Members of PSU recently traveled to Harrisburg PA to meet with students from Harrisburg's William Penn High School and engage them in our Campaign for Nonviolent Schools and our Campaign for Equitable School Funding. We led a participatory workshop that explored the root causes of violence in our schools and communities. We also talked about conditions inside our schools, and students from both Philly and Harrisburg agreed that underfunding of schools is a root cause of many of the problems we face.
 
By sharing our experiences, students came to the realization that the problems we see in our schools are not isolated to our own districts; that the struggle for a high quality education is a statewide struggle. In this radio piece, we hear from Harrisburg students about conditions in their school, their views on violence, and how PSU's Nonviolence workshop affected their perceptions.

 
Across the state of New Jersey, high school students staged a one day strike Tuesday to protest cuts to the state's education budget.
 
The action was organized mainly through facebook, where an event page calling for a statewide walkout drew over 17,000 attendees.
 

By Gregory Jordan-Detamore & Dylan Washington
 
In late 2007, a Costing Out Study was released. It was commissioned by the state to find out how much money is needed to give all students in Pennsylvania an adequate education, broken down by school district. It took into account factors such as poverty, English language learners, and cost of living. The results were not surprising, but nonetheless were very important.

By Dan Jones & Azeem Hill
A key feature of any public education system is its purpose. Right now, a lot of people are putting forward the idea that the purpose of our schools is to prepare students to “compete in the global economy.” The proponents of this framework span the political spectrum, from Newt Gingrich to Barack Obama, but is it really the best thing for students?