RADICALLY READY

What if preparing your child for the future requires more than simply doing well in school?

For Black families navigating a rapidly changing educational landscape, good grades alone may not be enough. Children also need strong reading and writing skills, critical thinking, college and career knowledge, financial literacy, credentials, mentors, networks, and the confidence to recognize opportunities when they appear.

In RADICALLY READY: Building an Underground Railroad of Education for Black Children in a Changing America, educator, author, college professor, homeschool mother of five, and longtime writing and college-preparation mentor Dr. Cheryl Carter gives parents a practical roadmap for building those advantages intentionally.

Drawing on decades of experience teaching and mentoring young people, Dr. Carter shows families how to create an educational strategy that extends beyond the school day without requiring parents to become full-time homeschoolers.

Parents will learn how to:

• strengthen reading, writing, reasoning, and communication skills
• use public school as part of a larger "School-Plus" educational strategy
• explore dual enrollment and help students earn college credit before graduation
• identify career certifications, apprenticeships, skilled trades, and alternative pathways
• build a balanced and financially realistic college list
• search strategically for scholarships and financial aid
• prepare neurodivergent students for greater independence and self-advocacy
• help Black boys develop strong academic, professional, and personal identities
• teach financial literacy, entrepreneurship, technology, and AI literacy
• build mentoring relationships and professional networks before students need them
• create an educational plan even when a family feels it is starting late
• organize churches, families, and communities into networks that share educational opportunities

At the heart of the book is Carter's provocative but carefully defined idea of an Underground Railroad of Education. The historical Underground Railroad responded courageously to the horrors of slavery, and this book does not equate today's educational challenges with that history. Instead, Carter draws upon one enduring principle: communities become powerful when people who know a route to opportunity help others find it.

A mother discovers dual enrollment and tells ten other parents. A retired teacher starts a Saturday writing group. A college graduate helps teenagers understand financial aid. An electrician introduces young people to apprenticeships. A church creates a college and career ministry. One family learns something valuable and refuses to keep the information to itself.

That is how an educational network begins.

Radically Ready is especially useful for parents of middle and high school students, Black families preparing for college, homeschool families, parents of struggling or neurodivergent learners, first-generation college families, educators, mentors, churches, and community organizations serving young people.

This is not a book about preparing every child for the same destination. College may be an excellent path. So may community college, an apprenticeship, skilled trades, entrepreneurship, professional certification, or another route.

The goal is bigger:

Prepare your child to have options.

Because the most powerful educational strategy is not simply getting one child through a door.

It is preparing that child to succeed, then teaching them to hold the door open for someone coming behind them.