neighborhood schools and forced kids to travel long distances.

It’s… hard to see any wisdom in the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Milliken v. Bradley, which limited busing the borders of school districts. That decision essentially meant that people within cities were forced to integrate their public schools, but suburban kids were exempt. If an antiurban fiend had tried to cause a mass exodus from the older cities, he couldn’t have done better… The result isolated the urban poor even more.

Coincidentally, Craig Fahle interviewed Central Michigan University professor Joyce Baugh on Tuesday about the Milliken case. Baugh just published a book about the busing case, and her analysis complemented Glaeser’s. Baugh emphasized that the perpetually imminent collapse of DPS is just part of a ‘‘long history of unequal education in Detroit.’‘ Baugh points out in her book that even at the time of the Milliken decision, DPS was already in dire fiscal crisis due to the decampment of the auto industry for the suburbs (and out of state) and the subsequent loss of Detroit’s tax base, a trend underway since the 1950s. According to her, Detroit voters in the early 1970s repeatedly refused to approve maintaining or increasing school millages and bond issues.

If that was the case, it seems like yet another consequence of Detroit’s extreme concentration of employment in manufacturing at the time. You didn’t have to have any education to make a terrific living working the line. Detroiters did not value schooling, and consequently did not feel the need to invest in their schools. It’s part of how the region ended up with mediocre college attainment compared to other large metros. It’s been paying for it ever since.

Talking with Baugh, Craig Fahle notes realtors at the time of the Milliken case employed busing-related fear tactics to motivate white families to leave Detroit and even adjacent suburbs like the Grosse Pointes. I see this as further evidence of how Detroit’s very high homeownership rate in the 1960s and 1970s accelerated white flight to a greater degree than in cities like New York or Chicago. Cities with higher percentages of renters may have been subject to less panic from white residents.

Let’s return to Glaeser, who describes how a metro’s economic health today is directly correlated with the average level of educational attainment its citizens had in 1940. (I had to return the book, so I don’t recall if it is per capita income or some other measure.) It is sobering to realize that so many of our region’s problems stem in one way or another from conditions seventy years ago. It is a reminder that the consequences of investments, sacrifices and tough choices made in 2011 – or not made – will last for the rest of our lifetimes.

It’s also something to ponder in light of DPS emergency financial manager Robert Bobb’s announcement this week of his proposal to turn Detroit’s forty or so worst-performing schools over to charter operation. To quote the Detroit News editorial board:

Under the plan, DPS would lease 41 schools that have chronically failed to meet improvement goals to private charter operators with a proven record of success. There are a number to choose from, including the University Prep Academies, the Henry Ford Academies, Green Dot Schools, YES!, KIPP and others that have posted impressive results.

Bobb’s plan calls for leasing to charters the school buildings and equipment. Current student bodies would stay with the schools, and charters would have to take the current special education pupils as well. Savings to the district would be up to $99 million, reducing its current $300 million shortfall…

As part of this proposal, Bobb also outlined four longer-term options.
Most involve a combination of traditional public schools and charters, all operating with greater autonomy. The most sweeping would convert all 142 DPS schools to charters, a direction Gov. Rick Snyder is said to be leaning toward as he puts together a plan for release next month.

Experienced charter operators and other education experts have been less sanguine than News’ editorial board, however:

Mary Kay Shields, executive director for the Center for Charter Schools at Central Michigan University, the state’s largest charter authorizer, said most ‘‘turnaround’‘ efforts in traditional public schools are statistically less successful than public charter schools begun from scratch… (She also) questions whether charter schools can help DPS fix its finances.
‘‘This is not the way to fix their $327 million deficit,’‘ she said. ‘‘I would recommend other models,’‘ such as startups…
Todd Ziebarth, vice president of state advocacy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington, said… ‘‘The challenge for DPS is they have very little track record as an authorizer. It might give operators there some pause…’‘

According to the article, officials at other organizations echoed these points. A spokesman for the national charter operator KIPP said it wouldn’t consider Detroit because they needed to start their schools from scratch. The president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies worried charter operators wouldn’t have enough independence from DPS administration and labor agreements. The News editorial, again optimistically, responded that

the issue may be settled once the (state’s) recently passed toughened emergency financial manager law is put in place. Bobb or his successor will have the authority under the law to rewrite or break labor agreements, as well as to act without the approval of the elected board. This may be the first test of how well that law works.

I’ve also heard experts shudder at the extremely brief timeline allotted for the conversion – recruiting and hiring entire schools’ worth of staff over the less than six months between now and the start of the next school year this fall. This is the part that worries me the most: that the most rigorous operators will shy away from the timeline. The contracts would be snatched up by less qualified charter operators, who may be more interested in making a few million quick bucks on the gravy train than in providing the best possible education for students.

While what I’m reading and hearing so far is less than encouraging, it’s a consolation to recall that the number of kids who are actually stuck in the DPS system continues to dwindle. Black families from Detroit have flooded to the suburbs over the past decade, contributing to much of Macomb County’s growth and helping keep Oakland County’s growth stable.

Alas, Detroit News story on the trend suggested that schools of choice in Macomb County were actually re-segregating schools there. According to the article, in suburbs that are seeing large increases in black residents, white families are using schools of choice to send their kids to schools in whiter, neighboring districts. The article quotes my favorite Detroit demographer, Kurt Metzger:

‘‘(T)his is totally about race… You hear code words: It’s getting rougher, or the quality has gone down.’‘

Parents choosing to transfer their students will argue that this is not just some kind of fig-leaf for racism. After all, if you have objective data that your home district is performing worse than a neighboring district, why not send your child to the better schools? Lacking hard evidence to the contrary, though, I’m inclined to side with Metzger: that a lot of white families, even those who would swear otherwise, are still using increased enrollment black students as a proxy measure for ‘‘lower quality.’‘ That’s just how racial cognitive schema works.

To accept as inevitable that a significant share of white families will reflexively seek to pull their kids whenever the share of black families hits a certain point, actually reinforces Glaeser’s argument on school competition. From the standpoint of a city whose goal is to preserve its tax base and resident population, schools of choice could actually help – at least the communities that are growing more diverse aren’t losing white families, they are just sending the students to different districts. It doesn’t hurt that the real estate market is still too lousy for them to be able to sell their homes, either.

If you’re not yet sick of all the hot air I’ve spewed about DPS and want to subject yourself to more of my rambling on this topic, you might check out my earlier post at Motown to TreeTown (incidentally, one of my most-viewed posts.) Not being an educator or an education expert myself, I’m always looking to learn more, and welcome your comments.