SCHOOL SHOOTINGS - The Students & Guns In Schools

THE STUDENTS:

"‘We do have a right to go to school and not fear for our lives,’ say Florida shooting survivors" PBS NewsHour 2/19/2018

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SUMMARY:  Last week’s school shooting has given rise into a new campaign for action on guns.  Two students from the Florida high school, Suzanna Barna and Lewis Mizen, discuss the aftermath of the shooting and the change they hope to drive in state and national gun laws.

"Staging walkouts and rallies, students and family members implore lawmakers to end gun bloodshed" PBS NewsHour 2/21/2018

#NeverAgain

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SUMMARY:  As dozens of survivors from the Florida school shooting lobbied the Republican-led Florida legislature for tougher gun control, thousands across the country heeded a call to walk out of classes, massing at Florida’s state capitol, as well as the U.S. Capitol and White House, where President Trump held a listening session with shooting survivors and family members.  William Brangham reports.

"These students are fed up with going to school scared for their lives" PBS NewsHour 2/21/2018

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SUMMARY:  Student-led rallies in support of gun control are picking up momentum in Florida and around the country, in part born out of anger over the easy availability of assault-style weapons.  Judy Woodruff gets perspectives from Camille Richter and Jake Bennett, two Virginia high school students who took part in a walkout from their schools.

"For kids who survived the Florida shooting, the next assault is from online conspiracy theorists" PBS NewsHour 2/21/2018

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SUMMARY:  The immediate response to the school shooting in Florida was a national wave of prayers, condolences and political outrage.  Then came a different flood, allegations and conspiracy theories about the students now calling for gun reform.  Right-wing outlets and online trolls are promoting the false theory that the Parkland teens are actually paid actors or even FBI “plants.”  Hari Sreenivasan reports.

"Scottish town devastated by gun violence has advice for America: Say ‘no more’" PBS NewsHour 2/21/2018

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SUMMARY:  For the Scottish town of Dunblane, one deadly shooting massacre was enough.  After 16 children and a teacher were murdered in 1996, Britain outlawed hand-gun ownership.  After years of watching deadly shootings in the U.S. with little change in American attitudes toward gun control, some in Dunblane feel inspired by students in Parkland, Florida.  Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.

GUNS IN SCHOOLS:
#StandAgainstNRA

"If we arm teachers, ‘we have accepted… that school shootings will not stop,’ says Detroit teacher" PBS NewsHour 2/21/2018

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SUMMARY:  After last week's mass shooting at a Florida school, "students are scared," gasping even at the sound of the normal school announcement system going off, says Mike Conrad, a teacher at a high school outside Detroit.  Conrad joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the importance of making school a safe environment and why he's opposed to arming teachers.

"NRA backs Trump’s call for arming teachers: ‘Schools must be the most hardened targets’" PBS NewsHour 2/22/2018

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SUMMARY:  The CEO of the NRA gave a full-bore defense of gun rights at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, calling for weapons in schools in response to a mass shooting in Florida last week.  Meanwhile, Republicans in that state like Sen. Marco Rubio face new pressure in the gun control debate, as evidenced by a tense televised town hall on Wednesday night.  William Brangham reports.

"Students who support gun rights say schools safer when ‘good guys’ are armed" PBS NewsHour 2/22/2018

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SUMMARY:  Judy Woodruff talks with Maddison Westcott, a Rio Salado College student, and Ian Parish, a Liberty University student, about various restrictions and other gun control measures being raised, as well the prospect of arming teachers.

"New Florida gun control proposals make notable break with NRA" PBS NewsHour 2/23/2018

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SUMMARY:  President Trump at CPAC again insisted that arming teachers would help stop mass shootings, despite disapproval of many education groups, and repeated his call to keep seriously mentally ill people from buying guns.  But in Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott broke with the President and the NRA in announcing new gun control proposals for his state.  William Brangham reports.

MAKING THE GRADE - Social Media 101

"Schools are watching students’ social media, raising questions about free speech" PBS NewsHour 6/20/2017

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SUMMARY:  As universities have started paying close attention to the internet presence of prospective students, high schools have also begun cracking down, sometimes hiring outside companies to police social media posts for bullying or abusive language.  But monitoring raises other problems, and civil rights groups are paying attention.  Special correspondent Lisa Stark of Education Week reports.

TRUMP AGENDA - Transgender School Guidelines

THINK ABOUT IT:  There was a Facebook post on this issue that had a pic of a guy in jeans learning at girls in a school restroom.  Problem, a transgender boy would NOT be dressed as a boy, 'she' would be dressed as a girl.

Now think about how a transgender boy (dressed as a girl) would feel being forced to use a boy's restroom, or a transgender girl (dressed as a boy) would feel being forced to use the girl's restroom.  You can imagine the bulling and harassment the student would suffer.

The real solution is to have all schools have at least one unisex restroom.

"How scrapping transgender bathroom guidelines impacts schools" PBS NewsHour 2/22/2017

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SUMMARY:  Federal guidelines advising schools to let transgender kids use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity are being withdrawn by the Departments of Justice and Education.  What will the Trump administration's change mean for schools and students?  William Brangham talks to Evie Blad of Education Week.

BALTIMORE - Student Stress

"Faced with outsized stresses, these Baltimore students learn to take a deep breath" PBS NewsHour 2/21/2017

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SUMMARY:  Violent crime and unemployment rates are nearly twice the national average in Baltimore.  Educators say factors like these add significant stress to children, causing emotional and behavioral problems, so several public schools are working to reduce that stress with mindfulness and meditation.  Hari Sreenivasan reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Baltimore, Maryland, has high unemployment and a violent crime rate of nearly twice the national average.  Educators say that factors like these add significant stress to children and cause emotional and behavioral problems.

Several area public schools are working to reduce that stress with programs that teach mindfulness and meditation.

Our Hari Sreenivasan has the story.

It for our weekly series Making the Grade.

CHRIS BOWMAN, Student, Patterson High School:  And exhale, pushing out all the things that make you stressed out.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  This isn't your local yoga studio.  It's the Mindful Moments Room at Patterson High School in East Baltimore.  It's a place students go when they act up, get stressed out, or just need a break.

CHRIS BOWMAN:  Stay in your happiness.

LATONYA LEE, Student, Patterson High School:  My day is so stressful.  As soon as I walk in the door — I don't even have to do exercises.  There's just a big smile on my face because I'm in here.  If they didn't have mindful moments in Patterson, I wouldn't be here at all.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Why?

LATONYA LEE:  Because it's too stressful.  And for — to not have a place to relieve stress is like putting you in a oven.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  These students are participant ambassadors for mindfulness meditation programs run by the nonprofit Holistic Life Foundation at Patterson High.

It's a school that has struggled with higher rates of dropouts, absenteeism, and has more students on free or reduced lunches than the national average.

Nineteen-year-old Chris Bowman not only practices mindfulness meditation at school, but he starts his day with it, and yoga, which he's used to deal with his demons.  At a previous school, he says he used to fight with kids who picked on him for being black.

Then his father died when he was 13.

CHRIS BOWMAN:  Growing up without a father and stuff like that, I struggled with a lot of depression, a lot of grief, and a lot of just really bad — really bad zones of like suicidal thoughts.

But I had to find a way to get out of that.  A mindful moment is when you — you just take a deep breath in a moment of conflict and just — maybe you just look at that and just like, I can do this in a different way.  I don't have to fight this person.  I don't have to look violence as the answer.

THE IDEA FACTORY - Student Inventors

"Helping student inventors turn big ideas into the next big thing" PBS NewsHour 8/31/2016

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SUMMARY:  It's back-to-school season, but these students have taken their brainstorming outside the classroom to solve pressing, real-life problems.  Visit a competition where teams of student inventors pitch their entrepreneurial ideas to guests posing as investors, who vote on the best startup ideas.  Special correspondent Cat Wise reports from Portland, Oregon.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  As students head back to college this year, some will be doing more than just the usual course work.

Special correspondent Cat Wise has a story about a group of student inventors trying to make their mark, part of our weekly series covering the Leading Edge of science and technology.

CAT WISE, Special correspondent:  Music, wine, and ideas were flowing at an event in Portland, Oregon, that brought together college students from around the country who have all been hard at work, between classes and tests, inventing the next big thing.

While the atmosphere was festive, there was some serious business going on.  Fourteen teams pitched their inventions to invited guests, who were playing the role of venture investors for the evening, with venture bucks to invest in the ballot boxes of their favorite start-ups.

MAN:  Back the team that you think is going to change the world.

CAT WISE:  There were plenty of cool ideas to choose from, like a low-cost water contamination detection system from an all-women team of engineers at Santa Clara University, and a device to help babies with respiratory distress syndrome in low-resource hospitals developed by students at Western Michigan University.

And there was even a group from a local high school trying to tackle another common problem in many parts of the world, lack of electricity to charge cell phones.

WILLIAM WU, West Salem High School:  We made a thermo-electric generator that can be used in open fire to generate electricity while cooking.  The metal rod right here will go directly into the pot they're using for cooking, and the heat will go from the rod into the thermal electric generators that will generate electricity from the heat.

CAT WISE:  Many of the products on display are still in the early stages of development, and some build on ideas that are already out in the marketplace.

But a few of the teams have created things never invented before.  Katherine Jin is part of the Kinnos team from Columbia University.  She and her two co-founders, who are also her classmates, were inspired when they saw a need for better disinfection methods during the Ebola crisis in Africa.

KEVIN TYAN, Co-founder, Kinnos:  One of the current problems with the way people decontaminate today is that the disinfectants are clear and transparent, so you can't see where you're spraying.  They bounce off waterproof surfaces, just like rain off an umbrella.

CAT WISE:  After some late nights and a lot of trial and error, they developed Highlight, a powder that adds temporary color to bleach and enhances adhesion to surfaces.

SHADOW DAY - What an Educator Learned

"What one assistant principal learned from shadowing a student for a day" PBS NewsHour 8/9/2016

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SUMMARY:  Karen Ritter, an assistant principal at a high school just outside of Chicago, wanted to see her school through a student's eyes.  So she decided to follow 9th grader Alan Garcia, who came to her asking to be switched out of the many remedial classes in which he is enrolled, hoping to get a clear view of his experience in the classroom.  Special correspondent John Tulenko of Education Week reports.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  High school students and parents sometimes say principals and teachers don't quite understand what it's like to be a student these days.  It turns out there's an effort to change that.  Some 1,300 principals recently took a day off from their usual role and instead followed one of their students for a day.

The approach came from two groups outside the traditional field of public education, the Design School at Stanford University, and IDEO, a design company based in Palo Alto, California.

Special correspondent John Tulenko of Education Week followed one principal through the first ever national Shadow a Student Day Challenge.  It's part of our weekly education series on Making the Grade.

KAREN RITTER, Assistant Principal, East Leyden High School:  My name is Karen Ritter.  I'm an assistant principal at East Leyden High School, which is just outside of Chicago.

And, today, I will be shadowing a student.

JOHN TULENKO, Education Week:  Why are you doing this?

KAREN RITTER:  Just to get a sense of what students go through during the day.

I don't really get to spend a lot of time with students.  Usually, I'm in charge of things that the teachers are involved in.  So, this includes teacher evaluations, teacher attendance, professional development.  I would say 50 percent is in meetings.

JOHN TULENKO:  Do you feel like you know what goes on here?

KAREN RITTER:  I — I do, just because I do observe a lot of classrooms.  Now, I'm looking at it more from the teacher's perspective.

But now I want to know what it feels like through the lens of a student.

JOHN TULENKO:  Her public high school serves some 1,700 students and is both racially and economically diverse.

Today, Karen is following a ninth-grader.

RACE MATTERS - To Police, Students Still Children

"Alabama lawyer seeks to remind school-based police that students are still children" PBS NewsHour 8/8/2016

I just cannot believe this, a pregnant teen gets maced and arrested FOR CRYING!  This is sick!

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SUMMARY:  Last September, a federal court in Alabama ruled that the disciplinary practices used by the Birmingham Police Department toward high school students were unconstitutional.  The police department's appeal will be heard next month.  Ebony Howard, the lawyer who filed the class-action suit, speaks with special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault about the specific police conduct and the settlement.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Last September, a federal court in Alabama ruled that the Birmingham Police Department's disciplinary practices, including the use of pepper spray for minor discipline problems, is in violation of student rights and unconstitutional.

Attorney Ebony Howard of the Southern Poverty Law Center filed the class-action suit, and returns to court next month when the police department's appeal is heard.

As part of our year-long Race Matters conversations focusing on solutions, special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports from Birmingham about reducing tensions between African-American high school students and the police.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (NewsHour):  This video of a white South Carolina policeman roughly ejecting a black student from her classroom went viral and ignited a conversation about the proper role for police in schools.

Ebony Howard, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been involved in that conversation as a result of her successful suit against police macing students in Montgomery, Alabama.

Ebony Howard, thank you for joining us.

EBONY HOWARD, Southern Poverty Law Center:  Thank you for having me.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  Can you tell us briefly about the case you won in Birmingham last year?

EBONY HOWARD:  Sure.

The case was about police officers who are stationed in Birmingham City high schools who are there to protect students, and they were using mace, or pepper spray is what it's sometimes called, against students for engaging in what amounts to normal adolescent behavior.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  Like what?

EBONY HOWARD:  Like, for example, one of our plaintiffs, plaintiff K.B., she was leaving class and going to another class with a fellow classmate.  And as she walked, a boy came up to her and started to call her really foul names that I won't repeat.

But as he called her those names, his friends who had come with him, they started to laugh.  And the more they laughed, the more names he called her.  And so she tried to walk away from him.  And as she walked away, he followed her and his friends followed her, and he continued to call her lots and lots of names.

And so eventually, as she walked the entire length of the school building, she started to cry.  And she became hysterical.  And when she reached the end of the school building, a police officer walked up.  And you would think that he would have taken care of her, but what he did was, he told her to calm down or he was going to arrest her.

And when she didn't stop crying, he put her in handcuffs.  And she continued to cry after he handcuffed her, and he told her, calm down.  And when she didn't calm down fast enough, he sprayed her with mace.

The other point that I forgot to mention, though, was that she was four months' pregnant at the time when he sprayed her with mace.  She was arrested and taken to the local juvenile facility, where she had to take off her pants and her underwear and squat and cough as a part of a strip search.

EDUCATION - In the Student Digital World

"Why digital education could be a double-edged sword" PBS NewsHour 4/5/2016

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SUMMARY:  Public education is becoming increasingly digitized -- these days, schools can compile everything from a student’s grades to their eating habits in online profiles.  But while this technology facilitates personalized learning, it also puts student data at risk of being compromised and misused, and extra security could come at the expense of education.  John Tulenko of Education Week reports.

JOHN TULENKO (NewsHour):  Miami, Florida, is taking on one of public education’s oldest problems:  With so many students, how do you personalize instruction?  One answer is with computers.

At Miami’s iPrep Academy, one-size-fits-all lessons are a thing of the past.

NICOLE RASMUSON, iPrep Academy:  We all started at the very beginning, and then some just took off.

JOHN TULENKO:  Nicole Rasmuson teaches math, using innovative software.

NICOLE RASMUSON:  It’s about 70 percent online.  And it’s a smart program, and so it checks, are they understanding, are they answering questions correctly right away?  Are they struggling?  Is it taking them a long time to answer questions?  Do they keep making mistakes?

JOHN TULENKO:  All the while, the computer is crunching and storing data about the students and sending back customized lessons.

NICOLE RASMUSON:  It’ll ask them, what are your interests?  And so, in the word problems, it’ll — if one kid’s really interested in food, it’ll talk about cookies and that kind of stuff.  It’ll even ask them, what are your friends’ names?  And then it’ll put their friends’ names in the problems, too.

JOHN TULENKO:  All that gets uploaded, along with student schedules, grades, discipline records, homework and even e-mails, the makings of what some have called a digital profile, that privacy expert Joel Reidenberg fears could someday be used in unauthorized ways.

ESSAY- Low-Income Student Incentives for College?

"What can motivate low-income high school kids to apply to college?" PBS NewsHour 3/18/2016

COMMENT:   Considering the debt for college a high school student need NOT go directly to a college or can go to a 2yr community college first.  It is OK to wait until one gains more real-life experience and gets a job (especially if it is related to a carrier).

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SUMMARY:  This month, many prospective college students are anticipating an admissions decision from their dream school.  Keith Frome, author of “How’s My Kid Doing?” has worked with high school students across the country and believes he has found the key to encouraging them to consider college, peer pressure.  Frome offers his unique take on the college application process.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now a “NewsHour” Essay.

This month, many high school seniors have either just learned, or are anxiously waiting to hear, what colleges they might have gotten into.

Education advocate Keith Frome has worked with students across the country, and believes the key to getting more kids to apply to college is peer pressure.

KEITH FROME, Author, “How’s My Kid Doing?”:  One summer weekend, I taught a small group of students from a low-income community how to write their personal statements for their college applications.

Each student would be the first in their family to apply to college, and their ability to tell their stories was going to be critical to their success.

During the three-day retreat, we used a variety of writing techniques to produce memorable, compelling and utterly authentic essays that I knew would stick in the minds of college admission officers.

Returning home, I felt quite satisfied, perhaps a little smugly so, with a job well done, and I proudly shared the compositions with my friends and family.

EDUCATION - Food for Thought

"Students running small-town market know business" PBS NewsHour 3/7/2016

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SUMMARY:  As a sparsely populated Nebraska town in an equally sparsely populated county, Cody is not where one might expect to find a thriving retail business.  But the Circle C Market has been making a (small) profit there for the last three years.  Its secret?  It’s run by students from a nearby school, who work at the store as part of their curriculum.  Mike Tobias of Harvest Public Media reports.

EDUCATION - WiFi on Wheels

"Wi-Fi on wheels leaves no child offline" PBS NewsHour 3/7/2016


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SUMMARY:  The digital divide and lack of reliable Internet access at home can put low-income and rural students at a real disadvantage.  So when superintendent Darryl Adams took over one of the poorest school districts in the nation, he made it a top priority to help his students get online 24/7.  Special correspondent David Nazar of PBS SoCal reports with PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Tonight, an innovative solution to bridging the digital divide for students.

Too frequently, kids and their parents in rural low-income communities don't have access to the Internet and high-quality learning technologies.  But, in California, a unique project is providing free home access to the Web in one of the nation's poorest districts.

Much of the footage for this story was shot by teenagers who are part of our Student Reporting Labs network, in collaboration with PBS SoCal in Southern California.

The correspondent is David Nazar.

DAVID NAZAR (NewsHour):  Thirty minutes west of the wealthy suburbs of Palm Springs is a desert oasis best known its annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

But behind the parties and concerts stretches a vast and isolated landscape, home to the second poorest school district in the country, where most families live below the poverty line and struggle just to pay the rent.

DARRYL ADAMS, Superintendent, Coachella Valley Unified School District:  We have some of the poorest of the poor in our country, very economically challenged, and 100 percent of our students are on free and reduced lunch.  Some of them living at trailer home parks that some have been condemned recently, or some in railroad, abandoned railroad cars.  It's just unbelievable, some of the challenges they face.

DAVID NAZAR:  Coachella Valley Unified School District Superintendent Darryl Adams believes the right use of technology is critical for the families in this area, like Norma Olivas and her daughter, Anisa Perez.

NORMA OLIVAS, Anisa's Mother:  I do see students sometimes struggling, and, right now, sometimes, some of the kids struggling to get school, to do certain things.  And I wouldn't want my daughter to go through any that.  I wouldn't want her to be a dropout.

DAVID NAZAR:  When Adams took the job in 2011, the graduation rate was 70 percent, according to the district.  One of his key initiatives was to get every student an iPad and WiFi service, but he knew it would be challenge.

DARRYL ADAMS:  We have 1,250 square miles to cover, larger than the state of Rhode Island.  So, when we out there were spots in every which way, students weren't connected, we said, well, how can we get them connected?

And so one of the ways, we said, look, we got 100 buses.  Let's put WiFi routers on those buses.  And let's park them where the need is.

STUDENTS - Whistleblowers Prevent Shooting

"These student whistleblowers spoke up to prevent a shooting" PBS NewsHour 4/22/2015

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SUMMARY:  One year ago, two students in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, began sharing plans to gun down their classmates.  They may have gotten away with it had it not been for a group of students who alerted school authorities.  Young journalists from NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs look at the actions of the whistleblowers that led to the arrest of the potential shooters.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This month we have been bring you stories from high school students around the country reporting on how the concept of school safety is evolving.

Tonight, we travel to the town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where a potential attack by students was foiled one year ago.

As part of our ongoing Student Reporting Labs series called The New Safe, student television network correspondent Nick Weiss investigates what inspired a handful of brave students to take action.

NICOLE MALINOSKI, Principal, Cedar Crest High School:  You know, the first thing I do when I wake up every morning is think about the safety and security of all students here.  It’s actually even before education, just because of school safety, how it’s been in the media and, unfortunately, you know, things that have happened over the last number of years.

I was actually out of the building the day that this occurred and I received a text message from Ms. May, who’s an assistant principal here.  She asked me if I could call ASAP.  She had something very important to discuss with me.

YEAR THAT WAS - Where Next-Gen Gets News

"Ebola, Ferguson and Derek Jeter make high schoolers’ #MyZeitgeist videos" PBS NewsHour 12/30/2014

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SUMMARY:  A contest sponsored by PBS NewsHour Extra and Google asked students to create a digital mash-up looking back at 2014.  Judy Woodruff talks with three high schoolers who entered the #MyZeitgeist competition about deciding what events made their year-in-review videos and how their generation gets its news.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Now a different take on the year that was.

Judy Woodruff recently talked to several teenagers about the stories that caught their eyes in 2014, and explored how technology affects what they see and hear about the news.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): “NewsHour Extra,” our Web site for teachers and students, has partnered with Google for what we’re calling the MyZeitgeist Year in Review contest.

More than 1,000 students from around the world created digital mash-ups, images and videos edited together, highlighting the most important stories of 2014.  We don’t know who won yet.  That won’t be announced until midnight, December 31.

But, in the meantime, to find out more about how young people view current events, we have invited three students who entered the contest from T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia.

EDUCATION - Schools and Native American Students

"Can the U.S. restructure schools to nurture Native American students?" PBS NewsHour 12/3/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now the substantial problems that Native Americans in the U.S. face, particularly with education.

That was the focus of a new report issued today and a meeting President Obama had with Native Americans in Washington.  The President announced a series of initiatives to prepare young American Indians for college and the work force.

They include a push to strengthen tribal control of education on reservations.  The Federal Bureau of Indian Education is responsible for educating nearly 50,000 students in 23 states.  The high school graduation rate is for Native Americans the lowest of any ethnic or racial group.  The bureau is part of the Department of the Interior.

And Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joins me now.

Welcome to the “NewsHour.”

SALLY JEWELL, Secretary of the Interior:  Thank you very much.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, we know the problems in the Native American community, they’re deeply entrenched.  They go back a long time, to the very beginning of this country.  What are just a couple of the ways the administration thinks it can make a real difference?

SALLY JEWELL:  Well, the report that the White House just issued on Native American youth does a very good job of chronicling the challenges.

And they are deep-seated.  They have been around for, not just decades, but literally hundreds of years, policies that tried to kill the Indian to save the man, policies of assimilation, of squishing cultures.  And, in so doing, they really diminished the confidence and the pride of Native Americans.

What the President has done — and he’s charged his Cabinet with this — and this was really powerfully brought home to him in a visit with young people at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe — is that he doesn’t want to stand by and let this happen anymore.

So, he’s charged his administration very directly with being part of the solution, with charting a different course.  And that’s what we’re doing.

EDUCATION - Rual Alaska

"Encouraging rural Alaska’s students to become teachers" PBS NewsHour 11/13/2014

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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Over the last few years, a number of academic gains have been made by historically disadvantaged students, including African-Americans and Latinos.  But Native American students have lost ground since 2008, with only about half earning a diploma.

In Alaska, an effort is under way to turn that around by creating more teachers within the Native community.

The “NewsHour's” April Brown reports as part of our American Graduate series.

APRIL BROWN (NewsHour):   Alaska is often called the last frontier.  A phrase that seems fitting for the town of Dillingham, which sits on a remote inlet near Bristol Bay.

For thousands of years, the area has been a hub for the Yup’ik people.  Today, more than 50 percent of the roughly 2,000 residents are Alaska Natives, who continue to survive on subsistence traditions passed down through the generations.  Home addresses are not a must here because everyone picks up their mail at the post office.

And when school begins in the fall, finding Alaska Native students, who have graduation rates that hover around 50 percent statewide, can be a challenge.

INA BOUKER, teacher:  Sometimes, families go moose hunting in the fall, right when school starts.  And families will take their kids and go to moose camp for a week, and so they will miss a whole week of school.

APRIL BROWN:  Alaska Native Ina Bouker has been a teacher in Dillingham’s schools for more than 30 years, and she’s well aware of the challenges and the legacy of mistrust that exists around education here.

Bouker was raised in the nearby village of Manokotak, at a time when American Indians and Alaska Natives were still being educated by mostly white teachers and told to shed their cultural identities.

MEXICO - Unsolved Mystery of Missing Students

"Unsolved mystery of missing Mexican students sparks protest – Part 1" PBS NewsHour 10/31/2014

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  We turn now to Mexico for a disturbing story of dozens of college students gone missing and the hunt to find what happened to them.

Hari Sreenivasan reports.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  It’s become an increasingly common sight across Guerrero province in Southern Mexico, police searching for the possible mass grave of 43 college students who vanished more than a month ago.  Their case has grabbed nationwide attention, but so far has yielded more questions than answers.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam:

JESUS MURILLO KARAM, Attorney General, Mexico (through interpreter):  We have been very careful about giving precise information, to not speculate, to work with facts and not imagination.  And this is why the information that we give is exactly at the stage that it’s at and the conditions that it’s at.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  What is known is that the students were last seen in the town of Iguala, roughly 80 miles south of Mexico City.  They’d been raising money to protest funding cuts at their teachers college, when they disappeared on the night of September 26.

Investigators say local police opened fire on the group, at the mayor’s orders.  Then, they allegedly handed over the students to a drug gang with ties to the mayor, who has now gone into hiding.

The gang’s leader and several members have since been arrested, but the case remains unsolved and the fate of the students unknown.  The lack of results has sparked public outrage and increasingly violent protests.  Just last week, demonstrators in Iguala set fire to the town hall.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto insisted Wednesday that he shares the outrage, as he met with the students’ families for the first time.

PRESIDENT ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO, Mexico (through interpreter):  The president of the republic is indignant before these incidents.  And I also became very impatient.  The ongoing investigations will soon allow us to determine the whereabouts and broaden the search to find the missing students.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Pena Nieto pledged to improve communication, starting with a panel to act as liaison between investigators and the families.

"Case of the missing student activists underscores dangerous corruption in Mexico – Part 2" PBS NewsHour 10/31/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  More than 50 arrests have been made in connection to the disappearance of 43 college students in the Guerrero province of Mexico, but authorities still don’t know where to find the missing young men five weeks since their disappearance.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Dudley Althaus of The Wall Street Journal from Mexico City about the greater political ramifications of this case.