Join Radio Rookies and Youth Radio today from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EST for a Live Chat about gun control and school safety with students from classrooms around the country. 

Teachers, principals, guidance counselors, administrators and other educators: how have you been dealing with talking about the Newtown shooting with students? What are you telling kids of different ages? How are your students handling it, and how have you been handling it? Call in to 212-433-9692 or post below.

Ken Bain, provost and vice president for academic affairs of the University of the District of Columbia, author of What the Best College Teachers Do and now What the Best College Students Do, offers advice for succeeding in college – beyond GPA.

Black and Latino students made up more than 96 percent of the arrests by NYPD School Safety officers during the 2011-2012 school year, according to recent data released by the NYPD. But the New York Civil Liberties Union believes the numbers betray a "heavy-handed" approach to discipline, particularly in minority neighborhoods.

Andrew Hacker, professor of political science at Queens College New York, recently proclaimed on The Takeaway that the age old belief that "algebra and mathematics generally sharpens our mind…[is] total fiction." Many of our listeners disagreed.

Most high-school seniors attend their prom. Only a few defy tradition and go dateless. Watch a video of one of the brave ones -- Tiffanie Galan, of Borough Park, Brooklyn -- taking on her big day without a date.

A group of high school students from Democracy Prep in Harlem added their voices to the outrage over the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin on Thursday. They wore hoodies and marching through the neighborhood. View a slideshow of the students in their hoodies explaining what it has come to symbolize to them.

A study of schools throughout the city of Chicago has found that detention and suspension rates increase towards the end of each month and sharply decrease at the beginning of the next. The main culprit, they believe, may be the students' diets. The study links the behavior with spending patterns associated to the national food-stamp program, SNAP. Lisa Gennetian, managing director of the behavioral economics research think tank Ideas42, thinks it's time for a change.

Small towns are shrinking across America, and along with them student populations. When a student population shrinks, so does a school’s state funding. But some rural and small town schools have found an inventive way to stay afloat by recruiting international students who pay up to $30,000 per year to attend an American public school — regardless of where in America that school is.

The arts studios of NYU and Hunter are some of the most competitive in the country. As a result they're usually closed to the public. For one weekend, the studios will be open for visitors to check out the student work in progress.

Reactions to the death of Moammar Gadhafi continue to pour in from Libya and across the U.S. Mohamed Gibril is a student at Michigan State University. He and other Libyan students were sent to the U.S. to study under a Libyan government program for diplomatic training before the uprising against the Gadhafi regime. Since then his visa has run out and he's been unable to return safely. He and his fellow students are currently in limbo due to the turmoil in their country. Assia Bashir Amry is the daughter of exiled Libyan revolutionary ElHajj Sabr, a revolutionary who did not live to see Gadhafi's ouster. She talks about what feelings Gadhafi's death has brought up for her.

Last week, The Takeaway reported on an Alabama immigration law that is considered on of the toughest in the nation. A federal judge upheld the law in a challenge by the Justice Department. Among its provisions, the law requires Alabama's public schools to check the legal documentation of its students. Since the law went into effect on Thursday, over 200 Latino students went missing from schools in Huntsville. The law does not give schools the right to turn away children. Schools are only required to report to the state if a child cannot produce legal documentation.

This web audio extra features an interview between Bob and Dr. Susan Linn, the director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. Last May, the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood began a letter-writing campaign that quickly culminated in the publisher Scholastic halting distribution of a set of academic materials called "The United States of Energy." The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood contends the materials exclusively highlighted the positives of coal as an energy source and provided no information about the environmental negatives. Scholastic has pledged to vet new corporate partners with a new review board and to strengthen the editorial review of subsequent sponsored supplemental materials.

Here's the (prompt) statement Scholastic released.

Yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced a major override of the No Child Left Behind accountability law for schools. Duncan's proposal will mean that states can apply to bypass performance requirements in the law. One of those requirements is that 100 percent students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Arne Duncan talks about about the overhaul in the law and how it will affect students and schools. (Transcript available after the jump.)

Ever wonder how a story on The Takeaway evolves? Our stories can start with everything from a tweet to a listener response phoned in during the morning's show, and move forward over the next hours as we interact with guests, put together radio segments, and blog on the subject at hand. This week, one of our stories began with a paper about student performance being impacted by unemployment rates. In the visual element below, you can see first hand how the story progressed, from our initial tweet and listener responses to a blog from Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner. 

Every year, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards honor the best high school and middle school students in a variety of categories, including painting, journalism and fiction. Past winners include leaders and luminaries in their respective fields, including Joyce Carol Oates, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote. Some 185,000 pieces of art and writing submitted this year, and eighteen-year-old Haris Durrani was one of seven high school seniors to win a gold medal for a portfolio of writing, out of 3,000 portfolio entries.

Ten different lunchroom tables with colorful messages went on display at Union Square on Thursday, in the largest student art exhibit ever in the city's parks.

Half a century ago, as Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington and Freedom Riders tested the desegregation of interstate buses, students at a Detroit high school stood up for their rights, and won. Finding the facilities and education at their school inferior to what was available at predominately white schools, they staged a walk-out, and refused to come back to their school until their demands were met. A new play called “Northern Lights 1966” tells their story. Starring a cast of high school students, it’s being staged by Detroit’s Mosaic Youth Theatre through this weekend.