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Some Michigan high school students are redefining the term "extracurricular activity." In addition to club meetings, band practices and football games, University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy teens are also signing up to serve as pallbearers for homeless veterans. Six students recently volunteered to be pallbearers for three dead homeless veterans. Senior Joshua Gonzales is one of the student leaders who helped develop the program. He said this new opportunity for students is "meant to help dignify and respect the human being." The students' initial plan was to carry the caskets for homeless individuals, said the Rev. Karl...

About 100 students at a South Carolina high school walked out of class briefly Friday to show support for a school resource officer fired after video showed him throwing an uncooperative black female student across the floor, according to local media and Twitter feeds. The students walked out of classes at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S.C., around 10 a.m. and gathered in the atrium to express their views on the firing of Deputy Ben Fields. Some in the crowd — which included both black and white students — wore T-shirts reading "Free Fields" or "#BringBackFields."

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Four Allentown police officers are recovering after being injured in a school fight on Thursday. Police said it happened while police were responding to a student brawl outside of Allen High School. According to police, two officers suffered moderate injuries, two others had minor injuries.

(Newser) - A twist in the story of the South Carolina school resource officer fired after a classroom arrest turned violent - and went viral: About 100 Spring Valley High School students peacefully walked out of class Friday morning and gathered in the school's atrium to show support for former deputy Ben Fields and ask that he be given his job back. The school principal called the protest "an orderly student-led activity" and noted, "I addressed the students to let them know that we understood their need to make their voices heard. Then I reminded them that Spring Valley high...

It turns out that you don’t have to get good grades or even show up to class often to graduate from high school in New York. Several students from New York City have spoken out about passing classes they know they should have failed and receiving high school diplomas they feel they didn’t earn. Melissa Mejia, a senior at William Cullen Bryant High School, was surprised to find out she was due to receive her diploma in June when she was fully aware she hadn’t completed all of the credits to earn it, she admitted in a letter to the...

Twitter remarks: Are we seriously discussing whether it might sometimes be okay for an adult to throw a child across a room? Teen Girl Slammed by Cop While Sitting In Her Desk How can an older Black man stand idly by while one of his young, Black female students is treated like an animal? The #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh is a sobering reminder of how differently black people are treated by police.

It was a sight to warm the cockles of my heart: students proudly wearing “American flag capes, American flag headbands, American flag shorts and all manner of beautifully and garishly patriotic American flag ornamentation” in defiance of their principal, who canceled “America Pride Day” the day before. The Daily Caller picked up on a report in the local Jackson Hole News & Guide: Jackson Hole High principal Scott Crisp blamed the results of a student survey and his concerns that some students may feel excluded if they see an American flag for the administration’s decision to cancel “America Pride...

A Texas high school student was punished with in-school suspension last Monday after a teacher discovered he was wearing an American flag T-shirt, FOX 4 reported. The student, a junior whose name is Jaegur, was wearing the shirt -- which featured an American flag design with an eagle in the foreground -- at Seagoville High School in Dallas when an administrator determined the shirt violated the school dress code. Jaegur’s mom, Shelly Goode, fears the suspension will show up as a permanent mark on his record, ruining any chance her son can earn a scholarship through the ROTC program. “He...

The mother of Fritz Moncion, the Linden, NJ high school football player who took the helmet of an opponent and hit him with it, spoke out on her son’s behalf and said the vicious hit, which caused ten stitches, was without intention and he is “very, very sorry” and is calling his punishment of being suspended from school, kicked off the team and potential criminal charges too severe. “He’s a great kid. He really didn’t intentionally do this. He’s very hurt. He’s crying… To keep him off the team, I don’t think that is the answer,” MyCentralJersey.com reports Moncion’s said....

Plenty of state school systems are struggling with ways to not only keep up with national mandates and restrictions, but to boost their graduation rates so they can maintain their funding and reduce criticism from the public. California seems to have come up a rather unique, back door approach to the problem. You could always take tens of thousands of former high school students who flunked out and simply give them a diploma anyway. (Daily Caller) The state of California is poised to award thousands of high school degrees to dropouts by passing a new law retroactively removing the...

The state of California is poised to award thousands of high school degrees to dropouts by passing a new law retroactively removing the requirement to pass a high school exit exam. The California High School Exit Exam (CASHEE) was created in 2004, and is intended to make sure that students have a rudimentary grasp of English and mathematics before being awarded a high school diploma, and to counter the phenomenon of students receiving passing grades while learning almost nothing. The test is hardly complex. The math test, for instance, only covers 8th grade-level material and can be passed if students...

A pair of high school girls has done something Republican members of Congress only talk about: They saved the First Amendment by actually using it. samantha jones fights atheists pledge of allegiance lawsuit “In July 2014—the summer before her senior year—Samantha Jones’s father told her family the American Humanist Association (AHA) was suing the Matawan-Aberdeen (N. J.) School Board on behalf of an anonymous atheist family,” Paula Parker reports in the August 2015 issue of Citizen magazine. “They claimed reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools was unconstitutional and discriminatory because it includes the phrase ‘Under God.’” Citizen is published...

These kids are going to be future legislators, and they’re going to get in there and know the truth about weapons. When I was in high school, back in the Stone Age, many if not most American high schools, both public and private, had shooting teams. Then the wilting violets and pansies took over and set about effecting Fundamental Emasculation of American society. But now, gradually, shooting sports are coming back: ... Competitive musketry dates to 16th century England and has been an Olympic sport since 1896. Today trap, a cousin of skeet and sporting clays, is as popular with...

How do you fix a failing high school? Change the grades. Under pressure to boost student achievement, the state-designated “out of time” Automotive HS in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, has resorted to rigging Regents exam scores. The failing scores of five students who took the Regents in January were switched to passing scores of 65 or higher on their transcripts, the city Department of Education has confirmed. One junior saw his scores upped to pass two exams required for graduation — Living Environment (biology) and algebra — even though he had failed both classes. The student insisted he deserved a break on...

Kalley Johnson was hunting with her father by age 4. She had a bow and arrow in hand two years later. She once shot a zebra on a productive big-game trip to Namibia. Who knew those skills would earn her varsity letters? “Sometimes if I tell a random person I’m on the trapshooting team, they kind of look at me funny like, ‘You’re a girl. You can do that?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, we do it all the time,'” said Johnson, a just-graduated senior at Delano High School. “But it’s definitely getting better. The first year it started, there were only...

Graduation ceremonies might still be going on if Dublin schools had asked all of its valedictorians to speak. There were 222 of them. That means two out of every 10 graduates at Dublin’s three high schools received top honors this year. [Snip] The valedictorian was once the single highest-performing graduate — and some districts, such as Hilliard and South-Western, still adhere to the practice. But experts say it’s more typical to see multiple valedictorians or none at all as educators try eliminate the competition among students to be No. 1 of their class.

St. Margaret's Tartans are in the USA Today final round for best HS boys lacrosse team in the country! St. Margaret's won the Southern California title recently, which is as high as HS teams can progress. (There is no state or national championship.) Thanks to friends like you voting in the 1st two rounds, St. Margaret's finished #3 in the country in Round 2 voting, and 1st in bracket. (Bracket and popular vote weren't necessarily in synch, depending on bracket) . In the final vote, it's all popular vote, which is serious business. (Dopey way of determining the best boy's...

HUTCHINSON, Kan. – Two of five teenagers accused of conspiring to carry out a shooting at Hutchinson High School were back in court Tuesday morning where one entered a “not guilty” plea to the charges, that being 16-year-old Takota Bowman (shown above). Later, 16-year-old Dominic Collins was before Juvenile Judge Patty Macke Dick where his attorney asked that he be released from custody, arguing that his client had no history with the court or history of violence. Attorney Mike Robinson also argued that he has done well in detention. But Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Allen argued against it citing things...

A Las Vegas high school sophomore says school administrators denied her application to form a pro-life club on campus. West Career and Technical Academy Vice Principal Allan Yee allegedly told Angelique Clark that the club would be “controversial” and would make pro-choice students feel left out. He also reportedly said that others were “more qualified to speak on the issue than a high school sophomore.” …

A New Jersey public school teacher who instructed her third-grade students to write “get well” letters to a convicted cop killer was fired at a raucous school board meeting that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, despite her pleas that “there’s a community behind me.” Marylin Zuniga, a first-year teacher who drew widespread condemnation for assigning her young charges the task of writing to Mumia Abu-Jamal, was canned at the meeting of the Orange Board of Education, the Star-Ledger of Newark reported.