This study focuses on the case of the “Haut-du-Lièvre” district in Nancy, the most emblematic priority education zone (ZEP) in France’s Meurthe-et-Moselle département, between 1982 and 2002. This article has several focuses: the way the ZEP actually operates, and how this priority education policy dovetails with policy at city level, and the media and political discourse around this concept. This research serves to increase knowledge of the social and political history of this district of the city of Nancy. It helps to explain the gap between the "revisionist" political readings of the past and the interpretations at work in the many information documents held in the Priority Education archives.