Birmingham voters don't even know where to aim.
Memphis voters took a shot.
Birmingham still can't see its target.
Last week, voters in Memphis -- a school system four times Birmingham's size, but one that shares many of its problems -- decided to get out of the school business altogether. Residents voted, in dramatic two-to-one style, to transfer assets of Memphis schools to their county system, the wealthier, whiter Shelby County (Tenn.) school district.
It was the shot heard round Tennessee, if not the world. It was a monumental, contentious, daring, daunting approach to 21st century urban education:
Share the load, and the power, and the responsibility with the suburbs. It's so crazy it just might work.
It was a loud lesson for Birmingham schools, in their slow-motion slide toward oblivion.
Memphis, like Birmingham, is a largely black (85 percent), largely poor (87 percent) urban system that fails to measure up academically or administratively. Tennessee's lieutenant governor just last week urged state takeover of the system, saying it seemed more interested in employing people than educating kids.
Which sounds ... familiar.
Of course there are differences between Memphis and Birmingham. While Memphis-area students are largely blanketed by two systems, the Birmingham area's patchwork lays a dozen school systems across Jefferson County alone. The laws, options and people are different in Memphis.
And let's face it, the lawsuits -- mostly by suburban parents and school officials who want to guard against the Memphis Menace -- will draw this thing out like a graphic novel.
Which is why we can't get too caught up in Memphis details. The details don't affect us. It's the action, the nerve, the risk that is our lesson.
Because Memphis people saw what was happening, and demanded change. And Memphis city and school officials backed it -- at risk to their own power and status.
They chose to see the big picture. They chose the future of their children, and perhaps their entire city, over short-term personal payoff and ego.
It's just the sort of thing people say can't happen, won't happen here. Our puny power struggles are too paralyzing. Petty political clout is too important. Public jobs are, well, too much to risk.
Which is why we need a ... a Boom!
It's not that Birmingham needs to rush out and dissolve itself. But it should look at that as an option, along with charter schools, and innovative programs like they came up with in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Birmingham must find ways to put children before politics, power and patronage, before it is too late.
Because it's not just about the schools. It's about the whole city.
For as long as the schools fail, as long as the system loses a school's worth of students each year, the city will not boom.
It will bust.
John Archibald's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write him at