Free Talk Live

Los Angeles (CNN) -- A police officer in Los Angeles who claimed he was shot while patrolling near a high school has now been arrested for making up the story, authorities said.
Officer Jeff Stenroos of the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department had said he was shot in the chest on January 19 in the west San Fernando Valley. He said the shooting happened when he got out of his squad car to check on a man peering into parked vehicles near the El Camino High School.

In the United States today, our public schools are not very good at educating our students, but they sure are great training grounds for learning how to live in a Big Brother police state control grid. Sadly, life in many U.S. public schools is now essentially equivalent to life in U.S. prisons. Most parents don't realize this, but our students have very few rights when they are in school. Our public school students are being watched, tracked, recorded

Two incidents recently (one in my local community) and one that made national headlines that document kids getting in trouble for making small messes of crumbs at school.

Schools in Brazil have started to place computer chips in school uniforms to keep track of pupils and reduce truancy.

One small-town Minnesota school district is taking a unique approach to keeping students safe: The police are moving in. In Jordan, south of Minneapolis, officials looking at school security after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut decided the police would set up satellite offices in public schools. Officers will conduct some of their daily work from the schools, including taking calls and filling out paperwork, while still going out into the community to patrol or respond to emergencies.

In testimony to Congress Wednesday, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a startling claim: This year, up to 82 percent of public schools could "fail" the government's "No Child Left Behind" standards.

"No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," he said, according to a transcript provided by the Department of Education.

State education officials have ordered the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools to immediately implement a plan that balances the district's books by closing half its schools. The Detroit News says the financial restructuring plan will increase high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidate operations. Officials say that the plan would wipe out the district's $327 million deficit by 2014.

Ken Robinson explains how one-size-fits-all public schools were designed to produce industrial workers and not designed for true education.

In the streets of his native Harlem, Joseph Hayden is a familiar presence, patrolling the neighborhood with his video camera, ready to document interactions between the police and the residents they stop — and doing so at an age when most people have retired. “Like I tell them,” Mr. Hayden, 71, said recently of the police, “I’m on your side to make sure there is courtesy, professionalism and respect. Isn’t that what you advertise on the side of your car?” “Seems like you’d want me to do it,” he added, “unless what you’re providing is not courtesy, professionalism and respect.”