PHILADELPHIA -- A Philadelphia-area school district has agreed to pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits over secret photos taken on school-issued laptops. The Lower Merion School District admits it captured thousands of webcam photographs and screen shots from student laptops in a misguided effort to locate missing computers. Harriton High School student Blake Robbins, then […]
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Pa. school settles laptop webcam spying suits for $610,000
1 Ohio school, 4 bullied teens dead by own hand
MENTOR, Ohio – Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window. The 16-year-old's last words, […]
Who's High? A School Suspends a Student for Bloodshot Eyes
by Maia Szalavitz California may be considering the full legalization of marijuana, but in Texas, a student was recently suspended from school for having red eyes. In Trophy Club, Texas, 16-year-old Kyler Robertson chose to attend classes just two days after his father was stabbed to death. His mother had urged the grief-stricken boy to […]
Goldson's C-A Valedictorian Speech Draws International Attention
Graduation ceremonies are fairly rudimentary. You get in, take your seat, listen to some speeches that appreciate graduating, and get out. The lineup changed a bit this past summer. Instead of presenting her pre-submitted acceptance speech, the class of 2010 valedictorian Erica Goldson made a bold move, swapping her submitted speech for a new one […]
Solidarities of Resistance: Liberation from Education
Reflections on education, colonization, and freedom by Mike Jo Brownlee and Carla Bergman In today's society, school is sometimes spoken about as a necessity for a happy life and as an inherent good. The concept of education is thought to be synonymous with learning, and separates those who are knowledgeable from those who are deficient. […]
Listen to the children - where does the love of learning go?
by Ellen Galinsky Many people know by now that the United States has fallen to 11th in Newsweek's list of the best countries in the world. What is interesting is that the debate about why we are losing our "oomph as a superpower" has focused in part on U.S. education. As always when we are […]
Boy, 5, wanders into wrong class, prompts lockdown
A 5-year-old Vancouver, Wash., kindergarten student who wandered into the wrong classroom set off a school lockdown before he was located Monday. Vancouver police said Braiden Gonzalez arrived at Walnut Grove Elementary on the school bus as usual. The problem started when he played outside with some first-graders and then followed them into their classroom. […]
Rocklin "I heart boobies" bracelet controversy leads to boy's suspension
ROCKLIN, CA - A Rocklin High School sophomore faces disciplinary action for wearing a controversial bracelet that proclaims "I heart boobies," then refusing to turn it over to school officials. Hunter Cooper, 15, said he wore the bracelet since the first day of school. For five months before that, he had the pink survivor bracelet […]
Over 5,000 anti-school bookmarks found in books at libraries in Dover
By Leslie Modica DOVER — Local libraries were recently the subject of a deliberate and calculating attack — of the bookmark variety. Volunteers and staff at the Dover Public Library spent 30 hours in May collecting more than 5,000 bookmarks secretly placed inside books at the library sometime before May. The bookmarks contained information about […]
Congresswoman aims to stop corporal punishment
(CNN) -- A congresswoman who is fighting to improve public education says that paddling in schools has got to stop. "The bottom line is that if we don't allow beatings in prisons or in mental institutions, then it's time we stop allowing it in our schools," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-New York. McCarthy recently introduced […]
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