Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh is a 2009 book by Gerald Grant, published by Harvard University Press.
In the words of Richard Arum of New York University, Grant argued that the Wake County district was "exemplary".
[3] Regina Smardon described the work as both "a masterful ethnographic survey" and a "brilliant demographic analysis".
[6] The use of Syracuse as the counterexample is done to show how de facto educational segregation is prevalent in the northern United States.
[7] Publishers Weekly described it as "a must-read for anyone interested in" the book's respective fields.