Pat Wingert

Those trapped in unhappy marriages are most vulnerable to affairs--or so it seemed. Shirley Glass, author and one of the nation's leading experts on infidelity, says that that image is increasingly wrong.

Sara Cowan of suburban Washington, D.C., "is not a 'freaking out' kind of kid," her mother, Kathy, says. But when the federal government recently bumped up its terror warning to Orange, the eighth grader felt unnerved.

CORRECTION APPENDED In 1978, the Supreme Court opened the doors of America's elite campuses to a generation of minority students when it ruled that universities' admissions policies could take applicants' race into account.

In early October, two snipers went on a killing spree in suburban Montgomery County, Md., leaving four dead within hours. The gas station where they killed one victim was only a mile from the school that my youngest children attend.

When it comes to teens and sex, abstinence forces say the message is simple--don't do it. The other side says give them all the facts--including how to use a condom.

The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion wasn't available that night, so the premiere was held in the first-floor party room of a Bethesda, Md., condo building. Not coincidentally, the film's auteur, 34-year-old Jeff Breslow, was himself a resident.

Ten Years Ago This Disease Was For Adults Only. But As Teen Depression Comes Out Of The Closet, It's Getting Easier To Spot--And Sufferers Can Hope For A Brighter Future.

Your kid is turning 17, so your parenting gig is just about up, right? Way wrong, say the authors of "The Launching Years," due out next month from Three Rivers Press.

This hasn't been an easy summer for Edison Schools, the nation's largest for-profit school chain. A few months ago Edison was in line to run 45 schools in Philadelphia.

Think summer means no more teachers, no more books? It's actually the perfect time to read something (gasp) fun. Encourage young readers with one of these page-turners.AGES 2-6Young kids will love the rhythmic rhyming of DO LIKE A DUCK DOES by Judy Hindley, and the vivid illustrations and overall silliness of DUCK ON A BIKE, by David Shannon.AGES 7-10The magical misadventures in LULU'S HAT by Susan Meddaugh make it a rare find--an easy-to-read book that still manages to be funny and...

In 1988, when maverick American Federation of Teachers president Albert Shanker came up with the idea of charter schools, he envisioned publicly funded but independent lab schools that would strike a bargain with the system: less red tape in exchange for more achievement, accountability and innovation.But this week, on the 10th anniversary of the experiment's launch, the AFT will release a highly critical assessment of the movement that now claims 2,119 schools and more than a half million...

Parents just got Junior on the bus, but it's not too early to think about next summer. Now's the time to tour prospective camps. Start your search by asking friends for recommendations.

The U.S. Department of Education's headquarters in the southwest corner of downtown Washington, D.C., has never exactly been a tourist magnet. It's the same kind of anonymous seven-floor concrete box that houses most bureaucrats in the capital city.

Princeton University's meticulously cultivated campus oozes tradition--from the annual P-rade (in which generations of alumni march around in the sacred orange and black) to the school's unofficial motto, "Princeton in the Nation's Service," coined by a former Princeton president named Woodrow Wilson, class of 1879.

"Charlotte's Web," the classic tale of Wilbur, a runt piglet, and the arachnid friend who saves him from slaughter, has been enchanting children and vegetarians for 50 years. Now, just in time for summer car vacations, Random House has issued an anniversary edition on CD, read in a gentle Yankee clip by the late E. B. White himself. It may be the best talking kid's book ever. Unabridged, it guarantees you won't hear "Billy's kicking me" for at least three hours and 30 minutes.

Stop playing with your food" isn't something you'll hear from Clare Crespo. In her splendid new cookbook, The Secret Life of Food (Hyperion.$19.99), meatballs become crazed eyes staring out of a mass of spaghetti, and mashed potatoes and broccoli conjure up a monster. Crespo offers 46 recipes; many would make a great rainy-day activity for kids.

The United States has a "dangerous" shortage of experts in non-European cultures and languages, hampering the country's response to 9-11, says the American Council on Education, the largest organization representing the nation's colleges and universities. "On the whole, the quantity, level of expertise and availability of U.S. personnel with required skills do not now match the national strategic needs at home or abroad, as recently evidenced by the shortage of language experts in the war...

When you walk through the brightly colored door of the Roseville Cooperative Preschool in northern California, you're entering a magical, pint-size world where 3- and 4-year-olds are masters of the universe.

During the boom years of the 1990s, teachers and administrators at inner-city schools had reason to hope that better days were ahead. Prosperity meant that states and cities had more money to spend on the classroom.

Should families have easier access to patients during emergencies? A growing number of researchers say it's good medicine. "Family members can comfort patients in a way no health-care provider can, and when the patient is less scared, procedures run more smoothly," says Dezra Eichhorn, who studied the issue for the American Journal of Nursing.

Just when parents were beginning to feel they were doing everything wrong, a new study says that modern moms and dads are doing something right--spending four to six more hours a week with their kids than the previous generation.

Not long ago, Republicans wanted to shut the Department of Education, arguing that schools were a local responsibility and Washington shouldn't be throwing money at failing classrooms.

The first symptoms surface right about now, between Thanksgiving and Christmas: unfinished homework, a lack of interest in studying for a big test. It gets a little worse when the first early-decision college acceptances are sent out next week.

For most of his life, 14-year-old Kyle Gilson has struggled with attention problems and hyperactivity. "All kids have energy, but it's different when they're going Mach 2 with their hair on fire," says his mother, Jeanua, of Gilbert, Ariz.

If you sat in on Sharon McGreevey's class at Menlo Park Terrace Elementary School in Woodbridge, N.J., you'd recognize a familiar set of characters from your own third-grade days.

It wasn't even a hockey game, on a summer afternoon at a rink in the Boston suburb of Reading, Mass.--just a "shoot around," an informal practice with sticks and pads for 9- and 10-year-olds.

Dr. Leroy Carhart won a victory in the Supreme Court last week. Carhart, a retired Air Force surgeon who does abortions in Bellevue, Neb., sued to overturn the state's law banning so-called partial-birth abortions, and the justices agreed with him.

Call them the supersize generation. Kids (6 to 11) are three times as likely to be overweight today as they were 30 years ago. And the news on adolescents (12 to 17) isn't much better --the proportion of fat teens has nearly doubled since the early '70s.

Competition for admission to the country's top private schools has always been tough, but this year Elisabeth Krents realized it had reached a new level. Her wake-up call came when a man called the Dalton School in Manhattan, where Krents is admissions director, and inquired about the age cutoff for their kindergarten program.

Jacob Williams was playing in the sandbox at his preschool when he got the first hint that there was something unusual about his family. One little girl kept asking him the same question every day: "Where is your dad?" And every day, Jacob gave her the same answer: "I don't have a dad.