A veteran college dean gives parents of college students all the practical guidance they'll need to navigate the labyrinth of bureaucracies and policies in order to support their student's academic career and extracurricular life. Most books for college parents dwell on the emotional and psychological challenges when their son or daughter "cuts loose" into the quasi-dependent, quasi-adult limbo of college. Here at last is an expert nuts-and-bolts guide showing parents how to work collaboratively with their children to navigate the college bureaucracy—a labyrinth that at times seems perversely designed to frustrate parents at every turn, even on such basic matters as tuition and fees, grades, and disciplinary, legal, and medical problems. Drawing on her 20 years of experience as a student affairs dean at a top-ranked national university, Helen Akinc teaches college parents everything they need to know about policies and practices today in college administration, instruction, and student services. The practical advice gathered in this handbook will empower college parents to extract enough information from the system to support, guide, and monitor the academic career and general well-being of their college student—both on campus and off, in both routine and special situations.

From the private academies of Colonial America to the comprehensive public high schools and alternative schools of today, The Praeger Handbook of American High Schools offers a thorough compendium for parents, educators, and students. In its accessible and well-organized volumes, it includes charts and tables representing such things as enrollment trends, drop out rates, and academic achievement, as well as original entries on everything from assessment to No Child Left Behind to vouchers. Written by an interdisciplinary group of experts in education, psychology, sociology, and other fields, this landmark handbook provides a thorough examination of U.S. secondary education from the private academies of Colonial America to the comprehensive high schools and alternative schools of today. This accessible compendium is a treasure trove of reliable and authoritative information for educators, parents, and students. It includes original entries on assessment, architecture, bullying, campus life, censorship, college preparation, desegregation, disabilities, ethnic identity, family and community involvement, finance inequality, gangs, home schooling, homework, immigrants, intelligence, learning styles, magnet schools, mentoring, peer groups and peer culture, prom, reunions, rural schools, school boards, school to work programs, sex education, sports, standardized tests, student rights, teacher certification, teacher shortage, test preparation, violence, vouchers, and yearbooks, just to name a few. The text includes primary documents, each with scene and context-setting introductions, such as reports, legislation, and US Supreme Court cases will be found as well. Thorough cross-referencing enables the user to follow a topic from an entry to a primary document or another related entry. This wide-ranging, accessible and user-friendly source is an authoritative reference for anyone concerned with high schools and high school students in the United States.

This book introduces readers to key concepts and issues in the evolving field of special education. Arguably, over the past thirty years, no other area of education has been as radically transformed as the provision of services to children with disabilities. Since the mid 1970s, special education has steadily grown to reach fully 12% of the U.S. student population in grades K-12, and millions of children from birth to age five. Despite its promise of equal access, special education has become a controversial field in many respects. Critics point to its high cost, questionable pedagogical effectiveness, and differential outcomes across localities, family income levels, and ethnicities. The more typical approach in the literature highlights the legal and procedural mandates that dominate the discourse on educating the disabled student, but fails to explore the underlying assumptions and inconsistencies that make this area of education a controversial and still unsettled enterprise. This handbook departs from the traditional books in the field by focusing on the ways that special education policies and practices are enacted, rather than highlighting only their intended outcomes. Contributors to this text focus on defining commonly used terms and professional jargon in order to give interested readers access and insight into the field of special education and its associated practices. Some of the subjects included in this volume are the history of special education, disability and society, law and special education, pedagogy, policies and practices, and research in special education.

Cognition, mind, counseling psychology, lesson plans, learning styles, and Vygotsky are just a few of the many subjects discussed in this exciting work. Educators, students, counselors, parents, and others will find new understanding as they read and browse. How does the immigrant experience affect student outcomes? What are the effects of poverty on standardized testing? How can a teacher or parent develop study skills in the special needs learner? What is the effect of the school environment on students? What are the larger issues at work in educating students of diverse races, cultures, and classes. This work, a rethinking of school psychology, will be an essential resource for anyone who is interested in teaching and learning. It combines effective, traditional knowledge with contemporary insights into the nature of today's schools and students.

Maintaining that urban teaching and learning is characterized by many contradictions, this work proposes that there is a wide range of social, cultural, psychological, and pedagogical knowledge urban educators must possess in order to engage in effective and transformative practice. It is necessary for those teaching in urban schools to be scholar-practitioners, rather than bureaucrats who can only follow rather than analyze, understand, and create. Ten major sections cover the myriad issues of urban education as it exists today.

What does scientific research show about the effectiveness of chiropractic care? How are chiropractors trained and what do they do? When should one turn to chiropractic care, and how does one select a practitioner? This book answers all of these questions and more. Chiropractic is the most frequently used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practice in the United States, with nearly $4 billion spent out-of-pocket annually by chiropractic patients. In fact, as evidence for its effectiveness for common conditions such as back pain continues to mount and acceptance grows in a variety of health care settings, chiropractic could be considered more "mainstream" than many other forms of CAM. In this information-packed single-volume work, an expert team led by Cheryl Hawk—a well-known chiropractic researcher—explains chiropractic licensure, practice, and effectiveness to general readers researching chiropractic care options and to undergraduate students choosing a major or specialty. Readers will see the range of scientific evidence supporting the use of chiropractic health care for many common conditions, learn about the typical chiropractic clinical encounter and chiropractic procedures, and understand the criteria by which patients and other health professionals can use to select a chiropractic physician. This book also provides health care practitioners in other fields with current information that enables a greater understanding of the training and the roles of chiropractors in health care.

Latinos in the United States have fought hard to attain equality, especially in the field of education. The Praeger Handbook of Latino Education in the U.S. focuses on this fight for equal educational access and represents a significant addition to American educational literature. The contributors to this volume reveal that many Latino children still face challenges that were present many decades ago. In addition to such obstacles as cultural conflicts and racism, they also face teachers, curricula, and assessments that are not always respectful to their backgrounds. Educators, parents, policy makers, and communities across the country will find this work a goldmine of detailed historical and current information.