Teachers and Students Team Up to Combat Peer Pressure

By Edward Graham When Tashana started sixth grade at Francis C. Hammond Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia, she was immediately struck by the change from the previous school year. “In elementary school it was much different because everybody wasn’t on your case,” Tashana, now an eighth-grade student, says. “When you were in fifth grade people [...]

Scrutiny Intensifies Around Zero Tolerance, School to Prison Pipeline

By Ava Wallace As suspensions and expulsions continue at an alarming rate across the nation, lawmakers are taking another look at decade-old zero tolerance discipline policies that are doing more harm than good. Civil rights advocates have long called out harsh disciplinary measures for the disproportionate effect they have on at-risk students and students of [...]

After 30 Years, Plyler v. Doe Legacy Under Attack

By Emma Chadband After Alabama’s H.B. 56 went into effect last September, Foley Elementary School Principal Dr. William Lawrence watched several of his students run off their school buses in tears. They were afraid their parents would be deported by the time they got home from school, and they wouldn’t have a chance to say [...]

More Hungry Kids, Greater Need for School Meals

By Amanda Litvinov As partisan clashes in Congress continue to delay decisions on measures that would provide some relief for middle class and poor Americans, a growing number of families are relying on free and reduced-price meals to prevent their children from going hungry. The numbers paint a distressing picture: A New York Times analysis of Department [...]

Pennsylvania Schools Stand Up to Bullying

By Kevin Hart If educators could wave a magic wand and solve one problem affecting American schools, bullying would be high on the list. Teachers, support professionals and administrators are acutely aware that bullying can take a devastating emotional and academic toll on students – in fact, an estimated 160,000 students miss school each day [...]

NEA and AEA Challenge Alabama’s Immigration Law

On Monday, November 21, the National Education Association, Alabama Education Association and the National School Boards Association filed an amicus brief challenging Alabama’s H.B. 56. By any measure, H.B. 56 is the country’s harshest immigration law and contains many onerous provisions, not the least of which is a requirement that educators and school staff verify the immigration status [...]

Bullying’s Impact on American Indian/Alaskan Native Students

By Robert McNeely For 16-year-old Coloradas Mangas of the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico, the rising teenage suicide rate among American Indians and Alaskan Natives has been all too real.  Several of his friends have taken their lives and he attempted to do the same. It was the only way he knew how to [...]

School Bus Drivers Put the Brakes on Bullying

By Teal Ruland Bullying happens in stairwells and in cafeterias, in the classroom and on the playground, but it also takes place beyond the school grounds as buses pull away from the curb. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2006–2007, one-third of U.S. students ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied. Of those, [...]

Bullying Takes Toll on Minority Student Achievement

By Cindy Long Victims of bullying can face a lifetime of psychological scars, but they also suffer academically, particularly Black and Latino students, according to new research. Educators know that bullied students are more likely to miss school, fall behind, and eventually drop out, but the new study, The Impact of School Bullying on Racial/Ethnic [...]

Alabama Schools Worry About Effects of Immigration Law

By Rebecca Bright As students in Alabama began a new school year in August, many returned to the same classrooms, cafeterias, and hallways they left in May—yet behind the scenes, their schools have become a battleground, the latest in a national debate over immigration policy. Alabama’s new immigration law, which was signed last June and [...]

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