FEBRUARY 2006

Musically trained children process language better

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — People who learned to play musical instruments as children process spoken language faster and more accurately than their non-musical counterparts as adults, according to a Stanford University study.

Researchers hope the findings, presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C., will help children with reading problems, such as dyslexia.

The study, based on research performed in 2004 at Stanford, shows that musical training can help the brain differentiate between rapidly changing sounds, an ability that is key to understanding and using language effectively, researchers said.

"What this study shows, that's novel, is that there's a specific aspect of language ... that's changed in the minds and brains of people with musical training," said John Gabrieli, a former Stanford psychology professor now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Researchers used adults ranging in age from 28 to 40 and divided them into groups of musicians and non-musicians, then matched them by age, sex, intelligence and general language ability.

The musicians were required to have started playing an instrument before they turned 7 years old and to never have stopped.

Researchers played tones of different pitches in rapid succession and asked participants to distinguish between them. Scans showed that the musicians' brain activity was more focused and efficient than their non-musical counterparts.

Participants were also asked to rapidly differentiate between similar word syllables, which the musicians did with more accuracy and speed than those without musical training.

Gabrieli said many children who become poor readers have trouble making auditory distinctions.
Some education observers caution against reading too much into the findings until it is proven that music training actually improves reading ability in children.

San Francisco Chronicle
November 17, 2005
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-11-17-music-training-language_x.htm


Handshakes with the past

An online forum is giving history students the chance to actually meet people who have lived through the periods they are researching. John Simkin and Heather McLean report

It's become fashionable in recent years to view history through the eyes of real people. But it's still a rare history lesson that can offer access to a Red Army colonel, peace activists, Vietnam veterans or those living in eastern Europe before the fall of communism.

Such a colourful array of human resources - and many others - are available at the International Education Forum (www.educationforum.ipbhost.com), designed for teachers to share ideas and best practice in any subject, and to break down barriers between countries.

It was here that 16-year-old Evgenia Plotnikova-Doumerc turned for her research into the history of the Soviet Union while she was studying at the International School in Toulouse, France. Born in Russia, Plotnikova-Doumerc was looking for an alternative to the received western view of the Cold War as a period of oppression and purges for the Soviets but drew a blank in traditional textual sources. "My questions were quite unusual. I wanted to go against the conventional view of Russia and take a positive view, but you can't normally find that in history books," she says.

By using the forum's Ask an Expert section, Plotnikova-Doumerc was able to put her questions to people who had lived through the Cold War as well as historians, academics and teachers.

"The forum has allowed me to ask questions I couldn't get answered anywhere else, talking to experts from all around the world," she says. "I've also heard first-hand experiences, which are important in study."

E-Help team

The interest in e-learning and ICT from key history teachers on the International Education Forum has spawned the European History E-Learning Project (E-Help), which aims to encourage and improve use of ICT and the internet in classrooms across the continent.

The E-Help team includes historians from France, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. Over the next three years they will be researching, evaluating and presenting evidence of good practice in ICT and the internet in history teaching. The information will be available on E-Help's website and forum, due to be launched by the end of this year. More details can be found via the forum website's front page under International Projects.

When the members of E-Help met in Toulouse for their first discussion on best practice use of ICT and the web in history teaching, Anders MacGregor-Thunell, head of history at Hvitfeldtska secondary school in Gothenburg, Sweden, showed how his students created teaching materials using the tax records of people living in Gothenburg between 1880 and 1900.

The students chose an address in one of the oldest areas of the city, Haga, which grew up in the early 1600s. They used records from the local archive offices to compare the lives of the people living at those addresses in 1880 and then in either 1899 or 1900, depending on the condition of the records available.

"The students were told that the material they were to produce was for a website," he says. "This meant they did not have to write at length but had to succinctly evaluate the sources they used; they could also use technology such as digital cameras. It's important that students can read and understand a primary source and also understand how an old source can be portrayed in modern media."

Students documented the changes in the households they chose, such as the number of people living there, and then evaluated the overall changes to the area.

Emigration will loom larger as the project evolves, MacGregor-Thunell says, as Gothenburg was a stopover point for many Europeans leaving for the US between the 1860s and the second world war.

"We're actually building up a project that can be used by people outside our school, and anyone can continue to build on this in any country," he says. His current project is at www.macgregorishistory.com.

Interactive storyboards

Andrew Field, head of ICT and a history teacher at Neale-Wade community college in Cambridgeshire, gave a virtual presentation on his interactive storyboard, available on his website at www.schoolhistory.co.uk. It uses boxes that students can fill with provided graphics plus their own text, so minimising time wasted on playing with fonts and other details that students are apt to concentrate on, Field says.

"We need to create things that can be put together easily by teachers and that add benefit in class. With my interactive storyboard, students are given a scaffold which they can structure in the way they want to in terms of historical interpretation, but which limits the amount of ICT messing around they can do."

Dan Lyndon, head of history at Henry Compton school in Fulham, spoke to the group about webquests, one solution to the problem of students cutting and pasting web material without processing the information.

"A webquest is an online lesson that is contained, so everything the students require is in the pages provided by the teacher," he explains.

One of Lyndon's webquests examined the role played by black and Asian soldiers on the British side in the first world war.

For the "quest" itself, students had to produce a mock newspaper article on the topic given. They were also given an assessment page to guide them on completing the quest effectively.

"This was an opportunity to increase the amount of material on multicultural British history, which I hope other teachers will be able to use and add to," says Lyndon. "A lot of my students have gone into this subject a lot deeper than they would have normally because of the webquest." Lyndon's web quests are at www.comptonhistory.com.

Doug Belshaw, a recently qualified history teacher at Portland school in Worksop, has set up www.mrbelshaw.co.uk, a resource-filled website that enables pupils to use ICT outside school time. The site has spawned www.historymagic.co.uk, a new departmental site for his school that was designed by and for his pupils.

Belshaw also advocates using commercial technologies, particularly within the history curriculum. At the forum meeting, he spoke about legally using more peer-to-peer (P2P) software to promote international collaboration in history. He wants to encourage history teachers to pre-empt P2P technology by getting involved in website-based resource share forums. His own forum is at www.mrbelshaw.co.uk/shareforum.

Mind-mapping

But history teachers are not the only ones involved in E-Help. Janos Blasszauer, head of English at Battyany grammar school in Nagykanizsa, Hungary, is a big fan of mind-mapping software, which allows students to add their opinions using text or audio file and add in interviews on digital video. Technologies such as Skype and videoconferencing can be added in.

"Students are visually orientated," he says. "Mind maps can allow history teachers to create a timeline that will bring history alive, breaking the monotony of routine in the classroom."

After all, he adds, that's what this technology is all about.

• John Simkin runs Spartacus Educational, a website providing a forum and resources for history teachers (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)

The Guardian
November 15, 2005
http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,10577,1642286,00.html


Schools want male teachers

BEIJING - "Why do we have so few male teachers?"asks middle school student, Li Tie, who lives in Shijiazhuang, the capital of northern China's Hebei Province.

That's according to a report in the Hebei Daily Wednesday. The paper reports that when the student recalled his kindergarten, primary and junior high school days, he found him surrounded by women.

Li Tie's experience is not uncommon. When you visit Chinese kindergartens, primary or middle schools, you may be surprised to see there are very few male teachers on campus.

Why is this so? In order to explore the issue, the newspaper interviewed some teachers, students, and parents in the provincial capital, Shijiazhuan, which lies some 200 kilometers south of Beijing.

A mother surnamed Zhao said that her fifth-grade son was very excited one day last autumn when he reported that he had a male head teacher for the new semester. Several months later, the boy appeared a little different, becoming more active in class, and showing more confidence, the mother told the newspaper.

One primary school in the city has more than 100 teachers, but there are only seven men amongst them. Why do we have so few male teachers, both students and parents frequently ask?

In China, very few male high school students want to join teacher-training programs at the country's Normal Schools. In a class of 50-60 students majoring in education, english or music, there might be only 6-7 boys, sometimes even fewer.

The Hebei Daily believes social prejudice has prevented an increase in the number of male teachers in schools, as few parents or students have an ambition to become teachers.

Provincial authorities make a rough estimate that the male to female ratio in teaching schools in the province stood at 1:2 in 1987. By 1995 it was 1:3. And the situation is getting ever worse in China's Normal Schools.

The Hebei Daily says that some people look down upon primary school teachers, especially male teachers, and also note that schoolteachers are not very well paid, which is another major reason cited for the shortage of male teachers.

Cheng Jun, an expert on primary and middle school education in Shijiazhuang, says that the imbalance between male and female teachers is a dominant feature of primary and secondary schools worldwide. Many countries, however, have begun to address the problem. Cheng Jun cites the example of the UK, where some schools have hired retired police officers for teaching positions, with the hope that the male officers would exert a positive male influence on children.

China has been suffering from a shortage of male teachers for a long time, and the problem has got more serious in recent years, the Hebei Daily quotes Cheng Jun as saying.

A child's character would be normally be fixed before the age of 14, the expert says, so it is no good for children to be surrounded by female influence, from kindergarten to primary school. Like children from single parent families, school children without male teachers are likely to encounter some character problems.

The expert calls on more boys and young men to join the teaching staff at primary and middle schools, saying the shortage of male teachers isn't in the interests of the Chinese nation.

CRIENGLISH.com
November 16, 2005
www.chinaview.cn
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-11/16/content_3788946.htm


State assessments show boys lagging in literacy

Patrick Callahan, 14, recently read "The Da Vinci Code" and enjoyed it. Ask him what else he's read lately, and there's a pause. A long pause.

Much of the high school freshman's free time is taken up with sports. "I play a lot of sports -- hockey, lacrosse, snowboarding," he said.

Patrick also enjoys computer and video games, which his mother, Annie Callahan, limits to short stints on the weekend. "I have to limit his time, otherwise he'd do it all day long."

The West Windsor mother makes an effort to keep her son reading -- an effort that is probably necessary if he's to avoid what many educators and social observers say is a worrisome trend. State assessments show girls outperforming boys in most subjects, but especially in reading and writing.

Vermont Education Commissioner Richard Cate expressed worry about the gender gap when state assessments were released last month.

The trend is not unique to Vermont. National and international studies suggest boys are significantly behind in literacy, and that in the United States girls who were once behind in science and math are catching up.

First lady Laura Bush is leading a campaign to help boys in school, and earlier this year the Academy for Educational Development released a national report suggesting a crisis in boys education.

The report stated that not only are many boys struggling academically, they are much more likely to have other problems. Consider the barrage of bad stats: Boys represent 70 percent of students with learning disabilities and 80 percent of those with social or emotional disturbances. They represent 70 percent of school suspensions and commit 85 percent of school violence. Boys also are more likely than girls to drop out of high school and college.

Perhaps because many of the worst-performing boys don't take college entrance exams such as the SATs, or perhaps because of other factors, boys still outscore girls on that influential test. In Vermont in 2005, boys averaged 523 on the verbal section compared to the girls' 518; and 534 on the math compared to girls' 502.

Facts like these, as well as statistics showing men continue to earn significantly more than women and dominate many high-paying professions, especially in the sciences, technology and business, make it hard for some people to believe boys as a group need special help in the literacy department, or perhaps, any department.

That thinking is wrong, said Larry Shelton, a University of Vermont associate professor of human development and family studies who conducts workshops on sex differences and raising boys.

The boys who aren't succeeding in school are much more likely to drop out and wind up on public assistance or in prison. Society just can't afford that, yet there still isn't much going on to address the problem, Shelton said. "I'm not at all sure that we're getting the word out about where boys are being served well and not being served well in the system -- the school system," he said.

Not targeting boys

Although many educational institutions have established programs designed to help girls succeed in science and math -- and these programs are thought to have helped girls make real headway -- few literacy programs are targeted at boys and some proponents of reading are reluctant to consider them.

South Burlington Community Library doesn't have any programs specifically targeting boys' literacy and library director Louise Murphy is not sure it is appropriate.

"In some respects I think it would not be. I feel that it's discriminatory. I think that parents of little girls would wonder why we don't offer the same thing."

She and many other librarians do agree that boys and girls like to read different books. Boys often lean toward fantasy, survival stories and non-fiction books or periodicals. Girls have fairly broad tastes and don't mind reading a book featuring a male protagonist, said Marje Von Ohlsen, children's librarian at South Burlington Community Library.

While girls will read the "Harry Potter" series, boys won't read the "Little House on the Prairie" books, said Von Ohlsen. "If it's a book about a girl, generally they are not interested."

Even very young boys are often quite selective, she added. "They are very picky. Even to the point where they see the cover and if the cover isn't what they like, they won't read it."

Titles for boys

Most schools approach literacy without any gender-specific programming, but some educators are looking more closely at studies on boys' development and at their reading habits.

Essex Elementary School is embarking on a new approach to reading and writing instruction that calls for much more intensive study of individual student performance and tailored plans to help students improve.

Through this process, the school looked carefully at its selection of books to make sure there were plenty of titles for boys, who sometimes have different tastes than girls, said principal Jan Keffer. "It's particularly important for boys to have lots and lots of books at a whole variety of levels that are non-fiction."

Second-grade reading scores at Essex are high among both girls and boys, but girls are slightly ahead. Ninety-three percent of girls at the school met or exceeded the standard on the Vermont Developmental Reading Assessment in 2005 compared to 85 percent of boys.

Keffer does not believe this difference is significant enough to suggest a gap, or a need for a reading program specifically targeting boys. "The focus of the school is on what everybody needs in order to be successful rather than we've got to do this for boys versus this for girls."

Making reading fun

Although reading is a problem for some boys, many boys love books and excel at both reading and writing. Richard Gliech is a Burlington father of three: boys ages 7 and 12; and a girl, 14. He and his wife read to the children from the time they were babies and all three are book lovers now.

Gliech said he's reluctant to make generalizations about gender differences based on the small sample size of his family. However, Gliech finds his daughter reads more than her 12-year-old brother, and he seems to be more "into math." While his daughter is in a mother-daughter reading group, the boys aren't in a father-son group and Richard Gliech doesn't know of any.

"I don't seem to have heard of any father-son groups as far as reading is concerned."

In order for boys' literacy to improve, society needs to start promoting reading as an activity that's fun for boys, said Barbara Sprung, co-director of the Educational Equity Center at the Academy for Educational Development in New York.

A lot of work has been done to try to help girls see math and science as fields where they can excel, and this has helped close the gender gap in these subjects, Sprung said.

"A lot of work was put into that effort and it's paid off. We really need to look at boys in the same way."

Contact Molly Walsh at 660-1874 or mwalsh@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

Molly Walsh, Free Press Staff Writer
Burlington Free Press
November 16, 2005
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051116/NEWS01/511160311/1009


Disabilities can result in steeper learning curve for some

For some Dartmouth students, attending class is not as simple as just showing up, taking notes and participating in discussion. Looking around the room, you may not notice that the student next to you isn't taking notes because he is physically incapable, or that he needed a few extra hours on last week's midterm because of a learning disability. Or maybe you do notice because there is an aide in the front of the class translating into American Sign Language.

Learning with a disability at Dartmouth can be a struggle that often goes unnoticed. In order to combat the difficulty disabled students face in the classroom, the College offers support through Student Disabilities Services.

An extension of the Academic Skills Center, SDS has been operating since 1987. Cathy Trueba, who previously worked as disabilities resource coordinator at the University of Wisconsin, became director of SDS this summer after long-time director Nancy Pompian retired. Her job is to facilitate accommodations for all disabled students, acting as a liaison between them and the College's faculty.

Kristen Wong '06, a religion major, has sought support through SDS because she is hearing impaired.

"Being hearing impaired is like a hidden disability sometimes," she said. "Few people tend to notice right away so their behavior isn't adjusted for it. I function extremely well regardless, but I'm not ashamed to use the aids that are available for me."

Wong is one of almost 300 Dartmouth students who receive daily academic and co-curricular support from SDS.

Trueba's role as director of SDS has a defined process. She must first determine if a student has a disability and is eligible for assistance. If a student is eligible, she helps provide the necessary accommodations for both curricular and co-curricular activities. Trueba pointed out that her job does not entail individual outreach, as a student must come to her with concerns about a disability before she can initiate the accommodation process.

In order to be eligible for assistance after approaching SDS, a student must prove that he or she has a documented disability. Trueba defined the standard as "anything that affects the learning process." She placed the disabilities she deals with into three categories: learning disabilities, health- and psychological-related disabilities, and mobility and sensory disabilities.

Trueba highlighted one shared characteristic in most of the cases she sees.

"The thing most disabilities share in common is time. As in more time to read, more time to write," she said. "It's a thread of continuity through a lot of the accommodations we provide."

For Wong, time can be the most demanding aspect of the learning process, especially when class discussion becomes intense.

"It's hard to tell people to only talk one at a time when everyone's in a heated debate," she said. "I hate having to change people's behaviors and so most of the time I just try the best I can. Sometimes I can feel very isolated from the group because I'm always a step behind."

Instead of utilizing an interpreter to translate lectures into American Sign Language, Wong uses a technology called CART to transcribe lectures and discussion in her classes. At the beginning of a lecture, she opens up a telephone conversation on her computer using the program Skype. An employee on the other end of the phone line, who may be in Nevada or Oregon, transcribes the lecture into note form with almost no delay.

The program Wong uses is one of a host of new technologies available to students with disabilities and falls into the category of adaptive technology.

Trueba listed voice-recognition software and audio texts as other examples of adaptive tech developments. She sees this type of technology as a rapidly developing area in disabilities services, and something she hopes utilize more in the future.

As for faculty response to student disabilities, Wong said some professors are better than others.

"Dartmouth went above and beyond what I expected," she said. "However, I will say that I have had some truly atrocious professors who can be completely insensitive to my needs."

Trueba took a more positive stance on faculty cooperation, citing that in her first term here she has not encountered any problems.

"The most common question I get is 'What can I do to help the student?'" she said. "I would expect the faculty are more interested in how to do it than why to do it."

Sam Rendall, The Dartmouth Staff
The Dartmouth
November 15, 2005
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2005111501050%20


Drawing Out Autism
Using brain imaging and advanced genetic tools, a new MIT collaboration is trying to show how genes could mold the autistic.

Scientists know volumes about the language and social problems that plague autistic children. Yet so far they've been unable to build a clear picture of the possible underlying genetic causes and neurological deficits. Now a group of MIT neuroscientists is attempting to unravel the intricacies of the disorder.

Autism is considered the fastest-growing developmental disorder in the United States. Typically diagnosed within the first three years of life, it leaves a person with profound problems in social interaction and communication.

Studies have shown that autism has a strong genetic component. Today, researchers think the disorder may involve 30 to 40 genes, which each exert a small effect, in combination with environmental factors. Large-scale studies of autism-affected families have revealed some candidate genes -- but little is known about how these genes contribute to the social and behavioral problems that characterize autism.

"The most pressing question is the causes of autism," says Andy Shih, chief scientific officer of the National Alliance for Autism Research, based in New Jersey. "It's crucial to understand how the genetic differences translate into the phenotype."

With the aid of a $7.5 million grant from the Simons Foundation, the MIT researchers will combine imaging and genetic tools to better understand this link.

"We will look for a relationship between gene variation and variation in the brain," says John Gabrieli, an MIT neuroscientist. Gabrieli will use fMRI, a type of MRI that shows which areas of the brain are active when people think about specific problems, to compare brain activity in normal individuals and in those with different forms of the suspected autism genes. Specifically, his group will look at how people deal with social functions, by imaging brain activity in response to faces and facial expressions.

Mriganka Sur, the neuroscience professor who heads the project, will look at similar genes in a variety of mouse models. By either blocking or boosting the action of these genes during critical periods of mouse development, researchers can determine the function of the genes, as well as the key timing for therapy.

While doctors and families long for a better understanding of the disease, they also want to find behavioral treatments that can help autistic kids function better in day-to-day activities. To that end, Pawan Sinha, another neuroscience professor at MIT, plans to develop a visual training program for autistic children.

Researchers theorize that autistic children have social problems because they can't read faces well. For instance, they have difficulty telling if an emotional face is angry or sad. But Sinha says their deficit may actually be much broader -- an autistic child may not be able to integrate different visual cues into a comprehensive whole. "Parents say their child tends to lose the forest for the trees, to become fixated on specific details," says Sinha. "We still need to do a more comprehensive study of this."

Previously, Sinha studied children in India with curable blindness. When they first learned to see, the children showed problems reminiscent of the deficits in autism, he says. For example, when shown a picture of two superimposed squares, they saw only a group of lines. While these Indian children eventually learned to see squares as objects, children with autism are unable to learn such strategies naturally, says Sinha.

Sinha's group will use a newly developed testing program to better characterize these visual problems. In the exercise, a blurry image becomes progressively clearer as the children try to rapidly guess the identity of the picture. To recognize a degraded object, the subjects must look at the whole image. Sinha assumes that autistic children will have trouble with this task because they tend to look at only local parts of a picture.

Ultimately, the researchers plan to use the testing program for teaching autistic children how to better integrate visual cues. Although the technique can improve normal adults' skills in a matter of weeks, it's unclear how much training autistics kids will require.

Emily Singer
November 14, 2005
http://technologyreview.com/BioTech-Genomics/wtr_15875,312,p1.html?PM=GO


TAKS welcomes three new additions to the family
Tests are state's attempt to satisfy federal special-ed requirements

The TAKS test is only three years old, so it may seem a bit young to be starting a family.
But the state's main standardized test is preparing to welcome three new tests into the world: TAKS-I, TAKS-M and TAKS-Alt. And you thought there were already enough acronyms in academia.

The three new sister tests promise to make an already confusing test landscape downright bewildering.

They are an attempt to satisfy federal requirements for special-education students and push Texas schools to raise their standards.

"There's an increased focus on giving special-education students access to the regular curriculum," said Cari Wieland, director of special-education assessment for the Texas Education Agency.

"We want special-education students to have the benefits of higher expectations. Not every student will be able to do it, but we want to get closer to that goal."

Most Texas students will never take any of the new tests, but many of the state's 500,000 special-ed students will.

Educators say they don't know enough about the tests – which are still in early development – to judge their quality.

But at least one is hopeful.

"I'm looking forward to see what the future is," said Cindi Walker, director of special education for Fort Worth schools.

Here's an introduction to the three new members of the family:

TAKS-I

The "I" stands for "Inclusive." It's a direct response to new federal requirements laid out in last year's renewal of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. That's the law that governs special-education policy nationwide.

The law now includes a basic requirement: If a state offers a test for mainstream students, it has to offer a corresponding test for special-ed students.

For most grade levels and subjects, Texas already meets that requirement. It gives the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test to students in grades three through 11 in a variety of subjects. It gives the SDAA II – the second version of the State Developed Alternative Assessment – to special-ed students in most of those grades.

Most, but not all. There's no SDAA II for science or social studies at any grade.
And there's no SDAA II for 11th-graders.

Enter the TAKS-I. It will be given in the grades where SDAA II isn't, starting in February.

That's just the beginning. The grand plan is to replace the SDAA II with TAKS-I in all grades and all subjects.

"We're thinking of this as a kind of transition," said Victoria Young, who directs the TAKS program for the Texas Education Agency. "We're hoping we have a couple of years to take a look at this and see how it works."

What makes the TAKS-I different? Its questions will be identical to those on the regular TAKS. The only differences: There'll be fewer of them, and they'll be printed in a larger size for students with visual problems. Some students will also be allowed to use instructional aids such as dictionaries during the test.

Unlike the SDAA II, for which a child's required passing standard is set by his or her teachers and parents, TAKS-I will have a uniform standard for all students. Passing the TAKS-I will require the same level of performance as passing the regular TAKS.

That's good news to federal officials, who have pressed Texas and other states to raise standards for special-ed students. New federal regulations require states to limit the number of children who are outside the state's mainstream testing system.

The other big change will be that TAKS-I will only be given to special-education students who are performing on grade level. Students can currently take versions of the SDAA II that are at grade level or versions that are significantly easier, depending on the child's ability.

TAKS-M

The "M" stands for "Modified." The TAKS-M will look a lot like the TAKS-I, but it will be given to children who are performing below their grade level. For instance, an eighth-grade special-ed student who is learning at a third-grade level would take the TAKS-M instead of the TAKS-I.

The TAKS-M will probably be used more often than the TAKS-I because most students in special education are behind their peers. Last spring, about 209,000 students took the math version of the SDAA II. Only about one-fourth of those were learning on grade level, according to state statistics.

TAKS-Alt

The "Alt" stands for "Alternative." TAKS-Alt is less a test than a tool that teachers can use to evaluate the most severely disabled children, those with serious cognitive disabilities. It will probably take the form of an online checklist, Ms. Wieland said.

Those students are currently evaluated with locally chosen assessments, many of which are designed by teachers or district staff members. New federal rules say those children must be evaluated with a state-developed tool.

The TAKS-I will debut Feb. 21. It's still unclear when it will expand to other grades or when the TAKS-M and TAKS-Alt will follow. That's because federal officials must approve the new tests, and negotiations are ongoing. Ms. Wieland said the transition wouldn't be completed until 2007-08 at the earliest.

Even the names of the TAKS-M and TAKS-Alt could change during development, she added. "We're still in the planning stages," she said.

What's also unknown is how these tests will be integrated into the federal and state school ratings system. SDAA II results are an ingredient in the current ratings system, and poor performance on the test has tripped up some schools seeking high ratings. State officials have said TAKS-I results won't be counted against schools in 2006 but may be included in the system in future years.

But Ms. Walker said she hopes the new system provides a more unified system for testing, better tying the expectations of special-ed students to those of other children.

"We've got to be accountable for results, and TEA is really working to make sure those tests are aligned with each other," she said.

Joshua Benton, The Dallas Morning News
E-mail jbenton@dallasnews.com
November 13, 2005
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/DN-newtaks_13met.ART0.North.Edition2.2ed3ffe.html


Math gap grows for minority students
Difference in WASL scores shows significant jump at seventh grade

While state and local education officials trumpet annual gains made on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a review of test results over the past few years shows that the achievement gap between white and minority students is widening in math scores.

Since the phased-in introduction of the WASL eight years ago, the gap between white and minority students on reading and writing scores statewide has narrowed slightly for most grade levels and ethnic groups, but the math gap has grown.

That discrepancy becomes particularly worrisome now, because this year's sophomores -- the class of 2008 -- are the first students who must pass the reading, writing and math sections of the WASL to graduate from high school. The science portion of the test does not become a graduation requirement until 2010.

Districts statewide are starting various programs in an effort to head off the widespread WASL failures some are predicting. A major federal initiative has been credited for helping boost reading and writing scores on the test, but experts say a similar initiative -- backed with real dollars -- is needed to help students struggling in mathematics.

Between 1998 and 2005, the math gap grew for all minority groups, with the exception of Asian students, and was particularly pronounced at the seventh grade.

The difference in math scores between white and black seventh-graders grew from 17.9 to 31.3 percentage points during that eight-year period, and for Latino students, from 17.3 to 29.3 percentage points. For American Indians, the gap widened from 17.1 to 23.8 percentage points. Overall, just one-quarter of minority seventh-graders statewide passed the math section of this year's WASL.

The picture is similar in Seattle.

The district has made some progress in closing the achievement gap on the reading and writing portions of the WASL, with 60 percent of all fourth-graders meeting the reading standard on last spring's WASL, double the percentage from eight years ago.

But the math gap has increased over the past eight years for all minority groups on the fourth-, seventh- and 10th-grade WASL, with the exception of Asian students and a negligible gain among sophomores of American Indian descent. The gap between black and white 10th-graders increased from 35.9 to 44.2 percentage points over the past eight years and jumped from 32.7 to 47.7 percentage points between black and white seventh-graders between 1998 and 2005.

WASL critics point out that the tests are only a snapshot of a student's achievement and, because they reflect the work of different groups of students each year, do not provide a comprehensive perspective on student progress. But with the new graduation requirement looming, the trend is troubling.

"It's a tough, multifaceted issue, but one that has to be tackled honestly," said Mary Alice Heuschel, the deputy state Superintendent of Public Instruction. "We've got to get off the blame game."

Heuschel and other education experts say the factors underlying the achievement gap in math are layered and difficult to remedy. One of the biggest contributors is a dearth of qualified math teachers nationwide, said Ross Wiener, a principal partner in the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust, an organization focused on narrowing the achievement gap.

Teachers' knowledge of math plays a critical role in student learning, he said. At the same time, "We have a crisis in terms of the shortage of math teachers who majored or even minored in math or a related field in college," Wiener said.

A 2001 Education Trust survey found that 63 percent of high school classes in Washington state were taught by teachers who majored in the subjects they were teaching, but the number dropped to 52 percent in schools with high numbers of children living in poverty. Because those schools tend to educate higher numbers of minority students who often have less academic support outside of school, "We sort of compound their challenges," Wiener said.

David Marshak, an associate professor at Seattle University, said the highly sequential nature of math, which requires mastering new skills each step of the way, makes it easy to fall behind. Children's differing levels of education when they start school, their varying rates of development, the support they get at home and the quality of their teachers, he said, all combine to push some children along while others fall behind.

"If you start falling behind, and the teacher doesn't address it or doesn't have the capacity in a single-year relationship to deal with it appropriately, then you keep falling behind," he said.

Marshak is critical of the educational reform effort that began in Washington in 1993, saying it should have focused first on improving schools and then implemented an assessment system, rather than the other way around. Before the effort began, he said, the educational system had adopted practices that reflected research demonstrating that children learn differently and develop at varying rates.

The standards and testing movement has obliterated that and created the assumption that kids are all the same, and, of course, kids are not the same," he said. Educators say a major challenge in raising math scores is the seismic shift in teaching strategies that today's math standards require. Past practices of memorizing times tables and learning by rote fall short of the WASL's requirement that children not only reach the correct answer, but also be able to explain how they got there.

"One of the things we don't know for sure is whether our students don't have the content knowledge or whether they're struggling to communicate that knowledge to a reader," said Jane Goetz, director of instructional services for Seattle Public Schools.

Chronic underfunding is another factor frequently cited as an obstacle to academic achievement. An Education Trust study last year found that Washington spends 87 percent of the national average on per-pupil funding, putting the state 44th in the nation, although Washington ranks sixth nationally in terms of education funding raised at the state level versus federal funding and local levies.

The Reading First initiative, part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, has allocated more than $3 billion nationally to provide research-based professional development for teachers with the aim of improving reading instruction in kindergarten through third grade.

Over a three-year period, Heuschel said, the initiative closed the racial gap in reading scores at 51 Washington schools that participated in a pilot. The state education department is applying for additional funding to expand the effort.

To date, the federal government has no comparable math initiative. The state has launched its own math effort, developing summer school curriculum for students not meeting the WASL math standard and providing training for teachers. This summer, schools around the state will offer five-week classes targeting the specific areas in which students fell short on the math portion of the WASL.

The state is also working with colleges and universities to develop math expectations for juniors and seniors that extend beyond 10th grade -- the last year students write the WASL -- and a statewide committee is reviewing dozens of math textbooks to help districts make informed curriculum decisions.

Seattle Public Schools is currently working to standardize its math curriculum, which varies from school to school.

Six years ago, the district started a grant-funded initiative that involved teachers' reading case studies on math instruction, watching videos depicting instructional practices and then applying those in their classrooms. The work was supplemented by weeklong summer training sessions.

Although math scores among minority students have increased on the fourth-grade WASL since the initiative began, the racial gap also has widened.

Goetz is at a loss to explain why, but said the solution is a complicated mix that includes providing teachers with the different types of professional development required at various stages of their careers, making sure principals know what to observe in classrooms and holding all students, regardless of ethnicity and background, to the same standards.

Stephen Fink, executive director of the University of Washington's Center for Educational Leadership, said Seattle's lack of a consistent math curriculum has doubtlessly been a major factor in the achievement gap.

But even with consistent curriculum in place, he said, providing the intensive training and coaching required for effective math instruction is difficult.

"The way you close the achievement gap is knowing your content well enough as a teacher and knowing your kids enough as individual learners," Fink said.

"That might sound like common sense. But powerful teaching is so nuanced and the degree of professional development that's required is such that most districts, I believe, don't even have the resources to invest, let alone the singular focus of mind to do that work."

Though children come to school with varying levels of preparedness and parental support, Fink said effective teaching can help level those inequities.

"You give a kid two years with a very powerful teacher, and that will mitigate against any family condition," he said. "You give kids two years of poor teaching, and it puts them at risk for the rest of their school-aged life."

P-I reporter Deborah Bach can be reached at 206-448-8197 or deborahbach@seattlepi.com.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Deborah Bach, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
November 14, 2005
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248250_waslgap14.html


DPS maps plan to 'fix' district
Language curriculum one of several issues school chief will address

Some students struggle with English three years after enrolling in Denver Public Schools because the district still lacks clear guidelines on how to teach the language.

In some schools, there are even classrooms for English language learners where no English is found on the walls. Every poster, every picture, nearly every phrase is in Spanish.

That's one of the more troubling discoveries that DPS Chief Academic Officer Jaime Aquino and his boss, Superintendent Michael Bennet, have made in recent weeks.

Here's another: Children who fall behind have few, if any, opportunities to catch up.

"There's been a lot of talk about intervention in this district," Bennet told one group of middle school teachers on Nov. 7, "but the evidence of it is thin."

For Bennet, who took over in July and who has no experience in K-12 education, and for Aquino, a former New York City instructional superintendent who started in DPS on Oct. 2, the past few weeks have been a whirlwind of school visits, principal talks and teacher meetings.

This month, they plan to release a strategic plan for reform that will boost student achievement in an urban district where test scores have been flat for years.

To do so, they must - in relatively quick fashion - figure out what's wrong and how to fix it.

As part of the process, Bennet agreed to allow the Rocky Mountain News to shadow the pair over four weeks.

The ground rules were simple: Report anything you see and hear but don't identify specific teachers and principals. In some meetings, the reporter's presence was noted. In others, it was not.

Finding a direction

The lack of a clear plan in DPS for teaching English language learners, who make up nearly a third of all students, was a key issue identified by teachers and principals.

"What is the curriculum?" a frustrated principal said at one meeting. "I didn't have this issue before, but now I have 30 students who barely speak any English. I call the curriculum department, they tell me to call the ELA (English Language Acquisition) department. I call ELA, they tell me to call curriculum. It's a vicious cycle."

Aquino, himself a native Spanish speaker, saw this gap for himself when he visited a classroom for English language learners at a northwest Denver elementary school. Most of the students, now second-graders, had been at the school since kindergarten.

"Help me understand why there's not much evidence of English in the classroom," he asked an assistant principal as they walked out of a classroom filled with Spanish.

"There's been a lot of questions about transitioning students from Spanish to English," she told Aquino, "about when that should occur."

That was confirmed in a later conversation with the teacher.

"There doesn't appear to be a uniform curriculum for our English language learners," Aquino said. "If it's in writing, it's not being followed. There is no language allocation policy that says: Teach this amount of English, teach this amount of Spanish."

A 1999 federal court order governing Denver's ELA program sets out rules for compliance, such as how to identify students for services, but it doesn't consider achievement.

"It's been all about compliance," another principal said. "It's still all about compliance."

Among other issues identified in recent weeks:
• Literacy programs lack instruction in basic reading skills after about third grade, a problem in a district serving many students who are poor, transient or learning English.
• Interventions to help struggling students catch up are largely absent, leaving children to founder as they're passed from grade to grade. Summer school is being considered.
"We have got to do a better job of aligning time to intervene with kids," Bennet said, "and not to use summer doesn't seem like a good idea."
• DPS' $565 million operating budget is mostly dispersed based on the numbers of students vs. the needs of students. Bennet, who expects cuts again this year, wants that to change.

"If we get $11 million, the right answer is not to apply it equally," he told a group of principals, using a hypothetical example. "It's to do what we can to maximize student achievement."

The strategic plan is expected to address some, but not all, of the concerns voiced during the school visits.

Class size is top concern

In a meeting last week with teachers at a large northeast Denver middle school, class size was a top concern.

"A lot of our teachers have over 35 students per class," the school's librarian said.

"We hear that all over," Bennet said of the issue. "You guys have it worst. . . . Your school consistently comes up basically first" in having DPS' largest classes.

He said he's also heard it from parents, who have cited large class sizes as one reason for pulling their children out of DPS.

But Bennet said he needs more time to deal with that issue - among the most costly of school reforms - and it isn't resolved in the strategic plan.

"Class size is a variable, but that's not the solution," Aquino told a group of middle school principals who raised the same concern. "When you drop from 35 to 19, if teachers are teaching the same, learning is not happening."

Bennet, who aggressively recruited Aquino from New York, sometimes refers to him as "the expert." That's not a term Aquino, who turned 41 on Nov. 3 and who is 25 days older than Bennet, uses for himself.

But Aquino is quick to reassure teachers he has done his time in the classroom. He spent his first year as a teacher in the Bronx, teaching a class of 43 fourth-graders.

"I'm going to be coming to your schools and your classrooms," he tells a group of teachers at a central Denver elementary. "Don't ever feel intimidated. I am not there as the curriculum police. I could care less what color your book baskets are."

Those lines, part of the opening patter that Aquino and Bennet have developed as they visit two to three schools every day, are intended to reassure teachers wary of speaking up. Sometimes it works.

"There's a lot of talk about accountability," one elementary teacher said. "Is there accountability for people in the district who are not teachers?"

Bennet, standing in front of the group of teachers, smiles.

"It's been like a game of telephone, but one-way," he says of district mandates. "There's been transmission but no reception going the other way. That's why I'm here. This is the best way to discern how effective the layers between me and you have been."

The "road show," as Bennet refers to the school visits, is intended to gather information as well as to improve the district's strained relations with teachers.

"What do you think of them?" he shoots back at a middle school teacher who asks about the district's literacy and math programs.

"You really want me to tell you?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says, prompting her to start talking about the literacy plan.

"I think there are some good elements," she tells him, "but I think it assumes our kids know more than they do."

It's not always so easy. Aquino, who succeeds a chief academic officer in DPS who was criticized as autocratic by many teachers, finds that he makes some nervous when he walks into their classrooms.

An assistant principal who trailed him on a walk through her elementary school said an earlier walk by his predecessor, Sally Mentor Hay, left her staff deflated.

"She made us feel as if we had so far to go," the assistant principal said.

Aquino, who met with four teachers after visiting their classrooms, left a different impression.

"I was nervous," a fourth-grade teacher said. "I won't be next time."

Getting a plan in place

Bennet lets some details slip in the meetings about the upcoming strategic plan.

"We're going to do something a little different," he tells a group of elementary teachers. "We're going to release this draft strategic plan, and it's really going to be a draft."

The plan, expected to run between 65 and 70 pages, will be debated by a wider district committee for 45 to 60 days after its release. Work groups composed of teachers and others will be formed to further review the different issues it addresses, such as English language learners.

"There's not a line in this document not mentioned in these meetings," Bennet tells the group of elementary teachers. Later, he adds the word "virtually" to the statement.

The plan's focus will be the next three to five years in DPS, with many of the likely changes targeted for implementation next fall.

"A lot of what you hear us saying will be for next school year," Aquino told another group of teachers. "We're in the middle of the school year and it would be too disruptive to do this now."

Bennet said he's fully aware of the pressure to fix DPS quickly.

"Everybody wants it all fixed today," he said, "and no one wants it all fixed today more than I do. But what I'm really interested in is fixing it."

In fact, he expects to continue reviewing the plan "over the next 12 months, 18 months, based on what we learn and its implementation."

Perhaps the biggest finding for Bennet and Aquino in recent weeks has been this one: The focus on compliance has left little room for what really matters - for what kids need, or how to help teachers, or what parents want.

The result, they say, is illustrated in an anecdote they frequently tell about a bright student they met one Saturday morning at a northwest Denver high school. The boy was there for a math lesson.

He is doing well in math, he tells them, but he can barely speak English. He tells Aquino, in Spanish, that he's been in DPS for three years.

"That's not going to cut it," Bennet said. "We'll make mistakes, I'm sure of it, and we're not going to make everyone happy. But we can do better."

What's next

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet will release a draft of his strategic plan for district reform by month's end. That will be followed by 45 to 60 days of discussion by a district committee. What's being considered:

BUDGET
• Targeted funding for students who need extra help, such as struggling readers

CURRICULUM
• Bolstering basic skills instruction in literacy programs
• End-of-course exams in literacy, math, science and social studies
• Summer school to intervene with struggling students

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS
• Guidelines about how much instruction is to be in thenative language and in English
• Training for every teacher in teaching English language learners
• Ensuring equity in classrooms for English language learners and native English speakers

TEACHER TRAINING
• Investing in training of teachers that is relevantand useful
• Flexible planning guides for teachers in everysubject to ensure consistency across the district
• Training principals alongside teachers so theycan be instructional leaders?

Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News
mitchelln@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5245
November 14, 2005
http://insidedenver.com/drmn/education/article/0,1299,DRMN_957_4236865,00.html


The special squad

Teachers of children with intellectual and physical disabilities operate in a highly skilled, but often misunderstood, area of education, writes Dylan Welch.

From dealing with students with mild dyslexia to profoundly intellectually disabled children, wheelchair-bound and unable to speak, there are many different jobs for teachers interested in working in special education. Whether they are helping visually impaired students negotiate the world or teaching severely physically and intellectually disabled students in specialised schools, it seems there is one characteristic that unites them.

"I would argue that those people who are good special educators are what I would see as highly skilled teachers," says Associate Professor David Evans, the co-ordinator of the special education program at Sydney University's education faculty.

"They have good classroom practice and good whole-school perspective. Some of the best principals that I know of have come out of special education. I believe they are people with far more refined instructional-design skills [and] curriculum-design skills; people who can manage their environment, work within a classroom [and] work with teachers."

According to the 2001 census, in NSW there are an estimated 80,900 school students with an intellectual or physical disability, accounting for 7 per cent of the school population. Of those, more than three-quarters (61,200) have reported a schooling restriction. This means they attend a special school or class, need at least one day a week off school or have difficulty at school.

Special education may also be the most varied sector within education, with schools for intellectually disabled, physically disabled, schools for behaviour, schools for vision and hearing impairment as well as itinerant positions, where the teacher works with various mainstream schools with special education students.

"You can't just say because you're a special-ed teacher you know all there is to know about special ed," says Nyree Bjazevich, acting principal and head of the infants program at Wairoa School in Bondi, which caters for students with moderate or severe intellectual disability.

Bjazevich says her job is rewarding because although it can take a long time to get her students to the next stage in education, it can make a huge difference to them and their families when she does.

"Developing independence in our students is the main goal and if you can get them to be independent eaters or independent bus travellers, it's just such a major development in that student's life and in the whole family's life because all of a sudden that child can be part of the community."

Kym Gribble is an itinerant teacher of vision-impaired students in the Department of Education's North Coast region. Based at Hastings Public School in Port Macquarie, Gribble spends 22 hours a week teaching two vision-impaired students at local schools. The rest of his time, up to a further 30 hours a week, is spent in the detailed preparation required for schooling blind students.

"I love classroom teaching as well, but in special ed I feel like you can see change in kids a lot quicker," he says. Gribble says his job allows him a much broader role than if he were teaching in a classroom.

"[There was] this young girl in year 7 who went blind this year. The family are obviously devastated, but having someone like me there with a fair bit of experience is great. I expose them to other students; they see that life goes on. It gives the families a lot of confidence knowing where their kids might end up, and that there's support - that's why my job's so fantastic, with those kind of challenges every day."

But, like any job, teaching special education comes with its own set of problems. "Whenever I tell people that I work with kids with disabilities, the first thing they always say is, 'Oh you must be so patient; you're so wonderful for doing that'," says Bjazevich. "And sometimes I find that quite patronising. I know it's just from a lack of knowledge of the area [special education] but they tend to look at kids with disabilities as either charity cases or aliens."

Gribble says: "You're perceived maybe not as a real teacher sometimes."

But neither Bjazevich nor Gribble believes in criticising people in the community or at mainstream schools for their misconceptions about students with disabilities and their teachers.

Says Bjazevich: "You don't win by telling [people] they're horrible, you win by showing them how the kids are achieving." Anyone who does an undergraduate degree in education has to complete at least one unit in special education. Generally, the education sector requires teachers to complete a postgraduate course in special ed before they are considered qualified to teach. The department offers 40 to 50 cadetships for classroom teachers interested in working in special education. The successful cadets are given one year of study leave to complete a graduate diploma and are then placed in a full-time position with special education.

For more information on these cadetships, contact the department on 95618000. Friends of the Wairoa are holding a fund-raising night on Tuesday, November 29, at Jackies Restaurant Bar, Bondi Beach. Money raised will go towards a sensory garden and other special initiatives to help the children of Wairoa. Inquiries to Jackie Milijash: 93009812.

Dylan Welch, The Age
November 12, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/employment-news/the-special-squad/2005/11/11/1131578211245.html


Schools look abroad to find needed teachers
Practice Expected To Grow Nationwide As Districts Struggle To Fill Openings

Hiring teachers from overseas wasn't something the San Mateo-Foster City school district had considered -- until last year, when six positions went vacant for nine months.

The district advertised in Bay Area newspapers, solicited at job fairs in California and New York, and posted classifieds on craigslist and edjoin.org, a statewide database of education job openings. No luck. Out of options, San Mateo-Foster City turned to the Philippines, where a math teacher and seven special education teachers and speech therapists -- all licensed -- were recruited and hired.

Over in Canada, Susan Dodds had been teaching French as a foreign language for about a year when she applied for an opening in Cupertino that she saw online. Her résumé: a bachelor's degree in education and another with honors in French, a language she had been studying since kindergarten.

She landed the job at Hyde Middle School, where she now teaches French, as well as English for immigrant students. Her principal ``likes the fact that I am completely fluent in French,'' Dodds said.

Districts across the nation are hiring foreign talent to overcome domestic shortages of qualified teachers. In the South Bay, the San Jose Unified school district now employs 22 foreign teachers, including a biology instructor from Germany. The Cupertino and Franklin-McKinley elementary districts have brought on 12 and 19, respectively, from Mexico, Canada, Spain and other countries.

Nationally, as many as 15,000 elementary, middle and high school teachers from abroad now work in the United States on temporary work visas. And their ranks are swelling at the rate of 20 percent a year, according to the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers' union.

Over the next decade, the pressure on schools to hire from abroad is expected to intensify as teachers from the baby boom generation retire en masse -- and as campuses scramble to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which tightens teacher competency requirements starting in 2006.

Sad commentary?

School district officials say imported teachers are filling critical classroom needs. Others argue their presence is a sad commentary on the desirability of U.S. teaching jobs.

``If we need to recruit teachers from overseas, that says something about the state of the profession here in the United States,'' said Donald Washington, a program analyst in the NEA's teacher quality department. ``We need to raise salaries, improve working conditions and do more to retain teachers.''

In California, more than 3,000 preliminary credentials have been issued since 2000 to people trained in other countries, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Local school district administrators say that licensed special education, math, science and bilingual Spanish instructors are among the most sought-after internationally, because qualified teachers are in short supply in these areas. In math, for instance, about one in five California teachers is inadequately trained, according to the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz.

Experts attribute teacher shortages to low pay, inadequate capacity in teacher training programs and lack of support for rookies who then flee the profession.

Generally, imported teachers work in the United States on H-1B temporary work or J-1 cultural exchange visas, which with renewals are good for three to six years. They come from a wide range of countries, including Turkey, South Africa, Peru and France. The Phillippines are a particularly rich source of special education teachers.

``They have outstanding education programs in place for special education,'' said Tiffany Bettencourt, a spokeswoman for the San Diego-based Amity Institute, one of many agencies that place overseas teachers with U.S. school districts.

School district administrators say that overseas hires typically have stronger résumés than domestic applicants, and even hold doctorates in their fields.

``You really get very qualified people this way,'' said Michael Gallagher, a human resources director with the Cupertino Union School District.

Cupertino does not recruit internationally. But if someone from another country applies and is the best-qualified for a job, the district will apply for an H-1B visa on the teacher's behalf. Cupertino now employs 12 teachers on such visas, with specialties in math, music, special education, elementary education, Mandarin, Japanese and French.

In California, foreign educators typically enter the classroom with the same preliminary credential most entry-level teachers hold. To get this credential, they must possess college degrees and certifications that are equivalent to what would be required in the United States. Like the state's rookie teachers, they then have five years to earn a permanent credential.

Four local districts -- Franklin-McKinley and San Mateo-Foster City elementary, and San Jose and West Contra Costa unified -- said they pay foreign teachers the same as other teachers in the district with equivalent qualifications. And district officials -- rather than some middleman agency -- act as the imported teachers' employers and visa sponsors.

According to a 2003 NEA report, school districts nationally have the same general practices.

Not problem-free

But the importing of teachers from abroad is not without its problems. Districts can come under fire for the expense of recruitment trips abroad, as the Ravenswood school district did in 2001 when the Mercury News reported on a pattern of excessive travel spending there. Foreign teachers lack the due-process rights of U.S. teachers, and if English isn't their first language, classroom communication can be awkward.

Cultural differences must be overcome on both sides.

Rogelio Calimag, a 31-year-old math teacher from the Philippines assigned to San Mateo's Bayside Middle School, says he is adjusting to the fact that students here are more socially outspoken, while at the same time less willing to participate in class academically than in the Philippines.

``To get them to explain their work, I have to push them more,'' Calimag said. ``In the Philippines, they would, even if they were nervous about it.''

Calimag taught mostly math in the Philippines for 12 years. He has a bachelor's degree in education with a specialization in math, has taken graduate courses in math, and is working on a thesis for a master's degree in education.

One of Calimag's algebra students, Eva McAvoy, says that her teacher's accented English makes him difficult to understand. At the same time, she appreciates the extra cultural dimension that he brings to the classroom.

``He's told us how people have to try harder for what they get in the Philippines,'' Eva said. ``We have it a lot of easier here.''

Contact Maya Suryaraman at msuryaraman@mercurynews. com or (408) 920-5505.
Maya Suryaraman, Mercury News
November 13, 2005
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/13157120.htm


Sending classrooms video digitally

Nearly every week, a video crisis breaks out at school - either a video gets lost or two teachers are ready to duke it out over the best VHS tape or DVD about colonial history or photosynthesis.

Digital delivery is a practical solution. A variety of vendors now make it easy for teachers to more elegantly bring engaging instructional video into our classrooms. Several teachers can show a video simultaneously. With a computer, a projector, and a set of speakers, the classroom teacher can get a wide variety of videos directly from the Web, or from a dedicated server.

These services allow teachers the flexibility to show an entire video, a clip, or a selection of clips, with opportunities to stop at any point for discussion. Teachers may create playlists and easily incorporate clips into lessons.

The solutions come in two flavors. Streaming-video solutions, which require a fairly robust network, allow users to view video on demand over the Internet in a real-time stream. Schools with networks that are less than robust get around the problem by downloading clips during quieter times. The other solution is server-based, where the media collection resides locally and is accessed over an intranet, reserving limited bandwidth for other types of activities.

Among the growing number of options for educators are these four major players:
Unitedstreaming.com (www.unitedstreaming.com), from Discovery Education, can be streamed via the Internet or through locally hosted video servers to ensure automatic updates of locally hosted content during off-peak hours. An average of 300 to 400 video titles are added annually to the database of 4,000 videos. The product also offers state curriculum standards, teachers' guides, lesson plans, quizzes, and a gallery of clip art and images. Videos come from such sources as Weston Woods, Discovery School, Environmental Media, Rainbow Educational Media, and others. Schools can add their own content for local users.

Classroom Content Click!, or CCC (www.ndmccc.com/curriculum/index.jsp), by New Dimension Media, offers high-quality, curriculum-specific programming that has been featured on Discovery Channel, PBS, History Channel and other stations. Streaming teacher segments help emphasize key concepts. Teacher guides, student activities, and assessments of comprehension accompany each program. Plato Learning has correlated each program to state standards. The system is designed to work off a server on a local or wide area network, or it may be streamed over the Internet. Users can export images and clips from programs. CCC adds hundreds of programs each year, combining its original programming with videos from its partners, including Disney Educational Productions, PBS' Nature, and newsreels from the Hearst Archives. Users can customize the system by adding local content.

PowerMediaPlus.com (www.powermediaplus.com) is a result of the 2004 merger of educational media companies Clearvue and SVE. The service offers streaming or locally based delivery and the ability to customize delivery. It includes 2,400 segmented, standard-aligned videos; 4,000 audio files, as well as photographs; and print resources. Users may build their collections with locally developed content. The collection crosses subject areas, and includes content by Weston Woods, Globe Trekker, Goldhil's Just the Facts Series, the Standard Deviants and Rabbit Ears. PowerMediaPlus is especially proud of its large collections of art, music and children's literature.

Schlessinger's SAFARI Montage (http://SAFARIMontage.com) offers an alternative to streaming. It loads its core video collections onto servers. The K-8 core content package includes 1,000 titles. A package for grades 9-12 will also include 1,000 titles, and it will be available this month. Educational programs come from such educational video publishers as Disney, PBS, Scholastic, Weston Woods, BBC Worldwide, National Geographic and Schlessinger Media, the producer of award-winning educational programming for the content areas. All Schlessinger Media programs are well-indexed, correlated to state standards, come close-captioned, with teacher's guides, and are created with Spanish language tracks. The package will soon include tools to aid students and teachers in the creation of multimedia.

Contact columnist Joyce Kasman Valenza at Joyce_Valenza@sdst.org
Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/kasmanvalenza

Joyce Kasman Valenza
The Philadelphia Inquirer
November 13, 2005
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/13151794.htm


School board to end 'zero tolerance'

Toronto schools will be encouraged to steer clear of blunt "zero-tolerance" discipline, under a new deal in which Canada's largest school board agrees to be more sensitive to why students act out.

In a landmark settlement with the Ontario Human Rights Commission to be released this week, the Toronto District School Board has agreed to take steps to better understand why students of various backgrounds sometimes break the rules, and to prevent punishments that are unfair.

The agreement, signed late last week, follows a four-month investigation of complaints that the board was applying Ontario's new Safe Schools Act more harshly with black students.

While there was no finding of bias on the part of the board, the deal spells out that from now on:

• Principals will avoid suspending or expelling a student until they first try less severe penalties such as detentions, peer mediation or transfer to another school.
• Principals will be reminded to consider mitigating factors when meting out discipline — and for the first time, they will be told to examine whether racial harassment helped provoke the misdeed.
• In a bid to quash any hint of a crude zero-tolerance approach to discipline, the settlement stresses "nowhere in Ontario's Safe Schools Act do the words zero tolerance occur."
• The board must begin to collect data starting next fall on the racial background of students who are suspended or expelled.
• When police are called due to a student's misconduct, the school board will ensure parents are called, rather than have them learn later their child has been taken to the police station.
• The board will ensure expelled high school students have the chance to continue to earn credits toward their diploma from home or elsewhere.
• Principals will be urged to ensure students suspended for more than five days have the chance to maintain their school work from home or elsewhere.
• The board will meet with the Ontario Human Rights Commission before Jan. 31 to discuss how it plans to recruit more teachers from visible minorities "in order that there be equitable representation reflective of the Toronto community."

"This helps put us back on track and gives us the impetus to make sure we're moving forward with safety while addressing all needs in a multicultural city," said Toronto Trustee Chris Bolton, who has been a leading critic of how the board has applied the Safe Schools Act introduced by the former Conservative government.

Bolton chaired a task force last year that held public hearings into suspensions and expulsions, and made recommendations for ensuring discipline is enforced fairly, many of which are echoed in the new deal. Nearly 1,500 people contacted the "Safe and Compassionate Schools Task Force" with examples of how schools seem quicker to suspend black students than white students who break the same rules.

"Sometimes a principal's discretion has worked against the rules being applied uniformly. What we're happy to see in this settlement is that principals are being urged to take mitigating factors into account. With this settlement, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is holding the board's feet to the fire to ensure principals enforce the spirit of the law, not just the letter of the law," said Bolton in an interview.

The Toronto board has launched a string of programs this year to promote fair treatment to students of all backgrounds, including naming a senior human rights watchdog, looking at gathering race-based statistics, and encouraging diversity when hiring teachers.

The board already trains staff in avoiding racial stereotypes and is working to broaden staff's diversity, which it agrees to continue under the settlement. It expects a blue-ribbon task force to report by January on the best way to gather race-based statistics, says Lloyd McKell, the board's new executive officer of student equity.

Louise Brown, Education Reporter
Toronto Star
November. 14, 2005
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_
pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1131922209977&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes

JANUARY 2006

Athlete With Down's Syndrome Scores 99-Yard Touchdown
Coach Arranges Play For Special Athlete

KELLER, Texas -- For two years, senior Lyndon LaPlante had only been getting a rep or two at football practice for the Keller Indians and had never seen action in a real game.

The upbeat student with Down's syndrome seemed content to just be part of head coach Kevin Atkinson's football team.

"I could see the passion in his eyes about how he really loved football and loved being around those guys," said Atkinson.

But Atkinson had other plans for the dedicated athlete and wanted LaPlante to take the field in a game.

"He wanted to play more than anything. Watching him compete in the Special Olympics ... I thought at that time, four years ago, that if he sticks with it and keeps having the attitude that he's having, then his senior year I'm going to give him the biggest surprise that we possibly can here," said Atkinson.

The surprise came last Friday night on the Indians home field as Keller took on the Richland High School Rebels. With the help of Richland's head coach Gene Wier and the crew officiating the game, LaPlante was to take the field and run the ball all the way to the end zone.

While the touchdown didn't count in the official recordbooks, that didn't matter to LaPlante.

"He was real excited about it. His words were 'I'm goin in ... I'm goin in'," said LaPlante's father, Don.

So the plan was set: Lyndon would get the ball on the first play of the fourth quarter. What no one could predict was Keller's field position.

The Indians were slated to start their fourth-quarter drive on their own one-yard line, giving Lyndon 99 yards to reach the Richland end zone.

"Everybody was behind me in the stands ... the crowd. They said 'Lyndon, Lyndon ... we want Lyndon, we want Lyndon" said LaPlante.

The crowd pushed LaPlante on to the field with cheers and a standing ovation.

"When he started trotting out on the field I thought, 'I wonder what's going through his mind ... he has to just be so excited,'" said LaPlante's mom, Genni.

At first and 10 from the one, Lyndon got the call he was waiting for and answered with an unbelievable run off the hip of his left tackle. LaPlante ran all the way, 99 yards, into Richland's end zone.

LaPlante's parents were understandably emotional watching their son streak down the field.

"I teared up and then I realized I had to not tear up or I wouldn't be able to see," said LaPlante's mother.

"It was just undescribable really ... it was just a neat feeling," said LaPlante's father.

LaPlante's teammates followed him all the way to the endzone, capping a momentus moment in a young man's life, scoring his first touchdown.

"I carried a 99-yard touchdown. I looked like Emmitt Smith out there," LaPlante said.

LaPlante certainly felt like a Hall of Famer with his one run, one chance to shine and his one moment that will last a lifetime.

October 19, 2005
http://www.nbc5i.com/sports/5126283/detail.html


Teachers to get legal right to restrain pupils

Teachers will be given the clear legal right to discipline unruly pupils and restrain them through the use of "reasonable force", ministers announced today.

The education secretary, Ruth Kelly, backed recommendations from the government's school discipline taskforce for new measures to force parents to take responsibility for their children's behaviour.

Teachers' leaders welcomed the new legal rights proposed by the taskforce, chaired by headteacher Sir Alan Steer, which they said would stop pupils disrupting lessons, but insisted they must be backed with action and not left to gather dust like previous discipline initiatives.

The plans include:
· a new law setting out teachers' "clear and unambiguous right" to discipline pupils and restrain them through reasonable force
· a national charter of rights and responsibilities for teachers, pupils and parents
· a new offence of "allowing a child to be found in a public place during school hours without good cause" to be introduced to make sure parents keep track of their children when they are excluded from school
· possible fixed fines for parents who are guilty of this new offence
· wider use of parenting contracts to be imposed before a child is thrown out of school.

Ms Kelly welcomed the report and promised to implement the key recommendations "as soon as possible". Some of the reforms are expected to be contained in a white paper later this month.

She said: "The government has made tackling poor behaviour a major priority, providing increased powers and resources. But some schools still face real discipline challenges because there is too little consistency in dealing with poor behaviour.

"There is still too much low-level disruption to lessons - backchat, rudeness, calling out in class - that makes teaching and learning more difficult. These proposals can help bring change not just to the rules, but to the culture, reaffirming respect in classrooms and putting teachers firmly in charge."

Ms Kelly added that poor behaviour would not simply disappear if there was legislation. "Heads and teachers must use these new powers with the backing of parents - only then can we make good behaviour the norm in every classroom," she said.

The taskforce wants pupils excluded for more than five days to be interviewed when they return to school to help them settle back in. The controversial right of parents to appeal against exclusions is backed, but there is a call for the independent appeals panels to be more representative and for guidance to avoid cases being overturned on technicalities.
By 2008, all secondaries, including academies and foundation schools, should be forced to belong to local partnerships working together to share "hard to place" pupils, the report states.

The taskforce rejects a code of rules for pupils, but recommends a national charter of rights and responsibilities for youngsters, parents and teachers, to be included in home-school agreements.
Some members of the taskforce were tempted to ban mobile phones in schools because of text bullying. But the report recommends that all schools have a policy on their possession and use.

The general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Mary Bousted, said she was particularly pleased the report clearly recommended legislation to establish beyond doubt that schools have the right to discipline pupils.

"The Steer report is an essential first step in rebalancing the equation between the individual rights of each pupil and the collective rights of the school community. It is essential that parents, carers, and society in general support schools in achieving good behaviour so that all pupils can benefit from their education. We are particularly pleased the report clearly recommends schools have the right to discipline pupils when their behaviour is unacceptable," she said.

The general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, John Dunford, said "more clarity" in the law would be helpful, but cautioned that the law would be interpreted in the courts.

Meanwhile, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Mick Brookes, said: "Within the school community, it is the attitude of parents that is a key element essential for the maintenance of good behaviour.

"It is reprehensible that a minority of parents condone negative and loutish behaviour which causes distress in the school environment."

Donald MacLeod, Matthew Taylor and agencies
October 21, 2005
http://education.guardian.co.uk/classroomviolence/story/0,12388,1597781,00.html


Online phys ed takes hold in Minneapolis

Jacob Miller's gym class isn't about push-ups or running laps or dodgeball. It's about computers and Frisbee.

Last year, as the tall, cheerful South High School senior neared graduation, he was finding it hard to complete his physical education requirement while balancing studies, sports and a social life. Then Miller discovered that through a new online class he could fulfill his phys-ed credit after school by playing on the Ultimate Frisbee team.

"I would've had to go to gym class and take up an hour every day," the 17-year-old said during a break from tossing a Frisbee with a few teammates. "I would've had to give up orchestra. If I'd taken it last year, I'd have had to give up German."

The Minneapolis school system's online physical education allows kids to choose a physical activity they enjoy, do it for 30 minutes three times a week -- on their own time -- while keeping an online journal. A parent or coach must confirm the student did the activities, and a fitness test at semester's end will turn up any cheaters.

Course choices have ranged from weight-lifting to swimming to horseback riding.

The course is proving phenomenally popular in Minneapolis, and teachers and administrators who developed the course believe they've hit on a way to help kids grow into adults with lifelong healthy fitness habits.

"You're always going to have kids who, phys ed is not their favorite thing or their priority," said Frank Goodrich, a longtime PE teacher who supervises an online gym class. "We want kids to be physically active and fit their whole life. If there's a percentage that we were missing and we're reaching them now -- that's pretty cool."

Online classes have grown increasingly common in high schools in recent years. But phys ed has been sort of the last frontier. While available at some online-only schools nationwide, it's been less common at traditional high schools.

"I was a big skeptic at first. It didn't make sense to me," said Brenda Corbin, a longtime phys ed teacher who ultimately helped write the curriculum for the new course.

Teachers said they had to embrace a shift in physical education that was already under way: Less emphasis on team sports, and more on personal fitness, health and wellness.

Josh Boucher, a 15-year-old sophomore, has a hip condition that makes it difficult for him to run. But he also has a black belt in karate, and last summer was able to turn his training into his phys ed class.

"I was doing so much physical activity -- more than most gym classes," Boucher said. "Now I can get credit for it."

He also rejects the idea that the online classes are easier than traditional gym. Students must study the health benefits of their activities and get assignments on related topics like healthy eating.

"It's time-consuming," Boucher said. "We had hours of written work where we were learning about fitness and how to better our lives. More than I'd ever had in gym class."

The teachers are in contact through e-mail and by phone, meeting face-to-face at least twice -- once at the beginning of the semester and once at the end, for baseline fitness testing.

The students "have to do better physically at the end of the semester compared to the beginning," said online PE teacher Tammy Cowan. "If they don't, I wouldn't pass them, to be honest."

It's not hard to spot cheaters, the teachers say.

"You're in contact with them constantly," said Goodrich, a gym teacher right out of central casting -- trim and fit with buzz cut and intense stare. "You're going to get a sense pretty quick if they're fudging it."

Minneapolis school officials said they're hearing from school districts around the country who are interested in the program. In Minneapolis, student waiting lists are filling up fast.

"It's like we started the ball rolling, and it started rolling so fast and now we're trying to catch up," said Jan Braaten, content specialist in physical education for Minneapolis schools.

Braaten is making a presentation on the program in January to a national conference of PE teachers.

"It's not appropriate for all students, but for the ones it works for it's good practice for the rest of their lives," said Dolly Lambdin, a health education professor at the University of Texas and past president of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. "The issue here is if students can take it into their lives and move toward self-responsibility."

On the Net: Minneapolis Public Schools: http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/

Patrick Condon, Associated Press Writer
Associated Press
October 20, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/10/20/
online_phys_ed_takes_hold_in_minneapolis/


Honors for a Principal Whose Impact
Extends Even to the Cafeteria
Head of Fairfax School Wins National Award

Late one morning, Principal Mel Riddile was standing in the cafeteria in J.E.B. Stuart High School and looking proudly at a scene quite unlike what is typical for American high schoolers at lunch.

About 600 students were sitting close together and chattering happily -- nothing unusual about that. The surprise was that there did not seem to be even a scrap of trash or leftover sandwich on any of the tables, at a school where food fights used to be common. Several hundred more students were about to descend on the cafeteria for the second lunch period, and Riddile and his staff at the Fairfax County school had trained students and janitors to get the garbage out of the way before they arrived.

There are several reasons the National Association of Secondary School Principals and MetLife have named the tall, muscular Riddile, a 55-year-old former linebacker at the University of North Carolina, the national high school principal of the year. Test scores at Stuart have gone up. College-level courses are abundant. Absenteeism has been sharply reduced.

But Riddile's admirers say the clean and mischief-free lunch period, the result of persistent reminders and a new system for wheeling trash barrels past the tables, is one of the more visible symbols of his ingenuity, energy and commitment to teamwork. The experts say he has turned Stuart into one of the highest-performing and best-functioning high schools in the country, the academic results particularly impressive because 54 percent of Stuart students come from low-income homes.

When Riddile arrived in 1997, the typical Stuart student was absent nearly 23 days every year, but that number is now down to six. He discovered in his first year that 76 percent of his students were at least two years below grade level in reading; today, almost none of the students who have been at the school at least two years score that low. About 40 percent of students are enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program.

Daniel A. Domenech, a senior vice president of McGraw-Hill Education, was superintendent of Fairfax County schools during most of Riddile's time at Stuart. He said the principal "has been able to demonstrate that a multiethnic student population with high percentages of English language learners and students from low socioeconomic background can achieve when placed in an environment where diversity is celebrated and students are given every opportunity to learn."

The school has 1,450 students in grades 9 through 12. Ethnically, the student body is about 31 percent white, 31 percent Hispanic, 13 percent African American and 24 percent Asian and "other," including many students from the Middle East and North Africa. In five years, its average SAT score has increased 104 points, from 951 to 1055, according to a report from the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Kathleen McBride, president of Stuart's Parent Teacher Student Association, said Riddile collected reams of data on each problem he faced and then encouraged different and sometimes daring solutions from a staff that came to realize he was going to listen to them and back up their efforts.

The auto-dialing program that had been used to inform parents about school events was turned into a wake-up call system for students who were persistently absent or tardy. Each morning at 6 o'clock, the telephone rings in the homes of those students and a recorded voice says: "Good morning. This is Stuart High School. Breakfast starts at 7:05, and school begins at 7:20."

Some central office administrators balked when Riddile insisted on testing the reading abilities of all his incoming ninth-graders, but the appalling results were necessary to persuade everyone that all students who were below grade level had to take a reading course their freshman year. Different methods were used for different students, including mandatory after-school tutoring, with sports and other after-school activities beginning after the tutoring was done.

The emphasis, experts who have studied the school say, has been on finding new ways to solve problems and having the patience to stick with them while teachers and students adjust to the changes. An analysis of the Stuart literacy program on the National Association of Secondary School Principals' Web site acknowledged that Riddile's strong focus on reading did not immediately catch fire.

"The greatest resistance was among the teaching staff," the Principals.org account says. "First, teachers could not understand how they could cover course content and teach literacy strategies. Second, the teachers had no training in teaching literacy strategies. However, the data became key to convincing the staff that there was a need to make a dramatic change from the traditional way of teaching to a more explicit form of teaching to meet the learning needs of students."

Riddile found a job coaching and teaching social studies at Lee High School in Fairfax County right out of college, and he was recruited to be an administrator three years later. He worked at three county high schools and was a substance-abuse prevention coordinator at school headquarters before becoming principal at Stuart. His wife, Marianne, recently retired as a county teacher, and their children, Meredith and Mike, both graduated from Robinson Secondary School before going to the University of Florida.

At the beginning of his career as an administrator, Riddile said, he thought he would miss the daily contact with students in the classroom. But he grew to love the fact that he was now responsible for helping solve the most difficult problems in the school. "When you are an administrator, you are dealing with the kids who need you most," he said.

What other educators say they have noticed about Riddile is his unerring, and sometimes astonishing, focus on student achievement. "One day I was told he was on the roof of the school, fixing the air-conditioning system," said Paul Regnier, the Fairfax County schools spokesman.

"When I asked him about it, he said that they could not get a technician to the school until the next day but that he had done so much to get extra instructional time for students that he was not about to let kids be unable to learn algebra for two hours because it was too hot to learn.

"Behind everything is Mel's strong and practical belief that education is the key to a better life," Regnier said, "and he is proving every day that it is true for people all over the world who come to this country looking for that life."

Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer
October 23, 2005
The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR2005102201221.html


Overworked doc turns to the Web

A local physician is turning to cyberspace to help him manage an overwhelming-- and ever-increasing-- number of patients.

Dr. Kenneth Handelman, a child psychiatrist at Peel Memorial Hospital, spends at least 40 per cent of his time helping children and teens with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Though statistics show approximately four per cent of Canadian children have the disorder, Handelman is one of only two full-time child psychiatrists in Brampton. His young patients wait an average of four to six months to see him, he said.

"There is a huge demand," said Handelman, who gets approximately 10 new patients every week. "There's just not enough time and not enough resources."

In addition to assessing a child with ADHD's medical needs, Handelman is also responsible for teaching patients, parents and other caregivers about the disorder. Education takes time, which he has precious little of, he said.

"I spend one hour on a new consult, which is kind of bare minimum," he said. "There are times when I'd like to take more time, but my practice would grind to a halt."

Struggling to find a way to do more with less, Handelman tuned in to his inner technophile and created a Web site and weekly audio newsletter dedicated to ADHD questions and concerns.

"It just hit me," he said. "My goal is to raise the knowledge of evidence-based, scientific information in the community about ADHD so we can improve the quality of life for those with ADHD."

Each week, subscribers to the free newsletter get Handelman's audio answer to a real question delivered right to their inbox. There are already 200 people on the mailing list-- each of whom submitted a question at registration. Dictating the answer saves Handelman the time of writing an appropriate response, he said.

"If I had to type up articles every week, it would feel like a burden to me," said Handelman.

There are a lot of misconceptions about ADHD out there, he said, and you don't have to be one of Handelman's patients to subscribe to the newsletter.

"There are still a lot of people who believe that this it's a parent's fault or video games that cause ADHD, and it's not," said Handelman. "With the new school year started, I've had parents, teachers, adults with ADHD, behaviour therapists and special education teachers sign up."

Handelman usually sees the most complicated cases of ADHD, with busy family doctors shouldering the burden of more mild situations. Those patients could benefit from the newsletter as well, he said.

Handelman also has an eye on expanding the services available on his Web site.
"This is just an introduction," he said.

For information or to subscribe to the newsletter, visit ">www.theadhd doctor.com/a>

HEATHER ENNIS
The Brampton Guardian
October 23, 2005
http://www.northpeel.com/br/news/story/3112315p-3609623c.html


Genetic Cause of Speech Defect Discovered

Researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T), Capital Health's Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton, Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and their international collaborators have discovered a genetic abnormality that causes a type of language impairment in children -- a discovery that could lead to isolating genes important for the development of expressive language.

A study published in the Oct. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine outlines the discovery of a genetic abnormality in a nine-year-old boy with learning difficulties and speech problems from northern Alberta. By using some of the latest genetic screening methods designed to look for differences in the amount of DNA in particular chromosomes, the researchers discovered that the boy carries additional copies (termed duplication) of around 27 genes on chromosome 7. This is only the second instance of the identification of a single chromosome region linked to specific language impairment.

The boy can understand what is said to him at the level of a seven-year-old but his expressive language and speech are at the level of a two-and-a-half-year-old. "Our results show that changes in the copy number of specific genes can dramatically influence human language abilities," says senior author Lucy Osborne, a U of T professor of medicine. "Based on our findings, we are expanding the study to assess the frequency of this DNA duplication in children with expressive language delay."

The chromosome 7 region that is duplicated in this boy is exactly the same as that which is deleted in Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), a neurodevelopmental disorder. While patients with WBS exhibit mild mental retardation, they also have strength in expressive language, alongside very poor performance in tasks involving spatial construction, such as drawing. In striking contrast, this patient could form virtually no complete words but showed normal spatial ability. "For example, if asked to tell us what animal has long ears and eats carrots, he could only pronounce the r, of the word rabbit but was able to draw the letter on the blackboard and add features such as whiskers," Osborne says.

This mutation -- an addition of 1.5 million DNA base pairs -- was predicted several years ago to exist by Osborne and her collaborator Stephen Scherer of The Hospital for Sick Children and U of T. "While estimated to be present in more than a half million people worldwide, the duplication has evaded detection since the disease was unknown until now, but also because finding this type of mutation is technically challenging," explains Martin Somerville, director of the Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory at the Stollery Children's Hospital. Uncovering the duplication sheds light on which genes are necessary for normal expressive language. "Language impairment was thought to be caused by the interaction of multiple genes on different chromosomes, but in this case our discovery implicates a specific location on chromosome 7," Somerville says. "In order to know how to treat a disease you have to know its cause, so this is a significant step in the right direction."

Other authors on the study are Edwin Young and Wayne Loo, Institute of Medical Science and Department of Molecular & Medical Genetics, University of Toronto; Stephen Bamforth and Margaret Lilley, Department of Medical Genetics, University of Alberta; Carolyn Mervis and Ella Peregrine, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville; Miguel del Campo and Luis Pérez-Jurado, Unitat de Genética, Departament Ciències Experimentals i de la Salut, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona; and Colleen Morris, Department of Pediatrics, University of Nevada School of Medicine; and Eul-Ju Seo and Stephen Scherer, Program in Genetics & Genomic Biology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto and U of T.

This study was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Sick Kids Foundation, the Spanish ministries of health and science and technology, Genome Canada/Ontario Genomics Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Scherer is a CIHR investigator and an international scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Osborne is a CIHR research scholar.

University of Toronto
October 22, 2005
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051022234552.htm


Keep on keeping up

ONE year has passed since the re-election of the Howard Government.

Brendan Nelson has embarked on a series of initiatives that have few precedents in a nation where constitutional powers for education lie with the states.

In Victoria, the Bracks Government has undertaken the first major revision of the School Act since the historic legislation of 1872 signalled an era of "free, compulsory and secular education".
It is timely to assess the state of public education in Australia.

There is immediate need to make such an assessment because there has been a quickening of the pace. At the federal level, the first round of Australian Technology Colleges was announced. In one sense, this is the first time in the history of the Federation that the Commonwealth has set up its own system of schools.

The inquiry into literacy has concluded its deliberations and findings can be expected shortly. An inquiry into teacher education is under way.

The minister has received a report highly critical of curriculum at the state level. Options for a national certificate of education are being explored.

While the minister has rejected the approach, there is a call among some backbenchers for the introduction of vouchers that would enable low-achieving students in government schools to be funded for enrolment in non-government schools.

In Victoria, history will be made with recognition of a private contribution to the funding of state schools, although tuition will remain free. It will also be the first time that non-government schools will be subject to the same accountability requirements as government schools.

Any objective reading of trends suggests that the era of public education defined as a system of schools built, owned and operated by the state, free of a private contribution except where it is voluntary, is over. Moreover, a broad consensus is emerging that the system of schools supported from the public purse will be comprised of those owned by the state and those owned in the private sector, either profit or for the most part non-profit.

Those who maintain the view that "public" is synonymous with "state" will be defending a position that has no counterpart among countries with which Australia is traditionally compared. There is still little awareness that high-performing countries such as Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Britain and some parts of Canada have integrated their systems of state and non-state schools, leaving a small rump of truly private independent schools.

Henceforth, "public" should be defined in terms of a set of public values that include quality, access and choice, with a commitment to high levels of achievement for all students in all settings, with all schools together, regardless of ownership, contributing to the public good in terms of the wellbeing of the individual and the nation.

None of the foregoing is to deny the achievements of government schools. Despite Brendan Nelson's broad acceptance of the criticism of curriculum, government schools must take some of the credit for Australia's high ranking in international tests of achievement - the Global Talent Index (fourth), the Global Creativity Index (ninth) and in the proportion of the workforce that belongs to the "creative class" (second).

Apart from increasing performance across the board, our schools need to address problems of disparity between urban and rural, high and low socio-economic status, and non-indigenous and indigenous settings.

Getting the pedagogy right in literacy is a high priority. Bellfield Primary School, in the challenging environment of West Heidelberg, has done just that, moving from well below to well above statewide standards in less than five years. Debates about state or national curriculum will rapidly give way to consideration of international standards. The three programs of the International Baccalaureate are offered in more than 100 countries, in government or state schools in most instances.

There is the remarkable example of the 3e International Kindergarten in Beijing, built on state land, funded by the Sun Wah Education Foundation, offering the Reggio Emilia program now implemented worldwide but pioneered in Italy, taught by recent graduates from Michigan State University in the US, with a teacher-centred program in the Confucian tradition taught by Chinese teachers in the afternoon.

Public-private partnerships in rebuilding the rundown stock of government schools across the country will follow the lead of the Blair Government. It can be done within the existing framework, as evidenced in the remarkable achievements of Port Phillip Specialist School in Port Melbourne, whose principal, Bella Irlicht, recently received the Equity Trust Award for CEO of the Year in the non-profit sector. She has built social capital on a previously unimagined scale and combined generous government support with large grants from the private sector, notably the Pratt Foundation, to convert the school from a two-room, ant-infested building to a world-class facility.

While some students will learn in other settings in a web-enabled world, there will still be a place called school but distinctions cast in a legislative straitjacket in the late 19th century will give way to a new view of public education. The new values for public education set out above are the right ones but, as Tony Blair declared at the recent conference of the British Labour Party: "The challenge we face is not in our values, it is how we put those values into practice in a world fast-forwarding to the future at unprecedented speed."

Brian Caldwell is managing director of Educational Transformations and former dean of education at the University of Melbourne. This article is an edited version of his address to the national conference of the Australian Council of State School Organisations (ACSSO) in Canberra on October 18.

Brian Caldwell, The Age
October 24, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/keep-on-keeping-up/2005/10/21/1129775959341.html#


Speaker allows deaf to feel music

A new device is helping deaf people to "hear" music through vibrations, 200 years after the technique was used by Beethoven as he lost his hearing.

Different instruments, rhythms and notes can be felt through five finger pads attached to the "Vibrato" speaker.

Brunel University design graduate Shane Kerwin is working on a prototype which he hopes will allow deaf children to join in mainstream music lessons.

If connected to a computer, the device allows deaf people to compose music.

Mr Kerwin said: "Vibrato will mean deaf children can join in with music classes in a way that would previously have been impossible.

"I hope that Vibrato will help us to integrate deaf students into mainstream musical education and enable schools to encourage deaf children to take up music as much as hearing children."

Earlier this month, it was reported that scientists are developing a cochlear implant, which could allow deaf people to hear music as well as speech, by using a wider frequency range.

And there have been several "deaf raves" in London, with an emphasis on bass and heavy rhythmic tracks, allowing clubbers to feel the music through their bodies.

But the idea of hearing music through vibrations dates back much further. Ludwig van Beethoven was completely deaf by 1818, but continued to compose for another 10 years.

He is said to have cut the legs off his piano and played while sitting on the floor so he could feel the vibrations better.

Paul Whittaker, artistic director at the UK charity Music and the Deaf, said many deaf people were able to enjoy music - but much of the technology was not available to them.

"The lack of tactile sensation means deaf people cannot easily perceive the sounds being produced, so Vibrato is a very welcome resource indeed," he said.

BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4377428.stm


Kim Thomas discusses the impact of paperless technologies on the classroom

Ever since school pupils stopped using slates and pieces of chalk, paper has been an integral part of school life. Pupils take notes on paper, they write essays on paper, they draw diagrams on paper. The handouts they receive from teachers are on paper, and at the end of a school year, they write their examination scripts on paper.

But what happens when paperless technology is introduced into education? Does it just mean a reduction in the height of the paper mountains that afflict most schools? Or can it mean a transformation in teaching and learning?

A recent report by Becta, entitled Tablet PCs in Schools, cautiously suggests that one such paperless technology, the Tablet PC, could dramatically change the way children learn. As the report puts it, "Tablet PCs were being used in ways that supported, extended and transformed the curriculum. The pace of lessons was improved, as was the richness and variety of the content examined."

The Tablet PC, which uses the Windows XP operating system, resembles a lightweight laptop. What makes it different is that users operate it with a digital pen rather than a mouse or keyboard (though some Tablets, known as 'convertibles', come with keyboards too). Students use the digital pen to write or draw, as they would with an ordinary pen. They can save their handwritten text as it is, or convert it to typed text. Teachers can use the pen to mark and annotate the work in a different colour. Students can search the saved files for particular words or phrases, just as they could with a laptop.

At the end of last year, there were 90 or so schools in England using Tablets. The Becta report looked at 12 of them, and found that in most cases the Tablets had had a significant impact. "There was a strong feeling amongst the schools, which was shared by the researchers, that there was definitely something different about Tablet PCs compared with laptops or desktops. Children related to them differently - they seemed to bond with them in a very personal way," says Peter Twining, the Open University lecturer who managed the Becta research.

The most successful schools were those that used the Tablets in conjunction with a wireless network or data projector to create a more collaborative learning environment. Children's individual notes, for example, could be shared by connecting their Tablet PC to a data projector in order, the report says, "to move towards a record that represented a class consensus." Stephen Uden, Educational Relations Manager at Microsoft, agrees that Tablets are best used collaboratively, and cites a music lesson he observed in which pupils using specialist software were able to write scores directly onto their Tablets and then play the music back to the rest of the class.

Cornwallis Technology College in Kent has been using Tablet PCs since November 2002, mostly with Year 7 children. It now has 200 Tablets, with 290 more due to arrive in the autumn. The Tablets have enabled students to personalise their learning, says Caroline Barber, first deputy at the school: "We've got some wonderful examples of students' work where they've got Flash animation, where they have inserted sound files into PowerPoint presentations, where they've produced electronic workbooks on topics." At the end of the first year, the academic performance of those pupils who had used Tablets was significantly higher than that of those who hadn't - a difference that was particularly marked for the lower ability students.

The students themselves are much better at taking control of their own learning, says Caroline; when the teacher marks a piece of work and returns it with comments electronically, students are much more likely now to re-edit the work and persevere with it to improve it. The success of the Tablets has enabled the school to rethink its approach to learning: currently, the science, English and humanities curricula are being redesigned so that pupils have longer learner periods of 100 minutes in which they work through a project-based curriculum.

Although technology is changing classroom learning, most pupils still expect to sit examinations using the traditional pen and reams of paper. Yet it doesn't have to be that way, according to software company PaperFree. PaperFree, which currently has 100,000 users in the UK, has made an impact in both the private and FE sectors with an e-portfolio software product that allows students on vocational courses to be assessed entirely without paper.

Instead of writing essays or sitting a written examination - which many vocational students dislike - the student hairdresser, engineer or carpenter is filmed both doing their job and answering questions about it with a video camera. The video and audio files are then held on a laptop along with other assessment information about the student. According to managing director Robert Smart, use of PaperFree has improved retention rates in vocational courses in FE from 63% to nearly 100%, and cut the length of time it takes to get an NVQ by two thirds.

The approach can also be used in schools. Last year, some Year 11 pupils at St Augustine's School in Trowbridge took part in a successful pilot project using PaperFree. The pupils were following an alternative curriculum from the OCR examination board, which included a 'preparation for work' module. Normally, these pupils, having carried out work experience, would be expected to submit written work or sit a written test.

Instead, they were visited in their workplace by careers coordinator Christine Hanlon, who asked them questions that they could then answer orally. The answers were recorded either on video or audio tape, and later uploaded to a laptop. Christine was able to cross-reference her assessment of the student with the video or audio evidence. "If they'd been given a piece of paper and asked, 'What were the main points you had to observe with regards to health and safety?' they'd have struggled," says Christine. "But out in the work environment, I could say, 'I see there's a knife on the table. Tell me about the health and safety rules for handling the knife.'"

What the two technologies have in common is that they are student-centred rather than teacher- or assessor-centred. Students learn, and are examined, in a way that feels natural and comfortable to them. Truly personalised learning may still be a distant goal, but these technologies could represent an important first step in that direction.

Kim Thomas
October 24, 2005
http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/3218


Ritalin Patch Awaiting Approval

Kids who are prescribed ADHD drugs may soon have a choice: the patch or the pill.

A new patch system delivers methylphenidate — the main ingredient in Ritalin, Concerta, and Methylin — throughout the day. Made by Noven and Shire pharmaceutical companies, the patch is the first ADHD drug that does not have to be taken orally. Pending FDA approval, the companies plan to call the patch Daytrana.

Studies reported at this week's joint meeting of the American and Canadian Academies of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry find the patch works at least as well as the popular once-a-day ADHD drug. Sharon B. Wigal, Ph.D., director of clinical trials at the Child Development Center at the University of California, Irvine, led one of the studies.

"The patch is different from oral stimulant medications, where the longest action is up to 10 or 12 hours. It looks like the patch goes beyond that," Wigal tells WebMD. "This is a plus, because this may really allow you to formulate a dose for individual patients. Even though we were removing the patch after nine hours, once parents administer it themselves they may determine to remove it earlier or later. That may give them more options, knowing there was continuing efficacy beyond that 12-hour time point."

Better Behavior, Attention, Math Scores

Wigal led a research team that gave the patch to 80 ADHD kids aged 6 to 12. Half the kids got an inert placebo patch and later switched to a real patch; the other half started with a real patch and later switched to a placebo.

When getting the real patch, the children's ADHD was significantly better than when they got the fake patch. Their behavior and attention, tested throughout the day, improved. They also did better on age-adjusted math tests.

The patch does have side effects.

"It is pretty comparable to what we see with other stimulant drugs," Wigal says. "We do see effects on sleep onset and decreased appetite. And then, because this is a transdermal system, you may see a skin response. That would be something to look at if a child is more sensitive in terms of skin type."

Children in the study are continuing to use the patch for a full year. So far, the patches aren't much of a problem.

"We see continued maintenance in terms of the patch continuing to work and safety not being a concern," Wigal says.

Better Than Extended-Release Pills?

In a second study, Robert L. Findling, MD, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at University Hospital in Cleveland, led a team that compared the patch with placebo as well as with methylphenidate pills.

Compared with placebo, both the patch and methylphenidate pills improved 6- to 12-year-old kids' ADHD. Interestingly, ADHD scores improved more with the patch than with the pills, although the difference was not large enough to be considered scientific proof of superiority.

"In general, there was a trend toward a greater positive effect of treatment with [the patch] than [oral medication]," Findling and colleagues write in their presentation abstract.

Who Would Use the Patch?

Since the patch contains the same drug as other long-lasting ADHD drugs, why would a parent choose it? WebMD asked Leslie Rubin, MD, director of developmental pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine.

Rubin remembers the sea change in ADHD treatment that methylphenidate brought about some 10 years ago.

"That was a revolution, because a child would get Ritalin and go to school, and by 11 a.m. it is not working any more," Rubin tells WebMD. "So we would have to prescribe another dose at school, and there would be long lines at the nurse's station. It was disruptive — and the kids would get embarrassed."

Concerta, Rubin says, also solved some of the problems that haunted early extended-release versions of ADHD drugs. So why go to the patch?

"Well, some kids don't like to take pills or even liquids. And you can't break up extended-release pills and put them in applesauce — you destroy the release mechanisms," Rubin says. "If approved by the FDA, the patch will offer an opportunity to give an ADHD medicine without the child having to swallow it."

Perhaps more importantly, the patch offers more control over how long a parent wants the stimulant medication to last.

"If you give a child a pill, it is in the body and you can't do anything about it," Rubin says. "But if you put the patch on, and the child needs, say, six hours today, you can leave it on for a corresponding amount of time."

Wigal agrees. She says the patch may release methylphenidate for as long as 16 hours. Her team is also studying what happens when the patch is removed at times shorter and longer than those used in the this study. So far, she says, it looks as though the patch must be removed for three hours before its effects wear off.

Sources:
2005 joint meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Toronto, Oct. 18-23, 2005. Sharon B. Wigal, PhD, associate clinical professor of pediatrics and director of clinical trials, Child Development Center, University of California, Irvine. Leslie Rubin, MD, director of developmental pediatrics and associate professor, Emory University School of Medicine.

Daniel J. DeNoon
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MDWebMD Inc.
October 25, 2005
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/25/health/webmd/main980224.shtml


High-schoolers logging on for gym class

Forget pushups, running the mile and the ugly uniform.

High school students at a handful of Arizona schools are now taking physical education courses online.

Take Primavera Online High School in Chandler. P.E. students there can jog, dance or go on a bike ride, then file heart-monitor readings to their teacher online as proof.

Mesa Public Schools and the Marana Unified School District near Tucson offer courses in which students study bowling online and then bowl 18 games at an alley.

Peoria Unified School District also began offering online P.E. last year as an alternate way for busy students to earn fitness credits.

Web-based P.E. courses have been popping up sporadically across the country over the past decade, from Florida to Minnesota, drawing both praise and criticism from physical education teachers. It's part of a general trend to make more high school courses available online so students can catch up on credits or work ahead.

Educators say the online P.E. courses can be good for motivated, independent students. But some teachers question how schools can monitor a student's fitness without seeing him or her in gym class.

"For most of the kids, independent stuff doesn't work. They don't do it," said Curt Jablin, a P.E. teacher in Paradise Valley Unified School District and the 2002 Southwest Physical Education Teacher of the Year.

Many Arizona school districts require high school students to take two semesters of physical education.

Questions arise

Sam Richardson, who teaches online phys-ed for Primavera, gets lots of curious questions about the course, and admits that at first even he was confused about how it would work.

"People will laugh and say, 'What is the deal with that?' " Richardson said. "Their idea is I set up a Web cam and show how to do pushups. It really isn't about that at all."

The six-week class at Primavera shows how the courses rely on a mix of honors system, computer tracking and events.

Students first get a fitness assessment and then choose their fitness activities, with walking, dancing and biking being popular choices. They must wear a heart-rate monitor during the activities and download the results by computer to their teacher twice a week. The course requires students to be active for about an hour a day, five days a week.

Students also must attend at least four school-organized events that have ranged from fishing, indoor rock climbing and bowling to an Arizona Diamondbacks game and a theater production of The Lion King.

Online textbook

The textbook is online, and the quizzes are similar to a regular gym class.

State Schools Chief Tom Horne said he sees benefits to online courses.

"The important thing is the kids get physical activity, and it's always important some of their physical activity should be in a social setting," he said.

That said, the required activities should be "aerobically challenging," he said, "not going to the Diamondbacks game or The Lion King."

High school junior Zachary Heyne, 16, recently took a six-week online course through Primavera. About 160 students have taken the course since it began a year ago.

"My favorite activity was when we got to go fishing and then rock climbing and bowling," said the Glendale teen. "We went to the zoo, my family and I, and they counted that as an event for me."

Heyne said he wore his heart-rate monitor when he mowed the lawn, ran a few times and brought in groceries. His mother, Karen, said her son also worked out on an elliptical machine and treadmill.

Mother and son loved the program.

"Instead of running around playing dodge ball, I was getting to bowl and fish, and do indoor rock climbing, which I felt was more fun," Zachary said.

Karen liked the school-sponsored events, such as the fishing trip to Lake Pleasant, because families could tag along."We were all making jokes: 'We're going to P.E. class with Zachary,' " she said.

Lifelong activities

While some students may not take the online course seriously, it's no different from a regular gym class where some students refuse to participate, she said.

Online activities may not sound as rigorous as the old-fashioned standbys of the 50-yard dash, but teachers say the new online courses fit with the philosophy being taught in today's phys-ed classes. The new philosophy downplays competitive team sports and emphasizes fitness activities that students can do the rest of their lives.

Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa, who has pushed for more fitness in the schools, calls online phys-ed an interesting concept.

Solution to a problem

Some schools have cut back on fitness in recent years, he said, so online courses would be one solution.

"How it works is actually the key question," he said. "If kids can somehow 'game' the system and figure out how to get around it without doing anything, that's not going to fly."

Primavera school officials say they monitor students through the twice-weekly downloads of their heart-rate monitors. The teacher admits a sneaky student could convince a friend to take their heart monitor and work out.

"We haven't had any trouble with that so far," said Richardson, the teacher. "No one has attempted to put it on a kitty cat."

Mesa Public Schools require students to get the signature of a bowling alley official each time they bowl, and their final exam is supervised.

The National Association for Sport and Physical Education based in Reston, Va., takes no position on online courses, said Dolly Lambdin, the group's past president.

Lambdin sees pros and cons.

Online phys-ed is great for students who live in rural areas or have packed schedules and find it hard to fit in all their academic requirements. But certain activities such as gymnastics are inappropriate for online because of the supervision needed, she said.

Hope High School Online, a Phoenix-based charter school, offers online fitness courses that allow student athletes to count their practice time toward their physical education credit.

The school's marketing director, Marmy Kodras, said many of the larger school districts won't accept the online P.E. credits, preferring the student take the course at a district high school.

But Richardson, the Primavera teacher, said he's now a believer in online P.E.

"It's really about students choosing a richer, more healthy lifestyle and keeping them away from the TV," he said.

Anne Ryman, The Arizona Republic
October 28, 2005
Reach the reporter at anne.ryman@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8072.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1028onlinephysed.html


Mayo Clinic researchers find math learning disorder is common

In a recently published study, Mayo Clinic researchers determined Math Learning Disorder (LD) is common among school-age children. Results show that boys are more likely to have Math LD than girls. The research also indicates that although a child can have a Math LD and a reading LD, a substantial percentage of children have Math LD alone. In fact, the cumulative incidence of Math LD through age 19 ranges from 6% to as high as 14%, depending on the Math LD definition. LD is used to describe the seemingly unexplained difficulty a person of at least average intelligence has in acquiring basic academic skills -- skills that are essential for success at school, work and for coping with life in general. The results appear in the September-October issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics.

"Our research on the incidence of Math LD indicates that Math LD is common, affecting many children at some time during their school years," says William Barbaresi, M.D., a Mayo Clinic developmental and behavioral pediatrician and an author of the study. "Our results support the notion that Math LD is an important problem that deserves attention from both researchers and educators."

Despite the recognized importance of mathematics, the majority of learning disability research has focused on reading. The prevalence of Math LD has been estimated at anywhere from one percent to six percent of school-age children. Research on Math LD has been hampered by differing definitions of Math LD and poorly defined criteria for identifying it. Most studies have looked at the prevalence of Math LD, ignoring changes in the group of students being studied, and making it difficult to determine the precise number of children affected by Math LD.

In the current study, Mayo Clinic researchers used different definitions of Math LD, analyzed school records of boys and girls enrolled in public and private schools in Rochester, Minn., and examined information from the students’ medical records. They also looked at the extent to which Math LD occurs as an isolated learning disorder versus the extent to which it occurs simultaneously with Reading LD. This study is the first to measure the incidence -- the occurrence of new cases -- of Math LD by applying consistent criteria to a specific population over a long time. By considering the coexistence of Math LD and Reading LD across the students’ entire educational experience (i.e., from grades K-12), the research presents a more comprehensive description of this association.

Knowing that children are as likely to have Math LD as have Reading LD makes it critical for school staff to be aware that, regardless of how LD is defined, a significant number of children with Math LD do not exhibit associated reading problems. Given the educational focus on reading achievement, strategies that focus exclusively on identifying children with poor reading achievement will fail to identify and provide educational services for many children with Math LD.

http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/statistiken/bericht-50901.htm


The Age of Autism: The Amish Elephant

A specter is haunting the medical and journalism establishments of the United States: Where are the unvaccinated people with autism?

That is just about the only way to explain what now appears to be a collective resistance to considering that question. And like all unanswered questions, this raises another one: Why?

What is the problem with quickly and firmly establishing that the autism rate is about the same everywhere and for everybody in the United States, vaccinated or unvaccinated? Wouldn't that stop all the scientifically illiterate chatter by parents who believe vaccinations made their children autistic? Wouldn't it put to rest concerns that -- despite the removal of a mercury-containing preservative in most U.S. vaccines -- hundreds of millions of children in the developing world are possibly at risk if that preservative is in fact linked to autism?

Calling this issue The Amish Elephant reflects reporting earlier this year in Age of Autism that the largely unvaccinated Amish may have a relatively low rate of autism. That apparent dissimilarity is, in effect, a proverbial elephant in the living room -- studiously ignored by people who don't want to deal with it and don't believe they will have to.

Here are a few cases in point.

Earlier this month the National Consumers League conference in Washington held a session on communicating issues around vaccine safety. I was on the panel and talked about the Amish and autism. In the Q&A session that followed, the first question was for me.

"Is this a proper role for a journalist, or is this just a straw dog set up there with a preliminary answer? It not only showed up where you wrote it. It was all over the place. You did very, very well for UPI (at which point I said, 'Thank you -- please tell my bosses that!') but the question is, did you do very, very well for America?

"Is it appropriate for a journalist -- you weren't reporting, you were investigating. And I just wonder if you think it's an appropriate role for you to play."

My answer: "There's different roles for the press. That's certainly a reasonable question. That is investigative reporting. This idea is something that's already been discarded -- that there's any reason why you would want to look in an unvaccinated population.

"One of my favorite comments about journalism is that it's the wild card of American democracy. The First Amendment says we can do (in the sense of reporting about) whatever we want. So one of our privileges is to get an idea in our head and go look at it."

My questioner was not finished. "I wasn't questioning whether you have a First Amendment right to do it. I think this is more of a question of the ethics, of what value we are bringing to the debate."

My response: "That's probably not a good one for me to answer. Obviously I thought it was ethical."

At that point a fellow panelist, Dr. Louis Cooper, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a staunch vaccine defender, spoke up. "I would jump in and say I thought it was ethical and I think it was useful," said Cooper, a courtly and unfailingly courteous Manhattan pediatrician.

"As you've learned, it was annoying to many people. I wasn't annoyed by it because I thought you kept the process and the debate and the discussion going forward. And we have to do that for one another."

That did not end the discussion. A few minutes later a public-health professor from -- where else? Harvard -- did her own version of Jeopardy!, offering the correct "answer" in the form of a question.

"This question is for Dan. Did you mention the outbreak of polio that happened in the Amish community in the Netherlands that caused widespread problems there, and also the fact that there'd been some context with respect to history in our country in trying to reach out to the Amish to actually encourage them to try to benefit from some of the vaccine technology to the extent that we could?

"So there's been a long history in this country of the CDC trying to reach out to them to the extent that they could. Also with respect to polio, I think what's really amazing is it's such a great story, this is such an exciting time, in the sense that we are very close to global eradication. What that means is we've gone from 1988 when we had 350,000 estimated paralytic polio cases in the world every year to roughly a thousand. It's very exciting that in fact we don't have the terror or the hysteria and all of the fear that surrounded disease.

"I just want to remind everyone that one thing that's very important in the context of reporting these stories is making sure that people do remember and also realize with infectious disease is these things can come back, and until they are eradicated they can come back and devastate us just as much as they did before, except now there are a lot more people.

"There's some related news that people might find interesting. A headline in the Washington Post today, 'Polio outbreak occurs among Amish families.' So I thought people might be interested in that."

At that point the moderator, Dr. Roger Bernier of the Centers for Disease Control, said time was getting short -- why was I not surprised? -- and asked for the next "question."
One thing I've noticed is the more that people want to lecture instead of learn, the more they speak in breathless run-on sentences that are hard to stop, slow down or even diagram. They leave one with the unspoken idea that dialogue -- opening the door to new information -- is somehow dangerous.

These exchanges reminded me of the response I got from Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC director, when I asked her this summer, verbatim: "Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated U.S. population, and if not, why not?"
Her answer, verbatim:

--
In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination as you probably know, and I think this year we have record immunization levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated group) that on a population basis would be representative to look at incidence in that population compared to the other population would be something that could be done.

But as we're learning, just trying to look at autism in a community the size of Atlanta, it's very, very difficult to get an effective numerator and denominator to get a reliable diagnosis.

I think those kind of studies could be done and should be done. You'd have to adjust for the strong genetic component that also distinguishes, for example, people in Amish communities who may elect not to be immunized (and) also have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States. So drawing some conclusions from them would be very difficult.

I think with reference to the timing of all of this, good science does take time, and it's part of one of the messages I feel like I've learned from the feedback that we've gotten from parents groups this summer (in) struggling with developing a more robust and a faster research agenda, is let's speed this up. Let's look for the early studies that could give us at least some hypotheses to test and evaluate and get information flowing through the research pipeline as quickly as we can.

So we are committed to doing that, and as I mentioned, in terms of just measuring the frequency of autism in the population some pretty big steps have been taken. We're careful not to jump ahead of our data, but we think we will be able to provide more accurate information in the next year or so than we've been able to do up to this point. And I know that is our responsibility.

We've also benefited from some increased investments in these areas that have allowed us to do this, and so we thank Congress and we thank the administration for supporting those investments, not just at CDC but also at NIH and FDA.
--

The latest response to my pesky persistence comes not from academia or government but from my own profession. Last week the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review published an article whose main thrust -- with which I concur -- was that a vigorous debate over a possible link between vaccines and autism was being thwarted by the self-induced timidity of the press.

Some reporters told the author, Daniel Schulman, that they have basically given up on the story because the criticism -- some of it from their own editors -- was so fierce, and the story was so complicated.

Schulman described Age of Autism's efforts to come at the issue "sideways," looking for possible clues to the cause of the disorder in the natural history of autism. And he mentioned our reporting on the Amish:

"Privately, two reporters told me that, while intriguing, Olmsted's reporting on the Amish is misguided, since it may simply reflect genetic differences among an isolated gene pool. ... Both reporters believed that Olmsted has made up his mind on the question and is reporting the facts that support his conclusions."

Ouch. Being slammed by one's peers is never enjoyable, although reporters need to have thick skins and realize they dish this kind of thing out every day. (And those anonymous sources really are annoying, especially when I am happy to be quoted by name about everything.)

What's interesting about the reporters' "private" remarks is the degree of presumed expertise they suggest -- that looking at the Amish is misguided "since it may simply reflect genetic differences among an isolated gene pool." Really? Where did these guys get their doctorate in genetics, Harvard?

This assertion -- that the Amish gene pool could explain everything, based on no data that I'm aware of -- is the kind of self-interested speculation masquerading as expertise that has beset the autism-vaccines discussion for far too long. The term I learned for it long ago is "convenient reasoning," and it does not always have to be conscious.

The Amish have all kinds of standard genetic mental and developmental disorders -- from bipolar to retardation -- and a lot more genetic issues to boot from this supposedly protective "isolated gene pool." The doctors who actually know something about the Amish have never suggested to me that genes have anything to do with a low rate of autism. They seem perplexed.
In upcoming columns, we'll put that question to the right people -- geneticists -- and tell you what we find. It's called reporting.
--
This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism welcomes reader response.
E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com

DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor
United Press International, Inc.
http://www.upi.com/ConsumerHealthDaily/view.php?StoryID=20051024-095736-4490r


Researchers May Have Discovered Dyslexia Gene

Researchers have identified a variation in a gene that appears to account for about 17 percent of cases of the reading disability dyslexia.

Experts hailed the finding as a potential milestone in the understanding of the widespread disorder.

"This is highly significant," said Jeffrey W. Gilger, associate dean for discovery and faculty development at Purdue University. "It is the first really good study that combines molecular genetics with brain imaging research, as well as actually testing whether these genes they think they found are really active in the brain."

Frank Wood, professor of neurology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, added: "This study is the first one to make a connection between a gene that is known to be associated with dyslexia and an anomaly in brain development. The authors have persuasive evidence that this particular gene variant causes altered migration of neurons and therefore alters the structure of the brain. That's a very important step in the evolution of our understanding of the neurogenetics of dyslexia and it will lead to further steps."

Neither Gilger nor Wood were involved in the research, which appears in next week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings were to be released Friday to coincide with a presentation at the meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in Salt Lake City.

The study's senior author, Dr. Jeffrey Gruen, an associate professor of pediatrics at Yale University's Child Health Research Center, said genetic tests for the variant could start right away that might steer people to the appropriate educational treatments.

Other experts disagreed.

"The tendency is to want to jump on this, but tests aren't complex enough to find this blip, and they're also expensive," Gilger said.

"We don't yet know what factors determine whether people with this genetic variation do or don't end up with dyslexia," Wood added. "A host of environmental and genetic influences likely influences or determines whether somebody with this particular genetic variation ends up being dyslexic or not. And until the nature of some of those other influences is fully specified, we won't know what it means to say to somebody that their 5-year-old child has this particular genetic endowment."

In the future, however, this information may be useful in identifying people with this variant and administer some form of gene therapy, perhaps by giving pills or vitamins to compensate for the deficiency, Gilger said.

Dyslexia is one of the most common neurobehavioral disorders, affecting up to 17 percent of the population. Sufferers have trouble processing language-based information, making it difficult to learn to read, write and spell. Early educational interventions can help compensate for some of these difficulties.

Dyslexia has a strong genetic component, probably involving several genes, although not dozens, Gruen explained.

Dyslexia is also accompanied by alterations in the structure and functioning of the brain.
Researchers had already identified a region on chromosome 6 that might house some of these errant genes. The region contains about 19 genes, most of which are expressed in the brain.

Gruen and his colleagues genotyped members of 153 families and found a deletion in the DCDC2 gene on chromosome 6 that is the likely dyslexia culprit.

When the researchers inhibited production of the gene in rat embryos, they found that doing so had influenced the development of neurons, or brain cells, causing them to migrate shorter distances.

"That fits perfectly with physiologically what we see," Gruen said. "We're seeing a disruption of the normal reading circuits, and what makes up these reading circuits are going to be neurons," Gruen said.

Since then, the researchers have found the deletion in children, as have two other research groups, one in Finland and one in Germany.

Functional MRIs conducted in humans revealed that the gene was expressed in reading centers of the brain. "Dyslexics use alternate circuits and alternate pathways, the thought being that the circuits for normal reading are disrupted and alternative pathways are less efficient," Gruen said.

Whether or not these findings translate into concrete gains for people with dyslexia, the research sends "a very important message to educators, parents and children, which is that you're not dumb. This isn't your fault. You're not a bad parent," Gruen said. "This is a transmitted difference in our gene that makes one person learn differently than another. That's all it is."

More information
Learn more about dyslexia from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Amanda Gardner, HealthDay Reporter
HealthDay News
October. 28, 2005
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2005/10/28/hscout528796.html


Texting teenagers are proving 'more literate than ever before'

FEARS that text messaging may have ruined the ability of teenagers to write properly have been shown to be unfounded after a two-year study revealed that youngsters are more literate than ever before.

The most comprehensive comparison made of exam papers of the past 25 years has discovered that the writing ability of 16-year-olds has never been higher.

The quality of writing has also improved, said Alf Massey, head of evaluation and validation at Cambridge Assessment, the department of Cambridge University that carried out the study.

But phrases that may not have been acceptable to examiners in 1980 have crept into regular use, even by pupils awarded A* to C grades.

Teenagers are ten times more likely to use non-standard English in written exams than in 1980, using colloquial words, informal phrases and text-messaging shorthand — such as m8 for ‘mate’, 2 instead of ‘too’ and u for ‘you’.

Despite this, the two-year study found that today’s teenagers are using far more complex sentence structures, a wider vocabulary and a more accurate use of capital letters, punctuation and spelling.

The study used samples from thousands of English language examinations sat by 16-year-olds in 1980, 1993, 1994 and 2004. Mr Massey compared students’ general written ability to express themselves accurately and clearly through a range of grammatical structures.

Vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure and grammatical adequacy were then looked at.

He said: “The quality of many features of writing by school leavers has improved over the past decade.”

Looking at the 2004 papers where improvements were substantial, he said that pupils who achieved grade C in GCSEs last year had better vocabulary than those who scored a grade B in 1980. “In this example, any tendency for vocabulary to become less impressive has been reversed with a vengeance,” said Mr Massey. “The 2004 candidates either had a better vocabulary than those a decade ago or were more likely to make a conscious effort to display their best efforts in the examination.”

Adam Fresco, The Times
October 31, 2005
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,591-1850922,00.html


Signs of literacy
Classes in three languages help deaf children learn to read

LAWRENCE -- Learning English is hard. That much Rosario Mendoza knew. The Nashua resident is still learning the language, and speaks mainly Spanish. An immigrant from Colima, Mexico, the 27-year-old mother just hoped her son, Jose Munguia, would pick up the language faster than she. After all, Mendoza had heard stories about the children of Spanish-speaking parents picking up English as fast as they learned to walk.

But when doctors told Mendoza her son was nearly deaf, she didn't know what to do. Not only would her son struggle with learning the language of their adopted home, but picking up basic literacy skills seemed impossible, she thought.

That was before she found out about a program at Northern Essex Community College that teaches Spanish-speaking parents how to read to their deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

At the monthly ''Shared Reading" sessions, classes are conducted in three languages -- Spanish, English and sign language.

The program, a collaboration between the local college and Gallaudet University, the world's premier university for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, gives parents tips on how they can introduce literacy to their deaf children using children's books. Each month, the school hosts classes that help parents with sign language, show them ways to improve students' reading skills, and provide a chance for deaf children and deaf adults to interact with one another.

''For me it's very important because it's the only place I can come to learn [sign language] for my son," Mendoza said in Spanish after one of the sessions.

Since it began two years ago, the free program has reached more than 20 families in the Greater Lawrence area, according to Kathy Vesey, director of the Gallaudet Regional Center in Haverhill and Northern Essex. The goal is simple: get deaf and hard-of-hearing children interested in reading at an early age so they continue later with their education.

When the program first began, only the parents and their children came to the ''Shared Reading" sessions, said Vesey. But as word spread, extended family members such as uncles, aunts, and cousins began showing up, wanting to see how they could help.

''People involved in the child's life wanted to be there, it seemed," Vesey said.

Gallaudet University offers similar workshops across the country, said Vesey. But, she said, the Northern Essex program is unique because a number of the participating families speak only Spanish.

''So really these are trilingual sessions," Vesey said. ''We have interpreters in Spanish, English, and sign language."

Mendoza said ''Shared Reading" has been helpful for her and her son. They have been attending sessions since the program's inception. ''He still is in his first year of learning how to read, but he has much to learn," said Mendoza with a slight grin. Her son is now 8 years old and attends a specialized school in Manchester, N.H., she said.

During a recent session, around 20 parents gathered to read the children's book ''Five Little Pumpkins" by Dan Yaccarino. Parents read through the story with a bilingual translation on a video projection screen while teacher Frances Conlin told the story in sign language. Two interpreters, one in Spanish and another in English, spoke through hearing devices so that all parents could understand the story. To encourage parents to convey the introduction of a friendly ghost into the story, Conlin told them to make facial expressions when reading the story to their children. Mendoza sat attentively, asking questions in Spanish and sometimes in sign language.

While Mendoza and the other parents sat in the workshop, their children were in another room playing. Placing deaf children and hearing siblings in the same room teaches both how to interact with each other, Vesey said.

After the workshop ended, parents were reunited with their children and went over the new reading techniques using the new book. When Mendoza showed her son ''Five Little Pumpkins," he flipped through the pages and pointed at the pictures as if asking questions.

''That's what this is about," Vesey said. In addition to the monthly workshops, Vesey said, Gallaudet also works with Lawrence public schools to help families of deaf children.

Organizers say participation from families has been consistent, though some have dropped out because parents' schedules have changed or the family has moved from the Lawrence area. New families have also shown up, giving the program new life.

Bob and Cathy Essex attended their first class this month so they could help their two young daughters learn to read. Everyone in the family is deaf.

During the session, Bob Essex joyfully followed the workshop along with his wife. He even announced to the other parents that he and his wife were expecting another baby.
''We think the baby's deaf," Essex said in sign language. He was smiling.

Russell Contreras, Globe Staff
The New York Times Company
October 30, 2005
Russell Contreras can be reached at rcontreras@globe.com http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/10/30/signs_of_literacy/


Arundel School Closes Achievement Gap
At North Glen, Black Students Outperform Whites in Many Areas

Todd Franklin lives in Morris Hills, a sturdy, middle-class, mostly black section of Glen Burnie, in a house around the corner from the one where he grew up. He's married to a woman from across the street. He lives there because the streets are safe, the neighbors are trustworthy and the local school is getting better. A lot better.

His son Joshua is part of the reason. At North Glen Elementary School in the spring, all but one of the 16 black students in the third grade, including Joshua Franklin, scored well enough on the statewide Maryland School Assessment test to be rated proficient. They scored higher than almost every other group of black third-graders in Maryland.

Over the past three years, this Anne Arundel school has achieved a goal that eludes most of the nation's public schools. It has closed the achievement gap between black and white students.

Among black students at North Glen, third-grade proficiency on the statewide test rose from 32 percent in 2003 to 94 percent this year, placing the campus among the top schools in Maryland for black students' performance. Across the third and fourth grades, a grand total of three black students, out of 37 tested, failed to attain proficiency. Blacks now outperform whites on several measures at the racially diverse campus, and white students perform very well.

"My children? Supreme Court judges," Franklin said, beaming at Joshua's younger brother, Joel, as he painted a construction-paper turtle in a classroom on a recent evening, part of a family reading night. "The sky's the limit."

The rise of North Glen Elementary, a school where two-fifths of students are from families poor enough to qualify for free meals, illustrates how a public school can go a very long way in a very short time with the help of a charismatic principal, an enthusiastic staff and supportive parents.

Its academic dossier -- a mixed-race, working-class, high-poverty school with test scores to rival schools in affluent suburbs -- embodies the goal of No Child Left Behind, the federal mandate created as a means to raise academic achievement across all racial and socioeconomic groups, and, most symbolically, to close the historic achievement gap between blacks and whites.

The school's ascendance began three years ago. North Glen Elementary got a new county superintendent, Eric J. Smith; a new statewide test, the Maryland School Assessment; five new teachers; and a new principal, Maurine Larkin, a giddy educator who occasionally allowed herself to be wheeled around the campus on a dolly.

The principal, who was promoted to a bigger school this fall, prepared North Glen students for the annual round of statewide testing, known by the acronym MSA, with a stuffed Chihuahua called "Ms. A," who sometimes spoke to students as Larkin's alter ego during morning announcements.

"I'm not saying we had the master plan at the beginning. The plan kept evolving," said Larkin, whose replacement at North Glen, Julie Little McVearry, is similarly well-regarded.

Throughout the 1990s and into this decade, North Glen was a modestly successful school, with test scores one might expect from a campus with substantial poverty. On statewide tests, whites usually outscored blacks.

In 2003, the first year of the MSA, North Glen ranked 575th among 839 Maryland elementary schools in third-grade reading. About one-third of black students -- and two-thirds of whites -- rated proficient.

The new principal launched a schoolwide campaign to raise the number of students enrolled for federally subsidized meals, offering popsicles to those who turned in paperwork. That kept the students fed and, perhaps more important, it triggered more funding from the federal government.

Larkin was able to double the number of staff members assigned to provide extra help to low-scoring students. She launched before- and after-school programs for low performers.

She hired teachers carefully, building an energetic young staff willing to work with the new superintendent and his countywide curriculum changes, which didn't sit well in some schools. She recalled "literally praying after every interview, hoping I'd hired the right person."

Larkin sensed that teachers and students were jittery about the all-important statewide exam, which, together with the broader federal mandates, had placed considerable stress on schools.

"If you get them all stressed out, they're not going to do well on tests," she said. "They're children."

Larkin sat down with every fourth- and fifth-grade student to go over their scores from the previous year. Then, as the spring testing date approached, Larkin trotted out "Ayap," another stuffed dog, this one named for the federal goal of adequate yearly progress.

"I would walk around with him, and Ayap would kiss people -- Ayap wants you to do just a little bit better than last year ," Larkin said, lapsing into stuffed-dog-speak.

Students who take the statewide exam are scored at one of three levels: advanced, signifying "outstanding accomplishment"; proficient, corresponding to "realistic and rigorous" achievement; or basic, indicating more work is needed. Students who score in the two higher levels are considered proficient, essentially the make-or-break standard under No Child Left Behind.

In 2003, eight of 25 black students in North Glen's third grade rated proficient in reading. The next year, 11 of 18 showed proficiency; and this year, 15 of 16.

Today, North Glen's teachers, most of them hired by Larkin, enjoy the sort of bond that comes from singing karaoke, kidnapping the principal's stuffed dog and plotting academic strategy together in a school with just 250 students.

The parents typify the changing face of this town, once strictly a Baltimore suburb, now a part of the Baltimore-Washington-Annapolis sprawl.

Glen Burnie is home to a mix of state government and utility workers, mid-level professionals and the self-employed, longtime residents and new arrivals, living in tiny ranch homes and townhouses and apartments in communities called Cromwell Fountain and Pleasantville.

Brian McElroy, working his BlackBerry at the family night, is a member of Glen Burnie's burgeoning black professional class. The corporate consultant moved his family from Howard County four years ago for "a two-car-garage townhome, convenient to the airport, convenient to all the major highways."

A revamped mall on Route 2, anchored by a new Target store, attests that Glen Burnie is changing. "It has to," McElroy said.

Daughter Ameena is in the second grade at North Glen. Son Amir is in kindergarten. McElroy is already thinking about college.

He and his wife chose North Glen after reviewing its scores. "The school's made a really big turnaround," he said.

Daniel de Vise, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post Company
October 31, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103001126.html


Google restarts online books plan

Google is resuming its controversial project to digitise millions of books and make them searchable on the net.

The search giant is pressing ahead with its plans despite growing legal pressure from publishers and authors.

They object to what they say are violations of copyright.

But in an apparent attempt to reassure critics, the search giant said on its blog that it would focus on books that were out of print or in the public domain.

2015 archive

Google is pumping $200m (£110m) into creating a digital archive of millions of books from four top US libraries - the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard universities, and of the New York Public Library - by 2015.

It is also digitising out-of-copyright books from the UK's Oxford University.

But Google has been criticised for not getting explicit permission from the copyright holders before scanning the texts.

The controversy led Google to put its library project on hold in August. The pause is designed to allow publishers to tell Google which books should not be included in the scanning programme.

But the delay did little to assuage concerns. In mid-October, the Association of American Publishers, which includes firms such as Penguin, filed a suit in New York claiming Google is breaching copyright.

In a separate action, the Authors Guild has filed a class-action suit against Google for copyright infringement.

Despite the pending legal action, Google is pressing ahead with its plans. On its blog, the company said it was resuming the scanning of texts, but also offered some words of reassurance.

"As always, the focus of our library effort is on scanning books that are unique to libraries including many public domain books, orphaned works and out-of-print titles," said the blog.

"We're starting with library stacks that mostly contain older and out-of-circulation books, but also some newer books.

"These older books are the ones most inaccessible to users, and make up the vast majority of books - a conservative estimate would be 80%."

"Our digital card catalog will let people discover these books through Google search, see their bibliographic information, view short snippets related to their queries (never the full text), and offer them links to places where they can buy the book or find it in a local library."

However, Google still plans to scan newer books that are both in print and under copyright protection at a later date.

Competition

A rival body set up by a group of digital archivists, backed by technology giants Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as libraries and academia, is also pursuing its own digital library project.

The Open Content Alliance (OCA), set up by the Internet Archive, aims to put 150,000 works online.

But it is avoiding some of the problems facing Google by initially focusing on works that are in the public domain.

Against this background, Google has hired an experienced lawyer as its vice president of global communications and public affairs.

Elliot Schrage, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, is known as an international policy activist.

"Elliot Schrage's experience and demonstrated commitment to transparency and global corporate citizenship will be an asset to Google as we continue to grow and explore new opportunities around the world," said Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt in a statement.
BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4395656.stm


Mystery of "Blindsight" Lets Some Blind People "See,"
Study Shows

An innovative research technique is providing insight into why some blind people are able to sense and describe objects they cannot see.

The phenomenon of "blindsight" occurs in some people who suffer injuries to the primary visual cortex, the region of the brain considered essential for sight.

Blindsight allows people to use visual information they get through their eyes even though they have no consciousness of the visual experience, said Christopher Mole, a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

"But that of course is quite hard to show in the lab," he said.

A team of psychologists at Rice University in Houston, Texas, may have found a way to directly study blindsight in the lab.

They are using electromagnetic stimulation on the brains of people who can see to render them partially and temporarily blind.

"The way it works is an electric current inducts into the brain via a magnetic pulse, and that causes a disruption of underlying neurons in the brain," said Tony Ro, a member of the Rice team.

"What this technique allows us to do essentially is in a safe and noninvasive way shut down a portion of the brain temporarily," he added.

Ro and colleagues report their technique and findings in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mole said the Rice team reports "compelling proof" for blindsight.

Unconscious Pathway

Blindsight is most prevalent among people who suffer damage to the primary visual cortex, such as in some stroke victims, Mole explained.

However this is never "clean" or specific damage—other parts of the brain are also impaired. Studies with these patients are therefore difficult, he said.

To study blindsight directly, researchers often purposefully and permanently disrupt the primary visual cortex in monkeys and other mammals, a method that would be unethical to use on humans, Mole said.

"What [Ro's team] has done is cleverly manage to interfere with the brain in a totally temporary way … It doesn't have any long-term lasting effects at all," he said.

The technique devised by the Rice researchers induced blindness for a fraction of a second in people who ordinarily have good vision.

During the state of temporary blindness, an object was flashed on a screen in front of the test subjects' eyes.

In one experiment the object was either a vertical or horizontal bar, and the subjects were asked to guess the bar's orientation. In the second experiment the researchers flashed a colored disc, and subjects were asked to guess the color.

In both experiments the blinded volunteers correctly guessed the characteristics of the objects at much higher levels than chance alone.

This fits the definition of blindsight and raises the question of how it is possible.

"What we believe is happening is people are able to discriminate orientation and color—as our experiments showed—by processing routes into the brain that aren't consciously accessible," Ro said.

"We believe there are pathways that go from the eyes into the brain that bypass the normal routes tied to conscious processing of information."

Ro added that the study supports the theory that these pathways go to a visual center in the brain that is more sophisticated than the visual centers common to all mammals. This suggests the pathways may be unique to higher-order species.

The test results also show that volunteers were more accurate when they were more confident in their guesses.

"It's unclear what that reflects, but what we think it reflects is that this unconscious processing system can contribute to feelings of certainty," Ro said.

In follow-up experiments the team will test why people feel varying levels of confidence in their guesses. Perhaps the unconscious processing routes are stronger in some people than others, Ro said.

John Roach
National Geographic News
November 1, 2005
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1101_051101_blindsight.html


Students to Evaluate Teachers

Forty-eight schools will allow students and their parents to help evaluate teachers under a pilot program starting next week, despite strong opposition from unionized teachers.

The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development said Friday that it will launch the new teacher evaluation system on Nov. 8 although it failed to reach an agreement with teachers.

Under the plan, 48 elementary, middle and high schools nationwide will operate the new system until next August on a trial basis.

Education Minister Kim Jin-pyo said that unionized teachers accepted the basic principles of the new system, which is designed to raise the competitiveness of teachers and schools.

The Korea Teachers’ and Workers’ Union (KTU) and the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association (KFTA) refused to agree on detailed issues, including evaluation methods, the operation of an evaluation committee, and the application of the evaluation results.

``But I don’t think the unionized teachers will wage a strong protest against our plan for the implementation, because they agreed on major issues,’’ Kim said.

Under the system, teachers are supposed to evaluate other teachers’ performances based on educational curriculum, class preparation and contents.

Students will complete a survey to measure their satisfaction with their teachers, while their parents will take part in the evaluation of their children’s satisfaction level at schools.

However, students’ parents will not evaluate an individual teacher and the methods and the contents in the survey will be determined by an evaluation committee to be established at schools.

School principals and vice-principals will be also be assessed on their management of schools.

However, the ministry said that the evaluation results will not be used for promotion and personnel management.

Instead, the assessment results will be sent to individual teachers to be used to improve self-development and competitiveness.

To reflect the opinions of the unionized teachers and parents, the ministry will allow schools to decide on other controversial issues such as the operation of evaluation committees and notification of the assessment results under the two policies.

However, Han Jae-gap, spokesperson of the KFTU, said that the ministry did not keep its promise to implement the system based on the consensus of unionized teachers.

``We’re worried that the ministry’s plan to push ahead with the new system in such a hasty manner will trigger conflict at schools,’’ Han said.

The KTU demanded that the current performance assessment system used for promotion usually made by schools’ principals be abolished.

The KTU also called on the ministry to delay the implementation of the system until next February.

The ministry plans to expand the system to more schools next year after the trial period.

Chung Ah-young, Staff Reporter
The Korea Times
chungay@koreatimes.co.kr
November 4, 2005
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200511/kt2005110417052111950.htm


Autism nothing more than an extreme form of male brain development

A recent research conducted on the brain pattern of autistic individuals has revealed that it is nothing more than an exaggeration of the normal male brain. The study has been conducted by researchers at the Cambridge Autism Research Centre who believe that a deep insight into the above mentioned theory would help in better understanding of the disease process.

Boys' brains grow more quickly than girls'. In the brains of people with autism, this growth appears to occur to an even more extreme degree. The findings are consistent with the fact that males generally have greater early growth of certain brain regions, and less hemispheric connectivity than females. There are also specific differences seen in certain areas of the brain.

Yet another finding that substantiates that autism is an exaggeration of the typical male brain development is the abnormally large amygdala, in toddlers with autism, which plays a key role in emotional responses.

The research has also pointed out that exposure of the fetus to male sex hormones such as testosterone during pregnancy can significantly affect these brain development patterns. Male fetuses produce these hormones from their testes, and female fetuses from their adrenal glands.
The possibility of female children being affected with the disease can still not be ruled out because they too could be exposed to higher than normal level of hormones.

Further research in the same direction would help understand if autism is a disease by itself or a manifestation of children who simply develop in a different way.

Medindia on autism:
Autism is a developmental disorder that typically develops during the first three years of life. These are very special children who have difficulty in communication and social interaction. They often come across as those who remain engrossed with restricted and repetitive behavior patterns.

MedIndia.com
http://www.medindia.net/news/view_news_main.asp?x=5541


Alberta planning law to allow fetus to sue mom

EDMONTON — Groundbreaking legislation that would allow a child to sue its mother for injuries suffered in the womb is providing comfort to a northern Alberta family but raising worries for insurance providers and the pro-choice lobby.

Alberta Justice Minister Ron Stevens plans to introduce a bill later this month that would create an exception to current Canadian law. But he cautions the Alberta law will be narrowly restricted to cover children who were hurt in motor vehicle accidents, and the liability will be limited to the amount of the mother's insurance policy.

The move stems from the case of Brooklynn Rewega, who was born with brain damage, blindness and cerebral palsy after her pregnant mother lost control of her car and crashed it.

"If that accident had occurred and any other party was driving or was responsible, there would be a remedy for that child for injuries arising out of the accident," Stevens said Thursday. "What we are doing in the legislation that we will be bringing forward is providing a potential remedy for that child in those circumstances."

It's great news for Lisa and Doug Rewega, who have been lobbying the government for two years on behalf of their daughter, who's now four.

"They're just absolutely thrilled," said the family's lawyer, Rosanna Saccomani.

"They suffer every day with raising a child they love very much, who brings a lot of joy in their life, but there are significant challenges they have to deal with and there's huge significant costs to raising a child with these kinds of disabilities."

Alberta's move was also applauded in New Brunswick, where a similar case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court ruled in 1999 that women should not be held liable for injuries to a fetus in most cases, but that provincial legislatures could make an exception for motor vehicle crashes because drivers are required to buy insurance precisely to cover such events.

Ryan Dobson of Moncton, N.B., was at the centre of that case. His mother, Cynthia, was pregnant 13 years ago when her car slid into a pickup truck. Ryan was born with cerebral palsy, is virtually unable to speak and has other medical problems.

After losing at the Supreme Court, Cynthia Dobson was left to pay out of pocket for costly therapies for her son.

"I really hope Brooklynn wins this one," said Dobson, who has been following the Rewega case closely. "It's her right. Why they didn't see that at the time of Ryan's case is beyond me."

Dobson said Ryan's lawyers are now looking what, if any, further avenues they can pursue for him. She hopes every province passes the kind of legislation Alberta proposes.

But Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada said the bill makes her uneasy.

"I'm just worried about the aspect of fetal personhood and how that law could somehow in some way or other be used by the anti-abortion movement to get a foothold on establishing some kind of future restrictions on abortion down the road," Arthur said from Vancouver.

Rebecca Cook, an expert in reproductive health law at the University of Toronto, said any recognition of fetal interests shouldn't be confused with a woman's right to end a pregnancy if she chooses.

"When we're thinking about the protection of prenatal life, we need to think about it in ways that are consistent with the woman's interests," Cook said. "So as long as protecting prenatal life is consistent with a woman's interest, I think it's an extremely important policy objective, and I don't think as a society that we think about it enough."

Jim Rivait, Alberta vice-president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, said the province's drivers will now face increased premiums.

"I don't have any doubt that Brooklyn and her parents deserve the support, that she gets the care throughout her life, but I would say it's a government responsibility," Rivait said.
He also worries that the law could invite all kinds of further challenges.

"It wouldn't be that many, but like many things, when you open the door, a lot of people will try and go through," Rivait said.

"We're seeing charter challenges on everything, and why should you be treated differently if you're a disabled child just because you happened to be in a car as opposed to having it happen at home or on the softball field or whatever?"

Alberta's law will be modelled after one in the United Kingdom, and Rivait said his industry will consult with its British counterpart to see what the effect has been there. He estimated that premiums in Alberta will likely rise by at least $2.

Canadian Press
Bell Globemedia Inc.
November 4, 2005
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051104/
alberta_wombinjury_rights_20051104/20051104?hub=Canada


Touch-screen terminals coming to all Minnesota polling places

ST. PAUL - Touch-screen voting equipment that will allow almost all disabled people to cast votes privately and independently will be ready for the 2006 elections.

Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer announced Thursday that her office has reached a contract with a Nebraska company to sell the terminals to counties for about $5,000 apiece, with a federal grant footing much of the bill.

Kiffmeyer said the $35 million grant will enable each polling place to have at least one such machine in place next fall.

Election Systems & Software of Omaha makes the terminals. Visually impaired voters can hear ballot choices through headphones or see them in enlarged type on a video screen. They can then make their choice by touching the screen, operating a keypad or, for the severely disabled, puffing on an air tube.

Ken Rodgers, president of the Minnesota chapter of the American Council of the Blind, said he hopes the equipment will encourage visually impaired residents to vote.

Kiffmeyer added that the new technology will reduce ballot errors in half of Minnesota's 4,108 precincts that have continued to use old-fashioned paper ballots counted by hand.

Associated Press
November 4, 2005
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/politics/13081572.htm


Normal noise often painful to autistic kids, study finds

Autistic and some gifted children are among the most severely affected by noise, a study in early education by Massey University has revealed.

What other children perceive as normal noise can be intense and painful to autistic children, eroding their ability to communicate and learn.

Stuart McLaren, senior lecturer in health science at the Wellington campus, says researchers will investigate strategies to help those affected.

The wide range of noises affecting autistic and gifted children include general classroom noise, school bells, machine noise from fans, vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers - and unexpected ones such as dogs barking and road works.

Along with young children in general, the study examined groups of children with special education needs, including Asperger syndrome, Down syndrome, ADHD and the hearing impaired, and while all were seriously affected by noise, the effects on autistic children were far more severe.

"We wish to highlight the serious nature of early childhood centre noise," says Mr McLaren.

"While their hearing may be normal, autistic children process auditory information differently.

"What others perceive as normal and tolerable can be extremely intense and painful to them.

"It causes them pain, distress and confusion ... and it erodes their ability to communicate and learn," he said.

Providing quiet spaces is one way to help autistic and gifted children, and researchers will investigate other strategies. "

Much of the present work is focused on these children being integrated into regular early childhood education environments.

"However, we must look more closely at the learning environment too," says Mr McLaren.

"Why is it acceptable to expect autistic children to negotiate their way around any such environment when we never expect children with physical disabilities to negotiate their way up a flight of steps?"

NZPA
November 2, 2005
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10353070