That led to a pair of Supreme Court decisions in 2003, striking down the school's undergraduate admissions formula, which gave an automatic boost to minority applicants, while upholding its law-school admissions criteria, which administrators said used race as a flexible "plus factor" for certain candidates.

WSJ: Supreme Court to Hear Michigan Affirmative-Action Case

For his new book Gun Guys: A Road Trip, Mr Baum travelled across the US and met a variety of gun owners, from those blasting automatic weapons in the desert to a school teacher hunting pigs.

BBC: Gun control: How a US liberal learned to love guns

Once again a deranged man has walked into an American school armed with powerful semi-automatic weapons and left a trail of death and heartache in his wake.

FORBES: Connect

Ann Forte, a spokeswoman for the New York City school system, said the Microsoft email service includes automatic filters for inappropriate content, which Google couldn't provide.

WSJ: Google for Schools

In a month-long experiement, morning register at Friars School in Bangor is being scanned into a computer and automatic personalised messages sent out to the mobile phones of parents whose children are missing.

BBC: Parents face truancy warning

Parents are also being urged to sign up for emails where they will receive automatic alerts when a change is made to the status of either their chosen school or school category - primary, secondary or special.

BBC: Herefordshire school disruption now logged online

The bill is quite explicit about who gets merit pay (and how two lousy evaluations mean automatic firing) but kicks the problem of finding the money for those raises down to the school districts.

FORBES: Making Education Miserable