Helping Special Education Students Move Beyond Graduation Day

SOURCE:   http://www.edweek.org/

During their public school years, children with disabilities are entitled to a menu of special services, such as music or occupational therapy, extra reading help and door-to-door transportation.

The law also requires they be given an Individualized Education Program, a blueprint tailored to their needs with involvement from educators and parents.
It's a comforting safety net that often ends abruptly when students leave school.

They might get help securing a job, enrolling in a technical school or giving college a try.  But it's just as likely they won't, says Karen Leggett of Silver Spring, Md., who leads a group trying to improve the transition out of high school for students with disabilities...MORE

40-Going Forward: States Target Higher Ed. for Cuts Once Again

SOURCE: http://www.edweek.org/

Higher education, which also accounts for a large percentage of discretionary spending in state budgets, is feeling the effects of the slow revenue growth, too. Consequently, tuition and fees at public colleges and universities are likely to continue going up, and state scholarship programs might get more competitive.
All this is worrisome news for high school students, their parents, and school counselors.

Continued spikes in the cost of attending college are certain to have “implications in terms of student access,” said Murray J. Haberman, the executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, an agency that plans and coordinates higher education in the state—one of several where cuts in higher education are occurring. “People still think there is value in higher education, but families are going to be making different decisions,” he said, about whether their children go to college at all.

The deficits come at a time when states have been strengthening efforts to improve high school graduation rates and make students more focused on preparing for college or a career. For example, a bill in the California legislature would establish an “early-commitment program” guaranteeing students a spot in a community college—or a university if they met application guidelines—in exchange for taking rigorous courses and fulfilling high school graduation requirements...MORE

Wise Bread| The weird logic of economic growth

SOURCE:  http://www.wisebread.com/

Besides growing the workforce, the other way to increase growth is to increase productivity.  If each worker can do more work, everybody can come out ahead.  The main way make workers more productive is through investment in things like tools and equipment. 
You can also make workers more productive through education, although we've not had much success with that, except where workers choose to make themselves more productive by investing in their own education. 
(A third obvious possibility--greater productivity by making job conditions more like sweatshops--doesn't get much praise, except in industry-specific trade journals.)...MORE

As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record - New York Times

SOURCE:  http://www.nytimes.com/
As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: March 31, 2008

“People sign up for food stamps when they lose their jobs, or their wages go down because their hours are cut,” said Stacy Dean, director of food stamp policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, who noted that 14 states saw their rolls reach record numbers by last December...MORE

America’s New Slavery

SOURCE:  http://aaopinion.blogspot.com/
America's New Slavery: Black Men in Prison
By Charlene Muhammad
Special to the NNPA from the Final Call

Although the costs of prisons is skyrocketing and consuming state budgets, money continues to be spent to push more Black youth into prison, activists assert.
Many education and prison advocates charge there is a plot to populate U.S. prisons based on the dumbing down of America's youth.
Figures show those most likely to be incarcerated and to return generally have the lowest level of education.
The report said, "While states don't necessarily choose between higher education and corrections, a dollar spent in one area is unavailable for another."...MORE

The Omega-3 Man

SOURCE:  http://www.propeller.com/
Why Men Need Omega-3 Fatty Acids

If you’re a victim of high cholesterol or have suffered from strokes in the past, getting more Omega-3 fatty acids into your life is the first great step towards a healthier and brighter future. It’s not hard to incorporate more Omega-3 fatty acids either.
The most convenient way is to purchase fish oil in capsules or Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, which can be found in any store. When purchasing such supplements, make sure you’re choosing a product that contains pharmaceutical-grade ingredients that are distilled so you’re safe from toxins, mercury particles and other harmful ingredients...MORE

Journal Issues Warning on Two Cholesterol Drugs - New York Times

SOURCE:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Journal Issues Warning on Two Cholesterol Drugs
By ALEX BERENSON
Published: March 30, 2008

CHICAGO — Two widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs, Vytorin and Zetia, may not work and should be used only as a last resort, The New England Journal of Medicine said in an editorial published on Sunday...MORE

Crisis Mgmnt

Questions to be Answered

How does disaster change leadership goals?
What signals should leaders send during a crisis?
How should organizations learn from failure?
Can leaders anticipate disaster?
How does disaster change leadership goals?

Shackleton: An Entrepreneur of Survival
On a trek across Antarctica, Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance
became trapped in ice. How did Shackleton lead his isolated team for
almost two years through extraordinary hardships? Professor Nancy F.
Koehn discusses lessons for leaders.

Key concepts include:

As the ship froze into place, Shackleton quickly overcame his own ego to
reset the enterprise to focus on survival.
Shackleton played to his strong suit and identified the strong suits in
other team members.
Leaders must be prepared to act when the stakes are much greater than
expected.
What signals should leaders send during a crisis?

High-Stakes Decision Making: The Lessons of Mount Everest
On May 10, 1996, five mountaineers from two teams perished while
climbing Mount Everest. What can business leaders learn from the
tragedy? For one, small decisions have big consequences.

Key concepts include:

Words and actions by leadership shape perceptions and beliefs of
organization members.
Leaders need to hold a delicate balance in nurturing confidence,
dissent, and commitment within their organizations.
After-action reviews often neglect to address the multiple factors
contributing to large-scale organizational failures.
How should organizations learn from failure?

Mission to Mars: It Really Is Rocket Science
After successive failures to land a spacecraft on Mars in 1999, NASA
blamed its own "Faster, Better, Cheaper" program as the culprit. But
Harvard Business School professor Alan D. MacCormack says the failure
was more about organizational execution.

Key concepts include:

Although individual projects fail, the root cause may be at an overall
program level. Some decisions are best made outside individual projects.
Institutionalizing postmortems on all projects, successful or not, is
the only way of generating robust insights on how well an organizational
change effort is proceeding.
In organizational transformation efforts based upon trial-and-error
learning, it is critical to understand at which points you will receive
feedback on progress.
Can leaders anticipate disaster?

Planning for Surprises
A company doesn't need a crystal ball to see impending disasters.
Leaders can foresee and avoid predictable surprises.

Key concepts include:

Predictable surprises happen when leaders had all the data and insight
they needed to recognize the potential of major problems but failed to
respond with preventative action.
Psychological, organizational, and political factors conspire to keep us
from dealing with potential problems.
Assuming a "veil of ignorance" can help leaders to see beyond themselves
and more effectively ward off a predictable surprise.

'Cheese' Heroin Hooking Young Users in Dallas : NPR

SOURCE:  http://www.npr.org/

'Cheese' Heroin Hooking Young Users in Dallas
by John Burnett

In Dallas, health officials are seeing children that young being brought to hospitals with signs of heroin withdrawal.
The city is in its third year of what drug abuse experts call a "mini-epidemic" among young Hispanics snorting a mild but addictive heroin called "cheese."
Cheese heroin is Mexican black-tar heroin that has been diluted with crushed tablets of over-the-counter sleep medication such as Tylenol PM...MORE

Florida apologizes for role in slavery

SOURCE:  http://www.tampabay.com/news/
By Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, Times Staff Writer
Published Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10:27 PM

TALLAHASSEE — More than 140 years after a former Florida governor described Africans as "a wild barbarian to be tamed and civilized," the Legislature on Wednesday apologized for the state's role in sanctioning slavery.

The House and Senate approved a resolution expressing "profound regret for the involuntary servitude of Africans, and calling for reconciliation among all Floridians."..MORE

Virginia's prison gravy train

SOURCE:  http://realcostofprisons.org/

Growing nationally by 3.4 percent a year for the past 10 years, federal, state and local prisons hold 2.3 million inmates -- one half of whom are nonviolent and small-time drug law offenders. In 2006, prison populations went up in 41 states, including an increase of 1,344 inmates in Virginia. From 2000 to 2005 the state's prison population has grown at a steady 3.2 percent per year...MORE

Emmett Till Blog: Censored 1956 Emmett Till Script Shown

SOURCE:  http://emmett-till.blogspot.com

Rod Serling Censored

ITHACA, NY—
A script deemed too sensitive for television in 1956 will have its first-ever reading as part of the Ithaca College conference on “The Life and Legacy of Rod Serling” March 28–29. The conference will include a presentation on how Serling had to turn a black teenaged boy into an elderly Jewish man in order to have his script aired...MORE

Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860

SOURCE:  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/sthome.html

Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The documents, most from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance. Of the cases presented here, most took place in America and a few in Great Britain. Among the voices heard are those of some of the defendants and plaintiffs themselves as well as those of abolitionists, presidents, politicians, slave owners, fugitive and free territory slaves, lawyers and judges, and justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Significant names include John Quincy Adams, Roger B. Taney, John C. Calhoun, Salmon P. Chase, Dred Scott, William H. Seward, Prudence Crandall, Theodore Parker, Jonathan Walker, Daniel Drayton, Castner Hanway, Francis Scott Key, William L. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Denmark Vesey, and John Brown.  Slaves and the Courts was made possible by a generous gift from the Citigroup Foundation.
LINK

Wal-Mart Clinics

SOURCE:  http://www.aseonline.org/

RNCentral, a web organization for current and future Registered Nurses, recently published a list of 20 ways Wal-Mart Clinics will affect U.S. healthcare.

Some of the more interesting affects are as follows:

• More immunizations – Immunizations will be readily available at all Wal-Mart health clinics. This will drastically decrease the risk of spreading contagious disease.
• No insurance necessary – Simply stated, no insurance is required to visit a Wal-Mart health clinic. People pay only a flat rate to visit a clinic. This will bring in patients with no insurance and ensure their health when they would otherwise go on for years without seeing a doctor.
• Eased emergency room crunches – Health care will me much more accessible, so people that would generally clog up emergency rooms for minor health conditions will visit a health clinic instead.
• Increased medical awareness – Because health care is available where people shop, they will be less likely to ignore aches and pains and get them treated.
• Increased office hours – Because Wal-Mart is open in the evening and on the weekends, so too would be the health care clinics...MORE

Top 10 Most Difficult Jobs to Fill Include Many in the Hourly Realm

SOURCE:  http://burghworks.blogspot.com/
Top 10 Most Difficult Jobs to Fill Include Many in the Hourly Realm

The one glaring fact that stands out most when looking at this year’s Manpower index of most difficult jobs to fill is that the majority of them are hourly positions and most do not require a 4 year college degree. Sales people lead off the list for the second year in a row.

From what we hear in Pittsburgh this runs in all sales categories from entry level retail up to sales Engineers and Pharmaceuticals. Also mirroring what we see in Pittsburgh are the dire need for qualified auto mechanics. Many dealers are in a position to limit their service hours because they cannot find enough mechanics to handle the workload they are seeing in their shops.

A large part of the reason for this national phenomena is the same as we are seeing here as well. The start of the Baby Boomers reaching retirement age. Too many of our young workers have been brought up in a go to college or you’ll die mentality. Not enough have given thought to a career in what used to be considered either dirty or menial work that didn’t pay well. All of those old perceptions are long gone...MORE

The Apex of Slavery

The Apex of Slavery:
"Eliot Spitzer's high-priced prostitute, Kristen, is not a slave; she's a prostitute. Or so says Benjamin Skinner, author of the new book A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery. Skinner's opinion is informed by his definition of 'slave': someone who is forced to work, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence."...MORE

Dining on Mud Cakes in Haiti

SOURCE: www.wallstreetfighter.com

In Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, 80 percent
of the population lives on less than $2 a day. The mud cookies sell for
around five cents each, compared to 60 cents for two cups of rice.

Made from dirt, salt and vegetable shortening, the cookies (which
are regularly used by pregnant women and children as an antacid
and source of calcium) have become a regular meal for Haitians
desperate to satisfy hunger.

While We Were Sleeping.

SOURCE:  http://gizmodo.com/371995/sewer-gas-may-allow-for-suspended-animation

Sewer Gas May Allow For Suspended Animation

Suspended animation — the state that space travelers are always put into in movies so they don't age while traveling for many years — may turn out to actually be possible, and it's a simpler process than you'd expect. Yep, all you need to fall into a deep sleep and not age is a good dose of sewer gas.

Scientists have discovered that small doses of hydrogen sulfide put mice into a completely reversible state of metabolic suppression. Within minutes of inhaling the gas the mice began to show the effects and were able to snap out of it within 30 minutes of the air supply being returned to normal.

If this can be done to humans, it could be used to "allow organ function to be preserved when oxygen supply is limited, such as after a traumatic injury" as well as, you know, for long-term space travel.

The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog:

SOURCE:  http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2008/03/the_sentencing_2.html

The Sentencing Project guide to 2008 Presidential Candidates' Platforms on Criminal Justice.

This guide provides information on a range of key criminal justice issues, including sentencing policy, reentry,
felony disenfranchisement, and the death penalty.

LINK to PDF: http://www.sentencingproject.org/tmp/File/PresidentialCandidatesPlatforms.pdf

'My House. My Dream. It Was All an Illusion.' - washingtonpost.com

SOURCE:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/

'My House. My Dream. It Was All an Illusion.'
Latina's Loss in Va. Epitomizes Mortgage Crisis
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 22, 2008; Page A01

Despite her poor credit, Honduran immigrant Glenda Ortiz easily got a subprime loan for this Alexandria home, bought in 2005 for $430,000. It was foreclosed on last year.

Looking back, Glenda Ortiz can see she did everything wrong when she bought her house in 2005. In fact, to understand the housing crisis that has swept the country, one need only listen to the tale of the Ortiz family...MORE