An Oklahoma high school valedictorian who was denied her diploma because she used the world “hell” in her commencement speech doesn’t plan to apologize for her choice of words, her father says.

David Nootbaar said he is furious that Prague High School is withholding his daughter Kaitlin's diploma because of her use of the word during the graduation speech in May. “She has worked so hard to stay at the top of her class and this is not right,” he said. “She earned that diploma. In four years she has never made a B. She got straight A’s and had a 4.0 the whole way through."

School officials declined to comment. "This matter is confidential and we cannot publicly say anything about it," Prague schools Superintendent Rick Martin said in a statement to KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City.

David Nootbaar said his daughter was inspired by the movie “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" when she wrote the speech. “Her quote was, ‘When she first started school she wanted to be a nurse, then a veterinarian and now that she was getting closer to graduation, people would ask her, what do you want to do and she said ‘How the hell do I know? I’ve changed my mind so many times,’” he said.

He said in the written script she gave to the school she wrote “heck,” but in the moment she said “hell” instead. 

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During the ceremony, Nootbaar said the audience laughed and she finished her speech to warm applause. She didn’t know there was a problem, he said.

But trouble surfaced when she went to school to pick up her graduation certificate last week, her father said.

“We went to the office and asked for the diploma and the principal said ‘Your diploma is right here but you’re not getting it. Close the door we have a problem,'" Nootbaar said.

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He said the principal told Kaitlin she would have to write an apology letter before he would release the diploma.

Kaitlin doesn’t plan on writing an apology letter because she doesn’t feel she did anything wrong, her father said. He said her family stands behind her decision.

Kaitlin starts classes at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in a few days on a full scholarship. 

KFOR-TV's La'Tasha Givens contributed to this report.

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The thousands of high school graduates in Prince George's County, Md., have completed all their studies, but they don't have an official diploma to prove it.

A spelling error marred at least 8,000 high school diplomas that were distributed last week, officials from Prince George's County, Maryland's second-largest school district, said. Students received diplomas that stated they had completed the approved "progam" of study.

The missing "r" was discovered after commencement exercises had already begun.

“We apologized for any inconvenience or disappointment this may have caused our students,” Briant Coleman, spokesman for the Prince George’s County Schools, told msnbc.com on Thursday. “Our students have been disappointed and at the same time are relieved that they will be getting their new diplomas soon.”

Prince George’s County, located outside of Washington, D.C., has 23 high schools, Coleman said.

The mistake resulted from vendor error, he said.

The printing company issued an apology, saying it would cover the costs for reprints. “We understand the value of your hard work and achievement; therefore we are reprinting your diploma,” read a statement from National Quality Products, NBCWashington.com reported.

Terrence Odom, 18, who graduated on May 30 from Oxon Hill High School, said he was disappointed by the typo.

“I would think it would be somebody’s job to proof and reproof again, especially with something that serious,” Odom told The Washington Post. “We were all excited to get our diplomas. Now we have to wait to get the official one.”

Coleman said the diplomas should be in the mail later this month.

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A Dallas-area high school was forced to pull back its yearbooks after a section described some students with special needs as “mentally retarded.”

Officials at the Mesquite Independent School District have apologized to families and students of Mesquite High School, east of Dallas, for a section dedicated to students with disabilities that contained errors and offensive language, district spokeswoman Laura Jobe said.

“It was with the best of intentions and not meant to ridicule or disparage anyone in any way,” Jobe told msnbc.com on Tuesday. “We believe the students didn’t understand the term ‘retarded’ was not acceptable. It was just an error that was overlooked and got printed, unfortunately.”

Jobe said she did not read the two-page section, but did see a photocopy of one page, which was sent to her office. She said a section read: “some of the disabilities the students in the Special Education Program have are being blind, deaf or non-verbal.”

She added:  “Specific disabilities of students were also cited in the yearbook, with some labeled as both blind and deaf, as well as mentally retarded.”

Students on the yearbook staff, a team of mostly seniors and a teacher advisor, also did not have parental permission to publish the photos of the students with special needs, Jobe said.

A special education teacher noticed the errors on Friday after 100 copies of the publication had been distributed to the senior class at Mesquite, Jobe said. Mesquite High School has about 2,800 students.

The school collected all the yearbooks and sent them back to the publisher, Jobe said. She said the section will be taken out and the yearbooks glued back together. Students will get their copies by next week, she said.

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"The principal did call the parents on Friday evening -- the parents of the students who were in that section -- [and] explained to them what had happened," Jobe said. "They were extremely understanding."

High school seniors, such as Alexandra Doverspike and Iman Hijaz, said they believe it was an honest mistake.

"You know everybody wants to be included, not left out," Hijaz told NBCDFW.com. "I think it was nice to make the page."

"I feel like everybody makes mistakes, and it's fixable," Doverspike told NBCDFW.com.

The school district plans to include additional training for staff members who work with yearbook production.

Some parents, like Christie Rawson, whose son is graduating from Mesquite High School on Saturday, are still upset.

“This should have been flagged during proofreading,” Rawson told msnbc.com. “The school made a mistake, and the graduating class shouldn’t have to leave school on this note. People need to have a greater sense of understanding and respect for all people. I want to congratulate the Class of 2012 and for them to move ahead on a positive note.”

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Seth Tooley has no problem talking up his alma mater -- The Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science in Bowling Green, Ky.

“It’s not your average high school,” said Tooley, 22, a 2008 graduate of the academy, a public high school for juniors and seniors based at Western Kentucky University.

Tooley now studies science at Western Kentucky but also helps the Gatton Academy by answering telephone calls to the front office. “The students here are learning on a higher level, a ground-breaking level, and that makes all the difference," he told msnbc.com. "When they say students are working on the latest research with leading experts in the field, it's true.”

Editors at Newsweek & The Daily Beast agree, naming The Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science as the best public high school in America.

The annual rankings by Newsweek & The Daily Beast highlight the 1,000 public high schools nationwide that have proven to be the most effective in turning out college-ready graduates.

The Top 15 are:
1. The Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science in Kentucky, Bowling Green, Ky. 
2. The School for the Talented and Gifted Magnet, Dallas
3. Basis Scottsdale, Scottsdale, Ariz.
4. School of Science and Engineering Magnet, Dallas
5. Basis Tucson, Tucson, Ariz.
6. Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School, Birmingham, Ala.
7. Signature School, Evansville, Ind.
8. Stanton College Preparatory School, Jacksonville, Fla.
9. Suncoast Community, Riviera Beach, Fla.
10. Thomas Jefferson for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Va.
11. City Honors School at Fosdick-Masten Park, Buffalo, N.Y.
12. School for Advanced Studies, Miami 
13. Andrew Carnegie Vanguard, Houston
14. Uplift Education North Hills Preparatory School, Irving, Texas
15. Pine View School, Osprey, Fla.

For the complete list of 1,000 schools, and more educational insights, click here to go to thedailybeast.com/besthighschools.

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Up to 15 percent of children in the U.S. are chronically absent from school, making them much more likely to fail and eventually drop out, a new national study shows.

As many as 7.5 million students nationwide miss a month of school each year, with absenteeism highest in kindergarten and in high school, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.

An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of students are "chronically absent" from school and miss enough class time to be considered a "severe risk" of not finishing high school. In urban and rural areas, where students may be poor and come from families with little education, the figures are as high as one-third of students, the study shows.

In Maryland, chronic absentee rates for poor students were "more than 30 percent, compared to less than 12 percent for students from more affluent families," according to the research.

"Because we don’t measure or monitor the problem, we generally don’t act on it," Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins, said in a statement. "Left untreated, the problem will likely worsen achievement gaps between rich districts and poor districts and curtail the positive effects of promising current and future reforms."

Balfanz is one of the Johns Hopkins researchers who worked on the study. Vaughan Byrnes, a research associate, co-authored the report.

According to the study, Balfanz says only six states track chronic absenteeism: Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island. Several states, including California and New York, do not gather individual data needed to calculate chronic absenteeism, the study found.

The U.S. Department of Education doesn't track the problem; it only requires states to monitor daily attendance, according to the study.

A student is considered chronically absent if he or she misses at least a month of school in a year, or about 10 percent of school days.

Because of the limited data, Balfanz said the study was only an "educated guess" about the scope of the problem.

"Even so, the research shows that we must address the attendance problem if we're going to have the kind of broader school improvement we want and our students deserve," said Marie Groark, executive director of Get Schooled, a nonprofit group that funded the study. "When you think about it, missing one or two days a month doesn't seem like much but it adds up over time. Then, that becomes a problem and that problem has a consequence."

The Get Schooled Foundation is an educational nonprofit campaign focused on boosting graduation rates. It is partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A Nevada principal has a lesson for U.S. News and World Report, which ranked his high school 13th best in the nation: It’s wrong.

Principal Jeff Horn says the magazine used incorrect data to place Green Valley High School of Henderson, Nev., just outside Las Vegas, above nearly 22,000 other public schools, elite prep and technical academies nationwide. The publication released its "Best High Schools" rankings on Tuesday.

"This is a great school and there are a lot of amazing things happening around here,” Horn told msnbc.com on Tuesday. "But the information it was based on is incorrect."

According to the Las Vegas Sun, the rankings published online showed Green Valley with 477 students and 111 teachers, a 4 to 1 ratio. Horn said Green Valley has 2,850 students and a student-teacher ratio closer to 24 to 1. The school also has a 64 percent pass rate on the Advanced Placement exams, not 100 percent as reported in the rankings, Horn said.

“My son first pulled up the report online and was reading it when he said, ‘Did you know you had 477 students?’" Horn said, adding “That's when I started reading it and saw the inaccuracies. Not only were there inaccuracies, but other things were skewed as well.”

Robert Morse, director of data research with U.S. News and World Report, told The Associated Press that the publication was aware of the discrepancy.

"We're looking into it," he told the AP.

According to the AP, Morse said the publication gathers enrollment numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data database. The federal statistics center, run through the U.S. Department of Education, collects and analyzes school data from state and local officials, the AP reported.

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Officials with the Education Department didn't immediately return messages seeking comment from msnbc.com.

It's unclear where along the process mistakes were made. Horn said he wasn’t aware of any school official providing data to the publication, and he said he told the local newspaper that he also noticed what appeared to be skewed enrollment figures for other high schools in southern Nevada.

The Las Vegas Sun reported that U.S. News was correct in reporting 17 school districts in Nevada, but made an error when it reported 5,864 full-time teachers and 123,697 students. The Clark County School District has nearly 18,000 teachers and more than 308,000 students, the Las Vegas Sun reported.

Said Horn: “We’ve been getting calls from our local news stations congratulating us and I have had to correct them."

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www.eychanerfoundation.org

Keaton Fuller, a senior at Prince of Peace High School in Clinton, Iowa.

An openly gay student in Iowa says he hopes a Catholic bishop will reconsider and let a gay rights advocacy group present a $40,000 scholarship to him during his graduation ceremony.

“Everybody at the school has always been very accepting and extremely encouraging toward me,” Keaton Fuller, a senior at Prince of Peace Catholic School in Clinton, Iowa, told msnbc.com. “That’s why the latest turn of events has been such a surprise -- I feel invalidated and unaccepted.”

Bishop Martin Amos in Davenport, Iowa, overruled school officials last week, saying he would not allow the Des Moines-based Eychaner Foundation to present its Matthew Shepard Scholarship to Fuller because the group’s support of gay rights conflicts with church doctrine. Instead, a school staff member will present the scholarship at the assembly.

Fuller, 18, said he was stunned: The bishop's decision comes after a Prince of Peace school official confirmed the award could be presented by an Eychaner scholarship committee member during the school's graduation ceremony on May 20. The Matthew Shepard Scholarship is given to students who are openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

Attempts by msnbc.com to contact Amos or officials with the Diocese of Davenport were unsuccessful on Tuesday. A school official referred calls to Edward O'Neill, president of Prince of Peace's school board, who could not be reached for comment.

“At some point, we hope they realize and agree for us to present the award because it is the right thing to do,” said Mike Bowser, a spokesman with the Eychaner Foundation.

Iowa businessman and gay rights activist Rich Eychaner founded the activism group and has awarded more than 130 Matthew Shepard scholarships to graduating high school seniors who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender since 2000. It is named for the gay Wyoming college student killed in 1998.

"The $40,000 scholarship to the University of Iowa was awarded to Keaton for his scholastic achievement and work reducing homophobia in his school and community as an openly gay student," Bowser said.

Fuller said he is among 70 seniors graduating from Prince of Peace this spring. He plans to attend University of Iowa in the fall. He wants to study film. 

For Fuller, being the lone openly gay student in a small Catholic high school has had its hardships. Yet, he said, he found solace among staff and students during those difficult times when he questioned his sexual orientation. He said teachers have always supported him, making sure he believed in himself.

"The whole thing has put the teachers and staff in an awkward position," Fuller said.

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O'Neill, the school board president, said he was disappointed with the bishop's decision, according to local media reports. "We preach tolerance and acceptance but then we turn around and we don't practice what we preach," The Associated Press quoted O'Neill as saying. "If the bishop says we're not going to do it, I can voice my objection to it, but there's not a whole lot I can do."

Fuller said he has been encouraged by his peers and community and will press on.

"It is difficult to understand how, after I have spent 13 years at this school and worked hard during all of them, I would be made to feel that my accomplishments are less than everybody else’s," Fuller told msnbc.com Monday evening.

"This whole ordeal has been incredibly hurtful, and I am even sadder that this will be one of my last experiences to remember my high school years by."

Fuller released an open letter Monday calling on church officials to reverse its decision. An online petition drive launched on Change.org also had garnered 4,007 supporters as of Tuesday morning.

In his letter, Fuller wrote: "This is a teachable moment for Prince of Peace to stand up against rejecting and invalidating the accomplishments of any student. Please help me by respectfully requesting that this decision be reversed. Share your thoughts about why all students deserve to be treated with respect and dignity at Prince of Peace."

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Fuller's mother, Patricia Fuller, said the last few weeks have been tough, but she was encouraged by her son's spirit and optimism.

“He was saddened initially and felt invalidated,” Patricia Fuller told msnbc.com Monday evening. “But he is an incredibly courageous person. He is pushing this issue because he knows -- and we know -- there are other gay students out there in other schools who are suffering in silence and that matters to him.”

“If he can have the courage to do this, then we can have the courage to support him. We support the respect and dignity of all people and we want to move that idea forward.”

Have story ideas, send Sevil an email at sevil.omer@msnbc.com

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Cedartown High School

Click the picture to view other dresses in the Cedartown High School dress code for prom.

Girls who squeeze all but their cleavage, backs and midriffs into their special prom dresses may not get through the dances’ doors this spring as U.S. high schools toughen dress codes.

“We’ve never had a problem until this year,” said Hal David, principal for Cedartown High School in northwest Georgia. “It was at homecoming when we first saw the dresses our students were wearing -- and they were inappropriate, unacceptable.”

Students at Cedartown High School aren’t the only ones under greater scrutiny these days, as more American public high schools crack down on plunging necklines and thigh-high slits, educators say.

Some high school administrators say dresses have become so risqué that staff have created special presentations on acceptable attire and offering approval in advance when girls show pictures of their most-sought after style of dress.

Teen banned from prom over Confederate dress

David said the school came up with new guidelines this fall to spare everyone involved in the special day, which came last Saturday for the Cedartown Bulldogs.

He said parents complained gowns worn during homecoming were too revealing. He said he assembled a team of parents, teachers and administrators to draw up a plan, which included showing pictures of dresses deemed acceptable and unacceptable. To make sure it was accessible to Cedartown’s 1,100 students he posted it on the school’s website. He said staff also placed posters on high school walls, showing pictures of acceptable dresses.

David said students had plenty of warning before they showed up for prom at the local country club. “And to be fair, we were not trying to embarrass anybody. We just wanted our students to be appropriate,” he said. “We didn’t have to turn away anyone, we didn’t have any issues and everything was fine.”

Despite rising melanoma rates, teens' tanning for prom still the norm

But staff at another Georgia high school had a few tears shed at the door.

“The biggest issue is cleavage and you can’t have rules for cup sizes,” said Ginger Lawrence, assistant principal at Lee County High School in Leesburg, Ga., where 375 seniors are graduating this year.

Lawrence said she chaperoned the Trojans' prom wielding a 3-inch ruler, making sure the length of hems were no more than three inches above the knees. She said she had to turn away a few students because their dresses were too risqué.

“One girl went home and put on a tank top and came back,” she said. “The other, well, we didn’t see her again.”

Courtesy of Cheyenne Niemeier

Cheyenne Niemeier, a senior at Crawford High School in Crawford, Texas, said she had no trouble finding her dress for prom this year.

In Crawford, Texas, one parent says there no question prom is a busy time for families, with parents spending up to hundreds of dollars on clothes, meals, tickets and transportation. Parents will spend about $1,078 on the big dance this year, compared to $807 last year, according to a survey by Visa. Sometimes a dress code can help families navigate through a costly purchase, said Renessa Niemeier, a parent of a senior at Crawford High School.

"We've been aware of the dress code for years, and we abide by it," Niemeier said. "Fortunately, we haven't had any troubles finding a dress. We've bought many dresses over the years, too."

Her 18-year-old daughter, Cheyenne, said she spent about $500 on her gown, adding that her friends were able to find suitable styles that comply with Crawford's dress code.

"It wasn't too hard to find a dress, if you look in the right stores," Cheyenne Niemeier said.

Video: Yearbook photo too racy? Student fights back

These days, the cuts and look seem to mirror outfits from the popular television show "Dancing with the Stars," says Catherine Moellering, executive vice president of trendspotting firm Tobe in New York City.

“Prom fashion is living in its own bubble,” Moellering said. “A lot of these girls are watching shows like ‘Real Housewives’ and the Kardashians, mimicking what they are seeing. And more or less, less has become the more.”

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