A FINE LINE

A probing look at the inequalities that plague American schools.

From the start, the book is clear on its aim to call “attention to those laws and policies that prevent most American kids from having equal access to the best public schools.” DeRoche, a consultant who’s advised nonprofit organizations on K-12 education reform, makes his case patiently and carefully, but his frustration is palpable at the outset as he addresses why schools located so close together can be so far apart in performance. In the book’s opening section, he shows how institutional problems have led to the betrayal of “the American promise of public education.” According to him, the public education problem is primarily a problem of access, and he blames educational redlining. It’s a form of systemic discrimination that creates “attendance zones,” and these, “as drawn by district bureaucrats,” give school administrators a policy tool to exclude children who live in certain neighborhoods—particularly black and brown communities. The book presents a series of maps of attendance zones in several major metropolitan areas to show how many school districts can be mapped onto their redlined boundaries from 1939. “Today’s geographic discrimination,” he writes, “still reflects the patterns of racial and geographic discrimination of the mid-1900s.” Attendance zones, he says, also drive some parents to take desperate measures such as address fraud, in which a parent pretends to live in a different zone to gain access to its schools. In later chapters, the author enumerates the ways in which attendance zones are illegal and what litigation battles might look like in state courts.

DeRoche, who previously wrote The Ballad of Huck & Miguel (2018), writes with purpose and clarity, and he makes a strong, decisive case against current attendance-zoning practices. He draws most of his examples from populous cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta. The sheer number of students in these systems leads to a pressurized, ruthless environment, he asserts, in which parents will do anything for the few open spots at high-achieving schools. The book capably integrates statistics and data with visual representations, including maps, charts, and graphs, which help support the author’s arguments. Its 12 chapters in three sections are further subdivided with headings and bullet points, which makes information easy to digest. Although there’s plenty of blame to go around, DeRoche is more interested in working to reform the current dysfunctional state. He takes a forgiving approach to parents who manipulate the system: “They’re all working within the system that exists now,” he writes, and they’re “just doing what they think is best for their kids.” However, he doesn’t shy away from the root of the problem—institutionalized racism. He writes especially well when articulating a rallying cry for change: “We should all be troubled when we see that long-standing educational policies seem to work at cross-purposes to the core constitutional promises of our democracy.” Overall, this book diagnoses far more than it prescribes, but that’s to be expected when dealing with thorny and intricate issues.

A worthy investigation into the root cause of public education failures in the United States.