By ELIZABETH WHITE, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 23, 3:28 AM ET

Court authorities here will be able to track students with a history of skipping school under a new program requiring them to wear ankle bracelets with Global Positioning System monitoring.

But at least one group is worried the ankle bracelets will infringe on students' privacy.

Linda Penn, a Bexar County justice of the peace, said she anticipates that about 50 students from four San Antonio-area school districts — likely to be mostly high schoolers — will wear the anklets during the six-month pilot program announced Friday. She said the time the students wear the anklets will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

--MORE--

IOF extort Palestinian students to work as collaborators

[ 19/08/2008 - 11:03 PM ]

RAMALLAH,(PIC)-- At least seven Palestinian citizens were kidnapped at the hands of the IOF troops on Tuesday in the West Bank city of Tulkarem after they stormed the city and ransacked commercial stores there, Palestinian local sources confirmed.

According to the sources, large number of IOF troops backed by military vehicles and jeeps raided the town of Enebta, east of the city at dawn Tuesday before arresting the seven youths, adding that the IOF incursion was in reaction to the daily clashes between the town's residents and the Israeli occupation soldiers.

A number of agricultural materials were confiscated from the invaded stores as the IOF troops alleged that those materials were used by the Palestinians to manufacture bombs and explosives, it added.

--MORE--

I’m a teacher. I’ve taught elementary school for eleven years. I’ve always told people, “I have the best job in the world.” I crafted curriculum that made students think, and they had fun while learning. At the end of the day, I felt energized. Today, more often than not, I feel demoralized.

While I still connect my lesson plans to students’ lives and work to make it real, this no longer is my sole focus. Today I have a new nickname: testbuster. Singing to the tune of “Ghostbusters,” I teach test-taking strategies similar to those taught in Stanley Kaplan prep courses for the SAT. I spend an inordinate amount of time showing students how to “bubble up,” the term for darkening those little circles that accompany multiple choice questions on standardized tests.

I am told these are invaluable skills to have.

--MORE--

By Fidaa Abed

August 15, 2008

As a young Palestinian from Gaza, I had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to study at the University of California San Diego on a Fulbright scholarship. The chance to escape Gaza's confines and immerse myself in an American education was deeply thrilling. With Israel controlling Gaza's border exits, air space and sea access – notwithstanding its “pullout” of 2005 – I imagined the long, open roads of the United States and its people's unchallenged freedom of movement.

I love my people and my homeland, but a young person needs opportunities. These are far more abundant in the United States than in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Last week, I landed in Washington, D.C., brimming with optimism. Upon arrival, I was whisked into a separate room. An American official informed me that he had just received information about me that he could not reveal. However, it required him to put me on the next plane home. I was shocked. And I was taken aback at the cruelty of snatching away my educational dreams at the last possible moment.

--MORE--

June 16, 2008

U.S. School District to Begin Microchipping Students

by David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.

The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.

Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus's current location as provided by the GPS device.

--MORE--

Held over al-Qaida manual used for research, Hicham Yezza gives first interview

Polly Curtis and Anthea Lipsett
Saturday May 31, 2008
The Guardian


Nottingham South MP Alan Simpson joins students as they protest against the imminent deportation of Algerian Hicham Yezza on Wednesday. Authorities later relented. Photographer: Rui Vieira
 

Related
About the British student who spent the last week in solitary confinement & had his home raided: He had downloaded the file you are downloading right now...if you've clicked here that is!
UK police officers can now search people for knives and guns without reasonable suspicion they may be carrying a weapon


· Lecturers fear threat to academic freedom
· Manual downloaded from US government website

Polly Curtis and Martin Hodgson
Saturday May 24, 2008
The Guardian

A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the "psychological torture" he endured in custody.

Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics.

The case highlights what lecturers are claiming is a direct assault on academic freedom led by the government which, in its attempt to establish a "prevent agenda" against terrorist activity, is putting pressure on academics to become police informers.

--MORE--

Two arrested after ORR High School protest
 

MATTAPOISETT — Two students were arrested and another 15 to 20 staged a sit-in at Old Rochester Regional High School Wednesday in a protest that began after students briefly commandeered the intercom system during MCAS testing, school officials and students said.

Thomas Buckley, 17, of 111 Acushnet Road, Mattapoisett, and Zachary Sherman, 17, of 79 Dexter Lane, Rochester, were charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and disturbing the school, according to police reports.

They were arraigned in Wareham District Court and released on personal recognizance; pre-trial is set for June 27, police said.

--MORE--

Wednesday, May 21st 2008, 4:00 AM

Students at a South Bronx middle school have pulled off a stunning boycott against standardized testing.

More than 160 students in six different classes at Intermediate School 318 in the South Bronx - virtually the entire eighth grade - refused to take last Wednesday's three-hour practice exam for next month's statewide social studies test.

Instead, the students handed in blank exams.

Then they submitted signed petitions with a list of grievances to school Principal Maria Lopez and the Department of Education.

--MORE--

Independent.co.uk
Use the force: Why ministers want all pupils to learn to fight

Next week a government report will recommend more cadet forces in state schools, but not everyone is at ease with the idea

By Andy Sharman

Thursday, 15 May 2008

It is said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. But could the wars of the future be won in less salubrious surroundings – a Salford community college? A secondary modern in Kent? A city academy? If ministers have their way, the cadet corps could soon become a big part of state school tradition.

Next Monday, a review commissioned by the Government and led by the Labour MP, Quentin Davies, will propose the setting up of combined cadet forces in maintained schools. "Cadet forces are an undervalued and great national asset," he says.

There are 130,000 children in cadet forces around the country – 42,000 in school cadet corps, the remainder in community forces – but Davies thinks that there ought to be many more. In particular, he wants to redress the imbalance of having 200 independent school CCFs and only 60 state school corps: private schools swallowing the lion's share of the £80m Ministry of Defence cadet corps budget.

--MORE--

The New York Times

To Curb Truancy, Dallas Tries Electronic Monitoring

May 12, 2008

By GRETEL C. KOVACH

DALLAS — Jaime Pacheco rolled out of bed at dawn last week to the blaring chorus of two alarms. Then Jaime, a 15-year-old high school freshman, smoothed his striped comforter, dumped two scoops of kibble for the dogs out back and strapped a G.P.S. monitor to his belt.

By 7:15, Jaime was in the passenger seat of his grandmother’s sport-utility vehicle, holding the little black monitor out the window for the satellite to register. A few miles down the road, at Bryan Adams High School in East Dallas, he got out of the car, said goodbye to his grandmother and paused to press a button on the unit three times. A green light flashed, and then Jaime headed for the cafeteria with plenty of time before the morning bell.

It was not always like this. Jaime used to snooze until 2 p.m. before strolling into school. He fell so far behind that he is failing most of his classes and school officials sent him to truancy court.

--MORE--

RIGHTS-US:
School Recruiting Could Violate Int'l Protocol

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 13 (IPS) - Pressed by the demands of the "global war on terrorism", the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.

The 46-page report, "Soldiers of Misfortune", which was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, also found that the U.S. military disproportionately targets poor and minority public school students.

Military recruiters, according to the report, use "exaggerated promises of financial rewards for enlistment, [which] undermines the voluntariness of their enlistment." In some cases documented by the report, recruiters used coercion, deception, and even sexual abuse in order to gain recruits. Perpetrators of such practices are only very rarely punished, the report found.

"The United States military's procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics," said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project.

--MORE--

By LISA CORNWELL – 7 hours ago

CINCINNATI (AP) — A man ordered by a judge to make sure his daughter hit the books has found himself in jail because she failed to earn a high school equivalency diploma.

Brian Gegner, of Fairfield, was sentenced last week to 180 days in jail for contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a minor.

He was ordered months ago to make sure his 18-year-old daughter Brittany Gegner, who has a history of truancy, received her GED — something that hasn't happened yet.

Brittany Gegner, who said Monday that she plans to take a required GED test this month, said her father shouldn't be blamed for her failure because she has been living with her mother.

--MORE--

 

Zero tolerance for student safety or to control them?

Massacre. Suicide-bombing. Mass murder. Conspiracy. WMDs. They love those inflammatory words, don't they? Not just adolescents, who use the words as adolescents would, without gauging their impact, but also law enforcement types, who should know better. The climate that makes chatter of school shootings so endemic can be attributed to the few deranged souls who think up mayhem fantasies in their miserable little journals and cyber-caves. But they're not the only ones responsible.

"Massacre" and "conspiracy to commit murder" were the words (and official charges) of choice when three DeLand Middle School seventh-graders were arrested in March after their "plot" to gun down other students and themselves was uncovered. "The investigators determined the students did not appear to have weapons or means to carry out the threats," a Volusia County Sheriff's spokesman said soon after their arrest. Nevertheless, word of a massacre averted and severe punishment deserved spread through the community. The three children's grind through the system is only beginning.

What, so far as we know, had these children done? One of them posted threatening messages and satanic idiocies on his MySpace page, along with the obligatory references to the Columbine school massacre. No matter how baseless, those references have become iconic for anyone angling for his 15 minutes of fearsome fame. Innumerable journal entries by seething adolescents, in print and online, are no doubt filled with Columbine fantasies. They're ignored, as adolescent scrawls generally (or absent more incriminating evidence) should be regardless of medium. Once in a while they're "uncovered." What should be the occasion for a parent-child reality check, a dressing down or at most a trip to the local counselor, is turned over to law enforcement instead. The cycle of public fear and sensationalism kicks in. For the children in question, humiliation and cruelty (what any form of juvenile-criminal proceedings and detention consist of these days) follow.

--MORE--