Marie and her three daughters have written an indispensable, easy-to-read book for transitioning to college. This updated and expanded 2011 edition contains new material explaining everything that parents need to know but most colleges won't be telling them. Chapters are devoted to safety, greening, privacy laws and how they impact the amount of information a college will be able to tell you, paying tuition bills you'll never see, managing a sick child no longer at home and guaranteeing you'll have a say if hospitalized, health care proxies, protecting your child's possessions, dorm insurance, identity theft, hidden college costs, budgeting and more.There are many steps between receiving the acceptance letter and saying goodbye at the dorm or airport. The Carrs guide you with clear, concise instructions, organization charts and forms. Tips and shopping lists are provided allowing one to plan ahead, be eco-friendly, save time and money and make the most of these exciting years.

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

Marie and her three college daughters have written an indispensable, easy-to-read book for transitioning to college. This updated and expanded edition has 40 pages of new material explaining everything that parents need to know but most colleges won't be telling them. Chapters are devoted to safety, greening, privacy laws and how they impact the amount of information a college will be able to tell you, paying tuition bills you'll never see, managing a sick child no longer at home and guaranteeing you'll have a say if hospitalized, health care proxies, protecting your child's possessions, dorm insurance, identity theft, hidden college costs, budgeting and more.There are many steps between receiving the acceptance letter and saying goodbye at the dorm or airport. The Carrs guide you with clear, concise instructions, organization charts and forms. Tips and shopping lists are provided allowing one to plan ahead, be eco-friendly, save time and money and make the most of these exciting years.

Realistic and practical advice for parents of college-age kids. Parents whose kids are away at college have a tough tightrope to walk: they naturally want to stay connected to their children, yet they also need to let go. What's more, kids often send mixed messages: they crave space, but they rely on their parents' advice and assistance. Not surprisingly, it's hard to know when it's appropriate to get involved in your child's life and when it's better to back off. You're On Your Own (But I'm Here If You Need Me) helps parents identify the boundaries between necessary involvement and respect for their child's independence.

"The most talked-about education book this semester." —New York Times From the author of Coming Apart, and based on a series of controversial Wall Street Journal op-eds, this landmark manifesto gives voice to what everyone knows about talent, ability, and intelligence but no one wants to admit. With four truths as his framework, Charles Murray, the bestselling coauthor of The Bell Curve, sweeps away the hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and upside-down priorities that grip America’s educational establishment. •Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn, but America’s educational system does its best to ignore this. •Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Yet decades of policies have required schools to divert resources to unattainable goals. •Too many people are going to college. Only a fraction of students struggling to get a degree can profit from education at the college level. •America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. It is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country.

Challenging parents to reconsider their understandings of what it means to be a more

Colleges look much the same as they did five or ten years ago, but a lot has changed behind the scenes. While some mixture of study and play has always been part of college life, an increasing number of schools have completely abandoned the idea that students need to learn or demonstrate that they've learned. Financial pressures have made college administrations increasingly reluctant to flunk anyone out, regardless of performance, although the average length of time to get a degree is now five years, and for many students it's six or more. Student evaluations of professors—often linked to promotion and tenure decisions—have made professors realize that applying tough standards, or any standards, only hurts their own career progress. For many professors, it's become easier and more rewarding to focus on giving entertaining lectures and to give everyone reasonably good grades. The worst of these schools are the "subprime" colleges, where performance standards and accountability have been completely abandoned. Students enjoy a five year party with minimal responsibilities while their parents pay the bills. These schools' investment decisions (first-class gyms and dining centers) are all geared to attracting students that want to have a good time, and their brochures all emphasize the fun aspects of the college experience—there are very few pictures of students actually studying or in class. And after graduation, former students are frequently unable to find work in their chosen fields, thanks to their school's reputation with employers, and unable to afford the payments on sizeable student loans. The subprime colleges, which "teach" a significant percentage of college students, are only the tip of the iceberg. All colleges, even the most elite, have moved in this direction to some extent. If you are a parent sending your child to college, The Five-Year Party will give you critical information you need about what is really happening at your child's college, and what you can do to ensure help your child gets a real education.

In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

Since when did families putting themselves into suffocating debt when trying to put their children through college become the rule rather than the exception? A long time ago, actually. In fact, drowning in hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt accrual for what seems like a lifetime is barely questioned these days. If you want your kids to pursue post-secondary education, managing (or mismanaging) crippling negative balances is a cruel but accepted fact of life and simply goes with the academic territory. Until now. In Parents, Send Your Child to College for FREE(R): Successful Strategies that Earn Scholarships, 3rd Edition, bestselling author Tameka L. Williamson sheds new light on a process that every parent wishes were easier. She reveals groundbreaking strategies to minimize and even eliminate debt when it comes to funding your child's future, reexamines the funding model that has proven faulty time and time again, and provides solutions for a financial burden that has plagued the nation's parents for far too long.