Teen hacker breaks into school files

Today's Boston Globe features an article about a teenager who has been arrested after hacking into his teacher's computer.

Column explores values issue in public, private schools

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby has written a thought-provoking column on the teaching of values in public and private schools.

Parents, students upset by cellphone ban

Parents and students are upset by a New York school's decision to ban cellphones. Find out more by reading the New York Times article on the controversy.

Sex education bill receives House approval

A sex education bill which would require Missouri students to have permission slips before they could take sex ed classes received approval from the House of Representatives Tuesday. Read the article from today's Kansas City Star.

JHS student favors replacing MAP with ACT

Joplin High School sophomore Danielle Crosthwait favors a proposal which would eliminate MAP testing for high school juniors and replace it with the ACT. Read her letter to the editor from today's Joplin Globe.

High school student may be forced to leave country

An award-winning New York High School science student may soon be forced to leave the United States. Read today's New York Times story of Amadou Ly, whose parents, Senegal residents, abandoned him in the U. S.

The perils of marching band

Do marching band members catch colds more often than other students? That was one of the experiments high school students conducted during a recent epidemiology conference. A tongue-in-cheek look at that conference is featured in a column in today's Washington Post.

School officials wrestle with problem of student blogs, journals

This week's situation in Riverton, Kan., will likely keep school officials debating the question of whether they should keep track of blogs that students do on their own time. The Christian Science Monitor recently published an informative article on this subject.

Psychologists say standardized tests may damage students

Standardized tests may have some unintended results, according to some psychologists consulted for this Santa Cruz, Calif., Sentinel article.

Students stage walkout to get more security

Though our area schools are by no means free of problems, we can certainly appreciate not having the problems faced by Kennedy High School in Chicago where students recently staged a walkout to protest the lack of security. Check out the Chicago Sun-Times article.

Online courses growing in popularity

Online courses for high school students are skyrocketing in popularity. Check out the Christian Science Monitor's article.

Springfield considering crackdown on underage drinking

The city of Springfield is considering a number of measures to curb underage drinking, according to an article in the Friday Springfield News-Leader.

Students slip porn into classroom DVD player

Another example of why teachers should never do paperwork while their classes are watching a DVD. Associated Press has a report on students who were expelled for slipping a pornographic DVD into the player while the teacher's back was turned.

Riverton students arrested in murder plot

The news that five Riverton High School students were arrested Thursday for allegedly formulating a plot to murder students and teachers at their school has thrown a major shock wave into this area. The Joplin Globe has an article and a sidebar on the situation.

Teen barred from wearing controversial t-shirt

Students in my communication arts classes during the 2004-2005 school year will remember the discussion over Webb City High School student Brad Mathewson, who was not allowed to wear gay pride t-shirts to school.
The exact opposite has occurred in San Diego where the 9th District Court of Appeals has ruled a student may not wear an anti-gay t-shirt. The ruling is featured in an article in today's Los Angeles Times.

MySpace hires official to help protect teens

Under attack from many corners for being a hunting ground for sexual predators, MySpace is taking steps to correct the situation, according to an article in today's New York Times.

Recipe to stop teen drinking given in column

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Mandy St. Amand writes about a recipe to stop teen drinking in a column from today's edition. With prom season here in most school districts, this makes for thought-provoking reading.

Post-Dispatch series examines teen depression

A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch series takes an in-depth look at teen depression.

Cop posing as high schooler leads to drug arrests

The Boston Globe has an interesting story this morning about a police officer disguised as a high school student whose work led to nine arrests in Falmouth, Mass.

Eminem files for divorce

Eminem filed for divorce this week. You can read USA Today's article to find out more.
(Students in Mr. Turner's Communication Arts classes should go to the following link to take the test over this article.)

Police call for boycott of new video game

A new video game, 25 to Life, has come under attack by police for its violent content. The issue is examined in an article from Teen Newsweek.
(Students in Mr. Turner's communication arts classes should go to the following link to take the test over this article.)

Students work to cut down price at proms

Believing that the price of proms was getting out of hand, students at a Long Island, N. Y. school have taken matters into their hands, according to this article from Associated Press.

(After they read the article, students in Mr. Turner's Communication Arts classes should go to the MAP Practice Test at this link and answer questions 5 and 6.)

Laptops for students may not be a good thing

Esther J. Cepeda, a schoolteacher and writer, believes laptops for students may be keeping them from learning to think on their own. Her column ran in today's Chicago Sun-Times.


BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA
People today are accustomed to using computers for nearly every task in life. For most of us, it was a gradual transition. We learned how to balance our checkbooks using our bank statements before we had Quicken to do it for us. We learned how to search through the encyclopedia to find who invented the light bulb. We had to actually read Shakespeare's ''Othello'' to learn the intricacies of the relationships between Othello, Desdemona and Iago before Google was invented.

Will those skills be lost if the I-Connect Initiative (House Bill 5244) is passed by the Senate? The initiative, proposed by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, would provide about 13,000 public school seventh-graders and their teachers with laptop computers -- the "textbooks of the 21st century." The estimated cost would be $5 million including hardware, software, technical support and teacher training.

The laptops would come loaded with science and math tutorials, and a full suite of word processing and spreadsheet software. The premise is that students need to learn from an early age how to use these tools to be better prepared to compete for the high-tech jobs that will surely dominate the economy as they enter the work force.

In Maine, where seventh-graders were given this same technology in 2000, the Maine Education Policy Research Institute found that students, parents and teachers reported an increase in enthusiasm for school and homework. The Maine eighth-grade test scores, however, showed no change in reading, writing, math and science compared with the previous two years. And the funding issues associated with keeping the gadgetry and training up to date is threatening the future of the program.

Walk into any high school math class and you will find students adept at using calculators. Every kind from the cheap colorful ones you find at the Dollar Store all the way up to expensive TI-83s which can convert fractions and percentages for you with the touch of a button and will also solve and graph equations -- a skill essential to any student pursuing higher education.

But behind those calculators, oftentimes, sit students who can't pull from their memory banks the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts necessary to solve real-world math problems. Sure, many students can figure out advanced logarithms because of the endless skill and drill which takes place to get kids to pass state standardized exams. But take the calculator away and many fall flat on their faces when asked to calculate the total price for a $65 pair of shoes with an 8.35 percent tax using just a pencil and paper.

Will the same happen in all curricular areas if the endless stream of information known as the Internet is constantly a key stroke away? Is there any reason to learn how to spell correctly when all word processing software comes with instant, automatic spell and grammar check? Do you need to remember the order of the presidents, how many ounces there are in a gallon, the capitals of all 50 states, or who wrote The Lottery?

If information is out there for us to use and manipulate at a moment's notice, the skills we need to impart to students who will navigate the 21st century must be in the areas of critical thinking and problem solving. That task will lie at the feet of well-trained, dedicated teachers with a strong grasp of how the world has changed since they got their teaching certificates.

It has been proved in study after study: The major factor in the success of students is a low student-to-teacher ratio. Knowing that, any money Illinois can scrape together to fund student achievement should be spent on getting more well-trained teachers into classrooms so students don't have to be packed together like sardines. It shouldn't be spent on silver bullets.

(Students in Mr. Turner's Communication Arts classes should go to the following link and answer questions 1-4 on the MAP Practice Test.)