No school board member, administrator, or teacher wants to see a student suffering from taunts of the student's peers, but with budget cutbacks, reductions in force, and increased class size, teachers and administrators are stretched too thin to easily identify, investigate, and remedy student-on-student harassment. But school districts must…

The phenomenon of "sexting," or forwarding nude or seminude photographs of other students in schools via cell phone or other electronic media, is occurring with regularity. Administrators and boards of education struggle with disciplining students for such actions when policies and procedures have not kept pace with the rapid changes in…

Headlines recently were full of studies about the obesity problem of America's children and young people, as if kids became overweight without anyone noticing. An accumulation of both school and family habits, however, have been contributing to the fact that at least 13% of children ages 7 to 11 are overweight, double those of the 1970s (and…

Discusses a South Dakota federal court case challenging a school board policy on holiday observances in the public schools. Condensed from "Illinois School Board Journal," July-August 1981, p22-24. (Editor/SJL)

In this article, the author discusses the effects of zero-tolerance policies in schools and depicts how the policies no longer make schools safe, even though many educators see them as the backbone of school discipline. A 2000 study by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) confirms that stringent zero-tolerance policies, though…

Although the US Supreme Court approved testing student athletes in 1995, and two years ago upheld an Oklahoma school system's right to randomly test students in extracurricular activities, schools nationally have not rushed to do it. A 2003 University of Michigan study found just 19% of secondary schools do some form of drug testing and most limit…

Condensed from "Saturday Review, Volume 51 (November 16, 1968), 97-98,101,117.

In this article, the author focuses on the issue involving zero tolerance in the Texas district whether the dress code policy is reasonable. In a small Texas school district, over 700 students were suspended in a single month for violating a zero-tolerance dress code policy. This suspension, which attracted national attention and threats of…

In this article, the author features the lawsuit, which Americans United filed jointly with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania asserting that the Dover School Board has violated the constitutional separation of church and state. He traces that the controversy stems from Tammy J. Kitzmiller's and other concerned parents' strong…