For years the school systems in Connecticut’s cities have been acknowledged as terrible, most of all by themselves, as those city school systems have sued state government charging that they fail because state government unconstitutionally underfunds them. Deciding the lawsuit last September, a Superior Court judge, Thomas G. Moukawsher, agreed. He’d heard testimony from city school officials that state education policy is mainly social promotion and that city schools long have been giving high school diplomas to illiterates.

Last week, though, President Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, changed all that. In testimony to Congress, she argued that because many public schools are failing, federal money should be diverted to alternative schools to provide choice. In support of her argument, Mrs. DeVos told of having met at a community college in Florida a young man who described himself as a product of the school system in East Hartford and who learned little there even as he was promoted from grade to grade and through high school, where disruptive students were in charge, where he was constantly bullied, and where teachers were indifferent to what he described as “dangerous day care.”

Suddenly things in Connecticut’s city schools turned around.

East Hartford School Superintendent Nathan Quesnel pronounced himself “disappointed and puzzled” by Mrs. DeVos’ testimony and invited her “to visit East Hartford, walk our hallways, and see how a public school system is working to help all kids succeed.” Yet last year Mr. Quesnel himself testified in support of the lawsuit charging that school systems like his are failing.

Connecticut’s largest teachers union, the Connecticut Education Association, fumed: “Betsy DeVos’ attack on the East Hartford public schools is alarming, demoralizing, and unwarranted, but not unexpected from a woman who is totally unqualified. … In an attempt to undermine public education and push her privatization policies, she continues to insult the millions of professional educators who dedicate their lives to teaching and empowering students.”

Yet the CEA was a key member of the group that brought the lawsuit impugning the city schools.

At least East Hartford’s U.S. representative, Democrat John B. Larson, a former East Hartford High School teacher himself, hinted that he knows that something might be wrong in public education. “I am deeply aware of the challenges that our public schools face,” Mr. Larson said. But he quickly struck the politically obligatory pose: “The characterization of East Hartford schools as uncaring is absolutely contrary to what I know about our local teachers, who are dedicated to the success of every student.”

Another representative from Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat, got closer to the real point of contention. Since it would divert money from public education, DeLauro said, the Trump budget “is not the way to make things better in Connecticut’s struggling schools.”

Thus the conclusion Connecticut was supposed to draw from Judge Moukawsher’s indictment of the city schools, an indictment prompted in large part by the East Hartford superintendent and the CEA themselves and so similar to the indictment by Mrs. DeVos, was instantly amended. Now it goes this way: If being terrible will get them more money, as sought by the school financing lawsuit, city schools are indeed terrible, but if being terrible will get them less money, as under the Trump budget, city schools are not so bad after all.

That is, this controversy is less about education than about whether the money appropriated in education’s name keeps flowing largely to members of the teacher unions, the largest faction in the Democratic Party.

Mr. Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer at Manchester, Connecticut.