Archive | August, 2012

Paper: Cyberbullying may be overrated

6 Aug

Technology can be used for information gathering and to keep people connected. Some people use social media to torment others. Children can be devastated by thoughtless, mean, and unkind comments posted at social media sites. Some of the comments may be based upon rumor and may even be untrue. The effect on a particular child can be devastating. Because of the potential for harm, many parents worry about cyberbullying on social media sites.

Nirvi Shah is reporting in the Education Week article, Researchers: Cyberbullying Not as Widespread, Common as Believed:

While parents may spend more time worrying about their kids being terrorized by text, tweet, Facebook, or Formspring, new research suggests that cyberbullying “is a low-prevalence phenomenon, which has not increased over time and has not created many ‘new’ victims and bullies, that is, children and youth who are not also involved in some form of traditional bullying.”

The research, presented here this week at the American Psychological Association convention, involved 450,490 students in 1,349 American schools surveyed between 2007 and 2010 and another 9,000 Norwegian students at 41 schools. It was intended to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about cyberbullying.

The study, by longtime bullying researcher Dan Olweus of the University of Bergen, Norway, found that while, on average, 18 percent of American students said they had been verbally bullied; those who said they had been cyberbullied was about 4.5 percent. About 11 percent of Norwegian students said they had been verbally bullied, compared to about 3.4 percent who said they had been bullied in some electronic format. The study was published online in May in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology….

The research also shows “there has been no systematic increase in cyberbullying,” Olweus said, despite an increase in the number of youths with cell phones and on social networking sites. (Facebook is considering expanding access to younger people, which has concerned some educators.)

Of the American students who had been exposed to cyberbullying, 88 percent had been bullied in at least one other way.

“To be cyberbullied or to cyberbully other students seems to a large extent to be part of a general pattern of bullying where use of the electronic media is only one possible form, and, in
addition, a form with a quite low prevalence,” the study says…. “T

The study notes that “bullying implies a form of relationship with certain characteristics and the term should not be used as a blanket term for any form of negative or aggressive act.”

While electronic bullying can have the same effects of traditional bullying—depression, poor self-esteem, anxiety, thoughts of suicide, headaches, and effects on sleep—it is
difficult to tell whether or to what extent these problems are a result of electronic bullying since the majority of cyberbullied children and youth are also harassed in other ways.

(Some states have amended existing bullying laws or passed new ones just to address cyberbullying. And lawsuits over bullying online or other electronic methods are increasing in number.)

Olweus writes that because traditional bullying is far more common than cyberbullying and that the great majority of cyberbullied students are also bullied in more typical ways, “it is natural to recommend schools to direct most of their efforts to counteracting traditional bullying,” ideally using an evidence-based approach. His research has found that levels of electronic bullying decline along with traditional bullying in these schools. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2012/08/orlando_while_parents_may_spen.html

Citation:

Invited expert discussion paper

Cyberbullying: An overrated phenomenon?

Dan Olweus

RKBU Vest, Uni Research, Bergen, Norway

The paper argues that several claims about cyberbullying made in the media and elsewhere are greatly exaggerated and have little empirical scientific support. Contradicting these claims, it turns out that cyberbullying, when studied in proper context, is a low-prevalence phenomenon, which has not

increased over time and has not created many ‘‘new’’ victims and bullies, that is, children and youth who are not also involved in some form of traditional bullying. These conclusions are based on two quite large samples of students, one from the USA and one from Norway, both of which have time series data

for periods of four or five years. It is further argued that the issue of possible negative effects of cyberbullying has not received much serious research attention and a couple of strategies for such research are suggested together with some methodological recommendations. Finally, it is generally recommended that schools direct most of their anti-bullying efforts to counteracting traditional bullying, combined with an important system-level strategy that is likely to reduce the already low prevalence of cyberbullying. Keywords: Cyberbullying; Victims; Bullying.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dan Olweus, RKBU Vest, Uni Research,

Krinkelkroken 1, PO Box 7800, NO-5020 Bergen, Norway. E-mail: Olweus@uni.no

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

2012, 1–19, iFirst article

 2012 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

http://www.psypress.com/edp

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/Cyberbullying%2C%20Olweus.pdf

Two articles describe the effects of social networking on teen relationships. In the first article, Antisocial Networking?, Hillary Stout writes in the New York Times about toxic social networking sites and their effect on teens.

Hans Villarica has an excellent article in Time, Dealing With Cyberbullying: 5 Essential Parenting Tips

Make sure your kids know cyberbullying is wrong. Many kids don’t understand that when they write down and disseminate feelings of frustration, jealousy or anger toward others online, it can quickly escalate into problems in the real world. They also tend to think that what happens digitally “doesn’t count” and that digital abuse doesn’t hurt, especially since parents usually focus on their kids’ behavior in person…. (More on Time.com: Lessons on Cyberbullying: Is Rebecca Black a Victim? Experts Weigh In)

Take an interest in your kids’ online behavior. Kids tend to think their parents don’t know or care about their online lives. They fear that their parents, in not understanding, will simply take away their cell phone or computer if anything goes wrong….. (More on Time.com: The Tricky Politics of Tween Bullying)

Check school policies on cyberbullying. Contact your child’s teacher or a school social worker or administrator and find out whether there is an official policy on cyberbullying. If there is one, read it and discuss it with your kids.

If there isn’t a written policy in place, ask about how cyberbullying is handled and whether there are any plans to create an official policy. Better yet, step up and join — or push to create — a committee to set the standards…. (More on Time.com: Cyberbullying? Homophobia? Tyler Clementi’s Death Highlights Online Lawlessness)

Set guidelines about cell-phone use. Many parents give their kids cell phones, so they can stay in closer contact with them. But that’s typically not the reason kids want cell phones. Rather, kids use them to surf the Web, send text messages to friends, update their social-networking status, and share pictures and videos.

Review with your children the laws that could affect their cell phone use, including limitations on where and when they can legally take photos or videos, and how you expect them to handle text messaging or Internet use. If you choose to monitor what’s on your kids’ phones, be aware that more than 70% of kids delete messages or photos before giving their parents their phones for checks, according to research from the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center. (More on Time.com: A Glimmer of Hope in a Bad-News Survey About Bullying)

Help your children respond appropriately if they are cyberbullied. First, talk with your children about what happened and how they feel about it. Be supportive. Remember that your kids feel that they are under attack. Second, report the abuse to the website on which it occurred. This can often be done via an “abuse” or “report” button or link on the site. Lastly, report the bullying to school administrators and ask them to look after your children.

Parents must monitor their children’s use of technology.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

 

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More schools trying longer school years

6 Aug

In Good schools are relentless about basics: School day length, moi said:

Rosalind Rossi, education reporter for the Chicago Sun Times is reporting in the article, 2011 Illinois school report cards: Top schools have longer days.

The 10 highest-ranking suburban neighborhood elementary schools all have longer days for kids than the typical Chicago public school — but shorter ones than those advocated by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and city public school officials.

Chicago’s current typical 5-hour and 45-minute elementary school day — usually without a regular recess — looks paltry compared to a top-scoring 2011 suburban average of just under 6½ hours that includes daily recess, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis indicates.

However, Chicago’s proposed 7½-hour day would keep city elementary kids in school an hour more than their top-scoring suburban counterparts. Such a day is appealing even to some suburban parents.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/8452309-418/2011-illinois-school-report-cards-top-schools-have-longer-days.html

The Mid Continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel) has great information posted at its site about school day length.

According to McRel in the article, Extended School Days and School Years:

Does more time in school matter?

Several scholars have argued that simply extending school time in and of itself will not produce the desired results. Larry Cuban, a Stanford University professor of education, has argued for example that what matters most is not the quantity but the quality of time students and teachers spend together in the classroom (2008).

In our 2000 meta-analysis of the impact of school, teacher, and student-level variables on achievement, McREL concluded that student achievement can be strongly affected if schools optimize their use of instructional time.

In 1998 WestEd researchers Aronson et al. examined the research on time and learning and arrived at three conclusions:

  • There is little or no relationship between student achievement and the total number of days or hours students are required to attend school.

  • There is some relationship between achievement and engaged time, that subset of instructional time when students are participating in learning activities.

  • The strongest relationship exists between academic learning time and achievement.

However, in recent years some notable extended time initiatives have produced gains in test scores, graduation rates, and college attendance, including the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), which increases the amount of time students spend in school by nearly 60%, and Massachusetts 2020. Conversely, a $100 million effort in Miami to extend school days by one hour and add 10 days to the calendar produced no significant benefits.

http://www.mcrel.org/newsroom/hottopicExtendedTime.asp

The key seems to be longer time spent in instructional activities.                https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/good-schools-are-relentless-about-basics-school-day-length/

Motoko Rich has a great article in the New York Times, To Increase Learning Time, Some Schools Add Days to Academic Year:

Griffith, one of five schools in the Balsz Elementary School District here, is one of a handful of public schools across the country that has lengthened the school year in an effort to increase learning time.

A typical public school calendar is 180 days, but the Balsz district, where 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, is in session for 200 days, adding about a month to the academic year.

According to the National Center on Time and Learning, a nonprofit research group in Boston, about 170 schools — more than 140 of them charter schools — across the country have extended their calendars in recent years to 190 days or longer. ..

Education advocates have been calling for more school time at least since the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report presented an apocalyptic vision of American education.

Teachers’ unions, parents who want to preserve summers for family vacations and those who worry that children already come under too much academic stress argue that extended school time is not the answer. Research on longer school days or years also shows mixed results.

But studies also show that during the summer break, students — particularly those from low-income families — tend to forget what they learned in the school year. Getting back to school early, supporters of a longer calendar say, is one of the best ways to narrow an achievement gap between rich and poor students.

Many charter schools, including those in the academically successful KIPP network, attribute their achievement in part to longer days and calendars. President Obama has repeatedly promoted expanded school time, even inspiring “Saturday Night Live” to poke fun, with Seth Meyers saying in his Weekend Update segment that only “Catherine, the fifth grader nobody likes,” would support such a proposal.

Within the last two years, both the Ford Foundation and the Wallace Foundation have made multimillion dollar commitments to help nonprofit groups work with school districts to restructure the school day and year.

Advocates of longer school years say that the 180-day school year is an outdated artifact….

Critics say that with so many schools already failing, giving them more time would do little to help students.

“It is true that we have an unfair society, and it is true that kids who are coming from the poorer backgrounds and whose parents don’t do a lot of reading are losing reading skills over the summer,” said Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College. “But let’s look at other solutions.” He added, “Whatever job we give to the school system, they ruin it….”

“Better is as important as the more,” said Jeannie Oakes, director of educational opportunity and scholarship programs at the Ford Foundation. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/education/some-schools-adopting-longer-years-to-improve-learning.html?emc=eta1

See, Should summer break be shorter for some children? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/should-summer-break-be-shorter-for-some-children/

There should not be a one-size-fits-all approach to education. For children who need a longer school year, that extra time should be available.

Resources:

Dave E. Marcotte and Benjamin Hansen , Time for School?Education Next, Winter 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 1                                                                                     http://educationnext.org/time-for-school/

Education Secretary Arne Duncan on School Day’s Length video … http://video.answers.com/education-secretary-arne-duncan-on-school-days-length-516897086

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Gifted students in rural areas

5 Aug

In Rural schools, moi said:

A significant number of children attend rural schools. According to The Rural Assistance Center, the definition of a rural school is:

Question: What is the definition of a rural and/or small school?

Answer: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the definition of rural schools was revised in 2006 after working with the Census Bureau to create a new locale classification system to capitalize on improved geocoding technology and the 2000 Office of Management and Budget definitions of metro areas that rely less on population size and county boundaries than proximity of an address to an urbanized area. Small schools do not necessarily mean rural, and rural does not mean small. A small school could be an urban school with a decreasing population. Rural schools can be large due to the center school concept where students are bused in to one school to save on costs. Some schools are considered small when compared to the mega-schools of several thousand that are common in some districts. A small school could be one designed to accommodate a specific population of students and their unique needs or a private school. Rural and/or small schools have similar needs and concerns.

According to The Condition of Education in Rural Schools (U.S. Department of Education, 1994), ‘few issues bedevil analysts and planners concerned with rural education more than the question of what actually constitutes “rural”.’ In the Federal Register published December 27, 2000, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced the Standards for Defining Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas. These new standards replace and supersede the 1990 standards for defining Metropolitan Areas. OMB announced definitions of areas based on the new standards and Census 2000 data in June 2003. The lack of a clear, accepted definition of “rural” has impeded research in the field of rural education. When defining the term rural, population and remoteness are important considerations as these factors influence school organization, availability of resources, and economic and social conditions.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the definition of “small rural schools” are those schools eligible to participate in the Small Rural School Achievement (SRSA) program. SRSA includes districts with average daily attendance of fewer than 600 students, or districts in which all schools are located in counties with a population density of fewer than 10 persons per square mile, AND all schools served by the districts are located in a rural area with a school locale code of 7 or 8.

http://www.raconline.org/topics/schools/schoolsfaq.php

Rural schools face unique challenges.                                                     https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/rural-schools/

Donald L. Kordosky has written the School Administrator article, Attending to the Gifted in Rural Schools:

Rural school districts nationwide have a difficult time meeting the needs of their gifted students.

The evidence has become obvious during my career as a teacher, building administrator and superintendent of a 600-student district in the central Cascade Mountains of Oregon, an hour from the closest urban area.

The last point shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s not just limited funding that hampers rural schools from serving gifted students; it’s also the distance to supplemental learning resources that educators in cities and suburbs can easily access.

Assuming 2.5 percent of our students in K-12 education qualify as talented and gifted, my calculations suggest 378,000 gifted students attend rural schools nationwide. Most do not receive an education aligned with their unique abilities and learning readiness, spending most or all of their time in traditional heterogeneous classrooms with nongifted peers. The gifted student often is simply provided with more of the same work as the average student or is expected to function as a “classroom helper” for students of lower ability.

Research by Marcia Gentry, Mary Rizza and Robert Gable, appearing in the spring 2001 issue of Gifted Child Quarterly, shows rural gifted students enjoy school more than their urban and suburban talented and gifted peers. This is partially due to the adult and peer relationships that are fostered in rural settings that are much less common in urban settings. Yet gifted students suffer greater rates of depression, discipline issues, suicide attempts, dropping out and self-destructive behavior, including alcoholism, drug abuse and sexual promiscuity.

The federal government spends almost nothing on gifted education. While most states mandate gifted education programs, they do not provide any additional funding for gifted education….

The federal government spends almost nothing on gifted education. While most states mandate gifted education programs, they do not provide any additional funding for gifted education.

Clarifying Procedures
There are strategies a district administrator can pursue that will result in improved services for gifted students without substantial cost increases.

Make gifted education programs a focus of improvement in your district….

Clarify identification and exiting procedures. Develop and implement clear ways for students to be identified for talented and gifted programming and to leave a program….

Attend to the heterogeneous classroom. Most services for gifted students in rural areas are going to occur in the heterogeneous classroom, so the most effective place to address this issue is there. The use of differentiated teaching strategies to provide instruction for all students is paramount. You can make this a priority for your teachers….

Create individualized education plans for gifted students. This could mirror the mandated individualized education plans for students in special education. Annual gifted team meetings include a building administrator, the school’s coordinator for talented and gifted, the student’s parents and teacher(s) and the student. These meetings serve as the cornerstone for constructing a strong districtwide gifted program. Every student identified as talented or gifted in Oakridge participates in two TAGEP (talented and gifted education plan) meetings each school year where individualized education plans are designed and performance outcomes are monitored. http://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=20066

There are things that parents of gifted children can do to help their child succeed.

Joan D. Lewis, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and the Director of Gifted Education for the University of Nebraska campuses and Cherry Hafer, in her 27th year in rural schools have written The Challenges of Being Gifted in a Rural Community about what parents can do to help their children.

Specific Things Parents Can Do

Since schools have limited resources and educators wear so many hats, particularly in rural schools, support from well-informed parents is needed more than ever. Parents must be knowledgeable about gifted education and need to understand their community’s abilities to meet the educational needs of gifted students.
Parents in rural areas can use their individual skills and advocacy efforts to:

Potential mentors need to be screened carefully, and students should be supervised during mentoring sessions to ensure safety.

  • work with teachers to find resources and materials that are needed for accelerated and enriched learning experiences in class and outside of school. Look for materials on school subjects, vocational, and avocational interests via Internet search engines (Google.com, Ask.com, Search.Yahoo.com, or the Web index site bubl.ac.uk); books and media in public, college, and university libraries; and books for parents of gifted learners (see the resources listed in the sidebar).
  • access and share information about educational opportunities for gifted and talented students provided by university talent searches and other programs run by universities, colleges, and other organizations. http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/842

All children have a right to a good basic education

Related:

Rural schools and the digital divide                      https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/rural-schools-and-the-digital-divide/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Sexting’ during school hours

5 Aug

In Teaching children about ‘sexting’ Moi said:

We live in a society with few personal controls and even fewer people recognize boundaries which should govern their behavior and how they treat others. Laura Hibbard has an eye opening post at Huffington Post about a teacher who was “sexting” one of her students. In the article, Cynthia Stewart, School Counselor, Jailed For Sexting Boy Hibbard reports:

After allegedly texting naked photos of herself to a 15-year-old boy, 43-year-old school counselor Cynthia Stewart faces possible jail time, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported.

According to the report, Stewart, a counselor at Olympia Elementary School, has been charged with with solicitation of a minor as well as receipt of child pornography.

Authorities arrested Stewart after the boy’s parents found the correspondance, which included more than 20 naked photos of the counselor, My San Antonio reported.

After the two became friends on Facebook two years ago, their messages turned sexual in nature, the report said. Investigators are still unsure whether or not any sexual exchanges ever took place offline, but are continuing to look into the matter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/cynthia-stewart-school-counselor-sexting-student_n_1098301.html?ref=education

Unfortunately, “sexting” incidents involving children and adults with authority over them are not that uncommon.

Children are not mature and adults cannot expect the same level of maturity that most adults are presumed to have. Immature people, like kids, will take even harmless interactions and embellish and broadcast them to the world at large. The safest course of action for for teachers who want to be viewed as teacher professionals is to use common sense when using all social media and never put yourself in a situation with a student which can be viewed as compromising.

Common Sense Media has some great resources for parents about teaching children how to use media responsibly. Their information  Talking About “Sexting”  is excellent.

Maureen Feighan reports in the Detroit News article, Schools in Troy seek to curb sexting:

Sexting — texting or emailing sexually explicit pictures or texts — is surging among teens, legal experts say, and one local school district is stepping up the fight against it.

The Troy School District Board of Education adopted a sexting policy this month that puts students on notice that their cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices may be searched starting in September if there’s “reasonable suspicion” of sexting, and local authorities may be contacted.

While school officials say the policy wasn’t prompted by a specific incident, it may be one of the first of its kind to specifically address sexting in a Metro Detroit school district.

“It was just a matter of being proactive and recognizing that unfortunately across the United States with the proliferation of communication devices and social media, it’s … only a matter of time before this may occur,” said Rich Machesky, Troy’s assistant superintendent for secondary instruction.

Still, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan has concerns about Troy’s policy, including how broadly it defines materials of a sexual nature and the handing over of a student’s private cellphone to police. They say under the current definition, biology books would be off-limits.

“Usually, this is kids being irresponsible and careless and certainly not criminals, and they shouldn’t be treated that way,” said Michael J. Steinberg, legal director for ACLU Michigan.

One infive teenage girls say they have electronically sent or posted online nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves, according to a national survey, “Sex and Tech,” by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com.

Andone inthree teenage boys say they have had nude or semi-nude images, originally meant to be private, shared with them.

A study by researchers at the University of Michigan found sexting is also common among college-age people. The U-M SexLab and Prevention Research Center of Michigan surveyed 3,500 young adults, ages 18-24, and found 43 percent had received or sent sex-related messages on their phones.

As common as it may be, the consequences are serious. In Michigan, youngsters who sext can be prosecuted under child pornography laws and face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Just possessing sexually explicit material is a four-year felony. A juvenile conviction for a sexual offense could land someone on the state’s sex offender registry….

“I’ve gotten a lot of calls from parents that their kids are facing these serious charges and they’re flabbergasted,” Service said.

Plymouth-Canton Community Schools uses its student code of conduct to make it clear to students that sexting is forbidden.

“If we even suspect it, we get the police involved,” said district spokesman Frank Ruggirello.

But where does student privacy end and a district’s right to know begin? The ACLU’s Steinberg said standards are different for schools; a district has to have reasonable suspicion of possible illegal activity to conduct a search of someone’s belongings. Police, on the other hand, have to have probable cause that a crime has been committed.

“It’s a much higher standard than school officials,” said Steinberg, who has problems with Troy officials potentially acting as agents of the police.

The district’s policy states “all evidence and electronic devices shall be turned over to the appropriate law enforcement agency.”

Machesky said students could say no to a request to search their cellphone or laptop if a school official suspects sexting; the district would then contact the parents, he said.

If a student is found in violation of the policy, discipline could range from a minor infraction to up to a 10-day suspension.

“The real challenge to policing this whole issue of social media is behavior that happens outside of school versus behavior that happens inside school,” Machesky said. “Where it becomes a gray area is when incidents happen outside of school and may have an impact on school.”
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120731/SCHOOLS/207310359#ixzz22cUJCAvR

See, School district acts to stop ‘sexting’                                           http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/school-district-acts-to-stop-sexting/2012/08/04/fe2e2552-db29-11e1-b829-cab78633af7c_blog.html

Common Sense Media has other great resources including including Caroline Knorr ‘s excellent article, How Rude! manners For the Digital Age

Parent must monitor their child’s use of technology.

Resources:

Sexting Information: What every parent should know about sexting.

http://www.noslang.com/sexting.php

Social Networking and Internet Safety Information for Parents: Sexting

http://internet-safety.yoursphere.com/sexting/

Teen Sexting Tips

http://www.safeteens.com/teen-sexting-tips/

Related:

New study about ‘sexting’ and teens                                                                               https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/new-study-about-sexting-and-teens/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Study: Fitter kids get better grades

4 Aug

In Government is trying to control the vending machine choices of children, moi said:

The goal of this society should be to raise healthy and happy children who will grow into concerned and involved adults who care about their fellow citizens and environment. In order to accomplish this goal, all children must receive a good basic education and in order to achieve that goal, children must arrive at school, ready to learn. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/government-is-trying-to-control-the-vending-machine-choices-of-children/

Kathleen Doheny, in a WebMD Health News article, Fitter kids, better grades? The article was reviewed by Louise Chang, MD:

Fitter kids do better on school tests, according to new research that echoes previous findings.

The fitter the middle school students were, the better they did on reading and math tests, says researcher Sudhish Srikanth, a University of North Texas student. He presented his research Friday at the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting in Orlando.

The researchers tested 1,211 students from five Texas middle schools. They looked at each student’s academic self-concept — how confident they were in their abilities to do well — and took into account the student’s socioeconomic status.

They knew these two factors would play a role in how well the students did, Srikanth says.

After those factors, they looked at others that might influence school performance, such as social support, fitness, or body composition.

Bottom line? Of the other factors examined, “cardiorespiratory fitness has the strongest effect on academic achievement,” he says.

The research doesn’t prove cause and effect, and the researchers didn’t try to explain the link. But other research suggests why fitness is so important, says researcher Trent Petrie, PhD, director of the Center for Sport Psychology at the University of North Texas.

“Physical fitness is associated with improvements in memory, concentration, organization, and staying on task,” he says.

Fitter Kids, Better Grades: Details

For one to five months before the students took standardized reading and math tests, they answered questions about:

  • Usual physical activity
  • Their view of their school ability
  • Self-esteem
  • Social support

The researchers assessed the students’ fitness. They used a variety of tests that looked at muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, aerobic capacity, and body composition.

Previous studies have found a link between fitness and improved school performance, Srikanth says. However, this new study also looked at several other potential influences.

For the boys, having social support was also related to better reading scores.

For the girls, a larger body mass index was the only factor other than fitness that predicted better reading scores. The researchers are not sure why.

Other studies have found fitness more important than weight for test scores.

For both boys and girls, fitness levels were the only factors studied (besides socioeconomic status and self-concept) related to math scores.

Srikanth found an upward trend, with more fitness linked with better scores. He says he can’t quantify it beyond that.

Fitter Kids, Better Grades: Perspectives

The new research echoes that of James Sallis, PhD, distinguished professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego. A long-time researcher on physical fitness, he reviewed the findings.

“The mountain of evidence just got higher that active and fit kids perform better in school,” he says.

The finding that fitness was related to both reading and math scores in both girls and boys is impressive, he says. “That’s strong evidence.”

“I hope this study convinces both parents and school administrators to increase and improve physical education, recess, classroom activity breaks, after-school physical activity and sports, and walk-to-school programs….”

Citation:

The study was funded by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education.

These findings were presented at a medical conference. They should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the “peer review” process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.

SOURCES:Sudhish Srikanth, University of North Texas student, Denton.James Sallis, PhD, distinguished professor of family and preventive medicine; chief, division of behavioral medicine, University of California, San Diego.Lesley Cottrell, PhD, vice chair of research, pediatrics, West Virginia University, Morgantown.American Psychological Association annual convention, Orlando, Aug. 2-5, 2012.Trent Petrie, PhD,  professor of psychology and director of the Center for Sport Psychology, University of North Texas, Denton.

See, Healthy Lungs and Hearts Predict Better Math, Reading Scores http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/schooled_in_sports/2012/08/healthy_lungs_and_hearts_predict_better_math_reading_scores.html?intc=es

Unfortunately, many low-income children are having access to physical activities at school reduced because of the current recession.

Sandy Slater is reporting in the Education Nation article, Low-Income Schools Are Less Likely to Have Daily Recess

Here’s what we know:

• Children aged six to 17 should get at least one hour of daily physical activity, yet less than half of kids aged six to 11 get that much exercise. And as kids get older, they’re even less active.

• The National Association of Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) recommends that elementary school students get an average of 50 minutes of activity each school day – at least 150 minutes of PE per week and 20 minutes of daily recess.

• Kids who are more active perform better academically.

As a researcher and a parent, I’m very interested in improving our understanding of how school policies and practices impact kids’ opportunities to be active at school. My colleagues and I recently conducted a study to examine the impact of state laws and school district policies on PE and recess in public elementary schools across the country.

During the 2006 to 2007 and 2008 to 2009 school years, we received surveys from 1,761 school principals in 47 states. We found:

• On average, less than one in five schools offered 150 minutes of PE per week.

• Schools in states with policies that encouraged daily recess were more likely to offer third grade students the recommended 20 minutes of recess daily.

• Schools serving more children at highest risk for obesity (i.e. black and Latino children and those from lower-income families) were less likely to have daily recess than were schools serving predominantly white students and higher-income students.

• Schools that offered 150 minutes of weekly PE were less likely also to offer 20 minutes of daily recess, and vice versa. This suggests that schools are substituting one opportunity for another instead of providing the recommended amount of both.

• Schools with a longer day were more likely to meet the national recommendations for both PE and recess.

http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=ACF23D1E-229A-11E1-A9BF000C296BA163&aka=0

The gap between the wealthiest and the majority is society is also showing up in education opportunities and access to basic health care. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/childhood-obesity-recess-is-being-cut-in-low-income-schools/

Our goal as a society should be:

A healthy child in a healthy family who attends a healthy school in a healthy neighborhood ©

Related:

New emphasis on obesity: Possible unintended consequences, eating disorders                                    https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/new-emphasis-on-obesity-possible-unintended-consequences-eating-disorders/

Seattle Research Institute study about outside play https://drwilda.wordpress.com/tag/childrens-physical-activity/

Louisiana study: Fit children score higher on standardized tests                                             https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/louisiana-study-fit-children-score-higher-on-standardized-tests/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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People MUST talk: AIDS epidemic in Black community

2 Aug

Aside from the devastation that a poor economy has wrecked upon the Black community, a scourge that few are talking about is the AIDS epidemic in the Black community. NPR reports in the story, AIDS In Black America: A Public Health Crisis:

Of the more than 1 million people in the U.S. infected with HIV, nearly half are black men, women and children — even though blacks make up about 13 percent of the population. AIDS is the primary killer of African-Americans ages 19 to 44, and the mortality rate is 10 times higher for black Americans than for whites.

A new Frontline documentary, Endgame: AIDS in Black America, explores why the HIV epidemic is so much more prevalent in the African-American community than among whites. The film is produced, written and directed by Renata Simone, whose series The Age of AIDS appeared on Frontline in 2006.

On Thursday’s Fresh Air, Simone is joined by Robert Fullilove, a professor of clinical sociomedical studies at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and chairman of the HIV/AIDS advisory committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“When I started doing this work in 1986, roughly 20 percent of all of the people in the United States who were living with AIDS were African-American,” Fullilove tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “The most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control indicate that 45 percent of all the new cases of HIV infection are amongst African-Americans. … If we continue on the current trend, in the year 2015, especially in the South, it will probably be the case that 5 to 6 percent of all African-American adults who are sexually active will be infected with the virus.”

Endgame explores how politics, social factors and cultural factors allowed the AIDS epidemic to spread rapidly in the African-American community over the past three decades. The film — shot in churches, harm-reduction clinics, prisons, nightclubs and high school classrooms — tells personal stories from children who were born with the virus, public health officials and educators who run HIV clinics, and clergy members around the country, many of whom have been divided on their response to the epidemic.

The film also explores how the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s affected the spread of HIV in communities where large percentages of African-American men were incarcerated. http://www.npr.org/2012/07/05/156292172/aids-in-black-america-a-public-health-crisis

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Preventions studies a variety of diseases.

Here are the statistics for the Black community and AIDS from the CDC:

The Numbers

New HIV Infections

  • In 2009, black men accounted for 70% of the estimated new HIV infections among all blacks. The estimated rate of new HIV infection for black men was more than six and a half times as high as that of white men, and two and a half times as high as that of Latino men or black women.
  • In 2009, black men who have sex with men (MSM)1 represented an estimated 73% of new infections among all black men, and 37% among all MSM. More new HIV infections occurred among young black MSM (aged 13–29) than any other age and racial group of MSM. In addition, new HIV infections among young black MSM increased by 48% from 2006–2009.
  • In 2009, black women accounted for 30% of the estimated new HIV infections among all blacks. Most (85%) black women with HIV acquired HIV through heterosexual sex. The estimated rate of new HIV infections for black women was more than 15 times as high as the rate for white women, and more than three times as high as that of Latina women.

Estimates of New HIV Infections in the United States, 2009, for the Most-Affected Subpopulations

Shown here is a vertical bar chart entitled, “Estimates of New HIV Infections in the United States, 2009, for the Most-Affected Subpopulations”. White MSM = 11,400Black MSM = 10, 800Women = 6,000Latino MSM = 5,400Black Heterosexual Men =2,400White Heterosexual Women = 1,700Black Male IDUs = 1,700Latina Heterosexual Women = 1,200Black Female IDUs =940Subpopulations representing 2% or less of the overall US epidemic are not reflected in this chart.

Subpopulations representing 2% or less of the overall US epidemic are not reflected in this chart.

HIV and AIDS Diagnoses2 and Deaths

  • From 2006–2009, the estimated number and rate of HIV diagnoses among blacks remained stable in the 40 states with long-term confidential name-based HIV reporting.
  • At some point in their lifetimes, an estimated 1 in 16 black men and 1 in 32 black women will be diagnosed with HIV infection.
  • In 2009, an estimated 16,741 blacks were diagnosed with AIDS in the US, a number that has slowly decreased since 2006.
  • By the end of 2008, an estimated 240,627 blacks with an AIDS diagnosis had died in the US. In 2007, HIV was the ninth leading cause of death for all blacks and the third leading cause of death for black women and black men aged 35–44.

Prevention Challenges

African Americans face a number of challenges that contribute to the higher rates of HIV infection.

The greater number of people living with HIV (prevalence) in African American communities and the fact that African Americans tend to have sex with partners of the same race/ethnicity means that they face a greater risk of HIV infection with each new sexual encounter.

African American communities continue to experience higher rates of other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) compared with other racial/ethnic communities in the US. The presence of certain STIs can significantly increase the chance of contracting HIV. Additionally, a person who has both HIV and certain STIs has a greater chance of infecting others with HIV.

The socioeconomic issues associated with poverty, including limited access to high-quality health care, housing, and HIV prevention education, directly and indirectly increase the risk for HIV infection and affect the health of people living with and at risk for HIV infection.

Lack of awareness of HIV status can affect HIV rates in communities. Approximately 1 in 5 adults and adolescents in the US living with HIV are unaware of their HIV status. This translates to approximately 116,750 persons in the African American community. Late diagnosis of HIV infection is common, which creates missed opportunities to obtain early medical care and prevent transmission to others. The sooner an individual is diagnosed and linked to appropriate care, the better the outcome.

Stigma, fear, discrimination, homophobia, and negative perceptions about HIV testing can also place too many African Americans at higher risk. Many at risk for infection fear stigma more than infection and may choose instead to hide their high-risk behavior rather than seek counseling and testing.

What CDC Is Doing

CDC and its partners are pursuing a high-impact prevention approach to advance the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and maximize the effectiveness of current HIV prevention methods. This approach focuses on implementing programs that have shown the greatest potential to reduce new HIV infections in populations and geographic areas at highest risk and on a scale large enough to yield the greatest possible impact on the HIV epidemic. Examples of activities addressing African American communities include:

  • The Act Against AIDS campaign delivers culturally appropriate messages about HIV infection. “Take Charge. Take the Test.” encourages African American women to get tested for HIV. “Testing Makes Us Stronger,” is aimed at increasing HIV testing among black MSM. For more information, visit www.actagainstaids.org.
  • An active part of the Act Against AIDS campaign, the Act Against AIDS Leadership Initiative (AAALI), is a $16 million, six-year partnership between CDC and the country’s leading organizations that represent the populations hardest hit by HIV. AAALI was initially formed to provide critical funding and to intensify HIV prevention efforts in black communities, but has since expanded to include organizations that focus on black MSM and the Latino community.
  • Expanded Testing Initiative (ETI). In 2010, CDC announced a second three-year expanded HIV testing program that builds on an initiative started in 2007 to increase HIV testing among African Americans. In the first three years of the project, more than 2.8 million tests were conducted and 18,432 people were newly diagnosed with HIV. Most of the people who were tested (57.4%) and diagnosed with HIV (66.0%) were African American. ETI includes 30 health jurisdictions and focuses on increasing HIV testing among African Americans and Latinos, as well as MSM and injection drug users of all races and ethnicities. Funding for the program was increased from $36 million per year to more than $50 million per year.
  • In September 2011, CDC awarded $55 million for HIV Prevention Projects for Young Men of Color Who Have Sex with Men (YMCSM) and Young Transgender (YTG) Persons of Color, to provide effective HIV prevention services over five years to YMCSM and YTG persons of color and their partners regardless of age, gender, and race/ethnicity.
  • CDC provides support and technical assistance to health departments and community-based organizations to deliver effective prevention interventions for African Americans. Efforts include
    • WILLOW, which emphasizes gender pride among HIV-positive African American women, informs them how to identify and maintain supportive social networks and healthy relationships, and learn coping strategies and safe sex communication skills;
    • Sister to Sister and SIHLE provide culturally sensitive health information to empower and educate African American women and adolescent females;
    • Nia educates African American heterosexual men about HIV/AIDS and its effect on their communities and motivates risk-reduction behaviors by effective condom use;
    • d-up: Defend Yourself!! and Many Men, Many Voices address social, cultural, and religious norms, promote condom use, and assist black MSM in recognizing and handling HIV risk-related racial and sexual bias. For information, visit www.effectiveinterventions.org.

CDC also supports research to reduce HIV risk among African Americans. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/aa/

This epidemic cannot be swept under the carpet any longer.

Resources:

HIV/AIDS in the African-American Community http://www.thebody.com/index/whatis/africanam.html

Black Aids Institute http://www.blackaids.org/

Fighting AIDS/HIV in the African American Community http://sociology.chass.ncsu.edu/chd/AIDS_HIV_ResourceManualMay21.pdf

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Study: Effectiveness of student rewards depends upon timing

1 Aug

In Should we pay children to go to school? Moi said:

Education is a partnership between the student, the teacher(s) and parent(s). All parties in the partnership must share the load. The student has to arrive at school ready to learn. The parent has to set boundaries, encourage, and provide support. Teachers must be knowledgeable in their subject area and proficient in transmitting that knowledge to students. All must participate and fulfill their role in the education process. See, School Absenteeism: Absent from the classroom leads to absence from participation in this society https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/school-absenteeism-absent-from-the-classroom-leads-to-absence-from-participation-in-this-society/

https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/should-we-pay-children-to-go-to-school/

Educators and researchers have been looking at whether reward programs motivate certain populations of students.

Science Daily reports about a study which looked the effect of rewards on student behavior. In the article, Immediate Rewards for Good Scores Can Boost Student Performance, Science Daily reports:

Test performance can improve dramatically if students are offered rewards just before they are given standardized tests and if they receive the incentive immediately afterward, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

Educators have long debated the value of financial and other rewards as incentives, but a series of experiments in Chicago-area schools showed that with the right kind of rewards, students achievement improved by as much as six months beyond what would be expected.

The rewards apparently provide students with an incentive to take tests more seriously. One implication is that policymakers may underestimate students’ ability in otherwise low-performing schools, according to the research team that conducted the experiments.

Researchers used financial rewards to boost performance for older students and non-financial rewards, such as trophies, to improve performance among younger students.

The prospect of losing a reward created a stronger desire to perform than the possibility of receiving a reward after a test, the research showed. Students who were given money or a trophy to look at while they tested performed better.

“Most importantly, all motivating power of the incentives vanishes when rewards are handed out with a delay,” said lead author Sally Sadoff, a 2010 PhD graduate in economics, who did the research as a Griffin Postdoctoral Scholar at UChicago from 2010-11. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120626113922.htm

Citation:

The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance

Steven D. Levitt, John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, Sally Sadoff

NBER Working Paper No. 18165
Issued in June 2012
NBER Program(s):   ED   PE

A long line of research on behavioral economics has established the importance of factors that are typically absent from the standard economic framework: reference dependent preferences, hyperbolic preferences, and the value placed on non-financial rewards. To date, these insights have had little impact on the way the educational system operates. Through a series of field experiments involving thousands of primary and secondary school students, we demonstrate the power of behavioral economics to influence educational performance. Several insights emerge. First, we find that incentives framed as losses have more robust effects than comparable incentives framed as gains. Second, we find that non-financial incentives are considerably more cost-effective than financial incentives for younger students, but were not effective with older students. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, consistent with hyperbolic discounting, all motivating power of the incentives vanishes when rewards are handed out with a delay. Since the rewards to educational investment virtually always come with a delay, our results suggest that the current set of incentives may lead to underinvestment. For policymakers, our findings imply that in the absence of immediate incentives, many students put forth low effort on standardized tests, which may create biases in measures of student ability, teacher value added, school quality, and achievement gaps.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

The disintegration of the family has profound implications for the education success of children.

Huffington Post is reporting in the article, Ohio High School Paying Students To Show Up, Behave In Class:

A Cincinnati high school is paying its students to go to school.

The Dohn Community High School, a charter school in Ohio, started a program this week that would pay seniors $25 weekly and underclassmen $10 weekly in Visa gift cards for showing up to class every day, being on time and behaving in school. The move aims to encourage students to stay in school and graduate from the school where 90 percent of its students live in poverty. Fewer than 20 percent are in two-parent households.

“Money is important to them,” school Chief Administrative Officer Ken Furrier told CBS Cleveland. “We can’t teach them if they’re not here.”

Every week a student is paid, an additional $5 goes into a savings account, payable upon graduation. The program is being funded by $40,000 from several areas, including private donors and federal Workforce Investment Act dollars funneled through the Easter Seals, a community-based health agency, KMSP-TV reports.

“The target is graduation,” Furrier told Reuters. “We do almost everything we can to get the kids to there.”

Critics say the school is rewarding students for basic things students should be doing already, but at Dohn, “they’re not doing it,” Principal Ramone Davenport told KMSP-TV. “We’ve tried everything else.”

Davenport tells the Associated Press that the program is already working and attendance is up. Dohn was designated by the Ohio Department of Education as an “academic emergency” last year, with just a 14 percent graduation rate during the 2010-2011 academic year. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/ohio-high-school-paying-s_n_1280227.html?ref=email_share

This school is dealing with the reality of certain education settings because they have not absorbed from their upbringing the thought that education is crucial to later success in life. Further, these children often face emotional and economic challenges because of their family circumstance.

In answer to whether children should be paid to come to school and achieve – for some children, this may be an option.

Related:

We give up as a society: Jailing parents because kids are truant https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/we-give-up-as-a-society-jailing-parents-because-kids-are-truant/

Hard truths: The failure of the family                     https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/hard-truths-the-failure-of-the-family/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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