Texting common despite school bans

Schools may have rules against texting, but students are ignoring them in greater numbers.

In its latest edition, the Wichita Eagle takes a look at the phenomenon:

It's fairly easy to get away with using a cell phone, especially with teachers who aren't very strict, added Ashton Bethel, a Southeast sophomore.

"You just go under the desk and hide it," she said.

A recent national poll shows that these Wichita-area students are in the majority when it comes to surreptitious cell phone use by teens.

About two-thirds of students who are supposed to keep their phones off use them during the school day anyway, according to an online survey commissioned by Common Sense Media, a California nonprofit that researches how media affects children.

"Even at the junior high level, they're breaking out iPhones," said Bailey Ketterman, who has worked as a substitute teacher at several Wichita-area suburban districts. "It's definitely a widespread problem."

Judge tentatively acquits MySpace mother

A federal court judge tentatively threw out the conviction of a Missouri woman who pretended to be a teenage boy on MySpace, starting a chain of events that led to a 13-year-old girl's suicide.

The following article comes from CNN:

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A federal judge tentatively overturned the conviction of a Missouri woman accused of using MySpace to deceive a teenage girl who eventually committed suicide, a U.S. attorney's spokesman told CNN.

A jury convicted Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Missouri, in November on three misdemeanor counts of accessing protected computers without authorization. Prosecutors argued that Drew illegally used the social networking site to humiliate a 13-year-old girl, who authorities said killed herself after receiving derogatory messages.

Drew was to be sentenced Thursday, but California U.S. District Judge George Wu -- who heard the case because MySpace is based in Los Angeles -- instead decided to not uphold the jury's finding.

Prosecutors based their case on a federal computer crimes statute that Wu is now challenging.

Using the statute, prosecutors accused Drew of violating the social networking site's terms of service, which prohibits creating fraudulent registration information, using accounts to obtain personal information about juvenile members and using MySpace to "harass, abuse or harm other members."

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, told CNN that Wu said in court if Drew is convicted of illegally accessing computers, the guilty verdict would set a precedent and anyone who has ever violated MySpace's terms of service could also be found guilty of a misdemeanor.

"It appears that the judge is basing his decision on his conclusion that the misdemeanor statute is constitutionally vague," Mrozek wrote in an e-mail to CNN.

Wu said his decision will become final once he files a written ruling, according to Mrozek.

The misdemeanor charges -- which Drew is tentatively cleared of with Wu's action -- stemmed from an elaborate hoax played out on MySpace.

The prosecution accused Drew of using the site to inflict emotional distress on Megan Meier. Prosecutors alleged during the trial that Drew -- worried that Meier had spread malicious rumors about her daughter -- used MySpace to pose as a 16-year-old boy, "Josh Evans," who feigned romantic interest in Meier.

Meier killed herself after the "boy" spurned her and at one point told her via the Internet that the world would be a better place without her, according to prosecutors.

Jurors declared a mistrial on a more serious conspiracy charge.

Prosecutors sought the maximum three-year sentence for Drew on the misdemeanor convictions.

The U.S. Justice Department plans to explore other legal options against Drew, Mrozek said. Prosecutors might appeal the case's dismissal and consider refilling the conspiracy charge, he said.

Is cyberspying on students legal?

Today's Dayton Daily News in Ohio offers an exploration of police and school officials spying on teen internet activity on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube:

Police officers assigned to schools in the region say they go online to check social networking sites and have found evidence of students bullying others, making threats and planning fights.

John Simmons, safety and security coordinator at Miami Valley Career Technology Center in Englewood, said he has personal MySpace and Facebook accounts and that he checks traffic on Yahoo! YouTube, AOL, Instant Messengers and other networks.

His vocational school assigns wireless laptop computers to each of its nearly 2,000 high school-age students.

Simmons, who is also a part-time Clayton police detective, said he has a legal obligation to enforce laws that require the school to ensure computer safety for its students, and to learn whether students are using the equipment for bad behavior or getting access to inappropriate Web sites.

Students who go astray can risk suspension, expulsion or even face charges in courts if the offenses are serious enough, Simmons said.

The article indicates not everyone thinks this kind of policing is the right way to go:

Police need to exercise restraint in developing suspicions on the basis of what is said on social networking sites, said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

“Really, what they’re doing is using people’s speech and associations as a basis for suspicion,” Davis said.

Student strip search case headed for Supreme Court

A middle school who was strip searched for drugs in Arizona is suing the school district and the case has gone all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The following article is taken from today's Washington Post:

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 11, 2009; A01

SAFFORD, Ariz. -- April Redding was waiting in the parking lot of the middle school when she heard news she could hardly understand: Her 13-year-old daughter, Savana, had been strip-searched by school officials in a futile hunt for drugs.

It's a story that amazes and enrages her still, more than six years later, though she has relived it many times since.

Savana Redding was forced to strip to her underwear in the school nurse's office. She was made to expose her breasts and pubic area to prove she was not hiding pills. And the drugs being sought were prescription-strength ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advils.

"I guess it's the fact that they think they were not wrong, they're not remorseful, never said they were sorry," April Redding said this week, as she and Savana talked about the legal fight over that search, which has now reached the Supreme Court.

And even more: When, days later, the principal met with April Redding to discuss what had happened, she said he was dismissive of an event so humiliating that her daughter never returned to classes at Safford Middle School.

"He said, 'There was an incident with some pills, and we had to find out if Savana had them, but you should be happy because we didn't find any on her,' " Redding recalled. "I got really upset and was telling him, 'Why did you do this to her? How could you do this to her?' "

From the yellow-brick school in this dusty town of cotton fields and copper mines to the Supreme Court, the lawsuit that April and Savana Redding brought carries the potential for redefining the privacy rights of students and the responsibility of teachers and school officials charged with keeping drugs off their campuses.

Matthew W. Wright, the school system's lawyer, declined to make his clients available for interviews. But in a statement, he said he regrets the news media's "reflexive reaction" to the case and underscored the dilemma school officials face between privacy and protection.

"Unfortunately, this tension sometimes places school officials in the untenable position of either facing the threat of lawsuits for their attempts to enforce a drug-free policy or for their laxity in failing to interdict potentially harmful drugs," he wrote.

To which Savana Redding's lawyer, Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union, replied: "The school official here heard an accusation that Savana previously possessed ibuprofen at some unknown location at some unknown time and jumped to the conclusion that Savana was presently storing ibuprofen and that she was storing it against her genitalia.

"It should be self-evident that that search is wrong."

But the federal judges who have reviewed the case have not been so sure.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit eventually ruled that the search violated Savana's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and that Vice Principal Kerry Wilson could be found personally liable for ordering the search.

"The public school officials who strip searched Savana acted contrary to all reason and common sense," wrote Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, who reached back to a previous court decision for the quote that has come to define the case:

"It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a thirteen-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude."

On the other hand, it apparently stumped other constitutional scholars. The first judge who heard the Reddings' case agreed with the school system that the search was justified because of accusations that school officials had heard about Savana. He threw out the suit.

A divided three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit upheld that decision.

And while eight judges on the circuit eventually ruled that the search was unconstitutional, several of the judges said Wilson could not have been expected to navigate the shifting legal standards for when such searches are allowed.

"Searches are often fruitless, and students' motives are often benign, but teachers, unlike courts, do not act with the benefit of hindsight," wrote Judge Michael Daly Hawkins.

The backdrop for the case is a 1985 Supreme Court decision that said school officials need to have only reasonable suspicions, rather than probable cause, to search individual students. That case involved the search of a student's purse, but the justices cautioned against a search "excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction."

Safford officials say in court briefs that they were on high alert in October 2003 because the year before, a student nearly died after taking prescription medication brought to school by a friend. And they said they had good reason to be suspicious of Savana Redding, despite her honor-roll grades and spotless disciplinary record.

They had received a complaint from one student that, before a dance earlier in the year, students drank alcohol at a party hosted by Redding and her mother. On the day of the search, a student told officials he had been given a prescription-strength ibuprofen tablet by a friend of Redding's.

When that girl was discovered to be carrying such pills, she said she received them from Redding.

Savana Redding said both allegations were lies -- the boy had not even been at the party, she said. But what happened next is not in dispute.

Vice Principal Wilson removed her from class and brought her to his office. She gave permission for a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing.

Then Wilson told her to go to the nurse's office with two female staffers. They told her to remove her socks and shoes, her stretch pants and pink T-shirt. They told her to move her bra from side to side, which exposed her breasts, and pull out the waistband of her underwear.

"I did what they told me to do -- I didn't want to look at them, though," Redding recalled. "If I had looked at them, I probably would have cried. I was trying not to."

She never attended classes again at Safford Middle School -- "I just couldn't go back," she said. She developed ulcers in high school, and the girl who, according to her mother, "would rather be at school than anywhere else" eventually dropped out.

Now 19, she took placement tests to get into nearby Eastern Arizona College and gives interviews to the national media in a small frame house just off the Old West Highway, which runs through the center of town.

"It's something that I really want to see through," Redding said of the lawsuit. "It's just that I'm one of those kinds of people who don't even want to get up in class and talk in front of people, so it's just going through it, over and over . . ."

She recently saw a flyer at the college that advertised a class that was going to discuss her case. She hears from "a lot of people [who] would find me through MySpace or something and then send me messages like, 'Hey, you're that girl that got strip-searched.' Yeah, I'm that girl, thanks."

But she didn't know about a new group on Facebook. It's called "Friends of Savana Redding."

"Really?" she asked.

New California law expels students for internet taunting

California is cracking down on students who bully other students over the internet or via text messaging. A new law which allows schools to expel students who commit cyberbullying takes effect in California Jan. 1:

By Peter Hecht
phecht@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008

It was bad enough when middle school students in Novato last year harassed and ridiculed 14-year-old Olivia when she suffered a seizure on campus.

But her torment only worsened when the girl went online and discovered a MySpace page full of taunts, slurs and threats directed at her. Her classmates had dubbed the page "Olivia Haters."

The case of the Novato teen would inspire a book, "Letters to a Bullied Girl: Messages of Healing and Hope." It would also stir a hand-wringing discussion over the emotional cruelty of school bullying and the power of the Internet to make it even more severe.

On Jan. 1, a new California law will give schools authority to suspend or expel students for bullying fellow students over the Internet, in text-messaging or by other electronic means.

Assembly Bill 86 by Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, adds cyberbullying to school disciplinary codes that previously defined bullying only in terms of direct physical or verbal harassment.

Lieu said he sponsored the legislation out of concern that the Internet has become a prime tool among students "to intimidate, harass or bully another person at school."

"You're dealing with some very fragile egos at these age levels," Lieu said. "Some people can be driven over the edge and do some horrible things."

Among those horrible things was the tragic death of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl who hanged herself in 2006 after being spurned by someone she thought was an online love interest.

Lori Drew, the mother of one of Megan's friends, harassed the girl by creating a phony MySpace page under the name of a fictional "Josh Evans." She was convicted in November of misdemeanor counts of accessing computers to inflict emotional distress.

In Novato, the wounds for Olivia were so searing that her mother moved her to another junior high school, only to have her daughter face more harassment after her new classmates learned of the "Olivia Haters" page.

After Olivia's mother, Kathleen Gardner, told the San Francisco Chronicle about her daughter's devastation, something remarkable happened.

The family was deluged with sympathetic letters from people young and old who told of their own suffering from school bullying - or who apologized for years-old acts of bullying.

The letters became the basis for "Letters to a Bullied Girl," published by Harper Collins.

"I am a parent of a 13-year-old girl who was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit this year after a suicide attempt or 'bullycide' attempt," read one letter, signed "A distraught mother." "I don't want other parents and children to experience this fate. So what is being done? And what can we do to change this?"

Gardner said in a recent interview that she had spoken to several "parents of kids who have been bullied or cyberbullied or both, and committed suicide."

AfterAB86 was signed into law, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said in a statement that "intimidation or harassment ... will not be tolerated at any school, on any playground" or online.

"Whether it's hurtful e-mails or abusive actions, we must protect those who suffer at the hands of bullies," O'Connell said.

The cyberbullying legislation was backed by the California Teachers Association and California PTA, the Anti- Defamation League, the American Electronics Association and Microsoft Corp.

"We see cyberbullying as a threat to creating a safe online environment for children," said Doug Free, a Northern California spokesman for Microsoft.

According to a June 2007 Pew Research Center study, nearly one-third of teenagers using the Internet reported being annoyed or harassed.

Thirteen percent said they had received threatening or aggressive e-mails. Another 13 percent said rumors about them were spread online. And 6 percent said embarrassing photographs were posted online without their permission.

At Sacramento's McClatchy High School, Principal Cynthia Clark said student altercations on campus often start online.

"We have had conflict resolutions in which we traced back disagreements to when they were on MySpace or text messaging," she said. "It's another vehicle kids use to insult their friends in immature ways."

Clark said students have come to her office with cell phone text messages to document threats.

"They say, this student is saying this about me. Can you help me stop it?" Clark said. McClatchy junior Sydney Tibbitts, 16, said she saw a classmate reduced to sobs after unflattering photographs were circulated online by fellow students.

"She was so upset. She had no idea who it was (sending out material) and she was scared,Tibbitts said.

In September, the Vallejo City Unified School District passed a sweeping policy banning students from using computers or cell phones to send harassing or threatening messages, or to cheat on exams.

District spokesman Jason Hodge said officials became alarmed by students sending text or instant messages to incite campus fights. In some cases, he said, altercations were incited by students wanting to make cell phone videos to post on YouTube.

"A kid would go up to another kid, say it's time to fight and then post it online," said Hodge, who said the district's policy also bans videotaping without permission. "Bullying is an age-old event. It's just gone onto the Internet because that's where the kids are now. And schools have to catch up."

Massachusetts school eliminates dances due to alcohol problems

A Massachusetts high school has taken action against teen drinking by eliminating dances, according to an article in today's Boston Globe.

By KEITH O'BRIEN
Boston Globe

BELMONT - Of the dozen or so students who had to be pulled off the dance floor for being intoxicated at the Belmont High School's Hoedown last March, principal Mike Harvey recalls one 18-year-old senior in particular.

Unable to reach his parents, administrators placed the wobbly student in police custody - not to be charged, just to be watched until his parents could be located. But once at the police station, according to authorities, the student made a clumsy effort to escape, pushing an officer, garnering criminal charges, and ultimately influencing Harvey to make a bold, if disappointing, decision.

Dances this fall are canceled in Belmont. Harvey, a square-jawed wall of a man, said he had no choice but to take drastic measures. In doing so he joined a growing number of school administrators who are cracking down on the state's pervasive culture of underage drinking.

Following recent incidents at football games at Westwood High School and Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, administrators at those schools have not only suspended students but changed school policies, restricting what students can bring to games and even requiring them, on one occasion, to be accompanied by chaperones.

A growing number of high schools are now using breathalyzers at school events, testing students they believe to be intoxicated or sometimes testing every single student to make sure no one has been drinking. At Winchester High School dances, parents are required to sign in their students at the door. And many schools have adopted zero-tolerance policies.

If you're a senior at Woburn High School, for example, and you get caught drinking at the prom, you can forget about collecting your diploma on time.

"You're cooked for graduation," said Woburn High School principal Bob Norton, noting that violators must enroll in a counseling program that lasts about two months. "We don't put anybody on a fast track. If you get caught at senior prom, you don't graduate."

Even though Massachusetts' rates of underage drinking overall have fallen in recent years, state and local officials are troubled by what they're seeing. The state still has one of the highest rates of underage binge drinking in the country, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

In 2006, more than 11 percent of Massachusetts youths ages 12 to 17 reported binge drinking - defined as consuming five or more drinks in one sitting - during the prior month, according to the survey. For underage drinkers age 12 to 20, the rate was more than double: 23 percent. And the number of high school students reporting any drinking in the previous month, according to 2007 state data, is even higher.

"It's 46 percent," said Michael Botticelli, director of the state Bureau of Substance Abuse Services. "Forty-six percent of high school students have drunk alcohol in the past month. That's not reassuring data to me."

What's troubling, Botticelli said, is the impact that alcohol can have on a young person's life. Research has shown that adolescent alcohol use can have long-term effects on the brain and lead to higher rates of alcoholism. And according to a 2007 report from the US surgeon general, alcohol is a leading contributor to death from injuries - the main killer of people under 21. Annually, the surgeon general said, about 5,000 people under 21 die from alcohol-related injuries, including 1,900 in car crashes.

Such statistics often aren't persuasive enough to keep youths from drinking. But they're enough to keep parents up at night, wondering if their children will make it home safe. And the numbers - as well as the mounting incidents of drinking on school grounds in Massachusetts - are certainly getting the attention of administrators.

Last spring, after what happened at Belmont High's Hoedown, Harvey said he knew it was time to make a change.

"I was sitting there thinking, 'What am I doing here?' Really questioning why we do dances in general," he said.

"We've been very lucky that nobody's been seriously hurt, I think. We've had a lot of luck. And I don't want to be around when the luck runs out."

Concerned about underage drinking, high schools, including Newton, Wellesley, Westwood, and others, started turning to breathalyzers several years ago. A majority of high schools now use the devices in some way, according to Noel Pixley, president of the Massachusetts Secondary School Administrators' Association.

Principals say they just work.

"How many schools can tell you they've had 18 consecutive proms - junior and senior proms - and haven't had a single issue with any students in possession, any bottles, any kids smelling of booze? None?" said John Brucato, the principal of Milford High School who began using breathalyzers at school events nine years ago. "We just haven't had issues."

Such testimonials are just one reason why Reading Memorial High School is considering using breathalyzers. In the next month, principal Joe Finigan hopes to present a breathalyzer proposal to the School Committee. Other schools, meanwhile, are stiffening breathalyzer policies already in place.

Unhappy that more than a dozen students showed up drunk at the junior prom last spring, Whitman-Hanson Regional High School administrators, who already owned a breathalyzer to be used just in case, purchased more devices and will be testing every student who attends a dance.

"My feeling was if I could keep students from drinking alcohol until 11:30 or until the end of the program, they would be inherently safer for the rest of the evening," said Whitman-Hanson principal Ed Lee.

But some school administrators say breathalyzers - while legal to use in schools - offer a false sense of security. They can drive some students away from dances; that only means, critics argue, that students prone to drinking could be drunk elsewhere. And some school administrators are just philosophically opposed to using breathalyzers.

"If that's the route you go, you're kind of admitting defeat," said John Ritchie, the principal of Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, where alcohol tainted the school's first football game of the season this month, leaving at least one student hospitalized, four cited by police, and seven suspended.

"If that's all you're doing, you're not dealing with the problem. That's like saying, 'People in prison are well-behaved.' "

Ritchie hopes to convene a meeting of Lincoln-Sudbury's school council this week to discuss adopting stiffer penalties for alcohol use, including, possibly, banning violators from the prom and other dances for the rest of the year.

Action is necessary, he said, given what he has learned in recent weeks students at his school: Drinking is far more widespread than he ever knew; water bottles don't always contain water; and students have traditionally seen the first football game of the fall, as well as other occasions, as a chance to get "juiced up."

Ritchie said he is intent not just on cracking down, but on changing the school's culture. And with his cancellation of dances in Belmont, Harvey hopes to do the same. For years, Belmont High School students say, there's been a tradition of drinking at the school, at least among some.

"I don't drink personally," said junior soccer player Josh Nelson. "But if you come back after the weekend, on a Monday, you hear stories about parties that happened and what people did. And if parents aren't going to be home the next weekend, people start planning then. You hear it."

In the spring of 2005, five students had to be hospitalized after showing up drunk to a dance. Harvey, who became principal the following fall, soon enacted a policy requiring students to sign a pledge not to drink before dances - and that worked for a while, he said. But with the Hoedown last spring and the arrest of one student, whose charges were later dismissed, it became clear, Harvey said, that something more needed to be done.

News that Belmont will have only two dances this year - the semiformal in the winter and the prom next spring - shocked students when Harvey announced it this month. Katie Christensen, a junior, called it "a wake-up call." And though many students were disappointed, they also understood.

Senior class president Deana DiSalvio said she supports Harvey's decision. It's time for students to understand that they can't drink and expect that the tragedies will always happen to someone else, she said.

"Thank God "we haven't had an accident."

New opposition surfaces for lower drinking age

Not everyone is on board with the movement to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18.

An article in today's Washington Post indicates opposition has surface in Maryland:

With some of the nation's most prominent college leaders suggesting that the nation's drinking age be lowered, a group of researchers and safety experts told Maryland lawmakers yesterday that younger drinkers would bring more accidents and deaths.

The experts told members of a special House of Delegates committee on drug and alcohol abuse holding a hearing on underage drinking that not only should the drinking age remain 21, but that legislators should consider even tougher penalties for teenagers who break the law.

"The risk of a fatal crash increases with the first drink, especially for drivers aged 16 to 20," said James Fell, a senior program director at Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

Little U.S. data are available on the issue, because the drinking age has been 21 across the nation for more than two decades. Fell cited reports from New Zealand, where the drinking age was lowered from 20 to 18 in 1999 and where teenage crash injuries increased soon afterward.

Push for eighth grade algebra questioned

For the past several years, there has been a push to put as many students as possible into eighth grade algebra. While that push shows no signs of letting up, an article in today's Washington Post questions whether so many kids should be taking algebra at the eighth grade level:

Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, has looked at the worst math students, those scoring in the bottom 10th on the National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth-grade test. He discovered that 28.6 percent of them -- let me make that clear: nearly three out of every 10 -- were enrolled in first-year algebra, geometry or second-year algebra. Almost all were grossly misplaced, probably because of the push to get kids into algebra sooner.

Canadian high school bans homework, calling it unfair

Undoubtedly many students would like to transfer to a Canadian high school where homework is banned, according to an article from parentcentral.ca:

Do students learn anything by completing 60 extra math problems at home?

Is it fair for kids from affluent families who have a computer at home – not to mention parental help – to work on assignments, while poorer kids might not have either?

Can teachers expect that children who live in shelters have a place to study?

One Ontario elementary school decided no, on all counts. So it banned homework.

"We send these projects home, and we don't know who's done them," said Jan Olson, principal at Prince of Wales Public School in Barrie, which draws students both affluent and indigent.

"And we don't know what the family life is like. We had a student, a girl who at 12 went home from school, took her siblings home and her mom was passed out on the floor.

"Her job was to make sure the younger ones didn't wake mom up. She had to feed them, she had to get them to bed, and the next day she's in detention because she didn't do her homework? That's where we are coming from with an inner-city school.

"We've got kids with a certain home life and we are making it worse by sending work home ... We have to accept the responsibility that we are perpetuating and extending the gap between the have and the have-nots."

Editorial: Homework is excessive

An editorial in today's Houston Post takes on the issue of whether homework is excessive and should be abolished:

Assigning lots of homework seems what rigorous schools are supposed to, several teachers and principals admit. But assigning hours and hours of busywork can backfire, depriving a child of the free time he needs to develop. To be useful, homework must build on concepts already taught in the classroom and efficiently show a teacher the child has mastered the material. The teacher also needs to read and grade the homework promptly.
Homework that is relentlessly dull, takes the place of classroom instruction or completely devours a child's personal time thwarts mental development rather than enriching it.
Pro forma busywork can rob children of the sleep they need, and the essential unstructured time necessary for recreational reading, creativity and building relationship skills.
Nevertheless, a moderate amount of meaningful homework, about two hours a night for high schoolers, helps students practice what they've learned in school and prods their intellectual curiosity, say educators, including Mike Feinberg, co-founder of Houston's Knowledge is Power Program charter school.
It also might reinforce time management skills. Especially in low-income families with parents at work and few neighborhood resources, attending to homework cuts into the number of hours spent dully staring at television. That's no small educational benefit.
Splitting the difference, with what experts calls the 10 minute rule — 10 minutes per grade per year, starting with second grade — is a sane rule-of-thumb.
But even that shouldn't be blindly followed without scrutinizing what teachers assign and measuring its success. Our students' minds are too precious to be fed empty calories.

Girl with pink hair allowed to return to school

The Mountain Home seventh grader who was suspended from school for dying her hair pink to honor her father who died of cancer has returned to school, according to an article in today's Springfield News-Leader:

Amelia Robbins, a student at Mountain Grove Middle School, returned to classes Monday, after the school district relented, Springfield television station KYTV reported. The 12-year-old had been suspended just days after classes began Aug. 13.

Amelia has said she dyed her hair pink to honor her father, who died of cancer when she was 6.

The reversal came after an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union office in St. Louis wrote to the district last week arguing that students have a protected right to express themselves.

Amelia finished sixth grade at the same school with pink streaks in her hair.

She said school administrators warned her not to continue wearing the color, but -- with her mother's permission -- she dyed her hair entirely pink over the summer.

Girl suspended for wearing pink hair as a tribute to her dead father

A Mountain Grove, Mo., seventh grader has been suspended from school for wearing pink hair as a tribute to her dead father. From Associated Press:

A southern Missouri school district has suspended a pink-haired seventh-grader.

Mountain Grove Middle School student Amelia Robbins said she dyed her hair pink to honor her father, who died of cancer when she was 6 years old. She says that to her, pink is the cancer color.


The 12-year-old said that when she finished 6th grade with pink streaks in her hair, school administrators warned her not to continue wearing the color. But with her mother's permission, Amelia dyed all of her hair pink, and her school year ground to a halt just days after it started.

She doesn't think her hair color is a distraction.

The school handbook says administrators have the authority to decide whether a student is causing a distraction. Officials declined to discuss specifics of Amelia's case.

(KY3 Photo)

Texas school district to allow teachers to carry guns to deter school shooting

A Texas school district has come up with a novel idea to prevent school shootings. Teachers will be allowed to carry firearms in the classroom:

HARROLD, Texas (AP) -- A tiny Texas school district will allow teachers and staff members to carry concealed firearms to protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting employees follow certain requirements.

The small community of Harrold in north Texas is a 30-minute drive from the Wilbarger County Sheriff's Office, leaving students and teachers without protection, said David Thweatt, superintendent of the Harrold Independent School District. The lone campus of the 110-student district sits near a heavily traveled highway, which could make it a target, he argued.

"When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that's when all of these shootings started. Why would you put it out there that a group of people can't defend themselves? That's like saying 'sic 'em' to a dog," Thweatt said in a story published Friday on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Web site.

Barbara Williams, a spokeswoman for the Texas Association of School Boards, said her organization did not know of another district with such a policy. Ken Trump, a Cleveland, Ohio-based school security expert who advises districts nationwide, said Harrold is the first district with such a policy.

Trustees approved the policy change last year, and it takes effect when classes begin this month. For employees to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun, must be authorized to carry by the district, must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and must use ammunition designed to minimize the risk of ricocheting bullets.

Officials researched the policy and considered other options for about a year before approving the policy change, Thweatt said. The district also has other measures in place to prevent a school shooting, he said.

"The naysayers think [a shooting] won't happen here. If something were to happen here, I'd much rather be calling a parent to tell them that their child is OK because we were able to protect them," Thweatt said.

Texas law outlaws firearms at schools unless specific institutions allow them.

It isn't clear how many of the 50 or so teachers and staff members will be armed this fall, because Thweatt did not disclose that information, to keep it from students or potential attackers.

Link provided to podcast of Mitch Albom show discussion on teachers and MySpace

I just discovered a podcast of my interview with guest host Steve Courtney on WJR Radio in Detroit's Mitch Albom Show.

The discussion centered around the topic of teachers communicating with their students via MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

Teachers and MySpace

(From the Aug. 13. Turner Report by Randy Turner)

(People are killed with guns, so naturally no one should have guns.

Anyone who expresses that view in the United States is quickly besieged by people who generally make the same argument time after time- Guns don't kill people, people do.

We have many in the United States who value their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Unfortunately, some of those same people, including a Missouri state representative who speaks with pride of her devotion to the National Rifle Association, use the same tactics as the gun control lobby when it comes to the First Amendment.

CNN posted an article today about teachers having students as "friends" on their MySpace or Facebook accounts. Rep. Jane Cunningham proposed a bill earlier this year, designed to crack down on teachers who are predators, which included an amendment added in her committee, banning teachers from communcating with students through so-called social networking sites. It's the same kind of logic detested by gun supporters. On very rare occasions, teachers have taken advantage of these sites to establish unhealthy relationships with students. So instead of punishing those who break the law, simply stop teachers from using what has turned out to be a productive educational tool.

I was surprised when I began reading the CNN article and saw that the first two words were "Randy Turner." The reporter interviewed me last week, but I did not realize my views were going to be the focal point for the side which favors the use of MySpace and Facebook by teachers:

Turner said he understands the reasoning for the bill. He acknowledged that in some cases, teachers have become the public face of inappropriate Facebook and MySpace relationships with kids.

"I see where they are coming from," Turner said. "You can't argue with people whose intentions are trying to protect children. But the simple fact is, you take these people who prey on children and they are going to find a way to do it, whether it's over Facebook or not."

Those teachers are ruining it for the ones legitimately trying to help children, Turner said.

"There are so many kids who are stubborn against anything teachers say, who are struggling in the classroom and refuse to ask for help," Turner said. "When it's so hard to reach these kids, why would you remove any of the weapons at your disposal to make a difference?"


When I first read of Mrs. Cunningham's bill, I supported the idea, who wouldn't, of removing perverts and lawbreakers from the classrooms. However, a similar bill has already been passed a few years back and has simply never been enforced by the state department. Instead of asking for more background checks on teachers, why are we not simply checking lawbreakers against a data bank with a list of certified Missouri teachers? We are already fingerprinting teachers and conducting background checks when they are hired; all we need to do is find a way to fill in the gaps when people break the law after they are hired and a database and coordination between our automated court system, the Missouri Highway Patrol and the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education would take care of that.

But what of those who have never previously broken the law or who have never been caught? If Jane Cunningham and those who supported her bill think preventing teachers from having students as MySpace and Facebook friends is going to stop predator teachers, they are wrong. Those people always seem to find a way.

As far as social networking sitse are concerned, I have had a MySpace page for the past couple of years and many, probably most of the "friends" are students or former students. I have had students ask about assignments, ask questions about outside writing they are doing, and have even had students turn in assignments over MySpace.

I have never asked a student to be a "my MySpace friend." To my way of thinking, that would be inappropriate. I also keep my MySpace open to where anyone can go to it, and have had parents tell me they appreciate the fact that I am keeping the lines of communication open- to them as well as to their children.

During this time of the year, as the first day of school approaches, I have had several of last year's eighth graders writing to tell me their fears of going from the much smaller South Middle School to gigantic Joplin High School. I reassure them that it will not take them long to adjust and give them a few tips to help them along. I consider that to be a part of my responsibility to help these children succeed as they move along to the next level.

In the CNN article, an "expert" talks about how teachers can communicate with students appropriately through school-sponsored websites. I have a class website and I also have websites for the South Middle School Journalism Club, which I sponsor, and one for the third quarter project I do each year over the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. It would be nice if students always opted to do things that would make it easier for adults and went to the "appropriate" websites. Unfortunately, that is not the way life works. I find some students who would never dream of going to a school-sanctioned website, have no problems whatsoever with sending a question or making a comment about classwork over MySpace. Should I toss aside those students in these days of No Child Left Behind because politicians are trying to cash in on the popular trend of trashing social networking sites?

A few months ago, I read an article in which an Ohio NEA official recommended that teachers not have MySpace or Facebook pages. I read it, thoroughly expecting to find valid reasons to back up his viewpoint.

Instead, I read about teachers who posted photos of themselves drinking, or made comments promoting drugs, or who were dressed inappropriately. Some of the teachers acted more like children than their students. Why is NEA spending its time bowing to the lowest common denominator? Of course, those teachers should not be communcating with impressionable students over social networking sites- THOSE TEACHERS DO NOT BELONG IN THE CLASSROOM PERIOD!

Fortunately, for today's youth, those kinds of teachers are a small, distinct minority. Of course, when you read about teachers in the newspapers or hear about them on television, you usually hear about the ones who stray from the straight and narrow- the ones who give us all a bad name.

My MySpace and Facebook accounts (I have one of those though I seldom use it) are open to the public. I take my responsibility as a teacher seriously and so do the many other teachers I know who also have students as "friends" on social networking sites. When students add me as "a friend," they are getting a teacher, not a buddy, and that is exactly the kind of "friend" these students need.

Texas school requires students who violate dress code to wear prison-like jumpsuits

A school in Gonzales, Texas, has found a unique way to punish dress code violators and not everyone is happy with it.

The school forces students who violate the dress code to wear a prison-like jumpsuit for the rest of the day:

Some parents said the jumpsuits will make students feel like prisoners but the district said it's just a way to keep the children dressed appropriately for school.

A school board official said it's "worth a try" because it's a way to keep the district's conservative values intact.

Some students said the plan may backfire on the school.

"I talked to some of my friends about it and they said they are not going to obey the dress code just so they can wear the jumpsuit," high school student Jordan Meredith.

Before the jumpsuits students who didn't follow the code had to sit in the office and wait for their parents to bring them clothes or face in-school suspension.

Students who blog appreciate First Amendment rights more

Students who blog and who read online news are more likely to appreciate the value of the First Amendment, according to a new book.

From the Knight Foundation website:

High school students who blog, who read online news sources and who chat online regularly are more likely to understand and support their First Amendment rights, according to a new book based on the largest survey conducted on the subject.

Kenneth Dautrich and David Yalof, authors of Future of the First Amendment: The Digital Media, Civic Education and Free Expression Rights in the Nation’s High Schools, presented the key findings at a launch of the book during the Unity ’08 journalism convention.

The book is based on the Future of the First Amendment surveys the authors conducted on behalf of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The initial 2004 survey, the first of its kind for high school students, found that three-fourths of U.S. teens surveyed don’t know or don’t care about the First Amendment. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

With additional information from the 2006 survey, the authors explored the impact of digital media and recent advances in information technology on students’ appreciation of the First Amendment. Their results find a positive correlation between using online news sources and blogs and supporting the forms of free expression protected by the First Amendment. Among the many findings:

Frequent users of online news sources were 12 percent more appreciative of their First Amendment rights than those who don’t get news online.
Students who blog to publish their own content show even higher levels of support.
And 73 percent of chat-room users agree that music lyrics should be allowed, even if deemed offensive, compared with 65 percent of those who don’t use chat rooms.
The authors conclude that a deeper education in both civics and digital technology can help students learn to appreciate the First Amendment.

Dautrich, associate professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, and Yalof, associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, authored the book along with colleague Mark Hugo Lopez, a research assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

The Knight Future of the First Amendment survey questioned more than 100,000 high school students about their knowledge of and opinions on the First Amendment. The 28-question survey portrayed general feelings of “ignorance, lethargy and agnosticism” in high school students when it came to the five freedoms of the First Amendment.

Mississippi school board bans teachers from texting with students or being friends through social networking sites

Though a Mississippi school board did not have any evidence to support non-professional behavior by teachers with students, it has forbidden teachers to text message with students or to allow them to be friends through social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

From Associated Press:

A new school district policy in southern Mississippi prohibits teachers from texting or communicating with students through Internet social network sites such as MySpace.

The Lamar County school board approved the policy earlier this month after becoming concerned that casual contact between teachers and students would be unprofessional.

"The only intent is to limit the personal communication between teachers and students," Superintendent Ben Burnett told The Hattiesburg American newspaper. "We don't need to let it cross the line between professional and personal communication."

Burnett said the policy won't keep teachers or students from creating profiles on sites such as MySpace or Facebook, which allow users to share personal information and communicate over the Web.

"This just keeps them from communicating socially through those kinds of means," Burnett said.

No incident led to the policy, which was enacted at the suggestion of the school board attorney. The board has yet to set penalties for violating the policy.

Small Town News author talks about writing first book

I recently uncovered a 2006 television interview I did with Springfield journalist Ron Davis. The first half of the interview centered around the writing of my first book, Small Town News, and how it was inspired by students in my creative writing classes at Diamond Middle School.

Schools need different approach to stop bullying

The common approach to curtail bullying in schools has been to try to stop the bullies.

That approach is wrong, according to psychologist Izzy Kalman. Schools need to teach students how do deal with bullies:

Creating a world where everyone is nice to each other is unrealistic, Kalman writes. People tease other people because they enjoy watching them get upset. The more upset the "victim" gets, the more fun it is to tease him or her. So rather than encourage children to report bullying and then punish bullies, educators need to teach children not to be victims. The keys to that, according to Kalman, are to learn not to let bullies upset you and to treat bullies like friends so they become friends.

If that sounds unrealistic, Kalman says he has taught children how to do just that through counseling and role-playing. He also has anecdotes from others who have used his approach successfully. Kalman argues that society often has more to fear from victims than bullies -- in school shootings in the U.S. such as the one at Columbine High School in 1999, the shooters were not bullies -- they were students who had been harassed and felt like victims.