To be sure, the influence of popular culture and the information and technology explosion on youth behavior is widespread. The predictable tendencies that characterized K-12 age groups for so many years seem to have disappeared and have been replaced by realities that reflect a completely transformed social and cultural paradigm for school age youth. A corresponding reality is that the traditional adult voices and influences that guided youth decisions in years past have been muted or minimized as young people dialogue and interact more with virtual communities across all kinds of boundaries. These evolving trends also reflect how much more difficult teachers' jobs have become as they try to manage classrooms full of students whose minds are often focused on everything but the lessons at hand. The competing demands in the lives of students are at once signs of the times and troubling precursors for those of us who are desperately working to produce high quality learning environments.

Parents and schools must continue to work together to not only make sure students are receiving consistent and definitive messages at home and school, but also to facilitate cohesive expectations that integrate academics with the extracurricular interests of students. The competition for students' attention is quite fierce when one considers the plethora of options being promoted and sometimes forced upon youth from all angles. The shifts in acceptable youth mores and behaviors are challenging parents and schools in unsuspecting ways. For example, while it was always a foregone conclusion that the majority of students would graduate from high school, the disturbing trends indicate quite the opposite in the current atmosphere that is pretty much dominated by electronic and virtual formats that provide elevated opportunities for social networking and otherwise distracting behaviors and choices. While we embrace the cultural and social changes that allow us to interact across so many boundaries, we need to be cognizant of the risks of nonproductive and negative behaviors that can occur in this new information and electronic age.