Segregation in the nation’s public school districts has taken center stage recently as the Omaha school district has decided to split into smaller school districts along racial lines. Citing segregated communities as the reason behind the decision, Omaha hopes the move will help schools better address the needs of students as they try to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act. Other states are pointing to similar school district make-up and considering similar situations. Does NCLB encourage segregation?
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After months of high profile cases involving sexual predators searching for young victims on popular social networks, Myspace.com is fighting back.

Popular online social networking hub MySpace.com said Monday it will begin displaying public service ads aimed at educating its users, many of them teens, about the dangers posed by sexual predators on the Internet.

MySpace, a division of News Corp., enables computer users to meet any of more than 60 million members. Users put up profiles that are searchable and can include photos of themselves and such details as where they live and what music they like.

But MySpace’s features and popularity with teens has raised concerns with authorities across the nation. There have been scattered accounts of sexual predators targeting minors they met through the site.

Learn more about how to keep teens safe in wake of the online social networking explosion.

Counselor Companion has sought opportunities to create dialogue among high school guidance counselors about the many issues, concerns and challenges facing today’s high school students as they prepare for college and life beyond high school. For a growing number of students, 30 percent of high school students to be exact, a life beyond high school is marred by the lack of a high school diploma. Time magazine tackles the issue of the rising high school dropout rate and what it means for America.

In today’s data-happy era of accountability, testing and No Child Left Behind, here is the most astonishing statistic in the whole field of education: an increasing number of researchers are saying that nearly one out of three public high school students won’t graduate, not just in Shelbyville but around the nation.

For Latinos and African-Americans, the rate approaches an alarming 50 percent. Virtually no community, small or large, rural or urban, has escaped the problem.

There is a small but hardy band of researchers who insist the dropout rates don’t quite approach those levels. They point to their pet surveys that suggest a rate of only 15 percent to 20 percent.

The dispute is difficult to referee, particularly in the wake of decades of lax accounting by states and schools. But the majority of analysts and lawmakers have come to this consensus: the numbers have remained unchecked at approximately 30 percent through two decades of intense educational reform, and the magnitude of the problem has been consistently, and often willfully, ignored.
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