Unit 3: Vocabulary from Readings 4

The students said school administrators overreacted to the perception that students in the photos were drinking.

"They don’t have (the) support of the students to hand out arbitrary punishments and punishments that don’t fit the crime,” he said.

"We do not go out looking at student social networking sites. We do however take action when we are given legitimate information about school or Minnesota State High School League violations,” McCartan said in an e-mail to families of his students.

She held signs such as, “They walk or we do,” in solidarity with the students who were punished.

"I don’t think most of us would have liked to have lived our teen years in an era of ubiquitous camera phones and social networking,” he said. “It really changes the perception of what places are private and which ones aren’t.”

A concussion is a blow to the head that smashes the brain against the skull. Because their brain tissues are less developed, adolescents are most vulnerable.

Buzz Bissinger's 1990 bestselling Friday Night Lights, a popular book, film, and TV series, was, in the long run, an indictment of the small Texas town with nothing going for it but its high school football team.

If the town had a library, churches, a theater, a park—if the school had any classes—we never saw them. They were irrelevant.

The boys went to high school to play, feeding delusions that they would be noticed by a scout who would get them college scholarships and contracts on pro teams.

The ventilation and electrical systems are antiquated.

At Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig in northern Minnesota—and on reservations across the country—the educational promises this nation made to tribes are being broken. It is a policy of disgraceful indifference, leaving generation after generation of American Indian children struggling to build better lives.

“The BIE must work with tribes to develop a comprehensive long-term plan to address the education needs of Native students. The infrastructure needs at BIE schools are incredibly serious, and it is critical that the BIE’s next budget proposal include a plan to address the dismal state of so many BIE schools across Indian Country,” he said.

If Duncan is serious about addressing educational disparities, which has been a focus of his, he can’t be absent without leave on the buildings in which some of the nation’s most disadvantaged students are trying to learn.

Today, far too many of our 1.7 million high school students are prepared for neither the demands of skilled employment nor the rigors of higher education.

Employers consistently complain of graduates who lack critical problem-solving and communications skills. More than half of students entering California State University need remediation in reading or math.

Students who take rigorous courses are also less likely to drop out, and they perform better in vocational and technical courses.

We must redefine high schools as institutions that provide all students with a strong academic foundation, whether they are bound for college or the workplace after graduation.

And it will establish a state “seal of approval” process for high school instructional materials, giving districts guidance in choosing materials that are standards- aligned, and therefore more rigorous than many used in high schools today.

Guiding students to an easier academic pathway, even if they show little early motivation or curiosity about possibilities beyond high school, virtually guarantees they won't be prepared with important foundational skills.