Three small-town eighth-graders in Minnesota were suspended by their principal for not standing Thursday morning for the Pledge of Allegiance, violating a district policy that the principal now says may soon be reworded to protect free speech rights.

NCLB mandates that kids be given a series of tests, so that all of a teacher's time is spent teaching kids what they need to know in order to pass the test.

What's wrong with that?

Well, the single most important thing that kids can be taught is how to think for themselves.

About 100 people, including students majoring in homeland security and criminal justice, were arrested Tuesday in an undercover drug sting at San Diego State University, officials said.

Carl Chew, a 6th grade science teacher at Nathan Eckstein Middle School in the Seattle School District, last week defied federal, state, and district regulations that require teachers to administer the Washington Assessment of Student Learning to students.

"I have let my administration know that I will no longer give the WASL to my students. I have done this because of the personal moral and ethical conviction that the WASL is harmful to students, teachers, schools, and families," wrote Chew in an email to national supporters.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it's widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.

This year, some districts, including the behemoth Los Angeles Unified, have avoided layoff notices to teachers, but many are preparing for deep cuts. About 14,000 teachers have received pink slips throughout the state, according to the California Teachers Association.

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

A month after Detroit Public Schools officials announced that most of the district's vacant schools had been carefully secured, Joy Middle School on the city's east side sat last week with unlocked doors, rubble-filled hallways trashed by vandals, a room full of new computers left behind and a stash of students' personal records scattered on the floor.

Seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.

Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually.

While school officials at Forest Lake Area High School fielded many phone calls Tuesday from people upset with their decision to cancel a visit by touring veterans, more than 100 people greeted the vets at the local American Legion center.

Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.