Great article. Our ANTI friends howl about a lot of nonsense that just is not true. This article is from the LATIMES.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez25-2009feb25,0,551764.column?track=rss
From the Los Angeles Times
Californians cling to easily dispelled tax myths
Steve LopezFebruary 25, 2009S
Seems like only yesterday that I was at the Orange County fairgrounds to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger drop a wrecking ball on a car, symbolically crushing the auto tax to the delight of supporters who never asked how the governor-to-be might cover the lost revenue.
Since then, he's continued to put that wrecking ball to use, crushing one campaign promise after another.
But not until the governor signed on to raising taxes, including the car tax, did GOP leaders and good citizens get angry, vowing to go after not just Arnold but any Republican legislators who voted with him on a budget that includes the new revenues.
It didn't matter that state services of every type were threatened from Chico to Chula Vista, that the bus was headed for the cliff, that inmates were packing their bags for early release, or that firing every state employee wouldn't have balanced the budget without new revenue.
All that mattered were taxes.
"California has the highest taxes in the country," a reader named Mary wrote to me."
I guess it's our patriotic duty, as residents of California, to pay the highest taxes (or close to it) in the country, for the most incompetent government in any state," wrote Art.
Most incompetent government? We're probably in the running, but two other states I've lived in were at least as screwed up, with Pennsylvania actually taking pride in its monumental incompetence.
As for the claim that Californians pay the highest taxes of any state or close to it, I'm sorry to disappoint, given the great joy so many people seem to derive from hyperventilating.But we're not even close.
"We're 17th," said Jean Ross, executive director of the nonpartisan California Budget Project. That means the residents of 16 states pay higher taxes than Californians. In an April 2008 report by Ross' group, California is called a "moderate tax state" based on the latest available figures. The report includes state and local taxes of all types in its computation, and rankings are based on taxation as a percentage of personal income. We tend to be higher on income taxes and lower on property taxes, Ross told me. We're also low on taxes for fuel and alcohol.
Given that we've just been handed a tax increase, I asked Ross if we'd be moving up in the rankings.
Impossible to know, she said, because other states are also being forced to raise taxes, so it'll take a while to settle out. She also said she hadn't yet computed whether the federal tax cut that's coming our way would nullify California's tax increase for some people.
"We've been fairly constant over the last decade," Ross said. "We might go up one rank and then down one rank from year to year. But over a period of time, we've been right about in the same place."
Look, nobody can be very happy about forking over an even bigger chunk of their earnings in taxes, especially at a time when jobs are being lost in droves, nest eggs are shrinking and foreclosures mounting. People have a right to be ticked off about false promises from politicians, and in this disastrous economy, they have every reason to be scared.
As for those who write me constantly, asking why I don't go back to Mexico and take all the illegal immigrants with me, I'm afraid that wouldn't be enough to balance the budget. As my colleague George Skelton pointed out in a recent column, illegal immigrants cost the state several billion dollars a year in services, and that's far less than our budget shortfall. And even if it would solve things, how practical is it for one state to address the federal failure on immigration reform? How many billions would it cost to round up and deport everyone? And how many industries would go belly up without cheap labor?
Don't get me wrong. I'm no apologist for Sacramento, where Democrats take care of labor unions in return for campaign donations and Republicans carry water for corporations, with working taxpayers footing the bill on both accounts. But if you want to blow a gasket, there are better targets than a tax hike that might move us from 17th in the nation to 15th.
Does it make sense that on the same street in any California town, one resident pays $3,000 in property taxes while the owner of an identical house pays $20,000, thanks to Prop. 13?
Does it make sense that businesses got a huge tax break in last week's budget deal while working blokes got smacked? Between 2001 and 2005, according to Ross' group, the net personal income of California taxpayers increased 22.7% while net corporate profits in the state increased -- watch the blood pressure, now -- 557%.California's business taxes are among the highest in national rankings.
But companies benefit from a large workforce, a huge pool of customers and access to venture capital, said Jed Kolko of the Public Policy Institute of California.
He's in the midst of a study that is debunking the claim that businesses are leaving the state in droves.
"We found that very few businesses either leave or enter the state," said Kolko. "California's job growth is pretty consistently at, or a little above, the U.S. average."
Don't you hate when facts get in the way of so many good myths?
Yeah, taxes are a drag, and we should get more for our money. But from a global perspective, if you sleep under a roof, drive a car on a paved road, drink safe water and can attend school, you're relatively rich.
Speaking of rich, the wealthiest nation in history is fighting simultaneous wars in two of the most impoverished countries in the world, to no apparent benefit. No state is paying more in tax dollars for those wars than California, and no state has lost more soldiers.
Where's Howard Jarvis when you need him?steve.lopez@latimes.com
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Public schools beat private schools, better teachers!
The ANTI folks have been running a con for a couple of decades. The con said public schools were no good. Only private schools could educate our kids. It is an example of the BIG LIE. Here is the evidence that contrary to their con, our public schools are the best in the land because our teachers are the best in the land.
Certified teachers+modern instruction=better public-school math scores
2/25/09
Phil Ciciora, News Editor
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In another “Freakonomics”-style study that turns conventional wisdom about public- versus private-school education on its head, a team of University of Illinois education professors has found that public-school students outperform their private-school classmates on standardized math tests, thanks to two key factors: certified math teachers, and a modern, reform-oriented math curriculum.
Sarah Lubienski, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says teacher certification and reform-oriented teaching practices correlated positively with higher achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam for public-school students.
“According to our results, schools that hired more certified teachers and had a curriculum that de-emphasized learning by rote tended to do better on standardized math tests,” Lubienski said. “And public schools had more of both.”
To account for the difference in test scores, Lubienski and her co-authors, education professor Christopher Lubienski (her husband) and doctoral student Corinna Crane, looked at five critical factors: school size, class size, parental involvement, teacher certification and instructional practices.
In previous research, the Lubienskis discovered that after holding demographic factors constant, public school students performed just as well if not better than private schools students on standardized math tests.
“There are so many reasons why you would think that the results should be reversed – that private schools would outscore public schools in standardized math test scores,” she said. “This study looks at the underlying reasons why that’s not necessarily the case.”
Of the five factors, school size and parental involvement “didn’t seem to matter all that much,” Lubienski said, citing a weak correlation between the two factors as “mixed or marginally significant predictors” of student achievement.
They also discovered that smaller class sizes, which are more prevalent in private schools than in public schools, significantly correlate with achievement.
“Smaller class size correlated with higher achievement and occurred more frequently in private schools,” Lubienski said. “But that doesn’t help explain why private schools were being outscored by public schools.”
Lubienski said one reason private schools show poorly in this study could be their lack of accountability to a public body.
“There’s been this assumption that private schools are more effective because they’re autonomous and don’t have all the bureaucracy that public schools have,” Lubienski said. “But one thing this study suggests is that autonomy isn’t necessarily a good thing for schools.”
Another reason could be private schools’ anachronistic approach to math.
“Private schools are increasingly ignoring curricular trends in education, and it shows,” Lubienski said. “They’re not using up-to-date methods, and they’re not hiring teachers who employ up-to-date lesson plans in the classroom. When you do that, you aren’t really taking advantage of the expertise in math education that’s out there.”
Lubienski thinks one of the reasons that private schools don’t adopt a more reform-minded math curriculum is because some parents are more attracted to a “back-to-basics” approach to math instruction. The end result, however, is students who are “prepared for the tests of 40 years ago, and not the tests of today,” she said.
Tests like NAEP, Lubienski said, have realigned themselves with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards for math instruction, which have moved away from the brute-force memorization of numbers to an emphasis on “geometry, measurement and algebra – things that private school teachers reported they spent less time teaching,” Lubienski said.
“The results do seem to suggest that private schools are doing their own thing, and that they’re less likely to have paid attention to curricular trends and the fact that math instruction and math tests have changed,” she said.
Lubienski cautioned that the relationships found between the two factors and public-school performance might not be directly causal.
“The correlations might be a result, for example, of having the type of administrator who makes teacher credentials and academics the priority over other things, such as religious education,” she said. “That's often not the case for private religious schools, where parents are obviously committed to things beside academic achievement.”
The schools with the smallest percentage of certified teachers – conservative Christian schools, where less than half of teachers were certified – were, not coincidentally, the schools with the lowest aggregate math test scores.
“Those schools certainly have the prerogative to set different priorities when hiring, but it just doesn’t help them on NAEP,” Lubienski said.
Lubienski also noted that public schools tend to set aside money for teacher development and periodic curriculum improvements.
“Private schools don’t invest as much in the professional development of their teachers and don’t do enough to keep their curriculum current,” she said. “That appears to be less of a priority for them, and they don’t have money designated for that kind of thing in the way public schools do.”
Lubienski hopes that politicians who favor more privatization would realize that the invisible hand of the market doesn’t necessarily apply to education.
“You can give schools greater autonomy, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to use that autonomy to implement an innovative curriculum or improve the academics of the students,” she said.
Instead, some private schools try to attract parents by offering a basic skills curriculum, or non-academic requirements, such as students wearing uniforms.
Privatization also assumes that parents can make judgments about what schools are the best for their children.
“With schools, it’s tough to see how much kids are actually learning,” Lubienski said. “Market theory in education rests on the assumption that parents can see what they’re buying, and that they’re able to make an informed decision about their child’s education. Although parents might be able to compare schools’ SAT scores, they aren’t able to determine whether those gains are actually larger in higher scoring schools unless they know where students start when they enter school. People don’t always pick the most effective schools.”
The results were published in a paper titled “Achievement Differences and School Type: The Role of School Climate, Teacher Certification, and Instruction” in the November 2008 issue of the American Journal of Education. The published findings were based on fourth- and eighth-grade test results from the 2003 NAEP test, including data from both student achievement and comprehensive background information drawn from a nationally representative sample of more than 270,000 students from more than 10,000 schools.
Certified teachers+modern instruction=better public-school math scores
2/25/09
Phil Ciciora, News Editor
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In another “Freakonomics”-style study that turns conventional wisdom about public- versus private-school education on its head, a team of University of Illinois education professors has found that public-school students outperform their private-school classmates on standardized math tests, thanks to two key factors: certified math teachers, and a modern, reform-oriented math curriculum.
Sarah Lubienski, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says teacher certification and reform-oriented teaching practices correlated positively with higher achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam for public-school students.
“According to our results, schools that hired more certified teachers and had a curriculum that de-emphasized learning by rote tended to do better on standardized math tests,” Lubienski said. “And public schools had more of both.”
To account for the difference in test scores, Lubienski and her co-authors, education professor Christopher Lubienski (her husband) and doctoral student Corinna Crane, looked at five critical factors: school size, class size, parental involvement, teacher certification and instructional practices.
In previous research, the Lubienskis discovered that after holding demographic factors constant, public school students performed just as well if not better than private schools students on standardized math tests.
“There are so many reasons why you would think that the results should be reversed – that private schools would outscore public schools in standardized math test scores,” she said. “This study looks at the underlying reasons why that’s not necessarily the case.”
Of the five factors, school size and parental involvement “didn’t seem to matter all that much,” Lubienski said, citing a weak correlation between the two factors as “mixed or marginally significant predictors” of student achievement.
They also discovered that smaller class sizes, which are more prevalent in private schools than in public schools, significantly correlate with achievement.
“Smaller class size correlated with higher achievement and occurred more frequently in private schools,” Lubienski said. “But that doesn’t help explain why private schools were being outscored by public schools.”
Lubienski said one reason private schools show poorly in this study could be their lack of accountability to a public body.
“There’s been this assumption that private schools are more effective because they’re autonomous and don’t have all the bureaucracy that public schools have,” Lubienski said. “But one thing this study suggests is that autonomy isn’t necessarily a good thing for schools.”
Another reason could be private schools’ anachronistic approach to math.
“Private schools are increasingly ignoring curricular trends in education, and it shows,” Lubienski said. “They’re not using up-to-date methods, and they’re not hiring teachers who employ up-to-date lesson plans in the classroom. When you do that, you aren’t really taking advantage of the expertise in math education that’s out there.”
Lubienski thinks one of the reasons that private schools don’t adopt a more reform-minded math curriculum is because some parents are more attracted to a “back-to-basics” approach to math instruction. The end result, however, is students who are “prepared for the tests of 40 years ago, and not the tests of today,” she said.
Tests like NAEP, Lubienski said, have realigned themselves with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards for math instruction, which have moved away from the brute-force memorization of numbers to an emphasis on “geometry, measurement and algebra – things that private school teachers reported they spent less time teaching,” Lubienski said.
“The results do seem to suggest that private schools are doing their own thing, and that they’re less likely to have paid attention to curricular trends and the fact that math instruction and math tests have changed,” she said.
Lubienski cautioned that the relationships found between the two factors and public-school performance might not be directly causal.
“The correlations might be a result, for example, of having the type of administrator who makes teacher credentials and academics the priority over other things, such as religious education,” she said. “That's often not the case for private religious schools, where parents are obviously committed to things beside academic achievement.”
The schools with the smallest percentage of certified teachers – conservative Christian schools, where less than half of teachers were certified – were, not coincidentally, the schools with the lowest aggregate math test scores.
“Those schools certainly have the prerogative to set different priorities when hiring, but it just doesn’t help them on NAEP,” Lubienski said.
Lubienski also noted that public schools tend to set aside money for teacher development and periodic curriculum improvements.
“Private schools don’t invest as much in the professional development of their teachers and don’t do enough to keep their curriculum current,” she said. “That appears to be less of a priority for them, and they don’t have money designated for that kind of thing in the way public schools do.”
Lubienski hopes that politicians who favor more privatization would realize that the invisible hand of the market doesn’t necessarily apply to education.
“You can give schools greater autonomy, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to use that autonomy to implement an innovative curriculum or improve the academics of the students,” she said.
Instead, some private schools try to attract parents by offering a basic skills curriculum, or non-academic requirements, such as students wearing uniforms.
Privatization also assumes that parents can make judgments about what schools are the best for their children.
“With schools, it’s tough to see how much kids are actually learning,” Lubienski said. “Market theory in education rests on the assumption that parents can see what they’re buying, and that they’re able to make an informed decision about their child’s education. Although parents might be able to compare schools’ SAT scores, they aren’t able to determine whether those gains are actually larger in higher scoring schools unless they know where students start when they enter school. People don’t always pick the most effective schools.”
The results were published in a paper titled “Achievement Differences and School Type: The Role of School Climate, Teacher Certification, and Instruction” in the November 2008 issue of the American Journal of Education. The published findings were based on fourth- and eighth-grade test results from the 2003 NAEP test, including data from both student achievement and comprehensive background information drawn from a nationally representative sample of more than 270,000 students from more than 10,000 schools.
Doodling helps student learn according to research
I used to love to doodle. So many teachers told me to stop, I started writing notes instead. Both helped me listen. I am glad to see I am vindicated. Doodling was not all bad.
Of course sometimes I got so involved with my drawing that I tuned out everything else and suddenly the period was over and I had no idea of what had happened. I guess there is "bad" doodling as well.
Here is the article:
Do doodle: Research shows doodling can help memory recall
Doodling while listening can help with remembering details, rather than implying that the mind is wandering as is the common perception. According to a study published today in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, subjects given a doodling task while listening to a dull phone message had a 29% improved recall compared to their non-doodling counterparts.
40 members of the research panel of the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge were asked to listen to a two and a half minute tape giving several names of people and places, and were told to write down only the names of people going to a party. 20 of the participants were asked to shade in shapes on a piece of paper at the same time, but paying no attention to neatness. Participants were not asked to doodle naturally so that they would not become self-conscious. None of the participants were told it was a memory test.
After the tape had finished, all participants in the study were asked to recall the eight names of the party-goers which they were asked to write down, as well as eight additional place names which were included as incidental information. The doodlers recalled on average 7.5 names of people and places compared to only 5.8 by the non-doodlers.
"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," said study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, Ph.D., of the School of Psychology, University of Plymouth. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."
"In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process. If that process is important for the main cognitive task then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade," added Andrade. "This study suggests that in everyday life doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing."
###
(27th February 2009 is National Doodle Day – http://www.nationaldoodleday.org.uk/)
Of course sometimes I got so involved with my drawing that I tuned out everything else and suddenly the period was over and I had no idea of what had happened. I guess there is "bad" doodling as well.
Here is the article:
Do doodle: Research shows doodling can help memory recall
Doodling while listening can help with remembering details, rather than implying that the mind is wandering as is the common perception. According to a study published today in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, subjects given a doodling task while listening to a dull phone message had a 29% improved recall compared to their non-doodling counterparts.
40 members of the research panel of the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge were asked to listen to a two and a half minute tape giving several names of people and places, and were told to write down only the names of people going to a party. 20 of the participants were asked to shade in shapes on a piece of paper at the same time, but paying no attention to neatness. Participants were not asked to doodle naturally so that they would not become self-conscious. None of the participants were told it was a memory test.
After the tape had finished, all participants in the study were asked to recall the eight names of the party-goers which they were asked to write down, as well as eight additional place names which were included as incidental information. The doodlers recalled on average 7.5 names of people and places compared to only 5.8 by the non-doodlers.
"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," said study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, Ph.D., of the School of Psychology, University of Plymouth. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."
"In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process. If that process is important for the main cognitive task then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade," added Andrade. "This study suggests that in everyday life doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing."
###
(27th February 2009 is National Doodle Day – http://www.nationaldoodleday.org.uk/)
Huge VUSD cuts and ANTI reactions
It is now 9:10 PM and our four brave VUSD school board members are having to make terrible cuts to our programs and staff. The national and world financial crisis and meltdown will be hitting us locally tonight. Through no fault of their own, our newly elected board members Jaka and Chunka will have to oversee some dismantling of our quality VUSD school programs. As bad as it will be, I am so glad that we will have a majority of FOUR school board members who support public education. The decisions will be tough but at least they will not be irrational and vindictive as they would have been with ANTI's in charge.
In case you have forgotten our ANTI friends are still out there. The ANTIs supported Guffanti, Anderson and Fernandez in the last election as well as Jimmy Gibson who is still on our board. The ANTIs have not gotten over their complete repudiation by the VUSD voters and have been blogging their bitterness and ignorance on the NCTimes website. As you read their ill informed and ill tempered posts just remember these people could be making the decisions about what will be cut. They are not in power thanks to the great work of hundreds of parents, teachers, CSEA folks and other community members in the last election.
The comments below can be found after the NCTimes called "VUSD Considering Layoffs, Other Cuts," at the following URL:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/02/26/news/coastal/vista/zf44fc638d8db91a4882575670079f531.txt
Samuel February 25, 2009 7:01PM PST
The funds for the Lindamood Bell program come from the federal government and can only be used for aid to students that need extra help. (Blog editor note: Samuel seems to be unaware of the hundreds of other possiblities for spending those funds, that might be far more helpful to our VUSD students.)
Vista Watchdog1 February 26, 2009 7:00AM PST
So, if you have funds from the state that are specifically supplied for Transportation, can you cut bussing (sic) and move those funds to the classroom? (VWdog is usually the most prolific ANTI blogger on the NCTimes website. He makes many errors. This post is one of those. I was a California public school superintendent. I can tell you that the state NEVER provides 100% of the funds for anything that they separately fund--not textbook adoptions, not special education and certainly not transportation. General fund money always has to be added in to cover the expenses, often up to 40% of the total cost. Transportation funds from the state do not come close to covering the full cost to our VUSD district for all the incidentals--maintenance, bus purchase, bus and equipment leases, personnel, etc. If VUSD cut all busing, we would be actually SAVING money for the general fund.)
Next I will post the blogs of "Roxy".
According to Roxy the VTA represents the classified employees of the district (quick someone tell the CSEA) and the "unclassified" employees (usually known as certificated). Also according to Roxy teachers are making millions in overtime pay!! Roxy also knows that teachers only work six hours a day(gee the contract requires 7 1/2, most teacher give 10 hours) and are paid $75,000 to $100,000!!
Roxy is really living in LaLa land. She has built her straw man (VUSD teachers) and she is going to tear them down. Very sad creature, this Roxy. Can you say clinical depression?
Roxy February 26, 2009 7:22AM PST
The district's Budget Advisory Committee is made up of VISTA TEACHERS UNION (s) REPRESENTATIVES [classified and unclassified employees.] California Teachers Association “CTA, employees of the school district, and Del Norte PTA that is the same vote as the VTA and CTA. Also a possible school employee named as a DELAC representative which another representative of the VTA. Along with FIVE members that are hand picked by each of the Board Members of VUSD Board of Trustees
Roxy February 26, 2009 10:15AM PST
Maybe someone should investigate the millions spent of teachers OVERTIME? When I heard this my jaw dropped. Since I know too well that the teachers are the first ones out the parking lot when the bell rings.
Roxy February 26, 2009 2:46PM PST
Well, lets see how much do VUSD teachers make including salaries, perks, benefits pensions? Does anyone know? $75,000. to 100,000. Plus? for a 6 hour day? Every summer and holiday imaginable. How many months do they get out in a year, with holidays and summers?
Roxy February 26, 2009 2:55PM PST
VistaRez~~ oh sure I hear the same old, same old, “Teachers give up so much of their own personal in order to make lesson plans, grade papers, prepare their classrooms.”Unfortunately, the facts don’t support your statements.Most of VUSD kids are functioning illiterates. They cannot understand a word of what they read. What is the total drop out rate 60%?
The following post allows a disturbingly clear a view into the bizarre thinking of our ANTI friends:
Realist February 26, 2009 3:01PM PST
A cult figure without ANY executive political skills/history pulled off the greatest fabian socialist act, the highest office in the land/world! He has gotten everything he ever wanted, grandma sends him to college, he gets a scholarship(see we don't have enough minorities(thank you ACLU, i.e. democrats)), then the lemmings give him the oval office. NOBODY has ever said NO to this guy...remind you of past facist socialists(germany, italy, etc...) So it is no wonder that at the local-yocal yahoo level(see vista) any jack-### can get elected and dispense their stupidity such as VUSD. Magnet schools, performing arts schools, alternative schools...
In case you have forgotten our ANTI friends are still out there. The ANTIs supported Guffanti, Anderson and Fernandez in the last election as well as Jimmy Gibson who is still on our board. The ANTIs have not gotten over their complete repudiation by the VUSD voters and have been blogging their bitterness and ignorance on the NCTimes website. As you read their ill informed and ill tempered posts just remember these people could be making the decisions about what will be cut. They are not in power thanks to the great work of hundreds of parents, teachers, CSEA folks and other community members in the last election.
The comments below can be found after the NCTimes called "VUSD Considering Layoffs, Other Cuts," at the following URL:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/02/26/news/coastal/vista/zf44fc638d8db91a4882575670079f531.txt
Samuel February 25, 2009 7:01PM PST
The funds for the Lindamood Bell program come from the federal government and can only be used for aid to students that need extra help. (Blog editor note: Samuel seems to be unaware of the hundreds of other possiblities for spending those funds, that might be far more helpful to our VUSD students.)
Vista Watchdog1 February 26, 2009 7:00AM PST
So, if you have funds from the state that are specifically supplied for Transportation, can you cut bussing (sic) and move those funds to the classroom? (VWdog is usually the most prolific ANTI blogger on the NCTimes website. He makes many errors. This post is one of those. I was a California public school superintendent. I can tell you that the state NEVER provides 100% of the funds for anything that they separately fund--not textbook adoptions, not special education and certainly not transportation. General fund money always has to be added in to cover the expenses, often up to 40% of the total cost. Transportation funds from the state do not come close to covering the full cost to our VUSD district for all the incidentals--maintenance, bus purchase, bus and equipment leases, personnel, etc. If VUSD cut all busing, we would be actually SAVING money for the general fund.)
Next I will post the blogs of "Roxy".
According to Roxy the VTA represents the classified employees of the district (quick someone tell the CSEA) and the "unclassified" employees (usually known as certificated). Also according to Roxy teachers are making millions in overtime pay!! Roxy also knows that teachers only work six hours a day(gee the contract requires 7 1/2, most teacher give 10 hours) and are paid $75,000 to $100,000!!
Roxy is really living in LaLa land. She has built her straw man (VUSD teachers) and she is going to tear them down. Very sad creature, this Roxy. Can you say clinical depression?
Roxy February 26, 2009 7:22AM PST
The district's Budget Advisory Committee is made up of VISTA TEACHERS UNION (s) REPRESENTATIVES [classified and unclassified employees.] California Teachers Association “CTA, employees of the school district, and Del Norte PTA that is the same vote as the VTA and CTA. Also a possible school employee named as a DELAC representative which another representative of the VTA. Along with FIVE members that are hand picked by each of the Board Members of VUSD Board of Trustees
Roxy February 26, 2009 10:15AM PST
Maybe someone should investigate the millions spent of teachers OVERTIME? When I heard this my jaw dropped. Since I know too well that the teachers are the first ones out the parking lot when the bell rings.
Roxy February 26, 2009 2:46PM PST
Well, lets see how much do VUSD teachers make including salaries, perks, benefits pensions? Does anyone know? $75,000. to 100,000. Plus? for a 6 hour day? Every summer and holiday imaginable. How many months do they get out in a year, with holidays and summers?
Roxy February 26, 2009 2:55PM PST
VistaRez~~ oh sure I hear the same old, same old, “Teachers give up so much of their own personal in order to make lesson plans, grade papers, prepare their classrooms.”Unfortunately, the facts don’t support your statements.Most of VUSD kids are functioning illiterates. They cannot understand a word of what they read. What is the total drop out rate 60%?
The following post allows a disturbingly clear a view into the bizarre thinking of our ANTI friends:
Realist February 26, 2009 3:01PM PST
A cult figure without ANY executive political skills/history pulled off the greatest fabian socialist act, the highest office in the land/world! He has gotten everything he ever wanted, grandma sends him to college, he gets a scholarship(see we don't have enough minorities(thank you ACLU, i.e. democrats)), then the lemmings give him the oval office. NOBODY has ever said NO to this guy...remind you of past facist socialists(germany, italy, etc...) So it is no wonder that at the local-yocal yahoo level(see vista) any jack-### can get elected and dispense their stupidity such as VUSD. Magnet schools, performing arts schools, alternative schools...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Hand movements improve math learning
Here is an interesting article:
Gestures lend a hand in learning mathematics
Contact: William Harms
University of Chicago
Hand movements help create new ideas
Gesturing helps students develop new ways of understanding mathematics, according to research at the University of Chicago.
Scholars have known for a long time that movements help retrieve information about an event or physical activity associated with action. A report published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science, however, is the first to show that gestures not only help recover old ideas, they also help create new ones. The information could be helpful to teachers, scholars said.
"This study highlights the importance of motor learning even in nonmotor tasks, and suggests that we may be able to lay the foundation for new knowledge just by telling learners how to move their hands," writes lead author and psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow in the article "Gesturing Gives Children New Ideas About Math".
Goldin, Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, was joined by Susan Wagner Cook, now Assistant Professor of Psychology a the University of Iowa and University of Chicago research assistant Zachary Mitchell, in writing the article and doing the research.
For the study, 128 fourth-grade students were given problems of the type 3+2+8=__+8. None of the students had been successful in solving that type of problem in a pre-test. The students were randomly divided into three instruction groups.
One group was taught the words, "I want to make one side equal to the other side." Another group was taught the same words along with gestures instantiating a grouping problem-solving strategy--a V-shaped hand indicating 3+2, followed by a point at the blank (group and add 3 and 2 and put the sum in the blank). A third group was taught the words along with gestures instantiating the grouping strategy but focusing attention on the wrong numbers--a V-shaped hand indicating 2+8, followed by a point at blank. The experimenter demonstrating the gesture did not explain the movement or comment about it.
All of the students were then given the same mathematics lesson. On each problem during the lesson, they were told to repeat the words or words/gestures they had been taught.
After the lesson, students were given a test in which they solved new problems of this type and explained how they reached their answers. Students who repeated the correct gesture during the lesson solved more problems correctly than students who repeated the partially correct gesture, who, in turn, solved more problems correctly than students who repeated only the words.
The number of problems children solved correctly could be explained by whether they added the grouping strategy to their spoken repertoires after the lesson, Goldin-Meadow said. Because the experimenter never expressed the grouping strategy in speech during the lesson, and students picked it up on their own as a new idea, the study demonstrates that gesture can help create new concepts in learning.
"The grouping information students incorporated into their post-lesson speech must have come from their own gestures," Goldin-Meadow said.
"Children were thus able to extract information from their own hand movements. This process may be the mechanism by which gesturing influences learning," she said.
Gestures lend a hand in learning mathematics
Contact: William Harms
University of Chicago
Hand movements help create new ideas
Gesturing helps students develop new ways of understanding mathematics, according to research at the University of Chicago.
Scholars have known for a long time that movements help retrieve information about an event or physical activity associated with action. A report published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science, however, is the first to show that gestures not only help recover old ideas, they also help create new ones. The information could be helpful to teachers, scholars said.
"This study highlights the importance of motor learning even in nonmotor tasks, and suggests that we may be able to lay the foundation for new knowledge just by telling learners how to move their hands," writes lead author and psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow in the article "Gesturing Gives Children New Ideas About Math".
Goldin, Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, was joined by Susan Wagner Cook, now Assistant Professor of Psychology a the University of Iowa and University of Chicago research assistant Zachary Mitchell, in writing the article and doing the research.
For the study, 128 fourth-grade students were given problems of the type 3+2+8=__+8. None of the students had been successful in solving that type of problem in a pre-test. The students were randomly divided into three instruction groups.
One group was taught the words, "I want to make one side equal to the other side." Another group was taught the same words along with gestures instantiating a grouping problem-solving strategy--a V-shaped hand indicating 3+2, followed by a point at the blank (group and add 3 and 2 and put the sum in the blank). A third group was taught the words along with gestures instantiating the grouping strategy but focusing attention on the wrong numbers--a V-shaped hand indicating 2+8, followed by a point at blank. The experimenter demonstrating the gesture did not explain the movement or comment about it.
All of the students were then given the same mathematics lesson. On each problem during the lesson, they were told to repeat the words or words/gestures they had been taught.
After the lesson, students were given a test in which they solved new problems of this type and explained how they reached their answers. Students who repeated the correct gesture during the lesson solved more problems correctly than students who repeated the partially correct gesture, who, in turn, solved more problems correctly than students who repeated only the words.
The number of problems children solved correctly could be explained by whether they added the grouping strategy to their spoken repertoires after the lesson, Goldin-Meadow said. Because the experimenter never expressed the grouping strategy in speech during the lesson, and students picked it up on their own as a new idea, the study demonstrates that gesture can help create new concepts in learning.
"The grouping information students incorporated into their post-lesson speech must have come from their own gestures," Goldin-Meadow said.
"Children were thus able to extract information from their own hand movements. This process may be the mechanism by which gesturing influences learning," she said.
New Teachers Sink or Swim--many quit impossible situation
Our ANTI friends tell us that teachers are lazy and overpaid. Apparently it is not as easy being a teacher as our ANTI friends think. Here is an article about a program in Michigan designed to try to save new teachers from quitting in massive numbers. Fifty percent are gone in five years.
Enjoy.
In battle against teacher turnover, MSU mentoring program proves effective
Published: Feb. 24, 2009
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Beginning teachers in urban school districts quit at an alarming rate – often from lack of support – and Michigan State University education experts are targeting the problem with an innovative mentoring program.
The research-based initiative already has proven successful in the Lansing School District, based on a new study, and now is being replicated at a much larger district in Atlanta. It could ultimately serve as a national model.
A major component involves freeing up veteran teachers to advise their beginning peers throughout the school year. It’s a huge commitment – the Fulton County School System has released seven teachers from the classroom to act as full-time mentors – but holds promise for districts struggling to raise teacher quality and keep new teachers from becoming frustrated and leaving for another system.
Previous research has shown that nearly 50 percent of new teachers leave within five years and student achievement often suffers as a result.
“We call it the revolving door,” said Randi Stanulis, MSU associate professor of education and director of the program.
A study by Stanulis and Robert Floden, University Distinguished Professor and associate dean for research in MSU’s College of Education, found the mentoring program improved teacher effectiveness in the Lansing district when it was tested there during the 2005-06 school year. The findings are published in the March/April edition of the Journal of Teacher Education.
Stanulis said many school districts’ mentoring, or induction, programs are ineffective because the mentors are poorly chosen and not trained properly. This is typical in states such as Michigan that have an unfunded mandate requiring each beginning teacher to have a mentor. Often, the mentor simply becomes a “buddy” – available for advice and explaining school procedures but rarely observing or providing feedback about teaching and learning.
Through the MSU program, which is funded by the Carnegie Foundation’s Teachers for a New Era, veteran teachers are recruited and interviewed for mentor positions. They are matched with beginning teachers based on teaching responsibilities related to content and grade level. The mentors are continually trained throughout the school year.
Some mentors are then trained as coaches – meaning they can train mentors themselves and eventually make the program self-sufficient within the school system.
Stanulis said effective mentoring can create better novice teachers, improve student performance and potentially curb high teacher turnover.
“It’s not that first-year teachers are unqualified,” she said. “You wouldn’t take a student who just graduated from medical school and have him perform surgery the next day. But that’s what we do with teachers: They graduate in May and in August they’re expected to do the same thing as someone who’s been teaching 10 years.”
In Fulton County, as in many large districts, teacher turnover remains a problem. The school system loses about 1,000 teachers a year – or about 10 percent of its instructional work force, according to Tawana Miller, the system’s director of Title I and school improvement. Miller worked closely with the MSU team to implement the mentoring program in the Fulton County School System this year.
“Many new teachers are placed in an environment where it’s a do-or-die, sink-or-swim situation,” said Miller, who explains that she has “battle scars” from her first few years as a teacher in Fulton County. “It’s almost an impossible task.”
Enjoy.
In battle against teacher turnover, MSU mentoring program proves effective
Published: Feb. 24, 2009
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Beginning teachers in urban school districts quit at an alarming rate – often from lack of support – and Michigan State University education experts are targeting the problem with an innovative mentoring program.
The research-based initiative already has proven successful in the Lansing School District, based on a new study, and now is being replicated at a much larger district in Atlanta. It could ultimately serve as a national model.
A major component involves freeing up veteran teachers to advise their beginning peers throughout the school year. It’s a huge commitment – the Fulton County School System has released seven teachers from the classroom to act as full-time mentors – but holds promise for districts struggling to raise teacher quality and keep new teachers from becoming frustrated and leaving for another system.
Previous research has shown that nearly 50 percent of new teachers leave within five years and student achievement often suffers as a result.
“We call it the revolving door,” said Randi Stanulis, MSU associate professor of education and director of the program.
A study by Stanulis and Robert Floden, University Distinguished Professor and associate dean for research in MSU’s College of Education, found the mentoring program improved teacher effectiveness in the Lansing district when it was tested there during the 2005-06 school year. The findings are published in the March/April edition of the Journal of Teacher Education.
Stanulis said many school districts’ mentoring, or induction, programs are ineffective because the mentors are poorly chosen and not trained properly. This is typical in states such as Michigan that have an unfunded mandate requiring each beginning teacher to have a mentor. Often, the mentor simply becomes a “buddy” – available for advice and explaining school procedures but rarely observing or providing feedback about teaching and learning.
Through the MSU program, which is funded by the Carnegie Foundation’s Teachers for a New Era, veteran teachers are recruited and interviewed for mentor positions. They are matched with beginning teachers based on teaching responsibilities related to content and grade level. The mentors are continually trained throughout the school year.
Some mentors are then trained as coaches – meaning they can train mentors themselves and eventually make the program self-sufficient within the school system.
Stanulis said effective mentoring can create better novice teachers, improve student performance and potentially curb high teacher turnover.
“It’s not that first-year teachers are unqualified,” she said. “You wouldn’t take a student who just graduated from medical school and have him perform surgery the next day. But that’s what we do with teachers: They graduate in May and in August they’re expected to do the same thing as someone who’s been teaching 10 years.”
In Fulton County, as in many large districts, teacher turnover remains a problem. The school system loses about 1,000 teachers a year – or about 10 percent of its instructional work force, according to Tawana Miller, the system’s director of Title I and school improvement. Miller worked closely with the MSU team to implement the mentoring program in the Fulton County School System this year.
“Many new teachers are placed in an environment where it’s a do-or-die, sink-or-swim situation,” said Miller, who explains that she has “battle scars” from her first few years as a teacher in Fulton County. “It’s almost an impossible task.”
Recess is not just for play
Here is an article from the New York Times. It speaks for itself. Enjoy.
February 24, 2009
The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess
By TARA PARKER-POPE
The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.
New research suggests that play and down time may be as important to a child’s academic experience as reading, science and math, and that regular recess, fitness or nature time can influence behavior, concentration and even grades.
A study published this month in the journal Pediatrics studied the links between recess and classroom behavior among about 11,000 children age 8 and 9. Those who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none. Although disadvantaged children were more likely to be denied recess, the association between better behavior and recess time held up even after researchers controlled for a number of variables, including sex, ethnicity, public or private school and class size.
The lead researcher, Dr. Romina M. Barros, a pediatrician and an assistant clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the findings were important because many schools did not view recess as essential to education.
“Sometimes you need data published for people at the educational level to start believing it has an impact,” she said. “We should understand that kids need that break because the brain needs that break.”
And many children are not getting that break. In the Pediatrics study, 30 percent were found to have little or no daily recess. Another report, from a children’s advocacy group, found that 40 percent of schools surveyed had cut back at least one daily recess period.
Also, teachers often punish children by taking away recess privileges. That strikes Dr. Barros as illogical. “Recess should be part of the curriculum,” she said. “You don’t punish a kid by having them miss math class, so kids shouldn’t be punished by not getting recess.” (Blog editor note: This guy obviously has never been in a real classroom with ordinary American children. What other alternatives do teachers have for enforcing enough discipline for the rest of the children in the classroom to be able to learn? Please ignore these two Dr. Barros quotes. They show real ignorance. But maybe the rest of the article has some worth.)
Last month, Harvard researchers reported in The Journal of School Health that the more physical fitness tests children passed, the better they did on academic tests. The study, of 1,800 middle school students, suggests that children can benefit academically from physical activity during gym class and recess.
A small study of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder last year found that walks outdoors appeared to improve scores on tests of attention and concentration. Notably, children who took walks in natural settings did better than those who walked in urban areas, according to the report, published online in August in The Journal of Attention Disorders. The researchers found that a dose of nature worked as well as a dose of medication to improve concentration, or even better.
Andrea Faber Taylor, a child environment and behavior researcher at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, says other research suggests that all children, not just those with attention problems, can benefit from spending time in nature during the school day. In another study of children who live in public housing, girls who had access to green courtyards scored better on concentration tests than those who did not.
The reason may be that the brain uses two forms of attention. “Directed” attention allows us to concentrate on work, reading and tests, while “involuntary” attention takes over when we’re distracted by things like running water, crying babies, a beautiful view or a pet that crawls onto our lap.
Directed attention is a limited resource. Long hours in front of a computer or studying for a test can leave us feeling fatigued. But spending time in natural settings appears to activate involuntary attention, giving the brain’s directed attention time to rest.
“It’s pretty clear that all human beings experience attentional fatigue,” Dr. Faber Taylor said. “Our attention has to be restored from that fatigue, and there is a growing body of research evidence that nature is one way that seems particularly effective at doing it.”
Playtime and nature time are important not only for learning but also for health and development.
Young rats denied opportunities for rough-and-tumble play develop numerous social problems in adulthood. They fail to recognize social cues and the nuances of rat hierarchy; they aren’t able to mate. By the same token, people who play as children “learn to handle life in a much more resilient and vital way,” said Dr. Stuart Brown, the author of the new book “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul” (Avery).
Dr. Brown, a psychiatrist in Carmel Valley, Calif., has collected more than 6,000 “play histories” from human subjects. The founder of the National Institute for Play, he works with educators and legislators to promote the importance of preserving playtime in schools. He calls play “a fundamental biological process.” “From my viewpoint, it’s a major public health issue,” he said. “Teachers feel like they’re under huge pressures to get academic excellence to the exclusion of having much fun in the classroom. But playful learning leads to better academic success than the skills-and-drills approach.”
Join the discussion at nytimes.com/well.
February 24, 2009
The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess
By TARA PARKER-POPE
The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.
New research suggests that play and down time may be as important to a child’s academic experience as reading, science and math, and that regular recess, fitness or nature time can influence behavior, concentration and even grades.
A study published this month in the journal Pediatrics studied the links between recess and classroom behavior among about 11,000 children age 8 and 9. Those who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none. Although disadvantaged children were more likely to be denied recess, the association between better behavior and recess time held up even after researchers controlled for a number of variables, including sex, ethnicity, public or private school and class size.
The lead researcher, Dr. Romina M. Barros, a pediatrician and an assistant clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the findings were important because many schools did not view recess as essential to education.
“Sometimes you need data published for people at the educational level to start believing it has an impact,” she said. “We should understand that kids need that break because the brain needs that break.”
And many children are not getting that break. In the Pediatrics study, 30 percent were found to have little or no daily recess. Another report, from a children’s advocacy group, found that 40 percent of schools surveyed had cut back at least one daily recess period.
Also, teachers often punish children by taking away recess privileges. That strikes Dr. Barros as illogical. “Recess should be part of the curriculum,” she said. “You don’t punish a kid by having them miss math class, so kids shouldn’t be punished by not getting recess.” (Blog editor note: This guy obviously has never been in a real classroom with ordinary American children. What other alternatives do teachers have for enforcing enough discipline for the rest of the children in the classroom to be able to learn? Please ignore these two Dr. Barros quotes. They show real ignorance. But maybe the rest of the article has some worth.)
Last month, Harvard researchers reported in The Journal of School Health that the more physical fitness tests children passed, the better they did on academic tests. The study, of 1,800 middle school students, suggests that children can benefit academically from physical activity during gym class and recess.
A small study of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder last year found that walks outdoors appeared to improve scores on tests of attention and concentration. Notably, children who took walks in natural settings did better than those who walked in urban areas, according to the report, published online in August in The Journal of Attention Disorders. The researchers found that a dose of nature worked as well as a dose of medication to improve concentration, or even better.
Andrea Faber Taylor, a child environment and behavior researcher at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, says other research suggests that all children, not just those with attention problems, can benefit from spending time in nature during the school day. In another study of children who live in public housing, girls who had access to green courtyards scored better on concentration tests than those who did not.
The reason may be that the brain uses two forms of attention. “Directed” attention allows us to concentrate on work, reading and tests, while “involuntary” attention takes over when we’re distracted by things like running water, crying babies, a beautiful view or a pet that crawls onto our lap.
Directed attention is a limited resource. Long hours in front of a computer or studying for a test can leave us feeling fatigued. But spending time in natural settings appears to activate involuntary attention, giving the brain’s directed attention time to rest.
“It’s pretty clear that all human beings experience attentional fatigue,” Dr. Faber Taylor said. “Our attention has to be restored from that fatigue, and there is a growing body of research evidence that nature is one way that seems particularly effective at doing it.”
Playtime and nature time are important not only for learning but also for health and development.
Young rats denied opportunities for rough-and-tumble play develop numerous social problems in adulthood. They fail to recognize social cues and the nuances of rat hierarchy; they aren’t able to mate. By the same token, people who play as children “learn to handle life in a much more resilient and vital way,” said Dr. Stuart Brown, the author of the new book “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul” (Avery).
Dr. Brown, a psychiatrist in Carmel Valley, Calif., has collected more than 6,000 “play histories” from human subjects. The founder of the National Institute for Play, he works with educators and legislators to promote the importance of preserving playtime in schools. He calls play “a fundamental biological process.” “From my viewpoint, it’s a major public health issue,” he said. “Teachers feel like they’re under huge pressures to get academic excellence to the exclusion of having much fun in the classroom. But playful learning leads to better academic success than the skills-and-drills approach.”
Join the discussion at nytimes.com/well.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Child Abuse Causes Life Long Genetic Changes
Great article on a new topic--epigenetics--changes caused by environmental insults to our genes that last a life time and can be passed down to future generations, (shades of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck!)
The article gives hard evidence to what teachers have observed. Children from tough backgrounds often have tough behavioral and learning problems.
There is good news. A whole series of anti-cancer drugs have been FDA approved and others are in last stage clinical trials to remove epigenetic changes. (HDAC is one) Some of these changes can cause cancer, hence the drug development, but the drugs may be helpful for a host of other problems ranging from these epigentic changes in the brain due to child abuse to many other sudden onset diseases in previous healthy people. One group is the autoimmune conditions like diabetes type I, psoriasis, MS, RA, etc. Another possible use could be for certain mental conditions that hit in adulthood--schizophrenia is one. Maybe baldness? Maybe menopause? Who knows how far this new science will go?
Here is the article:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/139938.php
Child Abuse Causes Lifelong Changes To DNA Expression And Brain
23 Feb 2009
A study led by researchers in Canada who analysed post mortem brain samples of suicide victims with a history of being abused in childhood found changes in DNA expression that were not present in suicide victims with no childhood abuse history or in people who died of other causes. The affected DNA was in a gene that regulates the way the brain controls the stress response.
The research was the work of scientists from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences and was published online on 22 February in Nature Neuroscience.
Previous studies have shown that child abuse or neglect changes the hormonal stress response and increases the risk of suicide in the victim. Animal studies show that maternal care can influence the expression of genes that control the stress response.
In this study the researchers looked at samples of the hippocampus from human suicide victims with a history of childhood abuse. The hippocampus is a region of the brain that plays a key role in regulating the stress response.
They found changes in expression of the NC3R1 gene that were not present in suicide victims with no history of being abused in childhood. The changes weren't present in people who had died of other causes either.
For the study the researchers used samples from 36 brains: 12 came from suicide victims who had been abused as children, 12 came from suicide victims who had no such history, and 12 came from people who had died of other causes (the controls). The researchers found that the child abuse victims had different "epigenetic" markings in a part of the brain that influences the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function, a stress-response that increases suicide risk.
This finding builds on an earlier study published in May last year that showed how child abuse can leave "epigenetic" marks on DNA.
Epigenetics studies the way that DNA is expressed: that is when the code behaves in a way that is not exactly what the DNA program says. DNA itself, the fundamental code, is inherited from the person's biological parents and remains fixed through a person's lifetime. But the genes in the DNA are coated with a layer of chemicals called DNA methylation. These chemicals influence how the DNA is interpreted and they can be affected by changes in the environment, especially in early life such as when the new embryo is made, in the womb, and then later in childhood.
Co-author Dr Gustavo Turecki, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and who practices at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, said:"We know from clinical experience that a difficult childhood can have an impact on the course of a person's life."
"Now we are starting to understand the biological implications of such psychological abuse", added fellow co-investigator Moshe Szyf, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill.
The interaction between environment and DNA plays a key role in our ability to resist and deal with stress and this affects the risk of suicide, said the researchers. Epigenetic marks are the product of DNA and environment.
The researchers found that different types of care from the mothers changed the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function in rats by altering the receptors in the brain. In earlier studies they showed that simple behaviours such as when mothers licked their baby rats in early life had a significant effect on epigentic markings on specific genes that affected behaviour throughout the offsprings' lives.
But they also found that these epigenetic marks can be changed in adulthood with treatments that change the DNA coating: the treatment is called DNA methylation and it reverses the change to the stress response.
The brain samples in this latest study came from the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the National Institute of Child Health and Development in the US paid for the research."Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse."
Patrick O McGowan, Aya Sasaki, Ana C D'Alessio, Sergiy Dymov, Benoit Labonté, Moshe Szyf, Gustavo Turecki & Michael J Meaney.Nature Neuroscience Published online: 22 February 2009.doi:10.1038/nn.2270
Click here for Abstract.Sources: Journal abstract, McGill University.Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD Copyright: Medical News TodayNot to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
The article gives hard evidence to what teachers have observed. Children from tough backgrounds often have tough behavioral and learning problems.
There is good news. A whole series of anti-cancer drugs have been FDA approved and others are in last stage clinical trials to remove epigenetic changes. (HDAC is one) Some of these changes can cause cancer, hence the drug development, but the drugs may be helpful for a host of other problems ranging from these epigentic changes in the brain due to child abuse to many other sudden onset diseases in previous healthy people. One group is the autoimmune conditions like diabetes type I, psoriasis, MS, RA, etc. Another possible use could be for certain mental conditions that hit in adulthood--schizophrenia is one. Maybe baldness? Maybe menopause? Who knows how far this new science will go?
Here is the article:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/139938.php
Child Abuse Causes Lifelong Changes To DNA Expression And Brain
23 Feb 2009
A study led by researchers in Canada who analysed post mortem brain samples of suicide victims with a history of being abused in childhood found changes in DNA expression that were not present in suicide victims with no childhood abuse history or in people who died of other causes. The affected DNA was in a gene that regulates the way the brain controls the stress response.
The research was the work of scientists from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences and was published online on 22 February in Nature Neuroscience.
Previous studies have shown that child abuse or neglect changes the hormonal stress response and increases the risk of suicide in the victim. Animal studies show that maternal care can influence the expression of genes that control the stress response.
In this study the researchers looked at samples of the hippocampus from human suicide victims with a history of childhood abuse. The hippocampus is a region of the brain that plays a key role in regulating the stress response.
They found changes in expression of the NC3R1 gene that were not present in suicide victims with no history of being abused in childhood. The changes weren't present in people who had died of other causes either.
For the study the researchers used samples from 36 brains: 12 came from suicide victims who had been abused as children, 12 came from suicide victims who had no such history, and 12 came from people who had died of other causes (the controls). The researchers found that the child abuse victims had different "epigenetic" markings in a part of the brain that influences the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function, a stress-response that increases suicide risk.
This finding builds on an earlier study published in May last year that showed how child abuse can leave "epigenetic" marks on DNA.
Epigenetics studies the way that DNA is expressed: that is when the code behaves in a way that is not exactly what the DNA program says. DNA itself, the fundamental code, is inherited from the person's biological parents and remains fixed through a person's lifetime. But the genes in the DNA are coated with a layer of chemicals called DNA methylation. These chemicals influence how the DNA is interpreted and they can be affected by changes in the environment, especially in early life such as when the new embryo is made, in the womb, and then later in childhood.
Co-author Dr Gustavo Turecki, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and who practices at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, said:"We know from clinical experience that a difficult childhood can have an impact on the course of a person's life."
"Now we are starting to understand the biological implications of such psychological abuse", added fellow co-investigator Moshe Szyf, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill.
The interaction between environment and DNA plays a key role in our ability to resist and deal with stress and this affects the risk of suicide, said the researchers. Epigenetic marks are the product of DNA and environment.
The researchers found that different types of care from the mothers changed the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function in rats by altering the receptors in the brain. In earlier studies they showed that simple behaviours such as when mothers licked their baby rats in early life had a significant effect on epigentic markings on specific genes that affected behaviour throughout the offsprings' lives.
But they also found that these epigenetic marks can be changed in adulthood with treatments that change the DNA coating: the treatment is called DNA methylation and it reverses the change to the stress response.
The brain samples in this latest study came from the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the National Institute of Child Health and Development in the US paid for the research."Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse."
Patrick O McGowan, Aya Sasaki, Ana C D'Alessio, Sergiy Dymov, Benoit Labonté, Moshe Szyf, Gustavo Turecki & Michael J Meaney.Nature Neuroscience Published online: 22 February 2009.doi:10.1038/nn.2270
Click here for Abstract.Sources: Journal abstract, McGill University.Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD Copyright: Medical News TodayNot to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
Schools struggling with terrible budget cutting decisions
Here is an Los Angeles Times story about the terrible choices that will have to be made in every California school district including our own, VUSD district. I am so glad that we have a solid majority of four pro-education school board members. I pity them they awful decisions that will have to be made. But I am glad that we can be sure that their first priority will be the good of our students and our schools and how to do the least damage. ANTIs in charge of our district at this time would have been VERY scary.
Here is the article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-schools-budget-cuts23-2009feb23,0,2894033.story
From the Los Angeles Times
California schools struggling with budget-trimming decisions
Because of reduced funding, school districts across the state are facing teacher layoffs, class-size increases and elimination of programs.
By Seema Mehta
February 23, 2009
In a cheery classroom decorated with posters exhorting students to "Dive into a Good Book," four first-graders, who are struggling to read, recited words ending with the "ang" sound -- bang, rang, sang, fang, gang. The Foothill Ranch Elementary School students used their index fingers to trace the letters into squares of felt and carpet, imprinting the connection between the letters and the sound into their minds.
The Language Arts Assistance Program has helped a generation of struggling youngsters in this Orange County suburb become skilled readers. But it, along with sports teams, small classes and school librarians, may vanish next year as Saddleback Valley Unified School District officials trim $13 million in spending for the upcoming school year.
Under the budget approved by the state Thursday, schools and community colleges will be forced to cut $7.4 billion from their budgets this year and $3.2 billion next year. And a $787-billion federal economic stimulus package that is expected to send billions to school districts isn't enough to backfill deficits, educators say.
"It doesn't look good for us," said instructor Tina Hatch, 52, who teaches the reading program designed for pupils in first, second and third grades. "It's very sad because these kids definitely will fall through the cracks if there's not a program like this."
Because of reduced state funding, school districts across the state are dealing with such difficult decisions. They have been cutting spending annually in recent years, but prior trims -- slimming the administrative staff, cutting back on maintenance, reducing the cleaning schedule -- were mostly invisible to students and parents.
But now, in many places the low-hanging fruit is gone, and educators are left with painful cuts that reach directly into classrooms, including widespread teacher layoffs, increasing class sizes and the eliminations of music, sports and other programs that are not mandated by state and federal law. And that includes Saddleback's reading-intervention program.
"You're very definitely going to feel the pinch in the classroom because there's no place else to go anymore," said Saddleback Supt. Steven Fish, whose school board also is considering closing a neighborhood elementary school and trimming its International Baccalaureate program. "The list isn't long enough. I need more."
The state budget offers school districts greater flexibility to spend so-called categorical funds, which in the past have been earmarked for such specific items as textbook purchases.
Funds earmarked for limiting class sizes in kindergarten through third grades, however, were preserved for that purpose, a victory for the teachers unions and a blow to some local district officials who had been calling for greater flexibility in using that money.
An earlier proposal by the governor to shave five days from the school year was eliminated from the final package but will probably be raised again in the spring.
"This budget will result in real cuts to real students in the classroom," said Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction. "These reductions will be felt and seen."
A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said given the state's fiscal crisis, state officials did the best they could to protect students.
"Probably more than any other sector of the budget, we went to great lengths to ensure that K-12 schools and community colleges had the greatest amount of flexibility and relief possible in what is the worst budget year in memory," said H.D. Palmer, state deputy director for external affairs. "By definition, closing a $41.6-billion budget gap is going to create difficult decisions. We tried to minimize how difficult those decisions were for" schools.
In Los Angeles Unified, the state's largest school district, officials expect to slash about $800 million in spending for the next 18 months. District officials have yet to disclose how they expect to close this budget gap, but it is hard to imagine a scenario that won't affect the district's nearly 700,000 students. Layoffs are likely.
"I will be recommending cuts the likes of which this district has never seen," said Supt. Ramon C. Cortines at a recent meeting.
Teachers must be warned by March 15 if they will face layoffs, but already districts have decided to send more than 12,000 pink slips to tenured and probationary teachers across the state, the most ever seen this soon before the deadline, said David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Assn.
The budget, he said, "was balanced on the backs of the students of the state of California."
In Hayward, school trustees voted earlier this month not to participate in the state's class-size reduction program and will boost class sizes in kindergarten through third grades, from the current maximum of 20 students per teacher to between 30 and 34 pupils per class. The move will allow the district to eliminate 120 teachers, saving $2.7 million annually.
"We just couldn't afford it anymore," said Val Joyner, spokeswoman for the 20,000-student district.
In Azusa, district officials decided this month to issue layoff warnings to 116 teachers -- a dent in their efforts to cut $16.8 million from their annual $100-million budget.
"We're already running lean and mean," said Kathleen Miller, spokeswoman for the 11,100-student district. "Every program will probably be affected in some way."
Districts throughout the state are shutting neighborhood schools. In the West Contra Costa Unified School District, which must cut tens of millions of dollars over the next three years, trustees decided earlier this month to close four schools.
"Closing schools is difficult at best but unfortunately necessary," wrote district Supt. Bruce Harter in an open letter in January. "No one in our community, especially our board of education members and I, wants to close schools."
He also warned of "substantial layoffs" in the upcoming school year.
"Last year, we cut $6.4 million from the budget by keeping the impact away from the classroom," Harter said. "We won't be able to do that this year. Every part of our district will feel the pain."
In the Atwater Elementary School District, which is cutting counselors and reading coaches as part of its effort to trim $2.5 million from its $37.5-million budget, Supt. Melinda Hennes agreed with Harter.
"Last year, we approached our cuts with a focus on what can we eliminate and still provide quality services to our students," said Hennes, whose district serves 4,600 K-8 students. "This year, it's a whole different way of looking at things -- what do we have to have, what do we have to keep in order to keep our doors open for kids."
At Foothill Ranch, meanwhile, the budget problems weren't far from the adults' minds as the children practiced phonics.
"Teaching everybody, to me, is not a choice. It's a responsibility to make sure we do the best we can for all students," said Adele Walsh, a district reading specialist who supervises the Language Arts Assistance Program, which serves 1,000 students in 26 schools throughout the nearly 34,000-student district. "You have to intervene early and not wait until they're so far behind."
Eliminating the program would save more than $522,000 annually.
The program definitely has its boosters.
"I like reading about . . . people and animals," said Charlotte Baldi, 6, adding that she's "100% faster!"
Lisa Brosnan, a Rancho Santa Margarita mother whose 8-year-old twin boys went through the reading program last year and are now successful readers, said: "I feel sorry for our school district, all the districts, because they just have to put up with so much, just trying to keep the basics. It's just really sad; we live in such a beautiful state, and we have to worry about stuff like this."
s eema.mehta@latimes.com
Times staff writer Jason Song contributed to this report.
Here is the article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-schools-budget-cuts23-2009feb23,0,2894033.story
From the Los Angeles Times
California schools struggling with budget-trimming decisions
Because of reduced funding, school districts across the state are facing teacher layoffs, class-size increases and elimination of programs.
By Seema Mehta
February 23, 2009
In a cheery classroom decorated with posters exhorting students to "Dive into a Good Book," four first-graders, who are struggling to read, recited words ending with the "ang" sound -- bang, rang, sang, fang, gang. The Foothill Ranch Elementary School students used their index fingers to trace the letters into squares of felt and carpet, imprinting the connection between the letters and the sound into their minds.
The Language Arts Assistance Program has helped a generation of struggling youngsters in this Orange County suburb become skilled readers. But it, along with sports teams, small classes and school librarians, may vanish next year as Saddleback Valley Unified School District officials trim $13 million in spending for the upcoming school year.
Under the budget approved by the state Thursday, schools and community colleges will be forced to cut $7.4 billion from their budgets this year and $3.2 billion next year. And a $787-billion federal economic stimulus package that is expected to send billions to school districts isn't enough to backfill deficits, educators say.
"It doesn't look good for us," said instructor Tina Hatch, 52, who teaches the reading program designed for pupils in first, second and third grades. "It's very sad because these kids definitely will fall through the cracks if there's not a program like this."
Because of reduced state funding, school districts across the state are dealing with such difficult decisions. They have been cutting spending annually in recent years, but prior trims -- slimming the administrative staff, cutting back on maintenance, reducing the cleaning schedule -- were mostly invisible to students and parents.
But now, in many places the low-hanging fruit is gone, and educators are left with painful cuts that reach directly into classrooms, including widespread teacher layoffs, increasing class sizes and the eliminations of music, sports and other programs that are not mandated by state and federal law. And that includes Saddleback's reading-intervention program.
"You're very definitely going to feel the pinch in the classroom because there's no place else to go anymore," said Saddleback Supt. Steven Fish, whose school board also is considering closing a neighborhood elementary school and trimming its International Baccalaureate program. "The list isn't long enough. I need more."
The state budget offers school districts greater flexibility to spend so-called categorical funds, which in the past have been earmarked for such specific items as textbook purchases.
Funds earmarked for limiting class sizes in kindergarten through third grades, however, were preserved for that purpose, a victory for the teachers unions and a blow to some local district officials who had been calling for greater flexibility in using that money.
An earlier proposal by the governor to shave five days from the school year was eliminated from the final package but will probably be raised again in the spring.
"This budget will result in real cuts to real students in the classroom," said Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction. "These reductions will be felt and seen."
A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said given the state's fiscal crisis, state officials did the best they could to protect students.
"Probably more than any other sector of the budget, we went to great lengths to ensure that K-12 schools and community colleges had the greatest amount of flexibility and relief possible in what is the worst budget year in memory," said H.D. Palmer, state deputy director for external affairs. "By definition, closing a $41.6-billion budget gap is going to create difficult decisions. We tried to minimize how difficult those decisions were for" schools.
In Los Angeles Unified, the state's largest school district, officials expect to slash about $800 million in spending for the next 18 months. District officials have yet to disclose how they expect to close this budget gap, but it is hard to imagine a scenario that won't affect the district's nearly 700,000 students. Layoffs are likely.
"I will be recommending cuts the likes of which this district has never seen," said Supt. Ramon C. Cortines at a recent meeting.
Teachers must be warned by March 15 if they will face layoffs, but already districts have decided to send more than 12,000 pink slips to tenured and probationary teachers across the state, the most ever seen this soon before the deadline, said David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Assn.
The budget, he said, "was balanced on the backs of the students of the state of California."
In Hayward, school trustees voted earlier this month not to participate in the state's class-size reduction program and will boost class sizes in kindergarten through third grades, from the current maximum of 20 students per teacher to between 30 and 34 pupils per class. The move will allow the district to eliminate 120 teachers, saving $2.7 million annually.
"We just couldn't afford it anymore," said Val Joyner, spokeswoman for the 20,000-student district.
In Azusa, district officials decided this month to issue layoff warnings to 116 teachers -- a dent in their efforts to cut $16.8 million from their annual $100-million budget.
"We're already running lean and mean," said Kathleen Miller, spokeswoman for the 11,100-student district. "Every program will probably be affected in some way."
Districts throughout the state are shutting neighborhood schools. In the West Contra Costa Unified School District, which must cut tens of millions of dollars over the next three years, trustees decided earlier this month to close four schools.
"Closing schools is difficult at best but unfortunately necessary," wrote district Supt. Bruce Harter in an open letter in January. "No one in our community, especially our board of education members and I, wants to close schools."
He also warned of "substantial layoffs" in the upcoming school year.
"Last year, we cut $6.4 million from the budget by keeping the impact away from the classroom," Harter said. "We won't be able to do that this year. Every part of our district will feel the pain."
In the Atwater Elementary School District, which is cutting counselors and reading coaches as part of its effort to trim $2.5 million from its $37.5-million budget, Supt. Melinda Hennes agreed with Harter.
"Last year, we approached our cuts with a focus on what can we eliminate and still provide quality services to our students," said Hennes, whose district serves 4,600 K-8 students. "This year, it's a whole different way of looking at things -- what do we have to have, what do we have to keep in order to keep our doors open for kids."
At Foothill Ranch, meanwhile, the budget problems weren't far from the adults' minds as the children practiced phonics.
"Teaching everybody, to me, is not a choice. It's a responsibility to make sure we do the best we can for all students," said Adele Walsh, a district reading specialist who supervises the Language Arts Assistance Program, which serves 1,000 students in 26 schools throughout the nearly 34,000-student district. "You have to intervene early and not wait until they're so far behind."
Eliminating the program would save more than $522,000 annually.
The program definitely has its boosters.
"I like reading about . . . people and animals," said Charlotte Baldi, 6, adding that she's "100% faster!"
Lisa Brosnan, a Rancho Santa Margarita mother whose 8-year-old twin boys went through the reading program last year and are now successful readers, said: "I feel sorry for our school district, all the districts, because they just have to put up with so much, just trying to keep the basics. It's just really sad; we live in such a beautiful state, and we have to worry about stuff like this."
s eema.mehta@latimes.com
Times staff writer Jason Song contributed to this report.
Class Size Reduction Works!
Anecdotal evidence:
Here is the tale of one teacher trying to teach a difficult concept in elementary math. Every day she is pushed to go faster by the District Pacing Guide. The elementary teacher keeps up. Yet at that speed some children miss concepts.
Our good teacher arranges a few precious minutes in her day to form a small group of children who did not to well on the math chapter test--multiplication of more than one digit with regrouping and word problems. She grades the tests. Most student do very well but a few do not. She separates out the tests of low performing students. The next day she brought the low performing students on the math test to the front of the class. The rest of the class was given math challenge activities and math extension activities.
She quickly thumbs through tests to look at exactly where each student performed poorly and how they made their mistakes. She goes over every missed problem with the students. They began to see what they did wrong. Individual attention pays off. It was only a 30 minute review however it did the trick. The next day she gave the alternate and equivalent chapter test to the group she had helped. Not one student scored below 80%. Two days before not one had scored above 50% one student had even scored 0%--every problem wrong. Yet two days later he was tested on different but equivalent problems and scored 80%!
This second chance for low scorers was ONLY possible because the teacher was a third grade VUSD teacher with only twenty students. If she had thirty or more (or like me in my second year of teaching -- 42 student!), she could never have helped those 8 or 9 students. There would have been way too many others and way too many disruptions/questions/whisperings for her to be able to pull out a small group and concentrate on that group.
Those low math scorers would have missed a math skill, perhaps never to learn it. Certainly those students would have been behind in the next math class, but now thanks to class size reduction they aren't.
Maybe that is why in a survey of HIGH SCHOOL VUSD teachers, there was OVERWHELMING support for class size reduction in K-3 VUSD classrooms. High school teachers BENEFIT from class size reduction because their students are better prepared when they arrive in high school. Better prepared students mean better teaching in the high school class. The HS teachers love class size reduction even though they will never have less than thirty plus students in any class they teach because they understand that the students that they will receive in high school in the coming years will have far more skills.
Gee, that gosh darn class size reduction is so evil. Those bad teachers and their nefarious union "bosses" just like it as some form of plot--at least that is what the North County Times and Heartland Institute say. Read what those ANTIs think in my previous blog entry.
For better evidence about how class size really works, read these:
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/02/class_size_redu.html
AND
http://www.cta.org/NR/rdonlyres/39CEEB46-1F8F-483D-AC49-0A77339CE3F1/0/ProtectSmallerClassSizesFacts2009Jan29.pdf
Here is the tale of one teacher trying to teach a difficult concept in elementary math. Every day she is pushed to go faster by the District Pacing Guide. The elementary teacher keeps up. Yet at that speed some children miss concepts.
Our good teacher arranges a few precious minutes in her day to form a small group of children who did not to well on the math chapter test--multiplication of more than one digit with regrouping and word problems. She grades the tests. Most student do very well but a few do not. She separates out the tests of low performing students. The next day she brought the low performing students on the math test to the front of the class. The rest of the class was given math challenge activities and math extension activities.
She quickly thumbs through tests to look at exactly where each student performed poorly and how they made their mistakes. She goes over every missed problem with the students. They began to see what they did wrong. Individual attention pays off. It was only a 30 minute review however it did the trick. The next day she gave the alternate and equivalent chapter test to the group she had helped. Not one student scored below 80%. Two days before not one had scored above 50% one student had even scored 0%--every problem wrong. Yet two days later he was tested on different but equivalent problems and scored 80%!
This second chance for low scorers was ONLY possible because the teacher was a third grade VUSD teacher with only twenty students. If she had thirty or more (or like me in my second year of teaching -- 42 student!), she could never have helped those 8 or 9 students. There would have been way too many others and way too many disruptions/questions/whisperings for her to be able to pull out a small group and concentrate on that group.
Those low math scorers would have missed a math skill, perhaps never to learn it. Certainly those students would have been behind in the next math class, but now thanks to class size reduction they aren't.
Maybe that is why in a survey of HIGH SCHOOL VUSD teachers, there was OVERWHELMING support for class size reduction in K-3 VUSD classrooms. High school teachers BENEFIT from class size reduction because their students are better prepared when they arrive in high school. Better prepared students mean better teaching in the high school class. The HS teachers love class size reduction even though they will never have less than thirty plus students in any class they teach because they understand that the students that they will receive in high school in the coming years will have far more skills.
Gee, that gosh darn class size reduction is so evil. Those bad teachers and their nefarious union "bosses" just like it as some form of plot--at least that is what the North County Times and Heartland Institute say. Read what those ANTIs think in my previous blog entry.
For better evidence about how class size really works, read these:
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/02/class_size_redu.html
AND
http://www.cta.org/NR/rdonlyres/39CEEB46-1F8F-483D-AC49-0A77339CE3F1/0/ProtectSmallerClassSizesFacts2009Jan29.pdf
Class Size Reduction North County Times ANTI editorial
Our North County Times editorial comments have become very ANTI. It is ANTI middle class wages and health benefits, ANTI union, ANTI fact based editorial and today ANTI class size reduction.
Today's editorial was a regurgitation of a right wing phony facts by an ANTI education "think" tank here in California called the Heartland Institute. How very sad that the NCTimes editors are so unable to discern the difference between real information and phony ANTI propaganda.
Here are a couple of easy things to know about the Heartland Institute that can be found in a two minute search of their website that NCTimes editorial staff apparently failed to do:
(1)This group of paid liars defends the Tobacco industry against "anti smoking propaganda."
If any news reporter or editorial writer points out that smoking kills and that the tobacco industry manipulates nicotine to cause quick addiction, etc. the Heartland attacks. They accuse that person of engaging in anti-smoking propaganda. See:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/14064/ClassSize_Reduction_Brings_Mixed_Results.html
(2) Medicaid, Medicare and SCHIP are all evil government programs that cause more problems than they solve.
All three programs and should be gotten rid of in favor of "consumer driven health care." A lovely sounding phrase that means something very evil. Translation only the healthy and wealthy will be able to afford or qualify for this 'consumer driven health care," the rest of us are supposed to die quietly in the cold dark streets and not bother the rich benefactors of the paid propagandists at Heartland when we are in need of medical help.
The heartless Heartland Institute put together crazy CON facts saying that class size reduction does not help and published them here: http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/14064/ClassSize_Reduction_Brings_Mixed_Results.html
Any rational person would realize immediately that fewer children in the classroom means more time spent per child and more learning per child. the heartland propagandists are paid to manipulate and lie and would be fired if they did not. I understand why they lie, but why the NCTimes? Apparently there are no rational thinkers among the North County Times editoral staff who realize that class size reduction helps real kids really learn. The better education our kids get today, the better economy California will have tomorrow. Here is the "Californian" branch of the NCTimes editorial:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/02/22/opinion/editorialscal/z1fdc2d221246000488257562007b1778.txt
EDITORIAL: Smaller class sizes hard to justify
OUR VIEW: Costly grand experiment's results mixed
By The Californian Opinion staff (Aren't they the very same folks as the NCTimes staff?) Sunday, February 22, 2009 12:13 AM PST
California's grand experiment at improving education by shrinking class sizes at the lowest grades appears to be coming to an end, a victim of the red ink gushing out of the state Capitol.Neither state nor local officials have officially pulled the plug yet on the program, and in fact most are fighting desperately to save it. But after 12 years ---- and decidedly mixed results ---- it has become a luxury neither the state nor local districts can afford.
The class-size reduction program limits kindergarten-through-third-grade classes to 20 students or fewer. The state subsidizes the smaller classes to the tune of $1.3 billion a year, but local districts have always had to supplement the state money to make it work.
The program began in the mid-1990s when the state was fiscally healthy and searching for a way to boost its abysmal education standing. The idea was costly, but seemed to make sense: Give kids more attention when they are just beginning to learn, and it will give them a boost for the rest of their school years.
Teachers love it and swear it has worked wonders, and there is little doubt that smaller classes make for a more pleasant teaching and learning experience. But few long-term studies can find any real improvement in test scores or learning as a result of keeping early-grade classes small. (At least none that the editorial staff could find listed at the Heartland Institute website)
And with the state dealing with a $40 billion budget deficit abyss, laying off workers and closing state offices, we cannot afford to keep subsidizing a program that makes us feel good but cannot demonstrate real results. (Lie, see next blog post)
Democratic legislators are reluctant to abolish the program because it would offend one of their key constituencies, the teachers union. (Oh yeah that's why the democrats support class size reduction. It has nothing to do with the fact that children learn more and have a better experience in school. Those silly Democrats actually caring about the learning of regular kids in public school classrooms. How last week is that?)
Smaller classes, after all, means more teachers. (Yes, so what?)But area school districts are staring into that same abyss, albeit on a smaller scale.
In the next few months, districts around the region will all be facing the same reality ---- drastically shrinking budgets.
Temecula's school board was told last week that closing three schools, doing away with class-size reduction and laying off 300 employees still would not close a $14 million budget gap. The $3 million a year it spends on the program will not balance its budget, but it is doubtful district leaders can balance it and keep the smaller class sizes.
School leaders around the region have jealously guarded the program as they trimmed budgets in recent years, but the trimming is turning into a blood-letting, and it will become harder and harder to justify, despite the anecdotal testimonials. (and real evidence--http://www.cta.org/NR/rdonlyres/39CEEB46-1F8F-483D-AC49-0A77339CE3F1/0/ProtectSmallerClassSizesFacts2009Jan29.pdf
and http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/02/class_size_redu.html)
Best comment from readers of NCTimes on line today:
Mike1 February 22, 2009 11:02AM PST
There is a thing called evidence that you need to support your opinion. Where is it NCT board? Pretty convenient to make a statement that class size reduction and then provide no proof. According to the U.S. census bureau, state and federal Dept of Ed it is working. Anyone that reads your articles already knows that you are blatantly anti teacher and anti union but come on!!! The biggest supporter of class size reduction was CA PTA and they fought to get it passed. Scores of k-3 students are well above the national average. Stop feeding the people nonsense.
Today's editorial was a regurgitation of a right wing phony facts by an ANTI education "think" tank here in California called the Heartland Institute. How very sad that the NCTimes editors are so unable to discern the difference between real information and phony ANTI propaganda.
Here are a couple of easy things to know about the Heartland Institute that can be found in a two minute search of their website that NCTimes editorial staff apparently failed to do:
(1)This group of paid liars defends the Tobacco industry against "anti smoking propaganda."
If any news reporter or editorial writer points out that smoking kills and that the tobacco industry manipulates nicotine to cause quick addiction, etc. the Heartland attacks. They accuse that person of engaging in anti-smoking propaganda. See:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/14064/ClassSize_Reduction_Brings_Mixed_Results.html
(2) Medicaid, Medicare and SCHIP are all evil government programs that cause more problems than they solve.
All three programs and should be gotten rid of in favor of "consumer driven health care." A lovely sounding phrase that means something very evil. Translation only the healthy and wealthy will be able to afford or qualify for this 'consumer driven health care," the rest of us are supposed to die quietly in the cold dark streets and not bother the rich benefactors of the paid propagandists at Heartland when we are in need of medical help.
The heartless Heartland Institute put together crazy CON facts saying that class size reduction does not help and published them here: http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/14064/ClassSize_Reduction_Brings_Mixed_Results.html
Any rational person would realize immediately that fewer children in the classroom means more time spent per child and more learning per child. the heartland propagandists are paid to manipulate and lie and would be fired if they did not. I understand why they lie, but why the NCTimes? Apparently there are no rational thinkers among the North County Times editoral staff who realize that class size reduction helps real kids really learn. The better education our kids get today, the better economy California will have tomorrow. Here is the "Californian" branch of the NCTimes editorial:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/02/22/opinion/editorialscal/z1fdc2d221246000488257562007b1778.txt
EDITORIAL: Smaller class sizes hard to justify
OUR VIEW: Costly grand experiment's results mixed
By The Californian Opinion staff (Aren't they the very same folks as the NCTimes staff?) Sunday, February 22, 2009 12:13 AM PST
California's grand experiment at improving education by shrinking class sizes at the lowest grades appears to be coming to an end, a victim of the red ink gushing out of the state Capitol.Neither state nor local officials have officially pulled the plug yet on the program, and in fact most are fighting desperately to save it. But after 12 years ---- and decidedly mixed results ---- it has become a luxury neither the state nor local districts can afford.
The class-size reduction program limits kindergarten-through-third-grade classes to 20 students or fewer. The state subsidizes the smaller classes to the tune of $1.3 billion a year, but local districts have always had to supplement the state money to make it work.
The program began in the mid-1990s when the state was fiscally healthy and searching for a way to boost its abysmal education standing. The idea was costly, but seemed to make sense: Give kids more attention when they are just beginning to learn, and it will give them a boost for the rest of their school years.
Teachers love it and swear it has worked wonders, and there is little doubt that smaller classes make for a more pleasant teaching and learning experience. But few long-term studies can find any real improvement in test scores or learning as a result of keeping early-grade classes small. (At least none that the editorial staff could find listed at the Heartland Institute website)
And with the state dealing with a $40 billion budget deficit abyss, laying off workers and closing state offices, we cannot afford to keep subsidizing a program that makes us feel good but cannot demonstrate real results. (Lie, see next blog post)
Democratic legislators are reluctant to abolish the program because it would offend one of their key constituencies, the teachers union. (Oh yeah that's why the democrats support class size reduction. It has nothing to do with the fact that children learn more and have a better experience in school. Those silly Democrats actually caring about the learning of regular kids in public school classrooms. How last week is that?)
Smaller classes, after all, means more teachers. (Yes, so what?)But area school districts are staring into that same abyss, albeit on a smaller scale.
In the next few months, districts around the region will all be facing the same reality ---- drastically shrinking budgets.
Temecula's school board was told last week that closing three schools, doing away with class-size reduction and laying off 300 employees still would not close a $14 million budget gap. The $3 million a year it spends on the program will not balance its budget, but it is doubtful district leaders can balance it and keep the smaller class sizes.
School leaders around the region have jealously guarded the program as they trimmed budgets in recent years, but the trimming is turning into a blood-letting, and it will become harder and harder to justify, despite the anecdotal testimonials. (and real evidence--http://www.cta.org/NR/rdonlyres/39CEEB46-1F8F-483D-AC49-0A77339CE3F1/0/ProtectSmallerClassSizesFacts2009Jan29.pdf
and http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/02/class_size_redu.html)
Best comment from readers of NCTimes on line today:
Mike1 February 22, 2009 11:02AM PST
There is a thing called evidence that you need to support your opinion. Where is it NCT board? Pretty convenient to make a statement that class size reduction and then provide no proof. According to the U.S. census bureau, state and federal Dept of Ed it is working. Anyone that reads your articles already knows that you are blatantly anti teacher and anti union but come on!!! The biggest supporter of class size reduction was CA PTA and they fought to get it passed. Scores of k-3 students are well above the national average. Stop feeding the people nonsense.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Bullying in Middle School and High School
I can name five instances of VUSD teachers stepping in to stop bullying and five instances of teachers being reprimanded by five different administrators for stepping in. Our administrative friends were far more concerns with the rights of the bully even in very extreme cases of bullying, then with the victims. The message to the five pro-active teachers and other teachers at those schools was that it is far safer for the teacher's career to ignore problems and not get involved. Not seeing "problems" during class changes and in the relatively unsupervised times before and after school meant no long meetings with administration, no long written reports, no questioning of the reaction of the teacher.
Very few teachers are willing to intervene in the first place, even less after admin treats the stopping of violence against students as a problem for admin that means more paper work.
The instances of bullying that I know about consisted of teachers stopping a very large bully from conducting widespread financial extortion against a dozen or more students with threats and actual violence to obtain money, sexual humiliation of a 6th grader by an 8th grader, and violence against a "gay" acting student.
One would expect admin to be grateful that the school was made safer, yet that appropriate reaction is rare among admin.
As the economy gets worse, gangs in Vista become more powerful. Gang problems like all community based problems enter our schools. Much gang activity consists of intimidation and bullying. I hope that admin at middle and high schools is encouraged to aggressively look for and extinguish it. Bales should know that there is more to running a good school than test scores.
I would like to give more details but I am afraid our ANTI friends would mis-use the details to club our schools again. These five instances that I am aware of were isolated and happened over a span of more than twenty years. For the most part our schools are safe and our children are safe. But it does take active surveillance to keep them that way.
I hope middle and high school teachers currently employed at VUSD show courage in the face of administrative pressure and intervene when they become aware of bullying. More importantly I hope counselors, assistant principals and teacher survey their student bodies about bullying on a regular basis. Bullying can happen without any adult being aware of it. It is imperative that someone in authority constantly monitors for it.
Here is an article about the problem in Missouri:
ttp://www.semissourian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090219/NEWS01/702199926&template=printart
Published Feb 19, 2009
Scott City parents, students complain about bullying in schools
EDITOR'S NOTE: The ability to post comments on this story was turned off due to the controversial nature of the subject and the inability of seMissourian.com staff to monitor commentary overnight. (blog editor note: This note was added by the editor of the newspaper in Missouri)
Emotions boiled over as parents and students confronted the Scott City School Board about bullying during a meeting Wednesday night.
Three parents sparked a heated discussion about threats to and assaults on their children during school, at times making verbal exchanges with Superintendent Diann Bradshaw-Ulmer.
Two sophomores, Myriah Miller and Katessa Simmons, cried as they shared their struggles.
"I'm a straight-A student and in all honors classes," Myriah Miller said. "I don't deserve to come to school and be bullied."
"I'd rather drop out than come to school everyday and deal with this," Katessa Simmons said.
Myriah Miller's mother, Sonya Miller, said the situation began more than a year ago when Simmons was hit several times in the head in a school locker room. In November, her daughter's car was rear-ended after she was chased after school, she said.
She said the verbal threats have continued, but the most recent incident occurred Tuesday when a piece of Myriah's hair was cut off during math class.
Simmons and Myriah Miller said they have filed police reports to document the incidents.
Sonya Miller said she hired an attorney and will hold the school accountable for any physical assaults.
"You can only turn your back for so long," she said.
Other parents said the bullying problem extends beyond high school.
"My daughter's getting called a slut, a whore, a lesbian, a bisexual," said Michelle Callihan, the mother of a fifth-grader. She said her daughter, Jazmyne, has also been hit and tripped during school.
"I send my child here and pay my taxes for them to teach my child and protect my child," Callihan said.
When Bradshaw-Ulmer assured her the incidents were being looked into, Callihan cut her off.
"The way you're saying that is not nice to me," Callihan said.
Other parents later said they did not believe the administration would take serious action against the assaults.
Tina McCulley said her daughter, who is in the eighth grade, will attend Saxony Lutheran School next year.
"The teachers are aware of [the bullying], and the teachers are doing nothing," she said. "It's getting out of control."
Board members expressed concern about the incidents and said they would discuss the individual disciplinary issues in a closed session.
"This all comes as a surprise to me, but we are going to look into it," said board member Gary Miller. "There's a certain protocol that we have to follow."
Bradshaw-Ulmer said she does not believe there is a hostile school environment, but the board will take a serious look at the complaints.
Parents "want students to feel safe when they come here, as do the administrators," she said.
© Copyright 2009, Southeast Missourian
Story URL: http://semissourian.com/article/20090219/NEWS01/702199926
Very few teachers are willing to intervene in the first place, even less after admin treats the stopping of violence against students as a problem for admin that means more paper work.
The instances of bullying that I know about consisted of teachers stopping a very large bully from conducting widespread financial extortion against a dozen or more students with threats and actual violence to obtain money, sexual humiliation of a 6th grader by an 8th grader, and violence against a "gay" acting student.
One would expect admin to be grateful that the school was made safer, yet that appropriate reaction is rare among admin.
As the economy gets worse, gangs in Vista become more powerful. Gang problems like all community based problems enter our schools. Much gang activity consists of intimidation and bullying. I hope that admin at middle and high schools is encouraged to aggressively look for and extinguish it. Bales should know that there is more to running a good school than test scores.
I would like to give more details but I am afraid our ANTI friends would mis-use the details to club our schools again. These five instances that I am aware of were isolated and happened over a span of more than twenty years. For the most part our schools are safe and our children are safe. But it does take active surveillance to keep them that way.
I hope middle and high school teachers currently employed at VUSD show courage in the face of administrative pressure and intervene when they become aware of bullying. More importantly I hope counselors, assistant principals and teacher survey their student bodies about bullying on a regular basis. Bullying can happen without any adult being aware of it. It is imperative that someone in authority constantly monitors for it.
Here is an article about the problem in Missouri:
ttp://www.semissourian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090219/NEWS01/702199926&template=printart
Published Feb 19, 2009
Scott City parents, students complain about bullying in schools
EDITOR'S NOTE: The ability to post comments on this story was turned off due to the controversial nature of the subject and the inability of seMissourian.com staff to monitor commentary overnight. (blog editor note: This note was added by the editor of the newspaper in Missouri)
Emotions boiled over as parents and students confronted the Scott City School Board about bullying during a meeting Wednesday night.
Three parents sparked a heated discussion about threats to and assaults on their children during school, at times making verbal exchanges with Superintendent Diann Bradshaw-Ulmer.
Two sophomores, Myriah Miller and Katessa Simmons, cried as they shared their struggles.
"I'm a straight-A student and in all honors classes," Myriah Miller said. "I don't deserve to come to school and be bullied."
"I'd rather drop out than come to school everyday and deal with this," Katessa Simmons said.
Myriah Miller's mother, Sonya Miller, said the situation began more than a year ago when Simmons was hit several times in the head in a school locker room. In November, her daughter's car was rear-ended after she was chased after school, she said.
She said the verbal threats have continued, but the most recent incident occurred Tuesday when a piece of Myriah's hair was cut off during math class.
Simmons and Myriah Miller said they have filed police reports to document the incidents.
Sonya Miller said she hired an attorney and will hold the school accountable for any physical assaults.
"You can only turn your back for so long," she said.
Other parents said the bullying problem extends beyond high school.
"My daughter's getting called a slut, a whore, a lesbian, a bisexual," said Michelle Callihan, the mother of a fifth-grader. She said her daughter, Jazmyne, has also been hit and tripped during school.
"I send my child here and pay my taxes for them to teach my child and protect my child," Callihan said.
When Bradshaw-Ulmer assured her the incidents were being looked into, Callihan cut her off.
"The way you're saying that is not nice to me," Callihan said.
Other parents later said they did not believe the administration would take serious action against the assaults.
Tina McCulley said her daughter, who is in the eighth grade, will attend Saxony Lutheran School next year.
"The teachers are aware of [the bullying], and the teachers are doing nothing," she said. "It's getting out of control."
Board members expressed concern about the incidents and said they would discuss the individual disciplinary issues in a closed session.
"This all comes as a surprise to me, but we are going to look into it," said board member Gary Miller. "There's a certain protocol that we have to follow."
Bradshaw-Ulmer said she does not believe there is a hostile school environment, but the board will take a serious look at the complaints.
Parents "want students to feel safe when they come here, as do the administrators," she said.
© Copyright 2009, Southeast Missourian
Story URL: http://semissourian.com/article/20090219/NEWS01/702199926
Mercury News--Questions Answered about California Budget
Blog editor note: I have added commentary in blue to the article below.
Questions, answers about California's budget
By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
Posted: 02/19/2009 09:20:30 PM PST
SACRAMENTO — After all the theatrics at the state Capitol over California's new budget plan, you're probably wondering what the upshot is. Here are some answers:
Q When will the "temporary" sales tax increase take effect, and when will it end? (REGRESSIVE the very most REGRESSIVE tax possible--completely unfair to the poor and middle class. Increases in sales tax do not affect the lifestyles of the wealthy in the least. The incomes of the poor are already completely spent on living expenses.There is no extra cushion of money. The wealthy will be totally unaffected. Notice the "" quotation marks around temporary. Those were added by an ANTI at the Mercury News.)
A The 1-cent-on-the-dollar increase begins April 1, but when it ends depends on the outcome of a ballot measure calling for a cap on state spending. If the spending cap fails, the tax hike ends June 30, 2011. If the cap passes, the tax ends June 30, 2012.
Q What's a spending cap?
A It's a way to force state government to limit how much money the state can spend. In this case, by using a formula that links spending to inflation and population growth, the increase in annual expenditures would be capped at about 5 percent each year. (Sounds good in principle but the goal here is to make sure that all future lack of State service burdens fall on the poor and middle class)
Q What are all these ballot measures related to the budget, and when are the elections?
A There are six measures that require voter approval at a special election May 19. They seek to: implement the spending cap (HURTS the poor, not the wealthy); require the state to increase annual education funding by $9.3 billion in future years (unlikely to pass in this economy); shift Proposition 63 mental health services money; redirect how Proposition 10 cigarette tax money is allocated; clarify education appropriations from the state lottery; and deny pay increases to lawmakers during budget deficits. A seventh measure, on the June 2010 ballot, would do away with partisan primaries, which would allow candidates for statewide and congressional seats to run for office without listing their party affiliation. (This will make it likely that the only two candidates left standing after our primaries will be very very wealthy ANTIs who do not care about the poor.)
Q How much more will it cost to register my vehicle? (REGRESSIVE and UNFAIR TAX for the poor and middle class)
A Beginning May 19, the vehicle license fee rises from the current level of 0.65 percent of the value of the car to 1.15 percent of the value. The tax increase goes away by June 30, 2013.
Q And there's a tax on income tax, too?
A Yep. A 0.25 percent surcharge on personal income tax, though the increase would be cut in half if the state receives more federal stimulus funding than expected. The surcharge, for the 2009 tax year, lasts through tax year 2012 at the latest. (This is also a REGRESSIVE TAX. The obscenely wealthy should pay a much higher percentage as they have FAR MORE discretionary money left after they pay for their lifestyle than either middle class or especially the poor.)
Q What does the budget mean for education funding?
A The Legislature slashed $8.4 billion in funding for schools and community colleges. As a result, the California Teachers Association predicts class sizes will increase, thousands of teachers could be laid off and programs will be eliminated. Funding was maintained to continue smaller class sizes in grades K-3, and school districts will have more flexibility in how they spend money geared for specific programs. (ANTIs hate public FACT based education. They jump at anything they can do to reduce FACT based public education or reduce the number of people exposed to good education. Very sad. They win again thanks to Prop 13 unfair requirements for a two thirds majority.)
Q What about other colleges and universities?
A The University of California and California State
University systems will each suffer a 10 percent cut. Annual fees for CSU students will rise to $3,354 from the current $3,048. (Worst possible kind of fee increase. This will be fewer educated Californians particularly those who come from the lowest income levels. The poor will continue to be locked into their low wealth status with less chance to use education to get out of their income level.)
Q What happens to those on welfare programs?
A CalWORKS, the welfare-to-work program, will not provide cost-of-living increases. Those who receive state and federal supplemental income, such as certain seniors or disabled recipients, also will not get an increase. (The poorest of the poor get benefits cut. As a prominent Republican said (Bob Dole), "the poor do not contribute to campaigns.")
Q Will the Department of Motor Vehicles and other state offices remain closed due to state worker furloughs every two weeks?
A Yes, for now, until labor unions and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's negotiators find a way to trim $1.4 billion in payroll expenses. The next state office closing is today.
Q Is there any good news in the budget?
A Well, yes. The budget includes tax credits for businesses that invest in California, and it ensures that previously approved public works projects can continue. (Tax credits mean tax breaks for the grossly wealthy who already do not pay their fair share of taxes)
Contact Edwin Garcia at egarcia@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4651.
Questions, answers about California's budget
By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
Posted: 02/19/2009 09:20:30 PM PST
SACRAMENTO — After all the theatrics at the state Capitol over California's new budget plan, you're probably wondering what the upshot is. Here are some answers:
Q When will the "temporary" sales tax increase take effect, and when will it end? (REGRESSIVE the very most REGRESSIVE tax possible--completely unfair to the poor and middle class. Increases in sales tax do not affect the lifestyles of the wealthy in the least. The incomes of the poor are already completely spent on living expenses.There is no extra cushion of money. The wealthy will be totally unaffected. Notice the "" quotation marks around temporary. Those were added by an ANTI at the Mercury News.)
A The 1-cent-on-the-dollar increase begins April 1, but when it ends depends on the outcome of a ballot measure calling for a cap on state spending. If the spending cap fails, the tax hike ends June 30, 2011. If the cap passes, the tax ends June 30, 2012.
Q What's a spending cap?
A It's a way to force state government to limit how much money the state can spend. In this case, by using a formula that links spending to inflation and population growth, the increase in annual expenditures would be capped at about 5 percent each year. (Sounds good in principle but the goal here is to make sure that all future lack of State service burdens fall on the poor and middle class)
Q What are all these ballot measures related to the budget, and when are the elections?
A There are six measures that require voter approval at a special election May 19. They seek to: implement the spending cap (HURTS the poor, not the wealthy); require the state to increase annual education funding by $9.3 billion in future years (unlikely to pass in this economy); shift Proposition 63 mental health services money; redirect how Proposition 10 cigarette tax money is allocated; clarify education appropriations from the state lottery; and deny pay increases to lawmakers during budget deficits. A seventh measure, on the June 2010 ballot, would do away with partisan primaries, which would allow candidates for statewide and congressional seats to run for office without listing their party affiliation. (This will make it likely that the only two candidates left standing after our primaries will be very very wealthy ANTIs who do not care about the poor.)
Q How much more will it cost to register my vehicle? (REGRESSIVE and UNFAIR TAX for the poor and middle class)
A Beginning May 19, the vehicle license fee rises from the current level of 0.65 percent of the value of the car to 1.15 percent of the value. The tax increase goes away by June 30, 2013.
Q And there's a tax on income tax, too?
A Yep. A 0.25 percent surcharge on personal income tax, though the increase would be cut in half if the state receives more federal stimulus funding than expected. The surcharge, for the 2009 tax year, lasts through tax year 2012 at the latest. (This is also a REGRESSIVE TAX. The obscenely wealthy should pay a much higher percentage as they have FAR MORE discretionary money left after they pay for their lifestyle than either middle class or especially the poor.)
Q What does the budget mean for education funding?
A The Legislature slashed $8.4 billion in funding for schools and community colleges. As a result, the California Teachers Association predicts class sizes will increase, thousands of teachers could be laid off and programs will be eliminated. Funding was maintained to continue smaller class sizes in grades K-3, and school districts will have more flexibility in how they spend money geared for specific programs. (ANTIs hate public FACT based education. They jump at anything they can do to reduce FACT based public education or reduce the number of people exposed to good education. Very sad. They win again thanks to Prop 13 unfair requirements for a two thirds majority.)
Q What about other colleges and universities?
A The University of California and California State
University systems will each suffer a 10 percent cut. Annual fees for CSU students will rise to $3,354 from the current $3,048. (Worst possible kind of fee increase. This will be fewer educated Californians particularly those who come from the lowest income levels. The poor will continue to be locked into their low wealth status with less chance to use education to get out of their income level.)
Q What happens to those on welfare programs?
A CalWORKS, the welfare-to-work program, will not provide cost-of-living increases. Those who receive state and federal supplemental income, such as certain seniors or disabled recipients, also will not get an increase. (The poorest of the poor get benefits cut. As a prominent Republican said (Bob Dole), "the poor do not contribute to campaigns.")
Q Will the Department of Motor Vehicles and other state offices remain closed due to state worker furloughs every two weeks?
A Yes, for now, until labor unions and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's negotiators find a way to trim $1.4 billion in payroll expenses. The next state office closing is today.
Q Is there any good news in the budget?
A Well, yes. The budget includes tax credits for businesses that invest in California, and it ensures that previously approved public works projects can continue. (Tax credits mean tax breaks for the grossly wealthy who already do not pay their fair share of taxes)
Contact Edwin Garcia at egarcia@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4651.
Republican Infection in Sacramento?
Below is a story from MSNBC regarding the Republicans in Sacramento. Their nickname a decade or more ago was the "Neanderthals". Now they are an infection?
I do agree that most elected Republicans now seem to be 100% behind the ANTI agenda--anti-science, anti progress, anti-middle class, anti-union, anti-public education; however, I hope in the future normals will get control of my party again. We cannot let radio con men whose mouths are purchased by the wealthy to control our party much longer.
Here is the article:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/California_Lt._Gov._Republican_infection_spreading_0219.html
Calif. politician blames budget woes on 'Republican infection'
David Edwards and Stephen C. WebsterPublished: Thursday February 19, 2009
State lawmakers break logjam over budget, pass bills with 'super majority' vote
When California Republicans replaced the state's senate minority leader for siding with Democrats over a budget conflation, ultimately delaying the deal by a single vote after weeks of frantic negotiations, that was a step too far for Lt. Governor John Garamendi.
Accusing the state's GOP of attempting to shut down the government, in the vein of the Gingrich-led federal shutdown of 1995, Garamendi said Wednesday to MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer that California's budget crisis was caused by "a Republican infection."
State lawmakers early Thursday passed a fiscal plan aimed at closing the state's $42 billion budget deficit, which threatened a financial meltdown in the world's eighth-largest economy.
The budget package passed after Republican Abel Maldonado agreed to support the measures in exchange for changes to California's electoral law and the removal from the plan of a 12-cent-per-gallon hike in the gasoline tax.
Lawmakers began voting on a series of 33 budget bills shortly after midnight and completed their approval at 6:55 a.m. -- four minutes after sunrise.The support allowed the budget measure to pass 27 to 12, giving Democrats the two-thirds majority necessary to approve the bill.
The plan calls for nearly 13 billion dollars in new taxes and more than 15 billion dollars in spending cuts that Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said were necessary to prevent California's economy from "going off a cliff."
"Rather than approaching this unprecedented crisis with gimmicks and temporary solutions, we took the difficult but responsible steps to address our entire 42 billion dollar budget deficit," Schwarzenegger said in a statement."
I look forward to partnering with the people to make sure these bipartisan reform measures are passed, to put an end to our budget roller coaster and get California moving forward again."
California is the only US state that requires a so-called "super majority" to both pass a budget and approve any new taxes.
"It is a major roadblock to any new progress," said the Lt. Governor. "And then, when you have recalescent Republicans that have taken a no new tax pledge and seem to really just want to throw this state, and the nation, into chaos and further decline in the economy. Then, we have the gridlock that we see now.
"We need to change our constitution, go to maybe a 55 percent vote. And we need to make sure these Republicans are held accountable for the continued layoffs in California, for the shutdown of construction projects and for this state being on the brink."
The Lt. Governor also criticised Gov. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, for "failed leadership."
"He spent five years saying no new taxes, the problem is spending," said Garamendi. "Last summer he came to realize that really we do have a revenue problem ... But he never took that message to the public and he certainly didn't work with individual legislators."
The Lt. Governor pronounced California's economic woes a symptom of "a Republican infection that's really spreading across this nation."
Gov. Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the package into law on Friday.
State officials had warned California's budget deficit could reach 42 billion dollars by 2010, and were on the verge of halting hundreds of construction projects and slashing up to 10,000 jobs if a budget was not passed.California has an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent, much worse than the US national average.
I do agree that most elected Republicans now seem to be 100% behind the ANTI agenda--anti-science, anti progress, anti-middle class, anti-union, anti-public education; however, I hope in the future normals will get control of my party again. We cannot let radio con men whose mouths are purchased by the wealthy to control our party much longer.
Here is the article:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/California_Lt._Gov._Republican_infection_spreading_0219.html
Calif. politician blames budget woes on 'Republican infection'
David Edwards and Stephen C. WebsterPublished: Thursday February 19, 2009
State lawmakers break logjam over budget, pass bills with 'super majority' vote
When California Republicans replaced the state's senate minority leader for siding with Democrats over a budget conflation, ultimately delaying the deal by a single vote after weeks of frantic negotiations, that was a step too far for Lt. Governor John Garamendi.
Accusing the state's GOP of attempting to shut down the government, in the vein of the Gingrich-led federal shutdown of 1995, Garamendi said Wednesday to MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer that California's budget crisis was caused by "a Republican infection."
State lawmakers early Thursday passed a fiscal plan aimed at closing the state's $42 billion budget deficit, which threatened a financial meltdown in the world's eighth-largest economy.
The budget package passed after Republican Abel Maldonado agreed to support the measures in exchange for changes to California's electoral law and the removal from the plan of a 12-cent-per-gallon hike in the gasoline tax.
Lawmakers began voting on a series of 33 budget bills shortly after midnight and completed their approval at 6:55 a.m. -- four minutes after sunrise.The support allowed the budget measure to pass 27 to 12, giving Democrats the two-thirds majority necessary to approve the bill.
The plan calls for nearly 13 billion dollars in new taxes and more than 15 billion dollars in spending cuts that Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said were necessary to prevent California's economy from "going off a cliff."
"Rather than approaching this unprecedented crisis with gimmicks and temporary solutions, we took the difficult but responsible steps to address our entire 42 billion dollar budget deficit," Schwarzenegger said in a statement."
I look forward to partnering with the people to make sure these bipartisan reform measures are passed, to put an end to our budget roller coaster and get California moving forward again."
California is the only US state that requires a so-called "super majority" to both pass a budget and approve any new taxes.
"It is a major roadblock to any new progress," said the Lt. Governor. "And then, when you have recalescent Republicans that have taken a no new tax pledge and seem to really just want to throw this state, and the nation, into chaos and further decline in the economy. Then, we have the gridlock that we see now.
"We need to change our constitution, go to maybe a 55 percent vote. And we need to make sure these Republicans are held accountable for the continued layoffs in California, for the shutdown of construction projects and for this state being on the brink."
The Lt. Governor also criticised Gov. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, for "failed leadership."
"He spent five years saying no new taxes, the problem is spending," said Garamendi. "Last summer he came to realize that really we do have a revenue problem ... But he never took that message to the public and he certainly didn't work with individual legislators."
The Lt. Governor pronounced California's economic woes a symptom of "a Republican infection that's really spreading across this nation."
Gov. Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the package into law on Friday.
State officials had warned California's budget deficit could reach 42 billion dollars by 2010, and were on the verge of halting hundreds of construction projects and slashing up to 10,000 jobs if a budget was not passed.California has an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent, much worse than the US national average.
Tyranny of the two thirds majority
The California budget passed.
Sadly a small minority of ANTI's held our state hostage until they made sure that their wealthy patrons (campaign contributors) would not have to pay their fair share for the benefits they get from living in our state.
Spending for poor and middle class was slashed--schools, colleges, health care etc. The wealthy were left alone.
All because it takes a two thirds majority of state lawmakers (thanks to prop 13) in both houses in Sacramento to increase taxes on the wealthy who own the mouths of the Radio Con Men that now control my Republican Party. A better written Prop 13 would have made it a 2/3rds majority to raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year but a simple majority for taxes on those who have the gained the most from our state infrastructure, the wealthy.
There will be a few new taxes but they will be the very worst kind in a recession. Most increased taxes will be REGRESSIVE. The kind that affect the poor and middle class far more than the wealthy. Regressive Taxes take the same amount from everyone. They mean that the poor who have no extra money must cut back on necessary living expenses. The middle class loses its discretionary spending which drives the California economy. But the life style of the wealthy is affected not at all.
The wealthy use only a very tiny proportion of their income for their wealthy decadent lifestyles, perhaps one or two percent. Increases in REGRESSIVE taxes are as inconsequential to the wealthy as taking out a few drops of water from a Olympic size swimming pool are to a swimmer.
Our schools will be severely impacted. The cuts will hurt and affect every school child and school employee in California. The new damage done to our already underfunded schools will echo down through the generations in California. An under funded school system means under educated students. An under educated population results in an under achieving economy. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and other southern states spend very little on education and their economies stagnate. Now California may join them in saving tiny amounts of money now to lose a chance at a better future to come. Penny wise pound foolish.
I received kind of wild two emails from some cell phone company called Credo. I do not know how they got my email address. The emails are a full of rhetoric and are both very anti-Republican and anti-conservative. Too much so for my taste.
I am a Republican and used to be a proud Republican. Something has happened to the leadership and driving forces in my party. It is no longer a party of the ordinary person or a party of solutions. Very sad. I think the party can be saved in the long run. But in the short term, radio con men like Rush Limbaugh will accept payola from the wealthy to drive listeners opinions away from rational solutions for funding our schools and government. Perhaps that is why there are so many folks like Credo springing up who hate my party.
Here are the emails. See what you think of them.
Stop the right-wing agenda. Join the movement to repeal the two-thirds budget rule.
California is in crisis — the conservatives continually hold our budget process hostage because of a rule requiring a two-thirds vote of the legislature to pass a budget.
Led by Senator Abel Maldonado, the conservatives held the recent budget negotiations hostage. Their ransom? Severe budget cuts and strict prohibitions on taxes.
We must stop this crisis now. On Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow and California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass told Americans about the consequences of California's crisis. Conservatives in our state are showing the rest of the nation how to obstruct economic recovery.
That's why CREDO and the Courage Campaign are teaming up to stop the right-wing from controlling California's budget process. Sign the pledge to repeal the two-thirds budget rule and watch the Rachel Maddow video.
Every other state but two (Arkansas and Rhode Island) passes its budget with a simple majority. Yet, even to repeal the two-thirds rule it takes a two-thirds vote of the legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Conservatives will do whatever they can to stop California from repealing this rule. We need to stop them now.
It is time to restore our budget process and build a movement to repeal the two-thirds rule. Join CREDO and the Courage Campaign today by signing this petition.
Thank you for working to build a better world.
Leah Donahey, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
Rachel Maddow's had enough. Have you?
California's government is hopelessly broken. Led by state Senator Abel Maldonado, Republicans turned the budget negotiations into a hostage crisis by exploiting the rule requiring a 2/3rds vote of the legislature to pass a budget.
California Republicans are an extreme minority. A party in exile. Rejected by Californians at the ballot box, Republicans have decided to take revenge by using the budget crisis to achieve their radical goals, no matter the cost.
This is insanity. And it's made possible by the 2/3rds rule, which allows a small cabal of extremist Republicans to hold the state hostage to their demands, as they have done year after year.
Last night, Rachel Maddow and California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass told America of the consequences of California's crisis. They explained that California Republicans are trying to set a precedent for the entire nation -- that obstructing economic recovery is their path to power.
We have to stop the insanity. The only way this madness will end is if we eliminate the 2/3rds rule. Please watch what Rachel Maddow said last night and join the Courage Campaign and CREDO Mobile in taking the pledge to support a repeal of the 2/3rds rule:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealTwoThirds
In the wake of dramatic progressive victories in the 2008 elections, the Republican counterattack is going to focus on ensuring government cannot meet the needs of the people in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. They believe that if government fails, they will win the next election.
Only TWO other states -- the small states of Rhode Island and Arkansas -- require a 2/3rds supermajority to pass a budget. But, ironically, it requires a 2/3rds vote of the legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to repeal the 2/3rds rule.
Since Republicans in the legislature will try to block that too, it is up to we, the people, to restore democracy to California and finally end the Republicans' obstruction. And the only way we can stop them is to repeal the 2/3rds rule by ballot initiative.
This budget insanity will never end -- it will go on year after year after year -- unless we build a movement to repeal the 2/3rds rule now. That's why the Courage Campaign is teaming up with CREDO Mobile to launch this pledge. Please watch the video, sign the pledge and ask your friends to join us:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealTwoThirds
Along with our progressive allies, the Courage Campaign will pursue a ballot initiative to repeal the 2/3rds rule. When the initiative is launched, we will contact you about where and when to sign to put it on the ballot.
Thank you for pledging to eliminate the 2/3rds rule and taking a stand against the right-wing's relentless campaign to destroy California.
Rick Jacobs
Chair
Sadly a small minority of ANTI's held our state hostage until they made sure that their wealthy patrons (campaign contributors) would not have to pay their fair share for the benefits they get from living in our state.
Spending for poor and middle class was slashed--schools, colleges, health care etc. The wealthy were left alone.
All because it takes a two thirds majority of state lawmakers (thanks to prop 13) in both houses in Sacramento to increase taxes on the wealthy who own the mouths of the Radio Con Men that now control my Republican Party. A better written Prop 13 would have made it a 2/3rds majority to raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year but a simple majority for taxes on those who have the gained the most from our state infrastructure, the wealthy.
There will be a few new taxes but they will be the very worst kind in a recession. Most increased taxes will be REGRESSIVE. The kind that affect the poor and middle class far more than the wealthy. Regressive Taxes take the same amount from everyone. They mean that the poor who have no extra money must cut back on necessary living expenses. The middle class loses its discretionary spending which drives the California economy. But the life style of the wealthy is affected not at all.
The wealthy use only a very tiny proportion of their income for their wealthy decadent lifestyles, perhaps one or two percent. Increases in REGRESSIVE taxes are as inconsequential to the wealthy as taking out a few drops of water from a Olympic size swimming pool are to a swimmer.
Our schools will be severely impacted. The cuts will hurt and affect every school child and school employee in California. The new damage done to our already underfunded schools will echo down through the generations in California. An under funded school system means under educated students. An under educated population results in an under achieving economy. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and other southern states spend very little on education and their economies stagnate. Now California may join them in saving tiny amounts of money now to lose a chance at a better future to come. Penny wise pound foolish.
I received kind of wild two emails from some cell phone company called Credo. I do not know how they got my email address. The emails are a full of rhetoric and are both very anti-Republican and anti-conservative. Too much so for my taste.
I am a Republican and used to be a proud Republican. Something has happened to the leadership and driving forces in my party. It is no longer a party of the ordinary person or a party of solutions. Very sad. I think the party can be saved in the long run. But in the short term, radio con men like Rush Limbaugh will accept payola from the wealthy to drive listeners opinions away from rational solutions for funding our schools and government. Perhaps that is why there are so many folks like Credo springing up who hate my party.
Here are the emails. See what you think of them.
Stop the right-wing agenda. Join the movement to repeal the two-thirds budget rule.
California is in crisis — the conservatives continually hold our budget process hostage because of a rule requiring a two-thirds vote of the legislature to pass a budget.
Led by Senator Abel Maldonado, the conservatives held the recent budget negotiations hostage. Their ransom? Severe budget cuts and strict prohibitions on taxes.
We must stop this crisis now. On Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow and California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass told Americans about the consequences of California's crisis. Conservatives in our state are showing the rest of the nation how to obstruct economic recovery.
That's why CREDO and the Courage Campaign are teaming up to stop the right-wing from controlling California's budget process. Sign the pledge to repeal the two-thirds budget rule and watch the Rachel Maddow video.
Every other state but two (Arkansas and Rhode Island) passes its budget with a simple majority. Yet, even to repeal the two-thirds rule it takes a two-thirds vote of the legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Conservatives will do whatever they can to stop California from repealing this rule. We need to stop them now.
It is time to restore our budget process and build a movement to repeal the two-thirds rule. Join CREDO and the Courage Campaign today by signing this petition.
Thank you for working to build a better world.
Leah Donahey, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
Rachel Maddow's had enough. Have you?
California's government is hopelessly broken. Led by state Senator Abel Maldonado, Republicans turned the budget negotiations into a hostage crisis by exploiting the rule requiring a 2/3rds vote of the legislature to pass a budget.
California Republicans are an extreme minority. A party in exile. Rejected by Californians at the ballot box, Republicans have decided to take revenge by using the budget crisis to achieve their radical goals, no matter the cost.
This is insanity. And it's made possible by the 2/3rds rule, which allows a small cabal of extremist Republicans to hold the state hostage to their demands, as they have done year after year.
Last night, Rachel Maddow and California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass told America of the consequences of California's crisis. They explained that California Republicans are trying to set a precedent for the entire nation -- that obstructing economic recovery is their path to power.
We have to stop the insanity. The only way this madness will end is if we eliminate the 2/3rds rule. Please watch what Rachel Maddow said last night and join the Courage Campaign and CREDO Mobile in taking the pledge to support a repeal of the 2/3rds rule:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealTwoThirds
In the wake of dramatic progressive victories in the 2008 elections, the Republican counterattack is going to focus on ensuring government cannot meet the needs of the people in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. They believe that if government fails, they will win the next election.
Only TWO other states -- the small states of Rhode Island and Arkansas -- require a 2/3rds supermajority to pass a budget. But, ironically, it requires a 2/3rds vote of the legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to repeal the 2/3rds rule.
Since Republicans in the legislature will try to block that too, it is up to we, the people, to restore democracy to California and finally end the Republicans' obstruction. And the only way we can stop them is to repeal the 2/3rds rule by ballot initiative.
This budget insanity will never end -- it will go on year after year after year -- unless we build a movement to repeal the 2/3rds rule now. That's why the Courage Campaign is teaming up with CREDO Mobile to launch this pledge. Please watch the video, sign the pledge and ask your friends to join us:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealTwoThirds
Along with our progressive allies, the Courage Campaign will pursue a ballot initiative to repeal the 2/3rds rule. When the initiative is launched, we will contact you about where and when to sign to put it on the ballot.
Thank you for pledging to eliminate the 2/3rds rule and taking a stand against the right-wing's relentless campaign to destroy California.
Rick Jacobs
Chair
Friday, February 20, 2009
Four children die of flu
Four children died in Colorado after catching the flu.
http://www.chieftain.com/articles/2009/02/20/news/local/doc499e4acd6156e957807508.txt
Reducing illnesses in your classroom can save lives.
Flu viruses seldom kill outright but they do damage the immune system and allow for secondary bacterial infections (staph, strep etc) If these bacteria are drug resistant like MRSA, then a patient can become very seriously ill or die. Two years ago in December a healthy soccer playing Ramona middle school boy died of secondary bacterial infection following the flu.
MRSA is simply one variety of a common staph bacteria found in our mouths, lungs and on our skin. The MRSA variety is not killed by most common antibiotics so it has become famous.
People with allergies and asthma are the most likely to get secondary bacterial infections from the flu. Two reasons for this have been found by research. First and older theory is that allergy asthma sufferers have more inflammation than most people. The inflammation traps mucous pockets that can not clear. These pockets provide a perfect environment for the growth of bacteria. Second reason is that some allergy asthma sufferers just cannot clear viruses as well from their lungs. Weeks after healthier subjects show no sign of infection, allergy sufferers still have virus particles in their sputum.
Reason two is the reason to stay five feet away from students who have constant runny noses even though they tell you it is only an allergy. It likely is an allergy but those kids are more likely to maintain viral loads in their mucous.
I have found that the most common spread of airborne disease is caused by mucous drops in the exhaled air of ill people. Sneezes and coughs are bad but so is breathing in the particles of mucous commonly launched from the mouth simply by talking. Distance matters--Two feet or less from ill person talking I got ill almost every time. When I was five or more feet away I did not get sick.
http://www.chieftain.com/articles/2009/02/20/news/local/doc499e4acd6156e957807508.txt
Reducing illnesses in your classroom can save lives.
Flu viruses seldom kill outright but they do damage the immune system and allow for secondary bacterial infections (staph, strep etc) If these bacteria are drug resistant like MRSA, then a patient can become very seriously ill or die. Two years ago in December a healthy soccer playing Ramona middle school boy died of secondary bacterial infection following the flu.
MRSA is simply one variety of a common staph bacteria found in our mouths, lungs and on our skin. The MRSA variety is not killed by most common antibiotics so it has become famous.
People with allergies and asthma are the most likely to get secondary bacterial infections from the flu. Two reasons for this have been found by research. First and older theory is that allergy asthma sufferers have more inflammation than most people. The inflammation traps mucous pockets that can not clear. These pockets provide a perfect environment for the growth of bacteria. Second reason is that some allergy asthma sufferers just cannot clear viruses as well from their lungs. Weeks after healthier subjects show no sign of infection, allergy sufferers still have virus particles in their sputum.
Reason two is the reason to stay five feet away from students who have constant runny noses even though they tell you it is only an allergy. It likely is an allergy but those kids are more likely to maintain viral loads in their mucous.
I have found that the most common spread of airborne disease is caused by mucous drops in the exhaled air of ill people. Sneezes and coughs are bad but so is breathing in the particles of mucous commonly launched from the mouth simply by talking. Distance matters--Two feet or less from ill person talking I got ill almost every time. When I was five or more feet away I did not get sick.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Impulsive Children pre-natal exposure to opiods
The following article may indicate a mechanism for the observation that the children or mothers who used alcohol or opioid while the child was in utero have much higher levels of impulsiveness, lack of self control, lack of ability to delay gratification, sudden emotional outburst among other problems.
NEUROSCIENCE: Opioids and Drink
Peter Stern
Substance abusers score higher on measures of cognitive and motor impulsivity. Cognitive impulsivity refers to the inability to delay gratification, whereas motor impulsivity, or disinhibition, describes the inability to withhold a pre-potent response.
Animal studies confirm that impulsivity correlates with drug intake, although nearly all of these studies have examined impulsivity in relationship to psychostimulant drugs.
Olmstead et al. have investigated whether deletion of the - or -opioid receptor genes alters motor impulsivity in mice. They tested the behavior of these mutant animals in an operant-based behavioral task that assesses the ability of mice to withhold a well-learned pre-potent response (a nose poke used to gain a sucrose reward); the reward can be obtained only when nose-poke responses are made during a brief light stimulus.
Mice lacking -opioid receptors exhibited decreased motor impulsivity, whereas those lacking -opioid receptors showed increased motor impulsivity. Additionally, mice lacking -opioid receptors were insensitive to the effects of alcohol, which increases impulsivity and decreases conditioned responding in wild-type mice, and the behavior of mice lacking -opioid receptors was completely disrupted by alcohol. Taken all together, these results indicate a link between opiate receptors in the brain, impulsive behavior, and behavior directed toward ingesting alcohol. -- PRS
PLoS ONE 4, e4410 (2009).e following article indicated one mechanism that could explain why we see high levels of impulsiveness, hyperactivity, lack of emotional control, lack of ability to wait for a reward in the children of mothers who took drugs while carrying the child during pregnancy.
NEUROSCIENCE: Opioids and Drink
Peter Stern
Substance abusers score higher on measures of cognitive and motor impulsivity. Cognitive impulsivity refers to the inability to delay gratification, whereas motor impulsivity, or disinhibition, describes the inability to withhold a pre-potent response.
Animal studies confirm that impulsivity correlates with drug intake, although nearly all of these studies have examined impulsivity in relationship to psychostimulant drugs.
Olmstead et al. have investigated whether deletion of the - or -opioid receptor genes alters motor impulsivity in mice. They tested the behavior of these mutant animals in an operant-based behavioral task that assesses the ability of mice to withhold a well-learned pre-potent response (a nose poke used to gain a sucrose reward); the reward can be obtained only when nose-poke responses are made during a brief light stimulus.
Mice lacking -opioid receptors exhibited decreased motor impulsivity, whereas those lacking -opioid receptors showed increased motor impulsivity. Additionally, mice lacking -opioid receptors were insensitive to the effects of alcohol, which increases impulsivity and decreases conditioned responding in wild-type mice, and the behavior of mice lacking -opioid receptors was completely disrupted by alcohol. Taken all together, these results indicate a link between opiate receptors in the brain, impulsive behavior, and behavior directed toward ingesting alcohol. -- PRS
PLoS ONE 4, e4410 (2009).e following article indicated one mechanism that could explain why we see high levels of impulsiveness, hyperactivity, lack of emotional control, lack of ability to wait for a reward in the children of mothers who took drugs while carrying the child during pregnancy.
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