A person's high school years have always been said to be the best of their lives. Not only is it supposed to be a time of meeting and befriending new people who are different, but most importantly, it is the point in life in which you take the first step in setting the foundation for the future to come (the next step being college). Not only are they supposed to be the best, but they are supposed to be the most important as well. However, it must be realized that in order for someone's high school years to be successful, there needs to be a lot of support given to every single person or they will not succeed. I feel that the high schools in the United States do not give the social needs, interests, or academic needs of today's student's the support they need.

Over the past seven years, a handful of schools in Fairfax County, Virginia have served as test cases for modified school year calendars. What are the pros and cons for teachers, students and parents? Rob Capriccioso reports.

The number of children with a parent behind bars has soared to over 2 million in recent years. A small but growing number of programs are addressing the problem of how to keep parent-child relationships alive through the years of incarceration. Chris Dickon reports on one, the Messages Project in Virginia.

Remember your first trip to the top of a really tall playground slide? Remember the kid who got to the top of ladder, but couldn't get up the nerve to slide—or climb back down? Modern safety concerns have made this particular rite of passage rare, and raise the question, does a safe playground have to be boring? By Rob Capriccioso.

For the first time ever this year, talented U.S. high school students had a chance to participate in a nationwide "Biology Olympiad,"then go on to represent the U.S. in an international competition. Rob Capriccioso reports on how much the contest and the Center that supports it mean to an often-overlooked group of students: gifted young science lovers.

Back in 1954, 15-year-old Darnell Miller used to leave school early to play guitar on a radio show. Miller's story is one of hundreds of true tales from Virginia's rural Bland County to gain new life on the Web, thanks to history teacher John Dodson and his students. Caitlin Johnson explains how kids at Rocky Gap High are using modern technology to create a lively arc

The summer of 2000, Caitlin Johnson volunteered in a language arts summer school class for 6th graders in Alexandria, Virginia, she left convinced that helping kids become confident writers is a critical job—and a tough one.