Despite the Best Intentions

Despite the Best Intentions PDF

Author: Amanda E. Lewis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0190250879

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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

Despite the Best Intentions PDF

Author: Amanda E. Lewis

Publisher: Transgressing Boundaries: Stud

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0195342720

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Despite Good Intentions

Despite Good Intentions PDF

Author: Thomas W. Dichter

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Policing the Racial Divide

Policing the Racial Divide PDF

Author: Daanika Gordon

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2022-05-31

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1479814059

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"This book explores the relationships between racial segregation, urban governance, and policing in a postindustrial city. Drawing on rich ethnographic data and in-depth interviews, Gordon shows how the police augmented racial inequalities in service provision and social control by aligning their priorities with those of the city's urban growth coalition"--

Best Intentions

Best Intentions PDF

Author: Emily Listfield

Publisher: Washington Square Press

Published: 2010-04-20

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781416576723

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

The Hell of Good Intentions

The Hell of Good Intentions PDF

Author: Stephen M. Walt

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0374712468

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the New York Times–bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

The Coddling of the American Mind

The Coddling of the American Mind PDF

Author: Greg Lukianoff

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0735224919

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book • Bloomberg Best Book of 2018 “Their distinctive contribution to the higher-education debate is to meet safetyism on its own, psychological turf . . . Lukianoff and Haidt tell us that safetyism undermines the freedom of inquiry and speech that are indispensable to universities.” —Jonathan Marks, Commentary “The remedies the book outlines should be considered on college campuses, among parents of current and future students, and by anyone longing for a more sane society.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising—on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe PDF

Author: Heather Webber

Publisher: Forge Books

Published: 2019-07-16

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1250198607

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER Heather Webber's Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe is a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town Southern charm. Nestled in the mountain shadows of Alabama lies the little town of Wicklow. It is here that Anna Kate has returned to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café. It was supposed to be a quick trip to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate, but despite her best intentions to avoid forming ties or even getting to know her father’s side of the family, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and the mysterious blackbird pie everybody can’t stop talking about. As the truth about her past slowly becomes clear, Anna Kate will need to decide if this lone blackbird will finally be able to take her broken wings and fly. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Integration Interrupted

Integration Interrupted PDF

Author: Karolyn Tyson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-02-21

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0199793018

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An all-too-popular explanation for why black students aren't doing better in school is their own use of the "acting white" slur to ridicule fellow blacks for taking advanced classes, doing schoolwork, and striving to earn high grades. Carefully reconsidering how and why black students have come to equate school success with whiteness, Integration Interrupted argues that when students understand race to be connected with achievement, it is a powerful lesson conveyed by schools, not their peers. Drawing on over ten years of ethnographic research, Karolyn Tyson shows how equating school success with "acting white" arose in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education through the practice of curriculum tracking, which separates students for instruction, ostensibly by ability and prior achievement. Only in very specific circumstances, when black students are drastically underrepresented in advanced and gifted classes, do anxieties about "the burden of acting white" emerge. Racialized tracking continues to define the typical American secondary school, but it goes unremarked, except by the young people who experience its costs and consequences daily. The rich narratives in Integration Interrupted throw light on the complex relationships underlying school behaviors and convincingly demonstrate that the problem lies not with students, but instead with how we organize our schools.

Best Intentions

Best Intentions PDF

Author: Colleen Barney

Publisher: Kaplan Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 9780793151967

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Compelling letters by real life parents and children beneficiaries illustrate the major concepts in estate planning. While most estate planning books focus on the "how to" format of reducing tax liability, this collection of letters and stories from real life people emphasizes the more human aspects, including people's desires and goals for future generations.