The Perfect Score Project is an indispensable guide to acing the SAT – as well as the affecting story of a single mom’s quest to light a fire under her teenage son. It all began as an attempt by Debbie Stier to help her high-school age son, Ethan, who would shortly be studying for the SAT. Aware that Ethan was a typical teenager (i.e., completely uninterested in any test) and that a mind-boggling menu of test-prep options existed, she decided – on his behalf -- to sample as many as she could to create the perfect SAT test-prep recipe. Debbie’s quest turned out to be an exercise in both hilarity and heartbreak as she took the SAT seven times in one year and in-between “went to school” on standardized testing. Here, she reveals why the SAT has become so important, the cottage industries it has spawned, what really works in preparing for the test and what is a waste of time. Both a toolbox of fresh tips and an amusing snapshot of parental love and wisdom colliding with teenage apathy, The Perfect Score Project rivets. In the book Debbie does it all: wrestles with Kaplan and Princeton Review, enrolls in Kumon, navigates khanacademy.org, meets regularly with a premier grammar coach, takes a battery of intelligence tests, and even cadges free lessons from the world’s most prestigious (and expensive) test prep company. Along the way she answers the questions that plague every test-prep rookie, including: “When do I start?”...”Do the brand-name test prep services really deliver?”...”Which should I go with: a tutor, an SAT class, or self study?”...”Does test location really matter?” … “How do I find the right tutor?”… “How do SAT scores affect merit aid?”... and “What’s the one thing I need to know?” The Perfect Score Project’s combination of charm, authority, and unexpected poignancy makes it one of the most compulsively readable guides to SAT test prep ever – and a book that will make you think hard about what really matters.

The Perfect Score Project is an indispensable guide to acing the SAT - as well as the affecting story of a single mom's quest to light a fire under her teenage son. It all began as an attempt by Debbie Stier to help her high-school age son, Ethan, who would shortly be studying for the SAT. Aware that Ethan was a typical teenager (i.e., completely uninterested in any test) and that a mind-boggling menu of test-prep options existed, she decided - on his behalf -- to sample as many as she could to create the perfect SAT test-prep recipe. Debbie's quest turned out to be an exercise in both hilarity and heartbreak as she took the SAT seven times in one year and in-between "went to school" on standardized testing. Here, she reveals why the SAT has become so important, the cottage industries it has spawned, what really works in preparing for the test and what is a waste of time.

From the beloved author of Because of Mr. Terupt and its sequels comes The Perfect Score, a new middle-grade school story with a very special cast of unforgettable characters who discover that getting the perfect score—both on the test and in life—is perhaps not so perfect after all. No one likes or wants to take the statewide assessment tests. Not the students in Mrs. Woods’s sixth-grade class. Not even Mrs. Woods. It’s not as if the kids don’t already have things to worry about. . . . Under pressure to be the top gymnast her mother expects her to be, RANDI starts to wonder what her destiny truly holds. Football-crazy GAVIN has always struggled with reading and feels as dumb as his high school–dropout father. TREVOR acts tough and mean, but as much as he hates school, he hates being home even more. SCOTT’s got a big brain and an even bigger heart, especially when it comes to his grandfather, but his good intentions always backfire in spectacular ways. NATALIE, know-it-all and aspiring lawyer, loves to follow the rules—only this year, she’s about to break them all. The whole school is in a frenzy with test time approaching—kids, teachers, the administration. Everyone is anxious. When one of the kids has a big idea for acing the tests, they’re all in. But things get ugly before they get better, and in the end, the real meaning of the perfect score surprises them all.

Bad Girl Grading System A — Totally bad!!! B — Could be worse… C — Wannabe territory D — Way too nice! F — Give it up, Mattie Brown! Mattie Brown has always prided herself at excelling at everything. And that's why it's killing her that she scored only 18% on a sex test! But she isn't going to take it lying down. (Well, maybe she will, but that's beside the point.) Her plan — to proposition Cullen Slater, the neighborhood stud, for some hands-on instruction in how to make her sex life sizzle. Too bad it's her cute, nice-guy neighbor Mike Peterson who's lighting her fire….

From the beloved author of Because of Mr. Terupt comes the sequel to The Perfect Score, about a lovable group of students at Lake View Middle School and the rewards and challenges of seventh grade. These students are in for a year of secrets, discoveries, and kid power! GAVIN finally joins the football team—a dream come true!—but Coach Holmes refuses to play him for reasons that also threaten to tear Gavin's family apart. When RANDI attends an elite gymnastics camp, she uncovers a startling family connection. SCOTT starts researching an article for the school newspaper and stumbles right into a hornet's nest of lies. With his loser older brother, Brian, out of the house, TREVOR's life is loads better—until he realizes that only he can save Brian from getting into deep trouble. NATALIE's top goals: (1) find out why Mrs. Woods and Mrs. Magenta no longer speak to each other—a mission shared by all the kids—and (2) teach a certain someone an important life skill without anyone knowing. It's tough keeping secrets. And tougher still to deal with the fallout when secrets spill out.

When you're a project manager with a team of people who don't technically report to you, your challenge is to get Results Without Authority. This book delivers proven techniques for controlling projects and managing diverse teams in a wide variety of situations, and bringing those projects to successful closure. The concepts in this book are essential for all project managers, with and without authority, because they offer a productive alternative to "command and control" management techniques that can easily backfire. Tom Kendrick's system will help you get successful project results from diverse, cross-functional, virtual, outsourced, and other types of project teams by showing how to establish and build: Control Through Process. Key project management processes, infrastructure, and the role of the project office. Control Through Influence. Productive leadership styles, reciprocity, and maintaining relationships. Control Through Project Metrics. Quantitative, predictive, diagnostic, and retrospective metrics for project control, motivating desired behaviors, and avoiding potential problems. Control Through Project Initiation. The role of the sponsor in project control, the importance of project vision, project launch documentation, and the project start-up workshop. Control Through Project Planning. Collaborative planning as the foundation of project control; planning as a key factor in setting baselines and establishing metrics. Control During Project Execution. Measurement and interpretation of project status, informal communication, and maintaining relationships as keys to maintaining control. Control Through Tracking and Monitoring. Controlling scope and other project parameters; formal project communication and reporting, rewards and recognition, and project reviews. Enhancing Overall Control Through Project Closure. Sign-off, evaluating retrospective project metrics, celebrating, and rewarding the team; improving long-term project control through lessons learned. Packed with invaluable guidance for controlling projects of all scopes and in any field, Results Without Authority will help novice and experienced project leaders get the best from their project teams.

ghSMART, the bestselling team behind Who: The A Method for Hiring, returns with a breakthrough formula for how the best leaders and teams deliver results. “ghSMART is the world’s top firm for helping leaders hire talented teams and run them at full power. Nothing is more important.”—Marshall Goldsmith, bestselling author of Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There “The most useful book about leadership.” That is what we hope you and your team will say after finishing Power Score. Is your team running at full power? Only 10 percent of leaders run their teams at full power. The formula you are about to learn is based on the most extensive research of its kind, spanning more than 15,000 careers with over 9 million data points. The idea has been battle-tested for more than two decades by leaders in every major industry. It works. Successful leadership starts with three key questions: 1. Priorities—Do we have the right priorities? (Only 24 percent of leaders do.) 2. Who—Do we have the right people on the team? (Only 14 percent of leaders do.) 3. Relationships—Do we have the right relationships that deliver results? (Only 47 percent of leaders do.) Learn how to calculate your team’s Power Score, and how to improve each of the three key areas of leadership. Learn what to do, and what not do, from compelling statistics and inspiring stories of those leaders who have succeeded and those who have failed. You may be surprised how easy it is to read this little book. And you may be even more surprised by how fast this approach will boost your team’s results. When you dial up your team’s Power Score, you will make a greater impact as a leader, help your team earn more money for your cause (whatever your cause may be), and enjoy greater career success. Praise for Power Score “Shaking distrust out of an organization is hard. But the payoff is immense. Bravo to Smart, Street and Foster for sharing their ideas about how to make that happen.”—Forbes “[Power Score] offers insights on improving in each dimension and inspiration. It’s written briskly, in a question-and-answer format that keeps ideas clear and concise. The book’s a winner and maybe you will be too if you try its approach.”—The Globe and Mail “The power score is the secret sauce that gives the group the information needed to fix problems. The authors provide plenty of guidance presented in an accessible Q&A format.”—Success “I wouldn’t be surprised if Power Score became the new go-to guide for leadership. Effective teams are key in everything from healthcare to business to government to nonprofits, and this book will help organizations change the conversation about getting results.”—Atul Gawande, New York Times bestselling author of Being Mortal and The Checklist Manifesto “Smart, Street, and Foster have turned more than twenty years of research on leadership into a practical, systematic approach for getting results.”—Frederick W. Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of FedEx Corporation “My entire team applied the principles of Power Score and has enjoyed explosive growth as a result. Even better, I am having more fun as a leader than ever before.”—Jeff Booth, chief executive officer and founder of BuildDirect

Getting 100 % on the SATs, or getting a date with a cute trumpet player? Scoring top honors in youth orchestra, or scoring tickets to a punk rock concert? Following your parents' dreams to an Ivy league college, or following your heart? It's senior year, and Patti Yoon is about to find out what it really takes to be good enough!

Now a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Learn a new talent, stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way. Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage through self-education. In these tumultuous times of economic and technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education—a lifelong mastery of fresh ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner. The challenge of learning new skills is that you think you already know how best to learn, as you did as a student, so you rerun old routines and old ways of solving problems. To counter that, Ultralearning offers powerful strategies to break you out of those mental ruts and introduces new training methods to help you push through to higher levels of retention. Scott H. Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Benjamin Franklin, chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymath Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship—without knowing French. Young documents the methods he and others have used to acquire knowledge and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life. Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares a proven framework for a successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and exe - cute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs. Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple tools to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.