What he found is that negative peer pressure may be the most important educational issue today—or at the very least among the most important—and perhaps the most changeable.

To counter negative peer pressure in the academic realm, parents, educational institutions, and voters must first face some uncomfortable truths.

• Parents and students share high expectations of educational achievement, but a high proportion of students are unwilling to work hard for that achievement
• The income gap between the degreed and the un-degreed is widening, creating a devolution of rising expectations.
• Much can be done to make higher education more attainable, but it will be expensive, and it must extend to the non-college-bound.
• Parents, schools, and businesses must form partnerships to replace negative peer influence with positive "steer pressure."

First, we must acknowledge the huge gap between the high educational expectations of parents for their children, and the even bigger gap between teens' educational expectations and their willingness to work hard.

"In short, studying isn't cool," says Zill. "Unfortunately we don't have good trend data on how these attitudes have changed over the decades. But know that there are more negative media influences on kids, that parents have less time, and that high schools are more lax toward student attitudes than they were 20 or 30 years ago. And we know that more students believe today that they can slide in high school and still get into college."

We need to recognize quickly the gap between our expectations and the reality. Our children, and our nation's economic health, depend on it.

Here's the current reality: As of the early '90s, (the most recent period for which statistics were available to Zill), 87 percent of high-school students were graduating; 49 percent of high-school graduates were going on to college; and a mere 23 percent of those who went to college were graduating with at least a bachelor's degree.

Here's the wishful thinking: Virtually all parents—98 percent—expected their kids to graduate from high school; 88 percent expected them to go to college; and 74 percent expected them to earn a diploma—more than three times the number that actually graduated.

"Students' educational ambitions were even higher than their parents," says Zill."Yet most of them apparently don't want to work at it. There's very little support among students for academic achievement." Only 38 percent of high school students—far less than half—said their friends in school thought it was important to work hard academically.

Not only is it not cool to study hard, but Zill's study also showed it's not cool to be interested in sports or extracurricular activities. And only 27 percent of the students polled said it was important to behave in school.

Those attitudes are true in inner-city schools and suburban schools alike. Students in private schools tended to value education more than those in public schools; but when it came to the value they placed on behaving in class, there was no difference between them and public-school students. Obviously, some remarkable changes will have to occur if young Americans are going to come even close to realizing their high expectations.

Some of those changes must take place in the home and school settings. But another issue—this powerful pull factor—must be addressed.

To counteract negative peer pressure, society itself must send a clearer message that education not only pays, but that it is accessible and meaningful.

Consider the widening income gap been the degreed and the un-degreed. A high school diploma today is about the equivalent of an eighth-grade diploma in 1972, according to Martin Camoy, aprofessor of education and economics at Stanford University and author of "FadedDreams."

A household headed by a high school graduate has an annual income of $41,078 while households headed by a college graduate earn more than $73,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

As of 1992, a college graduate who had been out of school one to 10 years earned about 58 percent more than a high school graduate. In 1979, the difference was only 28 percent. Between1979 and 1992, earnings by college graduates flattened, while real wages for high schoolgraduates fell by nearly a third.

Most experts believe that future jobs will depend on increasingly sophisticated skills, yet public education isn't keeping up with the educational demand—and teens know it.

Since 1980, tuition at public colleges and universities has risen 100 percent. During the same period, median family income has grown by only 5 percent.

Eduflation, as the rising cost of college might be called, grows: In September, 1996, the College Board reported that tuition and fees rose by 5 percent this fall, once again higher than the 3 percent U.S. inflation rate. Add housing and other living expenses, and the average four-year cost at a public university is more than $44,000, and nearly $94,000 at a private school.

The message many teens receive, too often an accurate one, is that the road to higher education is paved with debt. While many parents came of age during a time of generous college grants, more and more student aid is now provided in the form of loans.

The Dallas Morning News reports that in 1995, the number of student borrowing increased 78 percent nationally. And according to a Washington Post poll, nearly 60 percent of U.S. voters say college costs are putting higher education out of reach. (The poll also found that voters worried more about the rising cost of higher education than any other domestic issue, including crime and the health of the overall economy.)

Certainly, much of the future financial responsibility for higher education rests on the shoulders of parents. But Fidelity Investments, the nation's largest mutual fund group, reports that parents of college-bound students (no matter how much they worry) aren't putting enough away. And Neuberger & Berman, another mutual fund group, estimates that one-third of baby boomers with children under 13 have failed to set up any kind of college savings or investment programs. Of those parents saving for college, most are setting aside half or less of the minimum they will need.

But parents alone cannot revive the fading dream.

We must provide our children with more ways to win. To do that, we'll have to invest more of our money, and ourselves.

The primary focus of that investment should be in primary and secondary education, not just with money, but through human connections. When it comes to education, the best antidote to negative peer pressure is positive adult steer pressure.

Business and high education should be involved directly in the lower grades, in schools, and in the community. For example, the EEXCEL (Education Excellence for Children with Environmental Limitations) housing project, near Gardena, California, offers a new kind of lowincome "smart housing" with education as part of the design. Created through a partnership between The University of Southern California and developer Kent Salveson, EEXCEL housing includes a study center, library, study hall and tutorial center, daily tutorial sessions, and a nightly study hall proctored by parents and by USC graduate students. From its inception, USC offered scholarships to every child in the complex who graduated with minimal GPA and SAT.

And in Silicon Valley, the business-sponsored Challenge 2000 project is applying the venture-capital model to education and kick-starting the effort with $21 million in private investments. Hundreds of community members, educators, and business people are working with10 school districts and 55 schools serving 34,000 students. Renaissance teams, groups of volunteers, educators, and companies (among them Hewlett Packard and Apple) are paired with elementary, middle and high schools in the same geographic area, offering not only machines, but positive adult contact and guidance for the kids. Steer pressure.

Ultimately, parents are the core players in a steer pressure movement.

Among Nick Zill's recommendations for parents:

• Rather than withdrawing during their children's teen years, parents should send a strong message to students about learning and schoolwork, one that will counteract the often-negative influences of media and peers. Surveys show that teens whose parents remain involved in their schooling tend to do better in their studies and to be more active in extracurricular activities.
• Parents should more actively monitor their children's friends. "They can step in and do some steering when the peer behavior is becoming inappropriate," says Zill."They can also do more to help their kids find positive peer groups. When young people get involved in positive group activities, such as band, community service, ski club, etc., the peer pressure tends to become more positive."
• Instead of engaging in mutual recrimination, schools and families should form partnerships to encourage learning. Parents should get involved in their kids' junior high and high schools."Schools should do a lot more to encourage parents to get involved," says Zill."And they should help parents understand adolescence, peer pressure and how to deal with it."

Zill would like to see a national, public media campaign that would educate Americans about the relationship among learning, negative peer pressure, and the economic health of the nation.

Indeed, if we can construct such a campaign for smoking or AIDS, we can do it for learning.

Richard Louv is Senior Editor of Connect for Kids and columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune. He is also author of "101 Things You Can Do for Our Children's Future" (Anchor) and "The Web of Life" (Conari).