Examines why school desegregation, despite its success in closing the achievement gap, was never embraced wholeheartedly in the black community as a remedy for racial inequality In 2007, a court case originally filed in Louisville, Kentucky, was argued before the Supreme Court and officially ended the era of school desegregation— both changing how schools across America handle race and undermining the most important civil rights cases of the last century. Of course, this wasn’t the first federal lawsuit to challenge school desegregation. But it was the first—and only—one brought by African Americans. In Divided We Fail, journalist Sarah Garland deftly and sensitively tells the stories of the families and individuals who fought for and against desegregation. By reframing how we commonly understand race, education, and the history of desegregation, this timely and deeply relevant book will be an important contribution to the continued struggle toward true racial equality.

It didn't begin with Obama, and it certainly won't end after his time in the Oval Office has passed, but it is safe to say that his presence alone has been the catalyst behind some of the most interesting and enigmatic times we've experienced in recent American history. From deep division and political stagnancy in Washington, to heated vitriolic and sometimes unintelligible commentaries, America spasm'd its way through the first four years of the Obama Presidency. Divided We Fall is the latter half of an age old axiom which serves to remind us that we are strongest when united and weakest when fractured. Ignorant We Fail is forewarning that no one wins when society is dumbed-down. This book is a non-fiction introspective of the country's response to the first black President.

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This book provides a fresh and even-handed account of the newly modernized AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons)—the 40-million member insurance giant and political lobby that continues to set the national agenda for Medicare and Social Security. Frederick R. Lynch addresses AARP’s courtship of 78 million aging baby boomers and the possibility of harnessing what may be the largest ever senior voting bloc to defend threatened cutbacks to Social Security, Medicare, and under-funded pension systems. Based on years of research, interviews with key strategists, and analyses of hundreds documents, One Nation under AARP profiles a largely white generation, raised in the relatively tranquil 1950s and growing old in a twenty-first century nation buffeted by rapid economic, cultural, and demographic change. Lynch argues that an ideologically divided boomer generation must decide whether to resist entitlement reductions through its own political mobilization or, by default, to empower AARP as it tries to shed its "greedy geezer" stereotype with an increasingly post-boomer agenda for multigenerational equity.

This examination of the history, development, activities, successes, and limitations of the largest membership organization in the country will be of interest to anyone who belongs to or is curious about this sometimes-controversial group. AARP is one of Washington's most influential interest groups, but just who does it represent? To some, it represents the narrow special interests of older Americans who already consume more than their share of government benefits. To others, its advocacy encompasses everyone, including those with elderly parents and grandparents—and those who will comprise the older generations of the future. The most comprehensive volume ever written about AARP, the book begins with a chapter on the organization's history, going back to its founding in 1958 and its roots in the National Retired Teachers Association, established in 1947. Readers will learn about AARP's membership and chapter activities, including how it grew to be the largest membership organization in the country. Perhaps even more engrossing is the book's investigation of the nature and extent of AARP's political influence and its positions and priorities as it struggles to represent a large and diverse constituency. Finally, the study discusses AARP's organizational model, which combines political advocacy, business, and charity, and probes the controversies arising from what AARP's critics charge are conflicts of interest.

Social settings have enormous power to promote or hinder positive youth development. Researchers and practitioners know a great deal about features of schools and programs for youth that affect development, but much less about how to transform settings to bring about these desirable features. This book shows how to harness the power of settings. It shifts the debate from simply enhancing youth outcomes at the individual level to improving the settings of youths' daily lives. The book offers researchers and practitioners blueprints for creating and changing influential settings including classrooms, schools, universities, out-of-school time programs, ethnic systems of supplementary education, and other community-based programs. Leading scholars in psychology, education, human development, sociology, anthropology, economics, law, and public policy discuss a wide array of social change strategies, and describe how to measure key features of settings as a target and guide for change. The authors also demonstrate how larger social structures - such as school districts, community coalitions, community data resources - can support change. Many of the chapters describe ways to make settings work for all youth, including those marginalized by reason of race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. Toward Positive Youth Development will guide researchers, educators, administrators and policy makers to improve schools and youth programs for all of America's youth.

Back to Bharat: In Search of a Sustainable Future is a book that addresses the present economic dilemma for Indian entrepreneurs and consumers, looking at the past and present situation of both India and the developed world to find a way forward. Written in an engaging and anecdotal style, the book is enriched with case studies from Nagaraja's investment career. It consolidates many observations and insights from the experience he has as a professional, investor and mentor for entrepreneurs across the country. It strongly expresses the belief that India's strengths are its people, problems and technology (PPT). As it draws on reallife examples of struggle and success, the book illuminates many questions that are most relevant to our present dilemma, both in terms of economic development as well as environmental threats that compel us to look at more sustainable alternatives to patterns of production and consumption.

If you want to help, but aren’t sure how, these words of wisdom from leaders in charity and philanthropy can get you started . . . This illuminating little book with a very big—and very timely—message features contributions from some of the most influential and philanthropic people and organizations in the world today, including founders and CEOs from such groups as the Make a Wish Foundation, Dress for Success Worldwide, the American Red Cross, and any more, as well as executives who drive corporate giving efforts. Whether they’re leading-edge thinkers or hometown heroes, their stories of how they make a difference—along with specific action steps readers can take—form an inspiring mosaic. You don’t need to be rich and powerful to make a difference—and with this book, you’ll discover the many ways that giving back can transform your life as well as the lives of others.

For decades, Marietta High was the flagship public school of a largely white suburban community in Cobb County, Georgia, just northwest of Atlanta. Today, as the school’s majority black and Latino students struggle with high rates of poverty and low rates of graduation, Marietta High has become a symbol of the wave of resegregation that is sweeping white students and students of color into separate schools across the American South. Students of the Dream begins with the first generations of Marietta High desegregators authorized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling and follows the experiences of later generations who saw the dream of integration fall apart. Grounded in over one hundred interviews with current and former Marietta High students, parents, teachers, community leaders, and politicians, this innovative ethnographic history invites readers onto the key battlegrounds—varsity sports, school choice, academic tracking, and social activism—of Marietta’s struggle against resegregation. Well-intentioned calls for diversity and colorblindness, Ruth Carbonette Yow shows, have transformed local understandings of the purpose and value of school integration, and not always for the better. The failure of local, state, or national policies to stem the tide of resegregation is leading activists—students, parents, and teachers—to reject traditional integration models and look for other ways to improve educational outcomes among African American and Latino students. Yow argues for a revitalized commitment to integration, but one that challenges many of the orthodoxies—including colorblindness—inherited from the mid-twentieth-century civil rights struggle.