Archive | 2013

Yale University study: Left-handed people more likely to have psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia

3 Nov

Science Daily reported in the article, Lefties More Likely to Have Psychotic Disorders Such as Schizophrenia:

Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome. 1 The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open. About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, “a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed….” Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders. The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. “Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained,” said Webb. What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked “What hand do you write with?” “This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way,” said Webb. “Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%. Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people — those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131031125319.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

Citation:

Journal Reference:
1. J. R. Webb, M. I. Schroeder, C. Chee, D. Dial, R. Hana, H. Jefee, J. Mays, P. Molitor. Left-Handedness Among a Community Sample of Psychiatric Outpatients Suffering From Mood and Psychotic Disorders. SAGE Open, 2013; 3 (4) DOI: 10.1177/2158244013503166

Here is the Yale University press release:

By Karen N. Peart
October 31, 2013
Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open. About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, “a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed.”
“In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed,” said Webb. “Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways.” Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders.
The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. “Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained,” said Webb. What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked “What hand do you write with?” “This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way,” said Webb. “Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%.
Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people — those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support.”
Other authors on the study include Mary I. Schroeder, Christopher Chee, Deanna Dial, Rebecca Hana, Hussam Jefee, Jacob Mays, and Patrick Molitor. Citation: Sage Open vol. 3 no. 4 2158244013503166 (October-December 2013)

For interesting facts about left-handed people http://facts.randomhistory.com/facts-about-left-handedness.html

A 2011 Wall Street Journal article, The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed, highlighted some of the potential challenges faced by lefties:

On average there is no significant difference in IQ between righties and lefties, studies show, belying popular perceptions. There is some evidence that lefties are better at divergent thinking, or starting from existing knowledge to develop new concepts, which is considered an element of creativity. And left-handed people have salaries that on average are about 10% lower than righties, according to recent research performed at Harvard University that analyzed large income data bases, although findings of some earlier studies were mixed.
Left-handedness appears to be associated with a greater risk for a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders. While lefties make up about 10% of the overall population, about 20% of people with schizophrenia are lefties, for example. Links between left-handedness and dyslexia, ADHD and some mood disorders have also been reported in research studies. The reasons for this aren’t clear. Scientists speculate it could be related to a concept known as brain lateralization.
The brain has two halves. Each performs primarily separate, specialized functions, such as language processing, which mainly takes place in the left hemisphere. There is lots of communication between the hemispheres. Typically in right-handers, the brain’s left side is dominant. But this tendency doesn’t hold up with lefties, as scientists previously believed. Some 70% of lefties rely on the left hemisphere for their language centers, a key brain function, says Metten Somers, a psychiatrist and researcher who studies brain lateralization at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. This doesn’t appear to present problems, scientists say. The other 30% of lefties appear to exhibit either a right-dominant or distributed pattern, Dr. Somers says. They may be more prone to impaired learning or functioning, and at greater risk for brain disorders, he says. Hemisphere dominance is typical and more efficient. Symmetry, in which neither side is dominant, is believed linked to disorders, researchers say. People with schizophrenia, for instance, exhibit more symmetrical activation of their brain hemispheres than those without the disorder, studies show.
In a 2008 study, Alina Rodriguez, a psychology professor at Mid Sweden University in Östersund who studies handedness, brain development and ADHD, found that left- or mixed-handedness in children was linked to a greater risk of difficulty with language as well as ADHD symptoms. In another study published last year in Pediatrics, involving nearly 8,000 Finnish children, Dr. Rodriguez found that mixed-handedness rather than left-handedness was linked to ADHD symptoms. And knowing that a child was mixed-handed and had ADHD symptoms at age 8 helped predict much more accurately than just knowing they had symptoms at that age whether the child would continue to have symptoms at age 16. (What happens when people are forced to switch from writing with their dominant hand to the other isn’t well known, experts say.) Research that suggests that there is a link between favoring the left hand and an increased risk of bipolar disorder and ADHD, among other conditions. Emily Nelson has details on Lunch Break.
One reason that not more is known about lefties is that many studies of how the brain works prohibit left-handers from participating because their brain wiring is known to be different, says Robin Nusslock, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who uses neuroimaging to study mood disorders.
Lefties have an advantage in sports such as tennis, fencing and baseball, when up against a righthanded competitor, but not in noninteractive sports such as gymnastics. A potential pathway between prenatal stress and brain wiring could be cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, which can interfere with brain development, says Carsten Obel, a professor at the public-health department at Aarhus University in Denmark who has conducted research on the prenatal environment and risk of disease. Cortisol is able to pass over the placenta barrier to influence the baby.
Several studies show that stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one or job loss, during pregnancy increase the risk of having non-right-handed children. In one study of 834 Danish mothers and their 3-year-old children, Dr. Obel and his colleagues found that mothers who reported multiple stressful events during their third trimester of pregnancy and experienced distress were more than three times as likely to have a mixed-handed child, 17% compared with 5%, according to the 2003 paper published in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. Another large study followed 1,700 Swedish mothers and children until the kids were 5 years old. It found that mothers with depressive symptoms or who underwent stressful life events while pregnant were more likely to have left- or mixed-handed children. The work was published by Dr. Rodriguez and her colleagues in 2008 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Experts suggest that left- and mixed-handedness could be used as a risk factor for possible psychiatric or developmental conditions, along with behavioral difficulties, such as having a hard time in school. The presence of such risk factors could prompt early evaluation for those conditions, they say. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204083204577080562692452538

The best defense for parents is a good awareness of what is going on with their child. As a parent you need to know what is going on in your child’s world

Related:

GAO report: Children’s mental health services are lacking https://drwilda.com/2013/01/12/gao-report-childrens-mental-health-services-are-lacking/

Schools have to deal with depressed and troubled children: https://drwilda.com/2011/11/15/schools-have-to-deal-with-depressed-and-troubled-children/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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The death cult of the secular ruling elite: Belgium to consider law to grant euthanasia for children, dementia patients

2 Nov

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: AP reported in the story, Belgium considering unprecedented law to grant euthanasia for children, dementia patients:

Should children have the right to ask for their own deaths?
In Belgium, where euthanasia is now legal for people over the age of 18, the government is considering extending it to children — something that no other country has done. The same bill would offer the right to die to adults with early dementia.
Advocates argue that euthanasia for children, with the consent of their parents, is necessary to give families an option in a desperately painful situation. But opponents have questioned whether children can reasonably decide to end their own lives.
Belgium is already a euthanasia pioneer; it legalized the practice for adults in 2002. In the last decade, the number of reported cases per year has risen from 235 deaths in 2003 to 1,432 in 2012, the last year for which statistics are available. Doctors typically give patients a powerful sedative before injecting another drug to stop their heart.
Only a few countries have legalized euthanasia or anything approaching it.
In the Netherlands, euthanasia is legal under specific circumstances and for children over the age of 12 with parental consent. (There is an understanding that infants, too, can be euthanized, and that doctors will not be prosecuted if they act appropriately.) Elsewhere in Europe, euthanasia is only legal in Luxembourg. Assisted suicide, where doctors help patients to die but do not actively kill them, is allowed in Switzerland.
In the U.S., the state of Oregon grants assisted suicide requests for residents aged 18 or over with a terminal illness. Assisted suicide also is allowed in the states of Washington, Vermont and Montana.
In Belgium, the ruling Socialist party has proposed the bill expanding the right of euthanasia. The Christian Democratic Flemish party vowed to oppose the legislation and to challenge it in the European Court of Human Rights, if it passes. A final decision must be approved by Parliament and could take months.
In the meantime, the Senate has heard testimony on both sides of the issue.
“It is strange that minors are considered legally incompetent in key areas, such as getting married, but might (be able) to decide to die,” Catholic Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard testified.
Leonard said alternatives like palliative sedation make euthanasia unnecessary — and relieves doctors of the burden of having to kill patients. In palliative sedation, patients are sedated and life-sustaining support is withdrawn so they starve to death; the process can take days.
But the debate has extended to medical ethicists and professionals far from Belgium.
Charles Fostr, who teaches medical law and ethics at Oxford University, believes children couldn’t possibly have the capacity to make an informed decision about euthanasia since even adults struggle with the concept.
“It often happens that when people get into the circumstances they had so feared earlier, they manage to cling on all the more,” he said. “Children, like everyone else, may not be able to anticipate how much they will value their lives if they were not killed….”http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/belgium-considering-unprecedented-law-to-grant-euthanasia-for-children-dementia-patients/2013/10/31/67fd55be-4200-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html?wpisrc

Really, children are going to have the sufficient capacity to choose to end their lives?

Here is a bit about Belgium from Europedia in the web post, Why is it so special to turn 18 in Belgium ?

18 years old is the age of majority in most Western countries (apart from some Canadian or US states where it is 19 or 21). In Asian countries it is usually 20 (Japan, Thailand) or 21 (Malaysia, Singapore). This makes it special in itself, because it means that someone has reached the official threshold of adulthood, which means that they are free to act without their parents’ consent, sign contracts (e.g. job) by themselves, vote at elections…

But in Belgium, turning 18 means much more than that.

Like in the rest of Europe (except UK and Ireland), but contrarily to the USA, 18 is also the legal age to obtain a driving licence.

Belgium being one of the rare countries with compulsory voting at elections, 18 does not only become the age when one can vote, but when one must vote (if elections are held that year, but chances are quite high with all the levels of government in Belgium).

Belgium is also one of the few countries to have compulsory education until the age of 18. So not only do 18-year-olds become “free” from the the tutoring of their parents, but also free to quit school if they want.

One major difference with other countries is that criminal responsibility (different from the legal responsibility conferred by majority) in Belgium is also set at 18 years old, contrarily to the vast majority of countries around the world where it is almost always lower (as young as 6 years old in some US states). This means that if a 17-year old Belgian kills someone, commit a arson or robbery, etc., he or she is not considered responsible of their acts, and thus cannot be sentenced by a criminal court, and will usually be purely and simply acquitted. I personally think that this is abusive and the age should be set around 14 or 15, if not lower.

18 used to be the age for compulsory military service for men, but this was abolished in the early 1990’s.

There are a few legal rights which do not coincide with the age of 18 thanks to Belgium’s permissive laws, such as the right to buy or drink alcohol (no legal age), buy tobacco (16 years old, although there is no legal age for smoking), or have a bank card (12 years old). The legal age of sexual consent and marriage is 16 both for boys and girls.

In brief, the age of 18 in Belgium is synonymous with :

– legal adulthood/majority
– legal responsibility
– criminal responsibility
– right and obligation to vote
– right to be elected (except for Senate)
– legal age for driving
– minimum age to stop school

The bold indicate what makes 18 very special in Belgium compared to the rest of the world, and especially the rest of Europe.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/24245-Why-is-it-so-special-to-turn-18-in-Belgium

So, if one is not legally responsible until they are 18, why would Belgium ever consider giving a child a right to end their own life? Even more sinister why would Belgium even give parents or caretakers the right to end a life which may have become burdensome to them.

The quality of life means different things to different people. Should Stephen Hawking be killed because he has a disease?

Stephen Hawking is the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and author of A Brief History of Time which was an international bestseller. Now Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge, his other books for the general reader include A Briefer History of Time, the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universe and The Universe in a Nutshell.

In 1963, Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. From 1979 to 2009 he held the post of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663. Professor Hawking has over a dozen honorary degrees and was awarded the CBE in 1982. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Science. Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein…. http://www.hawking.org.uk/

The issue in Belgium is one of respect for life and whether that respect is accorded even when a life becomes inconvenient or difficult.

David H. Roper of Our Daily Bread gives us something to chew on in Respect For Life:

In Psalm 139, David describes God as fashioning his tiny body together in the darkness of his mother’s womb. God loved David before he ever existed.
God designed the person David was to be, and He brought that person into being according to His predetermined plan. In this psalm, David used the intriguing metaphor of a journal in which God first wrote His plan and then brought that plan into fruition through His handiwork in the womb: “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written” (v.16).
Put another way, David was shaped by his heavenly Father’s love into a unique creation. He came from the inventive heart and hand of God. What was true of David is true of you. You are special—along with everyone else in the world.
This being true, we must be pro-life in the purest sense of the word. We are to respect and cherish all human life: the born and those still in the womb; winsome children and weary seniors; the wealthy executive and the financially destitute. All persons are unique productions of our Creator’s genius. With David, let’s exclaim: “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (139:14).
By God’s wise designing We are wonderfully made, Every part essential And in perfect balance laid. —Anon. All life is created by God and bears His autograph. http://odb.org/2010/01/17/respect-for-life/

In this instance, moi thinks the following quote is appropriate:

“I think we might be going a bridge too far.”
Lt. General Frederick “Boy” Browning (1896-1965)
British military officer

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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The 11/02/13 Joy Jar

2 Nov

It is a windy day in Seattle and the branches are doing that wind dance. The waves are whipping up against the 520 bridge. The wind is simply a metaphor for what can blow against a life from time to time. Thank goodness for the winds which clear out debris. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the wind.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.
Jimmy Dean

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
Ashley Smith

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell

Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.
Winston Churchill

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
Bruce Lee

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
Jim Rohn

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
Augustus Hare

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
Khalil Gibran

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
Henry Ford

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.
Chanakya

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.
William James

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The 11/01/13 Joy Jar

1 Nov

It is definitely heading toward winter. Daylight Savings Time is ending and a winter storm is headed for Seattle this weekend. Storms build character and help one appreciate the calm. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is weathering the storms.

After a storm comes a calm.
Matthew Henry

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
Rabindranath Tagore

Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.
Robert H. Schuller

l
If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.
Mahatma Gandhi

l
After every storm the sun will smile; for every problem there is a solution, and the soul’s indefeasible duty is to be of good cheer.
William R. Alger

l
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Vincent Van Gogh

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
Frederick Douglass

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?
Rose Kennedy
Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability.
Ho Chi Minh

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things – with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope.
Corazon Aquino

If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm.
Frank Lane

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
Willa Cather

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Charles Caleb Colton

When you’re caught up in the storm or, you know, just the turmoil of everything that there is another side and you do get through it. And you know, just standing by the truth and doing the right thing.
Amber Frey

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.
William Cowper

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The 10/31/13 Joy Jar

1 Nov

Moi DOES NOT practice the occult and does not believe in some of the darker aspects of Halloween. Still, there are many fun aspects of the day, Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ is the fun that Halloween can bring.

“I think if human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn’t life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don’t they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you’d meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to – like talking to dogs. ”
Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“I wish everyday could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks.”
R.J. Palacio

“Pirates are not born; they are made out of God’s tears and the devil’s furry.”
Shannon L. Alder, Never or Forever

There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch.
Robert Brault,

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold.
Judith Olney

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.
Mason Cooley

Proof of our society’s decline is that Halloween has become a broad daylight event for many.
Robert Kirby

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Henry David Thoreau

There is nothing that gives more assurance than a mask.
~Colette

Look, there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.
Fernando Pessoa

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The 10/30/13 Joy Jar

1 Nov

Moi is looking forward to being on two weeks of vacation at Christmas. Just to have time to relax and just read and go to movies will be welcome. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is a much needed vacation.

“The only problem with politicians taking two week vacations every year is it’s about 50 weeks too short.
”
Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They’re Over.

“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

“In matters of healing the body or the mind, vacation is a true genius!”
Mehmet Murat ildan

“What shall you do all your vacation?’, asked Amy. “I shall lie abed and do nothing”, replied Meg.”
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Laughter is an instant vacation.
Milton Berle

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.
Earl Wilson

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.
Robert Orben

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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The 10/29/13 Joy Jar

1 Nov

Moi is nursing a cold. Mark Twain is a treasure. Truly, a joy for all seasons. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is HOW TO CURE A COLD:

September 20, 1863
HOW TO CURE A COLD
It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction – their profit – their actual and tangible benefit.

The latter is the sole object of this article.
If it prove the means of restoring to health one solitary sufferer among my race – of lighting up once more the fire of hope and joy in his faded eyes – of bringing back to his dead heart again the quick, generous impulses of other days – I shall be amply rewarded for my labor; my soul will be permeated with the sacred delight a Christian feels when he has done a good, unselfish deed.
Having led a pure and blameless life, I am justified in believing that no man who knows me will reject the suggestions I am about to make, out of fear that I am trying to deceive him.
Let the public do itself the honor to read my experience in doctoring a cold, as herein set forth, and then follow in my footsteps.
When the White House was burned in Virginia, I lost my home, my happiness, my constitution and my trunk.
The loss of the two first named articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home without a mother or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, to remind you by putting your soiled linen out of sight and taking your boots down off the mantle-piece, that there are those who think about you and care for you, is easily obtained.
And I cared nothing for the loss of my happiness, because, not being a poet, it could not be possible that melancholy would abide with me long.
But to lose a good constitution and a better trunk were serious misfortunes.
I had my Gould and Curry in the latter, you recollect; I may get it back again, though – I came down here this time partly to bully-rag the Company into restoring my stock to me.
On the day of the fire, my constitution succumbed to a severe cold caused by undue exertion in getting ready to do something.
I suffered to no purpose, too, because the plan I was figuring at for the extinguishing of the fire was so elaborate that I never got it completed until the middle of the following week.
The first time I began to sneeze, a friend told me to go and bathe my feet in hot water and go to bed.
I did so.
Shortly afterward, another friend advised me to get up and take a cold shower-bath.
I did that also.
Within the hour, another friend assured me that it was policy to “feed a cold and starve a fever.”
I had both.
I thought it best to fill myself up for the cold, and then keep dark and let the fever starve a while.
In a case of this kind, I seldom do things by halves; I ate pretty heartily; I conferred my custom upon a stranger who had just opened his restaurant that morning; he waited near me in respectful silence until I had finished feeding my cold, when he inquired if the people about Virginia were much afflicted with colds?
I told him I thought they were.
He then went out and took in his sign.
I started down toward the office, and on the way encountered another bosom friend, who told me that a quart of salt water, taken warm, would come as near curing a cold as anything in the world.
I hardly thought I had room for it, but I tried it anyhow.
The result was surprising; I must have vomited three-quarters of an hour; I believe I threw up my immortal soul.
Now, as I am giving my experience only for the benefit of those who are troubled with the distemper I am writing about, I feel that they will see the propriety of my cautioning them against following such portions of it as proved inefficient with me – and acting upon this conviction, I warn them against warm salt water.
It may be a good enough remedy, but I think it is too severe. If I had another cold in the head, and there was no course left me but to take either an earthquake or a quart of warm salt water, I would cheerfully take my chances on the earthquake.
After the storm which had been raging in my stomach had subsided, and no more good Samaritans happening along, I went on borrowing handkerchiefs again and blowing them to atoms, as had been my custom in the early stages of my cold, until I came across a lady who had just arrived from over the plains, and who said she had lived in a part of the country where doctors were scarce, and had from necessity acquired considerable skill in the treatment of simple “family complaints.”
I knew she must have had much experience, for she appeared to be a hundred and fifty years old.
She mixed a decoction composed of molasses, aquafortis, turpentine, and various other drugs, and instructed me to take a wine-glass full of it every fifteen minutes.
I never took but one dose; that was enough; it robbed me of all moral principle, and awoke every unworthy impulse of my nature.
Under its malign influence, my brain conceived miracles of meanness, but my hands were too feeble to execute them; at that time had it not been that my strength had surrendered to a succession of assaults from infallible remedies for my cold, I am satisfied that I would have tried to rob the graveyard.
Like most other people, I often feel mean, and act accordingly, but until I took that medicine I had never reveled in such supernatural depravity and felt proud of it.
At the end of two days, I was ready to go to doctoring again. I took a few more unfailing remedies, and finally drove my cold from my head to my lungs.
I got to coughing incessantly, and my voice fell below Zero; I conversed in a thundering bass two octaves below my natural tone; I could only compass my regular nightly repose by coughing myself down to a state of utter exhaustion, and then the moment I began to talk in my sleep, my discordant voice woke me up again.
My case grew more and more serious every day.
Plain gin was recommended; I took it.
Then gin and molasses; I took that also.
Then gin and onions; I added the onions and took all three.
I detected no particular result, however, except that I had acquired a breath like a buzzard’s.
I found I had to travel for my health. I went to Lake Bigler with my reportorial comrade, Adair Wilson. It is gratifying to me to reflect that we traveled in considerable style; we went in the Pioneer coach, and my friend took all his baggage with him, consisting of two excellent silk handkerchiefs and a daguerreo- type of his grandmother.
I had my regular gin and onions along.
Virginia, San Francisco and Sacramento were well represented at the Lake House, and we had a very healthy time of it for a while. We sailed and hunted and fished and danced all day, and I doctored my cough all night.
By managing in this way, I made out to improve every hour in the twenty-four.
But my disease continued to grow worse. A sheet-bath was recommended. I had never refused a remedy yet, and it seemed poor policy to commence then; therefore I determined to take a sheet-bath, notwithstanding I had no idea what sort of arrangement it was.
It was administered at midnight, and the weather was very frosty. My breast and back were bared, and a sheet (there appeared to be a thousand yards of it) soaked in ice-water, was wound around me until I resembled a swab for a Columbiad.
It is a cruel expedient. When the chilly rag touches one’s warm flesh, it makes him start with sudden violence and gasp for breath just as men do in the death agony. It froze the marrow in my bones and stopped the beating of my heart. I thought my time had come. Young Wilson said the circumstance reminded him of an anecdote about a negro who was being baptised, and who slipped from the Parson’s grasp and came near being drowned; he floundered around, though, and finally rose up out of the water considerably strangled and furiously angry, and started ashore at once, spouting water like a whale, and remarking with great asperity that “One o’dese days, some gen’lman’s nigger gwyne to git killed wid jes’ sich dam foolishness as dis!”
Then young Wilson laughed at his silly, pointless anecdote, as if he had thought he had done something very smart. I suppose I am not to be affronted every day, though, without resenting it – I coughed my bed-fellow clear out of the house before morning.
Never take a sheet-bath – never. Next to meeting a lady acquaintance, who, for reasons best known to herself, don’t see you when she looks at you and don’t know you when she does see you, it is the most uncomfortable thing in the world.
It is singular that such a simile as that, happened to occur to me; I haven’t thought of that circumstance a dozen times to-day. I used to think she was so pretty, and gentle, and graceful, and considerate, and all that sort of thing.
But I suspect it was all a mistake.
In reality, she is as ugly as a crab; and there is no expression in her countenance, either; she reminds me of one of those dummies in the milliner shops. I know she has got false teeth, and I think one of her eyes is glass. She can never fool me with that French she talks, either; that’s Cherokee – I have been among that tribe myself. She has already driven two or three Frenchmen to the verge of suicide with that unchristian gibberish. And that complexion of her’s is the dingiest that ever a white woman bore – it is pretty nearly Cherokee itself. It shows out strongest when it is contrasted with her monstrous white sugar-shoveled bonnet; when she gets that on, she looks like a sorrel calf under a new shed. I despise that woman, and I’ll never speak to her again. Not unless she speaks to me, anyhow.
But as I was saying, when the sheet-bath failed to cure my cough, a lady friend recommended the application of a mustard plaster to my breast.
I believe that would have cured me effectually, if it had not been for young Wilson.
When I went to bed I put my mustard plaster – which was a very gorgeous one, eighteen inches square – where I could reach it when I was ready for it.
But young Wilson got hungry in the night, and ate it up.
I never saw anybody have such an appetite; I am confident that lunatic would have eaten me if I had been healthy.
After sojourning a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and besides the steam baths, I took a lot of the vilest medicines that were ever concocted. They would have cured me, but I had to go back to Virginia, where, notwithstanding the variety of new remedies I absorbed every day, I managed to aggravate my disease by carelessness and undue exposure.
I finally concluded to visit San Francisco, and the first day I got here a lady at the Lick House told me to drink a quart of whisky every twenty-four hours, and a friend at the Occidental recommended precisely the same course.
Each advised me to take a quart – that makes half a gallon. I calculate to do it or perish in the attempt.
Now, with the kindest motives in the world, I offer for the consideration of consumptive patients the variegated course of treatment I have lately gone through. Let them try it – if it don’t cure them, it can’t more than kill them.
http://www.twainquotes.com/Era/18630920.html

Twain’s cure is as good as anyone’s. Humor is always good.

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The 10/28/13 Joy Jar

1 Nov

The exercise of the ‘Joy Jar’ is a one year experiment which will end on December 25th because on Christmas moi celebrates the birth of Jesus. Christmas is about promise and renewal. The ‘Joy Jar’ exercise was and is about finding something to be grateful for every day. In the process of the ‘Joy Jar’ exercise, moi is finding that she is more intuitive. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is intuition,

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs

The only real valuable thing is intuition.
Albert Einstein

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
Albert Einstein

Faith is a passionate intuition.
William Wordsworth

Listen to your intuition. It will tell you everything you need to know.
Anthony J. D’Angelo

The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.
Rene Descartes

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
Honore de Balzac

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.
Immanuel Kant

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.
Jonas Salk

It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
Henri Poincare

“Intuition is seeing with the soul.”
Dean Koontz

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Mayo Clinic study: Teachers more likely to develop speech disorders

1 Nov

Leigh Ann Morgan listed the hazards of the teaching profession in The Hazards of Being a Teacher:

Disease Transmission
Teachers spend their days with students, colleagues and parents, making them susceptible to bacterial and viral infections. In fact, a study led by investigators from the MGEN Foundation for Public Health revealed that teachers are more susceptible to certain types of infections than other workers. During the study, researchers surveyed 1,817 non-teachers and 3,679 teachers ranging in age from 20 to 60. After adjusting for variables, they found that male and female teachers had a higher lifetime prevalence of laryngitis and rhinopharyngitis, two infections of the upper respiratory tract. They also found that female teachers had a higher lifetime prevalence of bronchitis. The results of this study appeared in the April 21, 2006, online edition of “BMC Public Health.”
Workplace Violence
The American Psychological Association reports that approximately 7 percent of teachers in the United States are threatened with injury each year. These threats are more prevalent in urban high schools, and female teachers receive more than twice as many threats as male teachers. In 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed students as part of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance. Nearly 6 percent of the students surveyed admitted carrying a gun, knife or club on school property during the 30 days preceding the survey. This increases the risk for physical violence.
Ergonomic Issues
Ergonomics involves fitting the work environment to the employee instead of forcing the employee to fit the work environment. Employers use the principles of ergonomics to reduce the risk of repetitive stress injuries and other occupational health problems. Teachers spend much of their time standing, and may have to bend, stretch and lift to use educational aids and equipment such as blackboards and projectors. This puts them at risk for varicose veins and for injuries, including sprains, strains, pulled muscles, and back injuries. For teachers who spend a lot of time using a computer, the risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome is also a concern.
Work-Related Stress
Teachers have several sources of stress in the workplace. They include increased class sizes, student performance objectives, lack of control over work hours and methods, lack of student motivation, difficulty working with parents, lack of professional recognition, and inadequate salary. Although everyone reacts to stress differently, too much stress can affect mood, behavior and physical health. The Mayo Clinic says that stress can lead to headaches, sleep problems, fatigue, muscle tension, upset stomach, chest pain and muscle pain. It can also cause anxiety, irritability, depression, anger, drug or alcohol abuse, social withdrawal, and changes in appetite.
Legal Considerations
Educators must comply with laws designed to ensure that all students have equal access to educational opportunities. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, enacted in 1990, gives students with disabilities access to special education services. The act also protects the right of students with disabilities to receive a free public education regardless of their ability. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 implemented education reforms designed to improve student achievement and hold educators responsible for student progress.
Teachers and administrators must also adhere to the provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The act gives parents the right to review the education records of their minor children and request the correction of any inaccuracies. It also prohibits educators from releasing information from a student’s education record without written permission from the parent. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as releasing information requested by authorities or complying with a judicial order, but educators need to be aware of these exceptions and release information only when required. Failing to comply with these laws and any state-specific education laws puts teachers at risk of being sued or losing their professional credentials. http://work.chron.com/hazards-being-teacher-9309.html

In addition to the hazards listed by Morgan, a Mayo Clinic study found teachers are more likely to have speech disorders.

Science Daily reported in the article, Teachers More Likely to Have Progressive Speech, Language Disorders:

Mayo Clinic researchers have found a surprising occupational hazard for teachers: progressive speech and language disorders. The research, recently published in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Other Dementias, found that people with speech and language disorders are about 3.5 times more likely to be teachers than patients with Alzheimer’s dementia.1
Speech and language disorders are typically characterized by people losing their ability to communicate — they can’t find words to use in sentences, or they’ll speak around a word. They may also have trouble producing the correct sounds and articulating properly. Speech and language disorders are not the same as Alzheimer’s dementia, which is characterized by the loss of memory. Progressive speech and language disorders are degenerative and ultimately lead to death anywhere from 8-10 years after diagnosis.
In the study, researchers looked at a group of about 100 patients with speech and language disorders and noticed many of them were teachers. For a control, they compared them to a group of more than 400 Alzheimer’s patients from the Mayo Clinic Study on Aging. Teachers were about 3.5 times more likely to develop a speech and language disorder than Alzheimer’s disease. For other occupations, there was no difference between the speech and language disorders group and the Alzheimer’s group.
When compared to the 2008 U.S. census, the speech and language cohort had a higher proportion of teachers, but it was consistent with the differences observed with the Alzheimer’s dementia group.
This study has important implications for early detection of progressive speech and language disorders, says Mayo Clinic neurologist, Keith Josephs, M.D., who is the senior author of the study. A large cohort study focusing on teachers may improve power to identify the risk factors for these disorders….
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131015094508.htm

Citation:

Journal Reference:
1. C. F. Lippa. Loss of Language Skills in Teachers: Is There a Link to Frontotemporal Degeneration? American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, 2013; 28 (6): 549 DOI: 10.1177/1533317513502251
Mayo Clinic (2013, October 15). Teachers more likely to have progressive speech, language disorders. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 1,

Here is the press release from the Mayo Clinic:

Mayo Clinic Study: Teachers More Likely to Have Progressive Speech and Language Disorders
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic researchers have found a surprising occupational hazard for teachers: progressive speech and language disorders. The research, recently published in theAmerican Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Other Dementias, found that people with speech and language disorders are about 3.5 times more likely to be teachers than patients with Alzheimer’sdementia.
MULTIMEDIA ALERT: For audio and video of Dr. Josephs talking about the study, visit the Mayo Clinic News Network.
Speech and language disorders are typically characterized by people losing their ability to communicate — they can’t find words to use in sentences, or they’ll speak around a word. They may also have trouble producing the correct sounds and articulating properly. Speech and language disorders are not the same as Alzheimer’s dementia, which is characterized by the loss of memory. Progressive speech and language disorders are degenerative and ultimately lead to death anywhere from 8-10 years after diagnosis.
In the study, researchers looked at a group of about 100 patients with speech and language disorders and noticed many of them were teachers. For a control, they compared them to a group of more than 400 Alzheimer’s patients from the Mayo Clinic Study on Aging. Teachers were about 3.5 times more likely to develop a speech and language disorder than Alzheimer’s disease. For other occupations, there was no difference between the speech and language disorders group and the Alzheimer’s group.
When compared to the 2008 U.S. census, the speech and language cohort had a higher proportion of teachers, but it was consistent with the differences observed with the Alzheimer’s dementia group.
This study has important implications for early detection of progressive speech and language disorders, says Mayo Clinic neurologist, Keith Josephs, M.D., who is the senior author of the study. A large cohort study focusing on teachers may improve power to identify the risk factors for these disorders.
“Teachers are in daily communication,” says Dr. Josephs. “It’s a demanding occupation, and teachers may be more sensitive to the development of speech and language impairments.”
The study was funded by National Institute of Health grants R01 DC010367 and P50 AG16574.
###
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. For more information, visit MayoClinic.com or MayoClinic.org/news.
Journalists can become a member of the Mayo Clinic News Network for the latest health, science and research news and access to video, audio, text and graphic elements that can be downloaded or embedded.

Of course, more information will be needed about whether further studies confirm the Mayo Clinic study and what links, if any, the skill set necessary to be a teacher has to later speech problems. Still, the study has an interesting result.

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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MDRC study: ‘Success for All’ shows promise

1 Nov

Moi wrote in Research papers: Student Motivation: An Overlooked Piece of School Reform:
Moi often says 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. A series of papers about student motivation by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) follows the Council on Foreign Relations report by Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein. In Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein report about American Education, moi said
The Council on Foreign Relations has issued the report, U.S. Education Reform and National Security. The chairs for the report are Joel I. Klein, News Corporation and Condoleezza Rice, Stanford University. Moi opined about the state of education in U.S. education failure: Running out of excuses https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/u-s-education-failure-running-out-of-excuses/ Education tends to be populated by idealists and dreamers who are true believers and who think of what is possible. Otherwise, why would one look at children in second grade and think one of those children could win the Nobel Prize or be president? Maybe, that is why education as a discipline is so prone to fads and the constant quest for the “Holy Grail” or the next, next magic bullet. There is no one answer, there is what works for a particular population of kids

Research papers: Student Motivation: An Overlooked Piece of School Reform

Sarah D. Sparks wrote in the Education Week article, v:

One of the biggest early bets in the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation prShows Promise in First i3 Evaluationogram seems to be paying off: Success for All, a literacy-related, whole-school improvement model, shows signs of changing teaching practice and boosting students’ early-literacy skills after a year in schools.
The findings come from a new study by the New York City-based research group MDRC, the first of three installments in an ongoing $6.7 million evaluation of Success for All, a popular school-improvement model used in 1,000 schools representing 300,000 students nationwide. The program, which includes schoolwide curriculum, tutors, bimonthly student assessments, and teacher training, received $49.3 million from the federal i3 program in 2009 to expand its school improvement model and increase training for teachers and staff.
A year after 19 K-5 and K-6 schools in four states were randomly selected to launch the program in the 2011-12 school year, MDRC researchers found that kindergartners in those schools significantly outperformed demographically similar peers in a control group of 18 schools in a standardized test of phonics, the Woodcock-Johnson Word Attack. Success for All students got a boost roughly equal to 12 percent of the average annual growth for a kindergartner. Moreover, the same benefits were found for poor and minority students.
Painting a Picture of Teacher Practice
In the classroom, teachers at Success for All schools differed from those in the control-group schools in a number of ways. They were more likely, for example, to group and regroup students by ability for reading lessons—even across grades.
Those benefits are in line with the learning gains found in previous studies of Success for All, which has been studied extensively since its founding in 1987, but the MDRC study “goes into more depth in relating implementation to outcomes than any study that’s come before,” said Robert E. Slavin, the chairman of the Success for All Foundation and the director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “It’s outstanding in giving a more detailed picture of what’s actually happening in the schools.”
Compared with teachers in schools that did not implement the program, researchers found that the teachers in the Success for All schools had more, and more varied, training in reading instruction. They later proved more likely to focus on comprehension, even in kindergarten, than teachers in control schools, and were also more likely to use cooperative-learning strategies. Also, following the Success for All design, teachers in those schools were more likely to group and regroup students across multiple grades based on their reading skills, to provide more focused instruction.
“Some of the cooperative learning that students undertake—like turning to your neighbor and telling them something about the text—are among the ways comprehension can get reinforced even with very young children,” noted Janet C. Quint, an MDRC senior research associate and the study director for the evaluation project…
The evaluation report also details the challenge of implementing the whole-school program, which requires strictly scripted and paced lessons and regular assessments and regrouping of students. Surveys of teachers during the first year of implementation found many wanted clearer guidance on how to structure lessons, for example…
Teachers and administrators also repeated long-held concerns about balancing the many moving parts of SFA’s comprehensive-school-reform model, with many schools reporting they did not have sufficient staff to provide tutors for all students who needed them or put in place the school committees needed to implement the program’s whole-schools reforms. Similar complaints about comprehensive school reform programs stymied previous federal efforts to expand such programs in the late 1990s.
The complexity of the program may partly explain why Success For All has not been keeping pace with its scale-up targets under i3: The group initially proposed expanding its whole-school program to 1,100 schools in five years, 550 of which would receive startup support via the i3 grant. (Central Elementary was one of these.) Now, Mr. Slavin said Success for All will be lucky to recruit half that many new schools for expansion during the duration of the i3 grant, and all, not half, of them will receive the startup money.
“The economy has been so awful, schools have been struggling just to keep their staff, not to mention taking on any kind of reform program,” Mr. Slavin said. “We expected to have a real rush of schools interested in signing up, particularly with the i3 incentives, but … that hasn’t happened. We’ve had to do some real marketing.”
Still, researchers will continue to study students in the first group of expansion schools as they progress through elementary school. Two additional studies will look more broadly at whole-school changes, as well as longitudinal progress for 2nd graders and older students. These will also include comprehension skills, which Ms. Quint said are more difficult to test in early grades…http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/10/30/11successforall.h33.html?tkn=PQZFBWe7vcoucd7HsmaTAtuDHLlwCnkyz2So&cmp=clp-edweek

Here is the press release:

The Success for All Model of School Reform
Early Findings from the Investing in Innovation (i3) Scale-Up
10/2013 | Janet Quint, Rekha Balu, Micah DeLaurentis, Shelley Rappaport, Thomas J. Smith, Pei Zhu
First implemented in 1987, the Success for All (SFA) school reform model combines three basic elements:
• Reading instruction that is characterized by an emphasis on phonics for beginning readers and comprehension for students at all levels, a highly structured curriculum, an emphasis on cooperative learning, across-grade ability grouping and periodic regrouping, frequent assessments, and tutoring for students who need extra help
• Whole-school improvement components that address noninstructional issues
• Strategies to secure teacher buy-in, provide school personnel with initial and ongoing training, and foster shared school leadership
Success for All was selected to receive a five-year scale-up grant under the U.S. Department of Education’s first Investing in Innovation (i3) competition. This report, the first of three, examines the program’s implementation and impacts in 2011-2012, the first year of operation, at 37 kindergarten through grades 5 and 6 (K-5 and K-6) schools in five school districts that agreed to be part of the scale-up evaluation: 19 “program group” schools were randomly selected to operate SFA, and 18 “control group” schools did not receive the intervention. Program and control group schools were very similar at the start of the study. The analysis compares the experiences of school staff as well as the reading performance of a cohort of kindergarten students who remained in SFA schools throughout the year (and therefore received the maximum “dosage” of the program) with those of their counterparts in the control group schools.
Key Findings

• While teachers in the SFA schools initially expressed concerns about implementing this new, complex, and demanding initiative, by the end of the first year, many teachers were beginning to feel more comfortable with the program.
• Almost all the program group schools had reached a satisfactory level of early implementation as determined by the Success for All Foundation, the nonprofit organization that provides materials, training, and support to schools operating the reform. Yet there was also ample room for schools to implement additional program elements and to refine the elements that they had put in place.
• Reading instruction in the two sets of schools was found to differ in key ways.
• Kindergartners in the SFA schools scored significantly higher than their control group counterparts on one of two standardized measures of early reading. The impact on this measure seems to be robust across a range of demographic and socioeconomic subgroups, as well as across students with different levels of literacy skills at baseline.
Subsequent reports will examine the reading skills of these students as they progress through first and second grades and will also measure the reading skills of students in the upper elementary grades.
Full Report http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/The_Success_for_All_Model_FR_0.pdf
Executive Summary http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/The_Success_for_All_Model_ES_0.pdf

The Success for All Foundation describes the Success for All program.

In FAQs the Success for All Foundation answers some basic questions:

Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is Success for All?

A. The Success for All whole-school improvement model weaves together four essential strategies to help you ensure the success of your students:

Leadership for Continuous Improvement: School leaders, teachers, and other school staff work in collaboration to set quarterly goals, select leverage points for improvement, measure progress, and celebrate success. An online data-management system makes data accessible to all.

Schoolwide Support and Intervention Tools: Proven strategies focus on attendance, parental involvement, positive school culture, family needs, health issues, and individual student support and intervention to make sure that students are in school and ready to learn.

Powerful Instruction: All instruction in Success for All is built around a cooperative-learning framework that engages students in rich discussion and motivating challenges every day. Detailed lesson resources for reading make planning easy and include rich media supports to develop vocabulary, background knowledge, fluency, and discussion skills. Computer-assisted tutoring tools provide individualization and extra time.

Professional Development and Coaching: Implementation is supported by extensive job-embedded professional development and coaching that enables teachers and school leaders to make the most of the research-proven approach.

Q. How does it work?

A. Success for All makes reading the cornerstone of the curriculum. For children to succeed in school, they must be reading on grade level by the end of the third grade and keep building reading skills through secondary school. They also need effective teachers, so SFA includes intensive professional development, ongoing coaching support, and data tools to give teachers feedback on how students are learning and where they need additional instruction or extra help. SFA involves the whole community in implementing effective instruction that is based on the best research on what works. Success for All makes learning fun and engaging for kids and helps teachers become knowledgeable, skilled instructional leaders.

Q. How is SFA different from everything else out there?

A. Success for All is unique in so many ways!
• Cooperative learning is used all the time. Students work together productively to learn and take responsibility for one another.
• Technology is deeply embedded in daily teaching and learning.
• Students are highly motivated, engaged, noisy, and on task.
• The pace of instruction is fast, and the kids keep up with it.
• Every minute of teaching is well planned, exciting, and engaging.
• Learning is constantly monitored, and problems are solved the right way.
• Teachers teach the whole child. Social and emotional learning, behavior, and cooperation are as important as academics.
• Professional development is top notch and going on every day. Teachers know their craft and apply it with intelligence, adapting it to their students’ needs.
• Everyone is involved in support of student success—teachers, parents, community members, and the kids themselves.
• A facilitator from the school’s own faculty works with teachers every day to help every teacher succeed and grow in skill and sophistication.
• There is a strong research base in every component of SFA and in the program as a whole.

Q. I’ve heard Success for All is expensive. What’s the story?

A. The average cost of Success for All for a school receiving our $50,000 i3 grant opportunity is just $104 per child, per year—or just 60 cents a day. And costs are even lower after the first three years of implementation. Title I funds, including funds from SES waivers, professional-development budgets, and school-improvement grants, can all be used to fund Success for All. Research documents that cost savings from reductions in special-education services and grade repetition more than pay for ALL the costs of Success for All within a five-year period…. http://www.successforall.org/About-Us/FAQs/

Like, unhappy families, failing schools are probably failing in their own way.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Chapter 1, first line
Russian mystic & novelist (1828 – 1910)

It seems everything old becomes new once again, although a relentless focus on the basics never went out of style.

Good Schools really are relentless about the basics.

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