When the Fences Come Down

“When the Fences Come Down is the book that I myself would have written about the housing-school linkage, but Genevieve Siegel-Hawley has done it so much better than I could have.   She masterfully combines a comprehensive review of scholarly literature about the housing-school nexus with case studies that highlight the key value of county-wide school districts covering both a central city and its suburbs in promoting racial and economic integration.” — David Rusk, Founding President, Building One America, and author, Cities without Suburbs

“Professor Siegel-Hawley’s book is a direct challenge to current education ”reformers“ who think we can close the achievement gap by keeping low income children in separate, segregated schools.  She uses real life examples to demonstrate how state and local leaders can work together to make housing and school integration a reality.” — Philip Tegeler, National Coalition on School Diversity

“Genevieve Siegel-Hawley uses the experience of four southern metropolitan areas to evaluate regional approaches to school desegregation and how they relate to changing patterns in housing segregation. This book contributes significantly to an area clearly in need of further research — regional approaches to school desegregation.” — Thomas Luce, Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, University of Minnesota Law School

“When the Fences Come Down is a timely and well-considered contribution to the literature on desegregation in American schools. It promises to reframe the discourse on the topic so that educators and policymakers can look broader than a school and more acutely than the entire nation and instead settle their focus on a more appropriate unit of analysis — a region. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley looks squarely at issues that have heretofore been identified as important but have not received the scrutiny they merit as factors that may help us fully understand the conflicted legacy of Brown v. Board. Each chapter is rich with data, subtlety, and complex problems and solutions.” — Jeffrey S. Brooks, Monash University