The following op-ed was written by GAP Communications Associate Hannah Johnson. 

It seems like new reports of scandalous cheating schemes or other wrongdoing at public schools emerge every week. In cities including New York and Tulsa, Okla., the problem of school corruption is widespread.

What can be done? There's no surefire solution. Teachers and administrators alike are under pressure to see that an increasing number of objectives is met.

The pressure to achieve results can be unbearable. Waste, fraud and abuse can happen in any bureaucracy — and public schools aren't immune to those scourges.

There is, however, one easy and important solution our nation can implement to stem corruption and help curb cheating scandals. The federal government should institute whistle-blower protections for all school and district staff.

Consider these recent incidents. Philadelphia flagged 28 schools for an improbable amount of erasures and unlikely gains in test scores.

A scandal erupted in Atlanta when evidence of cheating incriminated nearly half of its 100 schools.

The following op-ed was written by GAP Food Integrity Campaign Director Amanda Hitt. Versions of this op-ed also appeared in the Xenia Daily Gazette (OH), Bristol Press (CT), New Britain Herald (CT), Herkimer Telegram (NY), Little Falls Times (NY), Union Daily Times (SC), and Wayne Independent (PA).

Food safety is running afoul in Springdale — in more ways than one. First, meat and grain agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey linked to a salmonella outbreak and temporarily shut its turkey processing plant in the Arkansas city in early August. Then, a Tyson Foods driver died after being pinned between two truck trailers outside a Springdale poultry plant.

The death of 50-year-old Merrill Reynolds, who worked for Tyson for nearly three decades, should draw much-needed attention to the critical role of truckers in today's food system. Often overlooked, food safety and security during transport is absolutely critical for keeping America's food supply safe. Consider transportation vulnerabilities like temperature control of meats, or the general sanitation and upkeep of vehicles. One compromised shipment could easily sicken thousands of consumers.

Food transportation also represents an environmental challenge. Every cross-country load of produce spews carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University estimated that about 11 percent of food-related greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation.

Many roads pave the way from farm to table. Trucking is by far the most common method of transporting food in the United States. Trucks tote food from a producer to one or more processors, they haul those products to distributors, and then they drive them to supermarkets and other shops, where consumers buy the food and most likely drive it home.

The following op-ed was written by NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake and GAP Naitonal Security and Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack. It was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 1 2011.

When President Obama took office, federal employees who had exposed wrongdoing or were considering doing so had reason for hope. Eight years of the Bush administration's relentless retaliation against whistle-blowers had ended, and Obama spoke encouragingly of transparency and due process.

Since then, the administration has taken some positive steps for whistle-blowers, most notably in (unsuccessfully) advocating legislation to protect them and in loosening the government's grip on public information. However, its treatment of national-security and intelligence whistle-blowers - arguably the ones we need most - has been brutal. It has pursued multiple prosecutions of such whistle-blowers on espionage charges.

As prominent whistle-blowers on matters of national security, we have experienced the crackdown firsthand.

Each of our cases began shortly after 9/11. One of us (Radack) warned the Justice Department against interrogating "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh without an attorney. She later exposed the FBI's ethics violations in deciding to proceed, its barbaric treatment of him, and the mysterious disappearance of evidence of the warning from DOJ files.

The other (Drake) exposed billions of dollars in waste, mismanagement, and malfeasance at the National Security Agency, epitomized by an expensive surveillance program that was ultimately canceled.

The following op-ed was written by GAP Food Integrity Campaign Director Amanda Hitt. Versions of this op-ed also appeared in the Burlington Record (CO).

Americans are becoming too familiar with imported foodborne illnesses.

Remember the tainted dog food from China and those salmonella-laced hot peppers shipped from Mexico? Now a virulent strain of E. coli is racing across Europe, possibly heading toward our shores.

We’re not ready for this new strain, if it comes to that. The government bulkhead required to keep it out is weak.

As the threat of the European outbreak looms, consumers may find it hard to believe that U.S. officials aren’t inspecting much of anything, let alone testing vegetable imports for E. coli.