Diamond, John (Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education)

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools - Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities Diamond, John (Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education)

Marc Notes: 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 50 years after the formal dismantling of segregation. Biographical Note: Amanda Lewis is author of the multiple award-winning Race in the Schoolyard and an associate professor in the Departments of Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how race shapes educational opportunities from kindergarten through graduate school and on how our ideas about race get negotiated in everyday life. John Diamond is a sociologist of education who focuses on how race, ethnicity, and social class intersect with school leadership, practices, and policies to shape educational opportunities and outcomes. He is the Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Education at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education. Previously, he was an associate professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and past research director for a consortium of U. S. schools that used research to address racial achievement disparities. Table of Contents: AcknowledgmentsPrologue1. Introduction 2. Race, Oppositional Culture, and School Outcomes: Are We Barking Up the Wrong Tree? 3. The Road to Detention Is Paved with Good Intentions: Race and Discipline at Riverview 4. "It's Like Two High Schools": Race, Tracking, and Performance Expectations 5. Opportunity Hoarding: Creating and Maintaining Racial Advantage 6. Conclusion Appendix: Short Summary of Research Methods Notes References About the Authors IndexPublisher Marketing: 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 Latina/o students continue to lag behind their peers? Through five years' worth of interviews and data-gathering at Riverview, Amanda Lewis and John Diamond have created a powerful and illuminating study of how the racial achievement gap continues to afflict American schools 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 Latina/o 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 how it matters. Diamond and Lewis' research brings clarity and data into a debate that is too often dominated by stereotyping, race-baiting, and demagoguery. 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. Review Citations:

Library Journal 11/01/2014 pg. 100 (EAN 9780195342727, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Diamond, John John Diamond, MD, is a pioneering figure in the field of holistic and alternative medicine, and a past president of the International Academy of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Diamond's remarkable body of work - a blend of over forty-five years of research and clinical practice - embraces a wide range of disciplines, including conventional and complementary medicine, psychiatry, the humanities, holism, applied kinesiology, acupuncture theory, spirituality, and the arts (especially music) to help people overcome their problems. He concentrates on the totality of the sufferer - the interrelatedness and interdependence of the inseparable triune of body, mind, and spirit. He is the best-selling author of over twenty books. Contributor Bio:  Lewis, Amanda Amanda Lewis is a children's author, teacher and calligrapher. She lives in southern Ontario.