Beating the Odds


Book Description

Renowned educator Arthur Levine and coauthor Jana Nidiffer explore how some people overcome the most desperate circumstances to achieve the seemingly unreachable goal of a college degree. Drawing on their own study of 24 students, the authors detail the factors--relationships, resources, and activities-- that made a difference and allowed these students to go as far as they did.




Beating the Odds


Book Description

Beating the Odds tells the story of how teachers, students, and leaders in three schools transcend obstacles to beat the odds of failure and achieve impressive success. The schools' a suburban vocational/technical school, an urban school for immigrant, new-English-language learners, and an urban second-chance school for students who have failed elsewhere, all operate as communities of commitment. With accessible language, multiple examples, and rich anecdotes, Ancess describes how these schools are organized, how they use adult-student relationships to leverage high levels of student performance, how they enact teaching and learning for making meaning, and how they confront the obstacles they encounter. Ancess also discusses the systemic conditions for sustaining and scaling up schools such as these three. The high schools described in this volume - Urban Academy, International High School, and Hodgson Vocational-Technical, have come to represent models of successful reform despite their challenging student populations. In addition to telling their story, this book provides samples of school documents that illustrate the day-to-day operation of the schools and can be adapted by practitioners to fit their own circumstances.




Unfavorable Odds


Book Description

When Kim Hamilton rose to fame, she was anything but a typical world-class gymnast. She wasn't white, she didn't come from a middle-class family, and she was tall for a gymnast. But facing those obstacles was nothing compared To The challenges she faced at home. There, she tumbled in a secret world filled with drugs, violence, and financial strain. She met Unfavorable Odds but found hope by persevering through the pain. Here, Kim shares the techniques she learned to catapult herself from the past into the purpose God intended for her life.




Confronting the Odds


Book Description




Facing Fearful Odds


Book Description

Facing Fearful Odds is based on interviews and correspondence gathered from more than seventy of Wake's American defenders and on research in archival and printed sources. The book covers the planning and political struggles that began Wake Island's transformation into a naval air station and submarine base, the U.S. Navy's eleventh-hour efforts to garrison and fortify Wake, and the various air, sea, and land attacks that resulted in the atoll's capture by the Imperial Japanese Navy. This study attempts to correct the myths that shroud what happened on the atoll. - from preface.




Against Great Odds


Book Description

The history of the first land-grant academic institution for African Americans.




The Odds of Lightning


Book Description

A bolt of lightning inspires an incredible adventure in this charming, magical realism story that takes four teens on an all-night journey through the streets of New York City. Extraordinary things happen when we least expect them. Tiny, Lu, Will and Nathaniel used to be best friends. Then life-defining events the summer before high school tore them apart. Now, three years later, they hardly talk anymore. Nathaniel has become obsessed with winning the prestigious science scholarship that his genius older brother once won. Will has risen from anonymity to popular soccer star. Lu grew into a brash, impetuous actress. And shy, poetic Tiny has slowly been fading away. But fate weaves their lives together again the night before the SATs, during a wild thunderstorm that threatens to shut down New York City. And lightning strikes. Before they know what's hit them, the four teens embark on an epic all-night adventure to follow their dreams, fall in and out of love, reconcile the past, and overcome the fears that have been driving them since that one lost summer. And by the time the sun rises, odds are they’ll discover that there’s a fine line between science and magic, and that the mysteries of love and friendship can’t be explained.




Mothering Against the Odds


Book Description

We all know what a "good mother" looks like on television and in the popular imagination: typically she is white, heterosexual, and married, and devotes herself full-time to child care. But increasing numbers of women who mother today do not fit this narrow traditional image,and their different experiences of mothering are often maligned, misunderstood, or ignored.This compelling book presents the stories of diverse mothers whose life circumstances place them outside the mainstream. Filled with the voices of the women themselves, chapters explore the lives of mothers of exceptional children and biracial children; mothers who seek closeness and connection with their adolescentchildren; mothers with HIV/AIDS; immigrant, homeless, single, lesbian, adoptive, and teen mothers; African American mothers living in poverty; and mothers in prison. Their vivid, heartfelt accounts demonstrate the unique strengths of women struggling to overcome personal and societal barriers and take us beyond labeling entire groups of mothers as normal or deviant, "good" or "bad."




Beating the Global Odds


Book Description

The Answer to Global Overload Contending with the 24/7 news cycle and an endless barrage of choices and information has stymied leadership and decision-making strategies among those at the top. But we all know, this is not a just a problem for the elite. The broad-based reaction to this chaotic, unmanageable assault has been to retrench, and to focus on immediate, controllable decisions. In the process, we lose sight of the horizon. More dangerous still, is the shift we’ve seen from value creation to wealth creation, where information technology 1.0 has enabled a transaction-based society in which the “deal” is more important than the value it drives or the relationships it is based on. On our current path, the odds of a better future are slim. What we need is a new value proposition. Beating the Global Odds is the answer to the dangers of too much of a good thing. There’s no going back, but there is the opportunity to set things right. In this book, Paul A. Laudicina, Managing Partner and Chairman of the Board of global consulting firm A.T. Kearney, provides a fast-paced and engaging tour of how we got to this point and what we can do about it. Drawing on examples from everything from world history and current media to anecdotes from his vast network of CEOs and the world’s most innovative thinkers, Laudicina helps bring our world of seemingly fuzzy and disconnected pixels into sharp focus. The result is a compelling case for change and call to action—not only for global leaders but also for everyone who struggles with the question of how we can inspire and seize a better future… how we can beat the global odds.




Confronting the Odds


Book Description

This study used data on 1992 high school graduates from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (a survey that began with eighth graders in 1988 and followed them every two years through 1994) to examine the critical junctures when at-risk high school graduates are most likely to leave the pipeline to college enrollment, and to identify factors that increase their chances of successfully navigating the enrollment pipeline. An at-risk student was defined as having risk factors such as being from a single parent household, having an older sibling who dropped out of high school, and earning low grades between sixth and eighth grades. Highlights of the findings include: about 58 percent of graduates had one or more risk factors; of these, 30 percent successfully navigated the pipeline to college enrollment; at-risk students differed most from counterparts in their educational aspirations and academic preparation; and academically prepared at-risk students were much less likely than counterparts to take an entrance exam. After an introductory chapter, two chapters detail data and definitions and provide an overview of students at risk. The following two chapters present findings on the pipeline to a four-year college and compare at-risk students regarding completion of math courses, help received in the college application process, and level of school involvement of students, parents, and peers. Appended are a glossary, technical notes, and supplementary tables. (DB)