Dani's parents have just separated and she moved with her mom to a new town. Not only does she live with her grumpy grandparents now, she also has to start at a new school. Dani pretends that she was a popular drama club star at her old school and starts to attract new, cool friends. Can she keep up her lies forever, or will she totally blow her cover?

"Weird Al" Yankovic's new tale of Billy, the irrepressible star of the New York Times bestselling When I Grow Up, is an uproarious back-to-school delight. Dazzling wordplay and sparkling rhyme combine in a unique appreciation of the rewards of unabashed originality and the special joy of viewing the world gently askew.

Actions to increase effectiveness of schools in a rapidly changing world Schools, in order to be nimble and stay relevant and impactful, need to abandon the rigid structures designed for less dynamic times. The NEW School Rules expands cutting-edge organizational design and modern management techniques into an operating system for empowering schools with the same agility and responsiveness so vital in the business world. 6 simple rules create a unified vision of responsiveness among educators Real life case studies illustrate responsive techniques implemented in a variety of educational demographics 15 experiments guide school and district leaders toward increased responsiveness in their faculty and staff

“If you read only one book on educating children, this should be the book.… With a warm, informative voice, Bauer gives you the knowledge that will help you flex the educational model to meet the needs of your child.” —San Francisco Book Review Our K–12 school system isn’t a good fit for all—or even most—students. It prioritizes a single way of understanding the world over all others, pushes children into a rigid set of grades with little regard for individual maturity, and slaps “disability” labels on differences in learning style. Caught in this system, far too many young learners end up discouraged. This informed, compassionate, and practical guidebook will show you how to take control of your child’s K–12 experience and negotiate the school system in a way that nurtures your child’s mind, emotions, and spirit. Understand why we have twelve grades, and why we match them to ages. Evaluate your child’s maturity, and determine how to use that knowledge to your advantage. Find out what subject areas we study in school, why they exist—and how to tinker with them. Discover what learning disabilities and intellectual giftedness are, how they can overlap, how to recognize them, and how those labels can help (or hinder) you. Work effectively with your child’s teachers, tutors, and coaches. Learn to teach important subjects yourself. Challenge accepted ideas about homework and standardized testing. Help your child develop a vision for the future. Reclaim your families’ priorities (including time for eating together, playing, imagining, traveling, and, yes, sleeping!). Plan for college—or apprenticeships. Consider out-of-the-box alternatives.

In Confessions of a School Reformer, eminent historian of education Larry Cuban reflects on nearly a century of education reforms and his experiences with them as a student, educator, and administrator. Cuban begins his own story in the 1930s, when he entered first grade at a Pittsburgh public school, the youngest son of Russian immigrants who placed great stock in the promises of education. With a keen historian's eye, Cuban expands his personal narrative to analyze the overlapping social, political, and economic movements that have attempted to influence public schooling in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century. He documents how education both has and has not been altered by the efforts of the Progressive Era of the first half of the twentieth century, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s through the 1970s, and the standards-based school reform movement of the 1980s through today. Cuban points out how these dissimilar movements nevertheless shared a belief that school change could promote student success and also forge a path toward a stronger economy and a more equitable society. He relates the triumphs of these school reform efforts as well as more modest successes and unintended outcomes. Interwoven with Cuban's evaluations and remembrances are his "confessions," in which he accounts for the beliefs he held and later rejected, as well as mistakes and areas of weakness that he has found in his own ideology. Ultimately, Cuban remarks with a tempered optimism on what schools can and cannot do in American democracy.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

Prospective college students and their parents have been relying on Loren Pope's expertise since 1995, when he published the first edition of this indispensable guide. This new edition profiles 41 colleges—all of which outdo the Ivies and research universities in producing performers, not only among A students but also among those who get Bs and Cs. Contents include: Evaluations of each school's program and "personality" Candid assessments by students, professors, and deans Information on the progress of graduates This new edition not only revisits schools listed in previous volumes to give readers a comprehensive assessment, it also addresses such issues as homeschooling, learning disabilities, and single-sex education.

A timely and incisive assessment of what the success of populism means for democracy. Populist movements have recently appeared in nearly every democracy around the world. Yet our grasp of this disruptive political phenomenon remains woefully inadequate. Politicians of all stripes appeal to the interests of the people, and every opposition party campaigns against the current establishment. What, then, distinguishes populism from run-of-the-mill democratic politics? And why should we be concerned by its rise? In Me the People, Nadia Urbinati argues that populism should be regarded as a new form of representative government, one based on a direct relationship between the leader and those the leader defines as the “good” or “right” people. Populist leaders claim to speak to and for the people without the need for intermediaries—in particular, political parties and independent media—whom they blame for betraying the interests of the ordinary many. Urbinati shows that, while populist governments remain importantly distinct from dictatorial or fascist regimes, their dependence on the will of the leader, along with their willingness to exclude the interests of those deemed outside the bounds of the “good” or “right” people, stretches constitutional democracy to its limits and opens a pathway to authoritarianism. Weaving together theoretical analysis, the history of political thought, and current affairs, Me the People presents an original and illuminating account of populism and its relation to democracy.

Teach Me to Be Generous tells the remarkable story of Regis High School, the Jesuit school on New York’s Upper East Side that was founded in 1914 by an anonymous donor as a school for Catholic boys whose families could not otherwise afford a Catholic education. Enabled by the philanthropy of the founding family for nearly a century, and now by alumni and friends carrying on that tradition of generosity, Regis has been able to provide tuition-free, all-scholarship education for its entire history. It also holds the distinction of being the first free-standing Jesuit high school in the United States, with no connection to any Jesuit colleges or universities. Regis High School’s unique story is told by an engaging storyteller and historian who has taught at the school for more than ten years. Father Andreassi offers captivating glimpses into the lives and daily experiences of Regis’s students and faculty while chronicling the development of the school’s educational philosophy and spiritual approach in its first century. Filled with entertaining anecdotes alongside wider historical context and illuminating statistical analysis, Teach Me to Be Generous tracks Regis High School through the decades of the twentieth century to the present day—from the generosity of a devout Catholic widow, through the Depression and World War II, to changes in demographics of the Catholic community and shifts in the landscape of Catholic education in New York City. During the school’s first few decades, Regis admitted thousands of Catholic boys, mostly from poor or lower-middle-class families, helping prepare them for success in college and leadership positions in the professions. Because of the closing of dozens of urban Catholic schools and the general decline of the quality of New York City’s public schools, in more recent years the school has faced the challenge of remaining true to its mission in offering an education to Catholic boys “who otherwise would not be able to afford a Catholic education.” Teach Me to Be Generous paints a vivid portrait of the first one hundred years of an exceptional institution and looks with hope and confidence to its future.

This handbook aims to be a guide to the best private schools of the country. It has been undertaken with the parent especially in mind, but it is hoped that it may be of value to school and college authorities and all others interested in the subject. It is believed that this Handbook is the first volume which attempts a critical and discriminating treatment of the private schools of the country. It is an endeavor to classify the schools on their merits -- at least a step, it is hoped, toward eventual standardization. - Editor's foreword.