A Fine Line
A Fine Line
Couldn't load pickup availability
View full details
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that little Linda Brown couldn't be excluded from a public school because of her race. In that landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the court famously declared that public education must be available to all on equal terms. But sixty-six years later, many of the best public schools remain closed to all but the most privileged families. Empowered by little-known state laws, school districts draw attendance zones around their best schools, indicating who is, and who isn't, allowed to enroll. In many American cities, this means that living on one side of the street or the other will determine whether you leave eighth grade on a track for future success or barely able to read.
In A Fine Line, bestselling author Tim DeRoche takes a close look at the laws and policies that dictate which kids are allowed to go to which schools. And he finds surprising parallels between current education policies and the redlining practices of the New Deal era in which minority families were often denied mortgages and government housing assistance because they didn't live within certain desirable zones of the city.
It is an extraordinary story of American democracy gone wrong, and it will make you question everything you think you know about our public education system.
Tim DeRoche is the bestselling author of The Ballad of Huck & Miguel, a modern-day retelling of Huck Finn set on the Los Angeles River, which was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, the LA Review of Books, and the Mark Twain Forum. It was also selected by the Pasadena Public Library as the “One City, One Story” book for the Summer of 2019.
He also wrote A Fine Line, which was featured in the Washington Post and which launched the national watchdog Available to All. His third book, Tales of Whimsy, Verses of Woe, is a collection of nonsense poetry that received starred reviews from Kirkus and the American Library Association (ALA). He has written for TIME, USA Today, The Free Press, Unherd, and Literary Hub.
Tim lives with his wife Simone and four young kids in the Foothills of Los Angeles.
