On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers? Through five years' worth of interviews and data-gathering at Riverview, John Diamond and Amanda Lewis have created a rich and disturbing portrait of the achievement gap that persists more than fifty years after the formal dismantling of segregation. As students progress from elementary school to middle school to high school, their level of academic achievement increasingly tracks along racial lines, with white and Asian students maintaining higher GPAs and standardized testing scores, taking more advanced classes, and attaining better college admission results than their black and Latino counterparts. Most research to date has focused on the role of poverty, family stability, and other external influences in explaining poor performance at school, especially in urban contexts. Diamond and Lewis instead situate their research in a suburban school, and look at what factors within the school itself could be causing the disparity. Most crucially, they challenge many common explanations of the 'racial achievement gap,' exploring what race actually means in this situation, and why it matters. An in-depth study with far-reaching consequences, Despite the Best Intentions revolutionizes our understanding of both the knotty problem of academic disparities and the larger question of the color line in American society.

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities)

Politics & Social Sciences

Lewis, Amanda E.

Diamond, John B.

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, 2nd Edition (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities)

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like an exemplar of an integrated community. Serving an affluent and diverse district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high-achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, racial disparities in key outcomes persist? In this updated second edition, Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond build on their powerful and illuminating study of Riverview to show how the "racial achievement gap" continues to afflict American schools sixty years after the formal dismantling of segregation. The second edition includes new chapters that highlight what has changed and what remains the same at Riverview and explore how the lessons from the book can inform school change efforts. Lewis and Diamond present a complex story of concerted efforts to transform educational opportunities in Riverview, alongside persistent resistance to those efforts. Most crucially, they challenge many common explanations of the racial disparities in educational outcomes exploring what race actually means in the school context, and how it matters.

Challenging Racism in Higher Education provides conceptual frames for understanding the historic and current state of intergroup relations and institutionalized racial (and other forms of) discrimination in the U.S. society and in our colleges and universities. Subtle and overt forms of privilege and discrimination on the basis of race, gender, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability are present on almost all campuses, and they seriously damage the potential for all students to learn well and for all faculty and administrators to teach and lead well. This book adopts an organizational level of analysis of these issues, integrating both micro and macro perspectives on organizational functioning and change. It concretizes these issues by presenting the voices and experiences of college students, faculty and administrators, and linking this material to research literature via interpretive analyses of people's experiences. Many examples of concrete and innovative programs are provided in the text that have been undertaken to challenge, ameliorate or reform such discrimination and approach more multicultural and equitable higher educational systems. This book is both analytic and practical in nature, and readers can use the conceptual frames, reports of informants' actual experiences, and examples of change efforts, to guide assessment and action programs on their own campuses.

Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice

Chesler, Mark

Crowfoot, James E.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

"Race in the Schoolyard is a wonderful book for social scientists studying race, education, and childhood studies. The book showcases the talents of a gifted fieldworker whose theoretically rich work sits on the cutting edge of a growing body of scholarship examining the social worlds of children. School officials, parents, and, most especially, a new generation of teachers will benefit from these lessons on race."-American Journal of Sociology
"Instructors may recommend this book to students to whom the topic is surely vital and engrossing and for whom the text will be lively and engaging."-Contemporary Sociology
"Lewis moves beyond traditional research methods used to examine achievement gaps and differences in test scores to look closely at the realities of schooling. I highly recommend this work for every person involved in teaching and learning."-Multicultural Review
"Through eloquent case studies of three California elementary schools-a white-majority 'good' school, a mostly minority 'tough' school, and an integrated 'alternative' school-[Lewis] demonstrates that schools promote racial inequalities through their daily rituals and practices. Even the notion of a "color-blind" America-an especially popular ideal in the white school-perpetuates racism, Lewis argues, because it denies or dismisses the very real constraints that schools place on minorities. Lewis is nevertheless an optimist, insisting that schools can change ideas of race. . . . Highly recommended. Undergraduate collections and above."-Choice 
"In this pioneering ethnography in elementary schools, Lewis shows brilliantly how racism is taught and learned in the small places of everyday life."-Joe Feagin, University of Florida and author of Racist America
"A wonderful and timely book. Ethnographically rich, theoretically sophisticated, and clearly written, this book addresses the ubiquitous issue of race in all its complexity."-Michèle Foster, author of Black Teachers on Teaching
"A compelling ethnography of the racial landscape of contemporary schools."-Barrie Thorne, author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School
Could your kids be learning a fourth R at school: reading, writing, 'rithmatic, and race?
Race in the Schoolyard takes us to a place most of us seldom get to see in action¾ our children's classrooms¾ and reveals the lessons about race that are communicated there. Amanda E. Lewis spent a year observing classes at three elementary schools, two multiracial urban and one white suburban. While race of course is not officially taught like multiplication and punctuation, she finds that it nonetheless insinuates itself into everyday life in schools.
Lewis explains how the curriculum, both expressed and hidden, conveys many racial lessons. While teachers and other school community members verbally deny the salience of race, she illustrates how it does influence the way they understand the world, interact with each other, and teach children. This eye-opening text is important reading for educators, parents, and scholars alike.

Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies)

Rutgers University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lewis, Amanda E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lewis, Amanda E.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lewis, Amanda E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities)

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities)

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, 2nd Edition (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities)

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, 2nd Edition (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities)

Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice

Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies)