Suddenly Diverse

"In Under Pressure, Erica Turner immerses the reader into two mostly white suburban communities in the Midwest that are quickly becoming racially, ethnically, and economically diverse. Turner explores how administrators and school board members navigate the challenges of demographic change, economic inequality and anxiety, and political shifts as public schools in the American Heartland are being transformed. She tells the story of these shifting demographics and shows how school officials in those cities responded: with the market-based managerial policies of performance monitoring and marketing. In Turner's analysis, the way those officials "managed" their schools' new multiculturalism not only fails to effectively address inequity, but in many ways deepens them. Despite everyone's best intentions, the contradictions inherent in working towards equity when US schools and society are marked by race and class disparity are too much for any school to address. Without larger changes to the whole system, Turner's study show that district leaders' best efforts will continue to undermine the promise of educational equity in public schools"--