National Youth Rights Association

HOWELL, N.J. – By the end of her driver’s lesson with a Skillful Driving School instructor outside her family’s home here, 16-year-old Samantha Miller had executed about a dozen K-turns and parallel-parked another dozen times. She knew she would do it all over again at her next lesson. And that was OK with Samantha. In [...]

The frantic rush to get a license at 16 — once a staple in American adolescence — is disappearing as Internet access and stiffening driving rules have led teens to wait longer to beg for the keys. Hannah Hart, 17, a high school junior in Atlanta, has had a learner’s permit for almost two years [...]

A Minnesota middle school student, with the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union, is suing her school district over a search of her Facebook and e-mail accounts by school employees. The 12-year-old sixth grade student, identified in court documents only as R.S., was on two occasions punished for statements she made on her Facebook [...]

College students presented 130,000 letters to the Congressional leadership at the Capitol on Tuesday to protest the scheduled doubling of the interest rate on certain federally backed student loans this summer. The interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans is set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1, increasing the average debt [...]

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BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts high school students would be required to stay in school until age 18 under a bill approved Thursday by a legislative panel hoping to reduce the number of students who drop out of school. The compulsory school attendance age in Massachusetts is currently 16, with certain exceptions for children as young [...]

The Morgan Hill, Calif., high school students prohibited from wearing American-flag T-shirts on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo in 2010 have appealed their case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The students from Live Oak High School contend in Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District that the First Amendment protects their [...]

The signs of students’ disengagement run the gamut, from daydreaming, doodling and covert texting to ignoring assignments, acting out and skipping classes. By the time they reach high school, about half are chronically disengaged from school, and this correlates with lower school grades and higher dropout rates, according to a recent study by researchers in [...]

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information. I saw a sign at a store saying anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an adult at all times. Is that legal? Depends on the store and where you [...]

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) – A Baptist church in Florida is barring children from attendance where a registered sex offender has been preaching since the end of January. Jacksonville television station WJXT quoted a woman Feb. 19 who said she was turned away on a recent Sunday when she tried to bring a 2-year-old boy she [...]

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information. Aren’t curfew laws necessary to keep kids safe and out of trouble? Should kids really be out so late? The real question is, should anyone be out so late, of [...]

WASILLA — Jim Dault and Shala Dobson are proud to display their artwork at Wasilla High School. After all, the Meadow Lakes artists are Valley residents and have a familial connection with the school. That’s why Jan. 29 was an exciting day, Dault said. That’s the day they installed their sculpture “Warrior Within” in front [...]

It’s been two years since that February Tuesday we decided to try out the idea of a day dedicated to promoting lowering the voting age on Twitter, using a hashtag. The chosen hashtag was, of course, #16tovote, a term used previously by NYRA of Southeast Florida’s lower voting age campaign. Watching others on Twitter use [...]

2012-02-15 Windy City Times http://www.windycitymediagroup…..36212.html JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A federal district court ruled today that the Camdenton R-III School District must stop censoring web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities through discriminatory filtering software. The ruling orders the district to not block content based on the viewpoints expressed by [...]

14th February 2012 Student Press Law Center http://www.splc.org/wordpress/?p=3199   Unless an outbreak of common sense sweeps through the Statehouse, Indiana is about to become the most frightening place in America to be a kid. House Bill 1169, pushed by the special-interest lobbyists for school administrators, would unleash school principals to control essentially anything their students [...]

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information. Is it really so important for youth to have the right to vote? Of course! While some may debate how low the voting age should go, under what conditions, and [...]

So, by now, we’ve all heard about that horrible man who made a video shooting his daughter’s laptop because… he was upset over something she said about him on Facebook. Something he only even knew about because he hacked into her account somehow, apparently. Perhaps even more disturbing than the idea this even happened is [...]

February 10, 2012 – MSNBC – http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_…..xperts-say Parents angry about Facebook use now have their poster child. He’s a dad wielding a .45 pistol, who posted a YouTube video showing him firing bullets through his daughter’s laptop computer as an act of discipline. The shooter, who identifies himself as Tommy Jordan from North Carolina, has [...]

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information. How are young people’s free speech rights violated? Look no further than the meme of “washing” a child’s mouth out with soap if she utters a swear word. Many probably [...]

February 8, 2012 The Moral Liberal http://www.themoralliberal.com/2012/02/08/eleventh-circuit-affirms-ruling-against-former-valdosta-state-president-in-victory-for-student-rights/   ATLANTA, February 8, 2012—In a victory for student rights, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a unanimous decision late yesterday in the case of Barnes v. Zaccari, holding that former Valdosta State University (VSU) President Ronald M. Zaccari may be found personally [...]