Can Sugar-Free Schools Improve Student Development And Grades?

Public schools are no longer focusing on just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Hoping to improve the social environment on campus, many school leaders are experimenting with innovative positive behavior programs.

Every day, more than 25 million middle and high school students walk through the hallways and classrooms of public schools across the country. According to Iris Educational Media (IEM), break times, lunch times, and moments between classes create the campus climate – and the students’ behavior ultimately impacts whether the environment is safe and respectful or intimidating and negative.

Public school behavior programs encourage students to build healthy relationships, develop positive behavior, and foster a shared responsibility amongst the community. All of these factors contribute to a more productive campus environment, as well as better academic achievement for individual students.

This video explains positive support.

Demanding a Change: Why Schools Need Positive Behavior Strategies

As IEM further reveals, problems with negative student behavior occur at all grade levels and can cause serious negative impacts on each student’s development and confidence. In fact, in specifically examining the pre-teen and high school years, the National Center for Education Statistics has reported that nearly 5 percent of all 12 to 18-year-olds have avoided school-related functions due to feelings of fear and/or apprehension.

While negative behaviors undoubtedly impact a

Could homeschooling no longer be an option that parents and students have? Based upon recent legal rulings, children can be mandated into public school classrooms, with parents stripped of their right to administer homeschooling. For example, in North Carolina, a judge recently demanded that one mother’s home-schooled children be removed from her “at home classroom” in order to engage in more “challenging” curriculum provided by publically funded schools. What does this hold for the future of homeschooling?

The Verdict on Home School Rights

As World Net Daily reveals, a North Carolina judge has demanded that one family’s children be placed in public schools after debating whether or not the children were receiving adequate lessons and assessments at home. The mother, in this case, Vanessa Mills, argues that she initially pulled her children from the public school environment because she felt that her kids were not being sufficiently challenged. As such, for the past four years, Vanessa Mills has been taking charge of her children’s educational development through at-home lessons and instruction. While most parents can capably educate their children at home, the Mills case is rare and complex, as the children’s father brought the issue to trial, arguing that the efforts were not up to par.

According to the father’s lawyer, speaking on his client’s behalf, homeschooling has not provided his children with adequate socialization that can be achieved from the public school

As school leaders experiment with modern educational strategies, one of the most promising programs centers on a concept known as “collaborative reasoning.” Far evolved from the archaic preconceptions of a classroom from the past, collaborative reasoning programs strive to make students active leaders in their learning communities.

Instead of having teachers solely speak and lecture, collaborative reasoning focuses on allowing children to explore using different learning and cognitive development elements. Specifically, as the Educational Psychology Review Journal explores, classrooms centered on collaborative reasoning enable teachers to act as facilitators of small student group discussions and investigations: “Collaborative reasoning discussions are intended to create a forum for children to listen to one another think out loud as they learn to engage in reasoned argumentation.”

Collaborative reasoning is designed to encourage independent critical thinking and question fellow peers and sources. Through this type of proactive learning, experts anticipate that cooperative learning can jumpstart student progress into modernity.

Traditional Learning vs. Collaborative Learning

Hoping to overcome the passive and dull methodologies of inactive classrooms, public schools across the country are embracing efforts to teach students using collaborative reasoning. Examining the need for this reform, Education Week argues, “The least effective mode of teaching and learning is still the most popular at all levels of instruction: teaching by telling, learning by parroting...When you tell it back to me the way I told it to you, I assume you have knowledge.”

Instead of demanding children to listen, memorize, and

Although the media may not frequently report sensational stories of public school gang activity, the reality of the statistics is not reassuring. Experts have found that a rising number of schools have been encountering gang-related activity – in areas outside of the stereotypical urban cities. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, during the 2003 – 2004 school year alone, 41% of high schools and 31% of middle schools reported gang activity.

As Phi Delta Kappa, an association of professional educators, explains, “Once the exclusive of poor neighborhoods in our large cities, youth street gangs have lately inspired an almost paralyzing fear in both suburban and rural middle-class communities across the nation.”

To address the growing gang dangers prevalent in school communities, educational leaders have been enforcing new practices to keep campuses and students safer.

Gangs in Public Schools: The Rising Concern

While gangs can realistically arise in any region, many schools throughout the country have reported significantly higher rates of gang activity. For example, as the Seattle Times reveals, one local Washington state high school, Garfield, has been forced to make significant changes in order to combat pressing gang problems in recent semesters. According to reports, “As Seattle struggles with heightened violence attributed to street gangs, the city's schools are increasingly shaping policies to keep the problem from spreading onto campuses.”

Garfield High School has implemented comprehensive changes in an effort to reduce gang activity, including:

• The school purposefully avoided scheduling any