Despite the Best Intentions

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.