A central Louisiana high school has banned T-shirts supporting the Jena 6, a group of six African American Jena, Louisiana students charged with the attempted murder of a white student. For more information on the Jena 6, and ways to support them, go to http://colorofchange.org/jena/rsvp/html.

An emerging generation of gay and lesbian athletes on high school campuses is coming out across the country, challenging the homophobic and often conformist tradition of sports. Some students come out only to peers, others to their entire schools; some are supported and some are ostracized (The Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2007).

The Presidential Scholars, a group of 141 outstanding high school graduates, were being honored at the White House. One of the Scholars presented President Bush with a statement signed by 50 of the Scholars protesting his torture policies (www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070710_)

The pilot schools in Boston, part of the public school system, are often demanding teacher recommendations, student transcripts, and applicant essays. "Most of Boston's experimental pilot high schools, held up as a national model and acclaimed for outperforming traditional public schools, have quietly created admissions hurdles that call into question whether they are stacking the deck with the most successful students (The Boston Globe, July 8, 2007).

The Chicago School Board passed a Student Code of Conduct in June, 2007 that made "restorative justice" a central approach to school discipline. As an alternative to zero tolerance, which hits African American and Latino students hardest, "restorative justice programs focus on using community networks and dialogue to reconcile the offender to the community" by providing conflict resolution which bypasses the criminal justice system (In These Times, September 2007).

The Nation's September 10/17, 2007 issue on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans highlights an article on how charter schools took over the New Orleans school system after the devastation.