Despite the Best Intentions

2015-08-04 Social Science

Author : Amanda E. Lewis
Release : 2015-08-04
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 879/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Despite the Best Intentions by : Amanda E. Lewis

Download or read book Despite the Best Intentions written by Amanda E. Lewis. This book was released on 2015-08-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Good Intentions

2003 Business & Economics

Author : Thomas W. Dichter
Release : 2003
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Despite Good Intentions by : Thomas W. Dichter

Download or read book Despite Good Intentions written by Thomas W. Dichter. This book was released on 2003. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than thirty-five years, Thomas W. Dichter has worked in the field of international development, managing and evaluating projects for nongovernmental organizations, directing a Peace Corps country program, and serving as a consultant for such agencies as USAID, UNDP, and the World Bank. On the basis of this extensive and varied experience, he has become an outspoken critic of what he terms the "international poverty alleviation industry." He believes that efforts to reduce world poverty have been well-intentioned but largely ineffective. On the whole, the development industry has failed to serve the needs of the people it has sought to help. To make his case, Dichter reviews the major trends in development assistance from the 1960s through the 1990s, illustrating his analysis with eighteen short stories based on his own experiences in the field. The analytic chapters are thus grounded in the daily life of development workers as described in the stories. Dichter shows how development organizations have often become caught up in their own self-perpetuation and in public relations efforts designed to create an illusion of effectiveness. Tracing the evolution of the role of money (as opposed to ideas) in development assistance, he suggests how financial imperatives have reinforced the tendency to sponsor time-bound projects, creating a dependency among aid recipients. He also examines the rise of careerism and increased bureaucratization in the industry, arguing that assistance efforts have become disconnected from important lessons learned on the ground. In the end, Dichter calls for a more light-handed and artful approach to development assistance, with fewer agencies andexperts involved. His stance is pragmatic, rather than ideological or political. What matters, he says, is what works, and the current practices of the development industry are simply not effective.

Best Intentions

2010-04-20 Fiction

Author : Emily Listfield
Release : 2010-04-20
Genre : Fiction
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 723/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Best Intentions by : Emily Listfield

Download or read book Best Intentions written by Emily Listfield. This book was released on 2010-04-20. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Waiting to Surface comes a page-turning novel about four college friends whose reunion reawakens old desires and grudges—with fatal results. What happens when you think you know the person you love—and you’re dead wrong? Thirty-nine-year-old Lisa Barkley looks over at her sleeping husband, Sam, and can’t help but feel that their fifteen-year marriage is in a funk that she isn’t able to place. She tells herself that the strain must be due to their mounting financial pressures. With two daughters about to start another year at an elite Upper East Side private school and her own career hitting a wall, the effort of trying to stay afloat in their privileged world is increasingly difficult. But when she listens to Sam’s voicemail and hears a whispered phone call from a woman he is to meet that night, she begins to suspect he is having an affair. Lisa’s best friend, Deirdre, claims it can’t be true. But how can Lisa fully trust her opinion when Deirdre is mired in her own obsessive affair? When Deirdre’s former college flame, Jack, comes to town and the two couples meet to celebrate his fortieth birthday, the stage is set for an explosive series of discoveries with devastating results. Filled with suspense and provocative questions about the relationships we value most, Best Intentions is a tightly woven drama of love, friendship and betrayal.

Despite the Best Intentions

2015 Education

Author : Amanda E. Lewis
Release : 2015
Genre : Education
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 720/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Despite the Best Intentions by : Amanda E. Lewis

Download or read book Despite the Best Intentions written by Amanda E. Lewis. This book was released on 2015. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably 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, black and Latina/o students continue to lag behind their peers? The authors present their study of how the racial achievement gap continues to afflict American schools more than fifty years after the formal dismantling of segregation. Their book addresses both the knotty problem of academic disparities and the larger question of the color line in American society.

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