Services and Supports for Students with Traumatic Brain Injury: Survey of State Educational Agencies

Long-term follow-up studies conducted during the K–12 school years suggest that challenges related to childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI) tend to persist or worsen over time. A 1999 survey of State Directors of Special Education revealed that most states had emerging initiatives for children with TBI and were expanding their capacity to serve this growing population. To determine whether significant changes in patterns of identification and service delivery had occurred, State Directors and brain injury consumer organizations were surveyed. Survey results show some improvement, but significant gaps remain. Most state education administrators perceive a gap between incidence of childhood TBI and identification of students with TBI to receive special education services. Recommendations for policy changes and research are provided.     

Sports Infrastructure,Legacy and the Paradox of the 1984 Olympic Games

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games created a new sponsorship model for organising committees, changed perceptions about the value of hosting the Games, encouraged greater reliance on television revenue and generated a $232.5 million surplus. Although observers rarely cite sports venues as a 1984 legacy, the Los Angeles Olympics resulted in the construction or improvement of nearly 100 sport facilities in Southern California in three decades following the Games. These sports spaces served more than 500,000 young people annually. Much of the construction funding came from grants made by the LA84 Foundation, which was endowed with Southern California's share of the 1984 surplus. The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC) achieved a surplus by producing substantial revenues while tightly controlling costs. A key element of cost control was limited spending on Olympic venues. The LAOOC built only three new venues, relying on existing stadiums for all other venues. The LAOOC's construction budget was significantly lower than those of other Olympic organisers in the 1980s and 1990s. Thus, by building very few new venues for the 1984 Games, the LAOOC laid the groundwork for a legacy of sports fields, tracks, gymnasiums and pools built or improved after 1984.     

A reexamination of the effects of motivational state on utilization of conspecific odors in the rat

Two previous studies suggested that rats are unable to use conspecifics’ odors when the motivational state of the donor rats is different from their own (Davis et al., 1974; Davis, Prytula, Noble, & Mollenhour, 1976). The effects of motivational conditions on the utilization of such odors were further evaluated in the present study. In Phase 1, test rats were given training either with donors in the same motivational state or with donors in a different state. Differential responses to donors’ odor emissions occurred only when the motivational states of donors and test subjects were the same, thus confirming earlier findings. However, when test subjects’ motivational conditions were changed in Phase 2, discriminations that had been present in Phase 1 were maintained even though the motivational states of these test subjects and their respective donors no longer matched. Thus, any constraint on the rat’s ability to use odors from conspecifics in a different motivational state is not absolute.     

Long-term reaction of the rat to conspecific (frustration) odor

Rats’ choices in a T-maze were observed to determine (a) their long-term tendencies, in the apparent absence of reinforcement, to approach or avoid a goalbox containing a “frustration odor” stimulus generated by prior placements into the box of other rats given frustrative nonreward, and (b) the extent to which preferences for one or the other goalbox persisted following cessation of odor placements. The initial response to frustration odor was avoidance, though it took a few trials to develop. Avoidance was short-lived for most subjects, diminishing quickly and turning to a stable approach reaction, although three subjects developed an equally stable avoidance. These changes in response direction appeared to result from altered perception or interpretation of the odor rather than changed responsivity or alterations in the odor product itself. Preferences for one or the other of the goalboxes per se were but little affected by experiencing odor there.     

Putting grammatical complexity in context

Effective writing is to some degree characterised by the ability to use complex grammatical structures. However, grammatical complexity is poorly defined in linguistics and related disciplines such as literacy. This empirical study examined the notion of grammatical complexity and its relevance to literacy. Complexity is multifaceted, so for reasons of scope the study was confined to nominal structures, i.e. the noun phrase (e.g. I finished the book on Marx) and the nominal clause (e.g. I heard what you were doing). Such nominal structures were analysed by frequency and category in a bank of essays from Year 10/11 pupils in a UK comprehensive school. The results suggest that complexity is a product of the interaction of grammar with the context of production, and that in literacy it is helpful to view grammar as a system of options that can be manipulated to maximise the meaning potential of a text.     

Techies,the Tea Party,and the Race to the Top: The Rise of the New Upper-Middle Class and Tensions in the Rightist Politics of Federal Education Reform

Abstract

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and their associated high-stakes testing are key parts of the federal Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative. There has been considerable resistance to both CCSS and related testing, particularly from conservative actors. This resistance suggests that CCSS has caused substantial tension within the conservative alliance that originally coalesced around No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This article examines the fracturing of the NCLB alliance in response to RTTT and CCSS.     

An instrument for measuring five aspects of children's attitudes towards microcomputers

The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument which would identify and measure independent dimensions of children's attitudes towards microcomputers. The sample consisted of 501 sixth and seventh grade Tasmanian children. The instrument produced by Williams, Coulombe, and Lievrouw (1983) was used as a starting point. Exploratory factor analytic procedures were used to arrive at a final instrument consisting of 17 adjective pairs in semantic differential format. Composite scores are calculated for five dimensions: 'functioning', 'difficulty', 'involvement','appeal' and 'novelty'. Recommendations are given for the use of these dimensions in studies of differences.     

Individual Differences in Infant Visual Attention: Are Short Lookers Faster Processors or Feature Processors?

Individual differences in the duration of infants' visual fixations are reliable and stable and have been linked to differential cognitive performance; short-looking infants typically perform better than long-looking infants. 4 experiments tested the possibility of whether short lookers' superiority on perceptual-cognitive tasks is attributable to attention to the featural details of visual stimuli, or simply to differences in the speed or efficiency of visual processing. To do this, the performance of long- and short-looking 4-month-olds was examined on separate discrimination tasks that could be solved only by processing either featural or global information. The global task was easier than the featural task, but as the amount of time allotted for infants to solve either type of task was decreased, short lookers' performance was superior to that of long lookers. These results thus lend support to a speed or efficiency of stimulus processing interpretation of infant fixation duration.     

Predicting elementary science learning using national assessment data

This study made use of data collected during 1981—1982 from a random sample of 1960 nine-year-old students from 124 elementary schools involved in a national assessment of educational progress in science sponsored by the National Science Foundation. This data base was used in secondary analyses which probed the validity of a model of educational productivity involving a set of nine aptitudinal, instructional, and environmental variables which require optimization to increase student learning. When controlled for other factors, ability, motivation, class environment, home environment, amount of television viewing (negative direction), gender, and race were all found to be significantly related to achievement. For an attitude outcome, the factors linked with attitudinal attainment were ability, motivation, class environment, and race. Overall the findings supported the model of educational productivity and suggested that elementary science students' achievement and attitude are influenced jointly by a number of factors rather than one or two dominant ones. Also the study attests to the potential value of science education researchers performing secondary analyses on the high-quality random data bases generated as part of this national assessment.