Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America

"Americans seem to concur that school desegregation is the right and just policy, and also that we will do nothing to pursue it. We also don't talk or think about it---until a book such as Five Miles Away comes along. James Ryan has produced just the right mix of case study and rigorous analysis to both help us grapple with an issue that most people would rather ignore, and to prod us into realizing the urgent need to do so. The focus on urban/suburban boundaries is exactly targeted and the attention to politics and the law, as well as to real children, is essential." Jennifer L. Hochschild, Professor of Government, Harvard University" "More than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, educational opportunity remains dramatically unequal across the United States---often, as James Ryan illuminates, in schools that are a few miles away but still worlds apart. Filled with vivid case studies and concrete reform proposals, this important and vibrant book demonstrates the role of law in perpetuating rather than reforming educational inequality." Martha Minow, Dean, Harvard Law School" "James Ryan has penned a searching and scholarly tour de force on the subject of race, community, and educational opportunity. His haunting account uses the stark differences between two neighboring Virginia schools, both located in the shadows of the capital of the Confederacy, as an opportunity to explore legal doctrine, judicial activism, social science, and public policy." Frederick M. Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute" "This book by James Ryan, a leading national expert on school law, shows a thoughtful and troubled moderate struggling to find ways to increase educational equity in America's deeply segregated and unequal schools in the face of massive legal and political obstacles to any significant change that would be opposed by suburbanites. Among the book's important strengths are a provocative treatment of the realities of metropolitan Richmond's schools and a rich discussion of equity reform efforts in state courts. Gary Orfield, Co-Director, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA" "Brown v. Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones?" "In his important new book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia---one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s that limited the scope of desegregation laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day. The Supreme Court, in accord with the wishes of the Nixon administration, allowed the suburbs to lock nonresidents out of their school systems. City schools, whose student bodies were becoming increasingly poor and black, simply received more funding, a measure that has proven largely ineffective, while the independence (and superiority) of suburban schools remained sacrosanct. Weaving together court opinions, social science research, and compelling interviews with students, teachers, and principals, Ryan explains why all the major education reforms since the 1970s---including school finance litigation, school choice, and the No Child Left Behind Act---have failed to bridge the gap between urban and suburban schools and have unintentionally entrenched segregation by race and class. As long as that segregation continues, Ryan forcefully argues, so too will educational inequality. Ryan closes by suggesting innovative ways to promote school integration that would take advantage of unprecedented demographic shifts and that embrace of diversity among young adults." Exhaustively researched and elegantly written by one of the nation's leading education law scholars, Five Miles Away, A World Apart ties together, like no other book, a half century's worth of education law and politics into a coherent, if disturbing, whole. It will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered why our schools are so unequal and whether there is anything to be done about it.