Images can be powerful tools for change, but without compelling images of the future of education, everyone will be forced to use the images of the past. Schools can't be built on old images: they must reflect current best practices that infuse technology, relationships, culturally responsive texts, and cooperation and collaboration with partners…

Five years after the Virginia Tech massacre prompted a student in Texas to start a Facebook page in favor of the right to carry concealed weapons on college campuses, the resulting group, Students for Concealed Carry, has advanced its cause. In more than a dozen states, legislation has been introduced to allow the carrying of concealed firearms on…

The Pew Research Center asked an important question earlier this year when it embarked on an ambitious project called Is College Worth It?: College Presidents, Public Assess Value, Quality and Mission of Higher Education. While most today believe that getting a good education is key to success in the society, this report revealed surprising issues…

Despite low opinions of the nation's schools, Americans rate public school teachers more highly now than they have in the past, according to the 2011 Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK)/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. More than 70% say they have trust and confidence in the men and women who teach in public schools.…

Educators, school safety experts, and anti-bullying advocates typically agree that bullying is a serious issue. They also agree that anti-bullying strategies should be an integral component of a school's safety plan. However, differences remain in how bullying should be addressed. Those differences have become magnified as bullying has become an…

Regardless of whether one's school is undergoing a major renovation or hasn't been touched since it was originally built decades ago, there are still ways to initiate change in one's school and community in a meaningful way--and that's exactly what two principals from southern Pennsylvania did. Last summer, in an effort to raise awareness for…

A University of California at Los Angeles study in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law suggests that the proportion of obese Americans has risen 20% since 1980, but the so-called obesity epidemic is at best a metaphor and not a very effective one at that. However, recent research finds no appreciable difference in mortality rates among…

In this article, the author examines the controversial issue whether to teach sex education or sexual abstinence. Sex education has always been fraught with controversy. The discord in Westbrook, Maine, school district is noteworthy because of the vocal support for an abstinence-only curriculum approach to sex education that has reshaped the…

In a recently released report, "Poetry in America", the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), at the University of Chicago, presented the results of a study evaluating American attitudes toward poetry. Commissioned by the Poetry Foundation, one of the largest literary organizations in the world, the research finds that the vast…

Condensed from "The PTA Magazine, LXIII (May 1969), 20-21.

There is some evidence that the public perception of teachers and teaching does impact the success of schools; there are countries that revere their teachers, and schools appear to benefit from that social endorsement. But, according to this author, things are different here in America, and it is not really anything new. The public has a long…

What higher education will look like 10 years hence is what this article discusses. Realistically, higher education may not be very responsive to the larger society in the next decade. It has too many constituencies to satisfy, too many traditions, too many constraints on it to lend it the flexibility--or political will--to adapt rapidly to the…

In this article, the author describes the content of an article by Samuel P. Huntington entitled "The Hispanic Challenge," which ignited a protest from the Hispanic community. Huntington posits in his article that the persistent flow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the US into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. He explains…

In characterizing urban public schools, the public does not appreciate that the complexities of urban education cannot be reduced to a few short facts. Instead, the public often works from perception based on nostalgia, rumor, and what is on the newspapers and on television. In this paper, the author discusses public school realities in an effort…

Responses of 140 Illinois superintendents to the PROBE survey were compared to the public views on education and its problems expressed in the 1979 Gallup Poll. Results indicate disparate perceptions. Implications for school/community communication are discussed. Condensed from "Illinois School Board Journal," November-December 1980, pp…