How could advice that encourages unconditional love, balance and sanity be controversial?

A checklist can be a helpful tool when evaluating a new school for your child and your family. Websites and admissions materials can give parents and children insights into what a school values. Videos and other visuals found on the websites of schools can be very useful. But nothing is more important than the person-to-person interaction with students, teachers, parents and past parents of the school.

Around this time of year, educators and parents across the country often talk about ways to prevent “Summer slide,” or the loss of academic progress over the summer months. High performing students, like those at Shorecrest and other private schools in St. Petersburg, FL, do not use the summer as a time to simply maintain skills. They use the summer months as a time for concentrated growth in their areas of passion. Whether a student is interested in robotics, coding, math, writing, a sport, an art, a service endeavor, or earning money, the 9-10 weeks of summer are a perfect time to develop those skills, passions or bank account.

I regularly meet parents who use data to guide their business decisions but find it much more difficult to use data to guide parenting decisions. The Center for Disease Control monitors high risk behavior in US high school students. Although some behaviors have declined in the last decade, the following statistics from the 2013 survey raise some questions.