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Asperger’s syndrome has been used as a defense with some success in cases of violence, experts say, suggesting it may arise when the fatal stabbing of a student at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School eventually goes to court. During an arraignment Friday in the death of 15-year-old James F. Alenson, the attorney for 16-year-old John Odgren said his client has Asperger’s, a mild form of autism that has helped win acquittals for defendants in 22 U.S. criminal cases since 2002, according to the Autism Society of America. The neurological disorder is characterized by average or above-average intelligence but difficulty developing social...

Lakeland teachers Dave Niedosik and Lorraine Nangle leading their students in dissecting the bear at the high school in Wanaque. The bear's paws were easy enough to slice off.  Then, trouble: None of the teachers or students had anticipated that you can't dissect the rest of a frozen black bear carcass until you thaw it out.  Forget the scalpels. Bring out the hot water, and the big buck knives.  All in all, as biology lessons go, the one taught under the open sky at Lakeland Regional High School in Wanaque on Thursday was definitely not for the squeamish.  Students...

QUIZ yourself: One American history course gets at pre-Civil War tensions through primary source readings, including William Lloyd Garrison’s editorial from The Liberator in 1831 and Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech. A second American history course leans on primary sources, too. Students parse each Supreme Court justice’s opinion in the 1857 Dred Scott decision as well as texts of the first and second Lincoln-Douglas debates. Students must also demonstrate knowledge of historic maps. So which is college and which is high school? Which is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and which Dalton, the private K-12 school on Manhattan’s East Side?...

To the school board of Chester County's Great Valley district, Patrick and Karen Cassidy's 1.5-acre property, just over a fence a few feet from a new wing under construction at the high school, looked mighty attractive. If the board could buy it and tear down the Cassidy house, the land could serve as a staging area for the school construction. Later, the parcel, which is bordered on three sides by district land, could be turned into much-needed athletic fields. To the Cassidys, however, the "parcel" was their home and a spacious, partly wooded yard. "Everything I'm used to is here,"...

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster. 2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. 3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2006 – With the start of the 2007 SemperComm Art Competition, the SemperComm Foundation is challenging all U.S. high school students to stretch their creativity in support of the troops. Caitlin Parker, a Forest Park High School student from Montclair, Va., submitted a multimedia/computer graphics entry entitled, “A Page from History.” Her entry, one of 150 submitted to The SemperComm Foundation’s 2006 SemperComm Art Competition, was selected as the contest’s overall winner. The 2007 contest is open to high school students from across the country. Courtesy photo  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The foundation announced...

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- Needham High School has abandoned its long-standing practice of publishing the names of students who make the honor roll in the local newspaper. Principal Paul Richards said a key reason for stopping the practice is its contribution to students' stress level in "This high expectations-high-achievement culture." The proposal to stop publishing the honor roll came from a parent. Richards took the issue before the school council, which approved it. Parents were notified of the decision last month. Richards said he received about 60 responses from both parents and students and the feedback has been evenly split for...

Eastern H.S. Principal FiredEastern Senior High School Principal Shawn Hearn has been fired following a D.C. school system probe into his role in four altercations with students and a parent. Hearn was arrested following one of the fights, but some of the other cases had not been previously reported. Officials won't elaborate on what happened, but school chief Clifford Janey says it was the right move based on the findings. The case that led to the investigation happened October 25th, when Hearn and a student were arrested following a fight in a hallway of the Northeast Washington school. Hearn and...

Probably one of the most amazing finishes in the history of high school football. Plano East High School (North Dallas suburb), down 41 - 17 to John Tyler with 2 minutes and 42 seconds left in the game, starts an amazing comeback to with a TD and three straight successful onside kicks. With 24 seconds remaining the unthinkable happens. You have to see it for yourself. You WILL NOT believe it! VIDEO -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHkABO0VwCg Just AMAZING! You will notice that the game was played at Texas Stadium in Irving, home of the Dallas Cowboys. --- This reminds me of our (Princeton...

WEIRD BUT TRUE By DAN KADISON, Wire Services December 4, 2006 -- An Albuquerque principal is in a hairy situation after driving a student off campus to a barbershop last week without seeking the permission of the teen's parents. Al Sanchez, of Rio Grande HS, faces disciplinary action after giving the 15-year-old boy two choices: receive a suspension or remove what he thought were gang symbols that had been shaved into the kid's head. Sanchez said he "was just trying to do a nice thing." The boy, a boxer, said the designs - the number "505" and New Mexico's Zia...

Former student shoots 6 at school POSTED: 2:34 p.m. EST, November 20, 2006 BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- A former student strapped explosives to his body and went on a violent rampage at a school in western Germany, shooting and wounding six people -- most of them students -- before killing himself, police said. Police were able to evacuate several students before finding the man's body, rigged with explosives, on the school's second floor. Police sealed off the school in Emsdetten, a town of 35,000 near the Dutch border, to search the grounds. Dozens of students and parents, some of them...

From maccacagate to bullygate, the Post is on the case!"....Others say Allen acted out at school. Tim Good, a classmate, said he had to confront the 6-foot-plus Allen after his younger brother reported that Allen had stolen his bicycle. "George Allen was a big bully," said Good, now an accountant in Torrance, Calif. Allen denied stealing the bike, but Good said it reappeared at school the next day...."

Sheriff's deputies are searching for the man who killed a deputy, his canine partner and shot another deputy following a traffic stop. Deputy Matthew Williams and his canine partner Dioji were killed. Williams has been with the department for 12 years. Deputy Doug Speirs was hit in the leg and is expected to be fine. He has been released from the hospital. It all started just after noon, when a deputy stopped the suspect for speeding. The suspect, described as a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks, then reportedly gave the deputy a fake identification. He then asked if he was going...

The saga of a Lakeville South High School student banned from home football games took another turn Wednesday -- he'll get to sit in the stands with his friends during football games after all. Donovan Sullivan was kicked out of the stadium two weeks ago for holding up a sign supporting the opposing team. Lakeville south was playing Lakeville North. He said he was bored with the game and did it as a joke. The dean personally removed Sullivan from the game. The school initially told the student that because of what he did, he would no longer be able...

Sept. 25, 2006 — It sounds like a plot straight out of a soap opera: A nurse crosses paths with a former schoolmate in a recovery room, and the patient winds up dead. Was it an accident or was an old high school grudge a motive for murder? Right now, investigators in Charlotte, N.C., think it may be the latter. Looking at Olympic High School yearbooks from 1972 and 1973, it would appear that Sandra Baker and Sally Jordan had everything going for them. Both were extremely pretty and moved in the same circles. They even reportedly dated the same...

Related To Story Sally Jordan Hill walks to a court hearing in Charlotte, N.C. Nurse Arrested In 2001 Death Of Former High School RivalCold Case Unit: N.C. Nurse Administered Fatal Dose Of PainkillerCHARLOTTE, Colo. -- A registered nurse from North Carolina was ordered held without bond Monday and faces homicide charges in the death of a patient who turned out to be a classmate rival from 30 years ago.  Sally Jordan Hill of Matthews, N.C., was accused of killing Sandra Baker Joyner, who died after undergoing cosmetic surgery in 2001 in Charlotte.  Hill is a certified registered nurse anesthetist...

It says something about a teacher, as well as his topic, when 19 teenagers are happy to show up and be reduced to first-graders – dyslexic ones, at that. “How do you write that letter? What animal does it look like?” Mohamed Eddefaa asked during a recent session of the only public-school Arabic class in New Hampshire. “Cat,” several students shouted, relieved after two weeks to remember one of the 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet, a series of beautiful swooping lines that neither look nor sound like anything in English. Eddefaa, a native of Morocco, nods and writes the...

I used to think vice principals had it easy. All they did, I thought, was administer licks to wayward students. Back in the day, they called it "paddling." Today, they call it "child abuse." Vice principals have among the toughest jobs of all — administering discipline in a hypersensitive, lawsuit-fearing, politically correct public school system. Try dealing with the student who yells at you, swears at you, threatens you. "That happens everywhere," one school administrator said Thursday. Then there's the kid who takes aim at your reputation. Ask Anna Draker. As assistant principal at Clark High School, she can tell...

A fake web page on the website, myspace.com, has some Northside ISD students in legal trouble, News 4 WOAI learned Wednesday. The teens are accused of using the site to spread malicious rumors about their vice principal. The vice principal is taking the students to court, News 4 WOAI learned. On Clark High School's web page, a picture of Assistant Principal Anna Draker has been removed. According to Draker’s attorney, a couple of students doctored her pictures and posted them on myspace.com. The civil lawsuit claims a couple of students who Draker disciplined retaliated by filing the myspace page. The...

For more than a half a century, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It has been a widely used textbook in both college and high school advanced placement courses. For about the same time period, it has been misleading students everywhere. For example, the author of the book, Columbia professor Richard Hofstadter offered up a chapter on Abraham Lincoln that never mentioned the Gettysburg Address. In like fashion, he claimed that the authors of the constitution “wanted freedom from fiscal uncertainty and irregularities in the currency, from trade wars among the states, from economic discrimination by more...