United States high schools, I feel, do a pretty good job of supporting the academic, social needs, and interests of today's students. In today's schools, we have so many alternative education programs, extra curricular activities, and other programs that it may even be difficult for a student to decide which ones to participate in.

With some 15,000 children and teens arrested for sex offenses each year, communities clearly have a stake in effective treatment for young offenders. Fortunately, there are programs helping adolescents re-join society successfully and safely. Linda Baker looks at Oregon's Counterpoint center.

They do crafts. They sell cookies. And twice a month the girls in the Columbia River, Oregon Girl Scouts Beyond Bars troop spend a couple of hours at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility with their moms. Linda Baker explains how this growing program works to improve the odds for families divided by incarceration.

When the boundless optimism of a dog encounters the wary affection of a young man in a juvenile detention center, what happens? Nancy Hill reports on Project Pooch, an Oregon program that pairs young offenders with hard-to-place strays, to the benefit of both.

In Portland, Oregon, a flexible approach to helping welfare recipients land jobs has been one of the most successful in the country. Caitlin Johnson looks at what's working, and how programs like Portland's Steps to Success would be threatened by proposed changes to the nation's welfare reform legislation.