Despite the Best Intentions How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, 2nd Edition

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.

Amanda E. Lewis is Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy & College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how race shapes educational opportunities and on how our ideas about race get negotiated in everyday life. She has received numerous grants and awards including from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Spencer Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Field Foundation, and the American Sociological Association. Dr. Lewis lectures and consults regularly on issues of racial and educational equity and contemporary forms of racism. John B. Diamond is Ford Foundation Professor of Sociology and Education Policy at Brown's Department of Sociology and Annenberg Institute for School Reform, where he directs the Center of Work on Race and Education. A sociologist of race and education, he studies the relationship between social inequality and educational opportunity, examining how educational leadership, policies, and practices operate through school organizations to shape students' educational opportunities and outcomes. An engaged scholar, Diamond has helped create space for community-engaged scholarship in sociology and education. He was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2023 and is an American Educational Research Association Fellow.