The state of America's college education is challenging the preconceived notions of parents and students alike. College costs continue to rise, while the traditional job market continues to dissolve, making the "Student Loan Crisis" a national epidemic. Complex loans are being taken by students who don't understand the ramifications of the debt. Lower than expected salaries with misunderstood employment trends challenge the traditionally perceived value of the college education. Cheating and fraud are growing rampant inside the classrooms, while the traditional top tier college professors are being eliminated. This has created The College Dilemma. But this new world simply has new rules, and young adults can still see the success of their dreams. The College Dilemma doesn't just expose the problems-- it teaches young adults and parents how to succeed in this changing collegiate and employment environment.

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! I’ll just ignore Rider and those soul-searing looks he gives me every time I reach for the baby. He broke my heart three years ago… he won’t get a second chance. What’s worse than having Rider Kingston, the hotshot quarterback on your college football team, give you the big brushoff because he doesn’t want to get serious? You’d probably think living across the street from him, where you get a first-hand view of his hookups, right? That’s what I thought, until someone drops off a surprise baby with a note pinned to her blanket that says one of those jocks—either Rider or one of his numbskull roommates—is the father. I wouldn’t care one bit about their paternity problems—except my brother lives there, too… which means that adorable squawking bundle might be my niece, and there’s no way I’m leaving her unattended with those bumbling football players. They need my help, even if they don’t know it yet. Once we solve this dilemma and figure out who the daddy is, I’m out. * * * The Varsity Dad Dilemma is a sexy, small-town sports romance novel from USA Today best-selling author Lex Martin. Over three thousand readers are raving about the passionate, angst-filled enemies-to-lovers romance, and the smoking-hot chemistry between Gabby, the slightly nerdy Latina with a take-charge attitude and her surprisingly sweet ex-boyfriend Rider. Who knew that he actually had a heart of gold underneath that deliciously ripped, well-defined exterior? “Gabby and Rider have great chemistry and their banter is HOT. While she had loathed everything about Rider since freshman year, there was no denying the physical attraction they had towards each other… If you are looking for a college romance that brings the laughter, with loads of sexual tension and plenty of heart melting moments, check this book out!” – Reader Review

In her new book, bestselling author Mercedes Schneider provides little-known details about the history of the Common Core State Standards. She lifts the veil on how the Common Core was developed, who was present in the back room, the push to copyright it so that test-makers could profit, and the urgency for governors to sign commitments before the standards were even completed. CCSS is publicized as being a state-led, teacher-developed approach guaranteed to ensure that all students are college- and career-ready. By the end of this eye-opening book, readers will come to understand the CCSS and its attendant assessments as something very different—an education-restricting, profit-garnering opportunity packaged as an education-sounding sales pitch. Common Core Dilemma will appeal to readers across the political spectrum who want to better understand the role of corporations, nonprofits, big donors with strings attached, and the federal government in exercising control in our schools. “Mercedes Schneider is the right person to take a close look at the controversies around the Common Core. She is not only a high school teacher, but also holds a Ph.D. in research methods and statistics. No one digs deeper than she to understand the politics, money, and personalities behind big issues.” —Diane Ravitch, professor of education at New York University, historian of education and bestselling author, author of Reign of Error “The Common Core 'state' standards swept the nation in an educational coup d’etat six years ago. The campaign was so swift that most Americans—indeed most educators—had never even heard of the standards when they were adopted. Mercedes Schneider has become the nation's leading detective investigating this 'whodunnit' mystery, and here she tells the tale, from the beginning.” —Anthony Cody, educator, writer, and public speaker

"Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 Americans have viewed school integration as a central tenet of the black civil rights movement. Yet, school integration was not the only-or even always the dominant-civil rights strategy. At times, African Americans also fought for separate, Black-controlled schools dedicated to racial uplift, community empowerment, and self-determination. An African American Dilemma offers a social history of debates over school integration within northern Black communities from the 1840s to the present. This broad geographical and temporal focus reveals that northern Black educational activists vacillated between a preference for either school integration or separation during specific eras. Yet, as there was never a consensus, this study also highlights the chorus of dissent, debate, and counter-narratives that pushed families to consider a fuller range of educational reforms. A sweeping historical analysis that covers the entire history of public education in the North, this study complicates our understanding of school integration by highlighting the diverse perspectives of Black students, parents, teachers, and community leaders all committed to improving public education. It finds that Black school integrationists and separatists have worked together in a dynamic tension that fueled effective strategies for educational reform and the black civil rights movement. This study draws on an enormous range of archival data including the black press, school board records, social science studies, the papers of civil rights activists, and court cases"--

Promise and Dilemma gathers the reflections of a group of leading educators on whether and how objectives of diversity, equity, and excellence can be simultaneously pursued. Empirical in orientation, these essays focus on constructive proposals and on the role of social and political consensus. Furthermore, they contrast what we believe we know with what empirical data and institutional experience can teach us.

China's One Child Policy and its rigorous national focus on educational testing are well known. But what happens to those "lucky" few at the very top of the pyramid: elite university students in China who grew up under the One Child Policy and now attend the nation's most prestigious universities? How do they feel about having made it to the top of an extremely competitive educational system—as their parents' only child? What pressures do they face, and how do they cope with the expectations associated with being the best? Fragile Elite explores the contradictions and perplexities of being an elite student through immersive ethnographic research conducted at two top universities in China. Susanne Bregnbæk uncovers the intimate psychological strains students suffer under the pressure imposed on them by parents and state, where the state acts as a parent and the parents reinforce the state. Fragile Elite offers fascinating insights into the intergenerational tensions at work in relation to the ongoing shift in educational policy and definition of what a "quality" student, child, and citizen is in contemporary China.

We’ve heard plenty from politicians and experts on affirmative action and higher education, about how universities should intervene—if at all—to ensure a diverse but deserving student population. But what about those for whom these issues matter the most? In this book, Natasha K. Warikoo deeply explores how students themselves think about merit and race at a uniquely pivotal moment: after they have just won the most competitive game of their lives and gained admittance to one of the world’s top universities. What Warikoo uncovers—talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford—is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the “diversity bargain,” in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment—racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it—who will be the world’s future leaders—will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.