Wellness – Page 7 – School Information System

Zero-Tolerance Policies in Practice

We don’t really know what we want. That’s the conclusion of a social psychologist who decided to test just how committed parents and others are to single-sanction, zero-tolerance, tough-love punishment regimens of the kind that many schools have adopted to fight drug use by teenagers.
Colgate University psychologist Kevin Carlsmith concluded that people fail to recognize that a zero-tolerance policy that seems simple and effective in theory will violate their sense of justice when they see it in practice. And that’s exactly the response I’ve been getting to my column last week about Josh Anderson, the Fairfax high school junior who killed himself on the eve of a disciplinary hearing that was likely to have ended with his expulsion for being caught on campus with a small amount of marijuana.
I’ve heard from hundreds of parents whose kids — like Josh — have gotten caught up in a punishment system that fails to distinguish between drug users and dealers.

Facebook fans do worse in exams
Research finds the website is damaging students’ academic performance

Jonathan Leake & Georgia Warren:

FACEBOOK users may feel socially successful in cyberspace but they are more likely to perform poorly in exams, according to new research into the academic impact of the social networking website.
The majority of students who use Facebook every day are underachieving by as much as an entire grade compared with those who shun the site.
Researchers have discovered how students who spend their time accumulating friends, chatting and “poking” others on the site may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work.
The findings will confirm the worst fears of parents and teachers. They follow the ban on social networking websites in many offices, imposed to prevent workers from wasting time.
About 83% of British 16 to 24-year-olds are thought to use social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, to keep in touch with friends and organise their social lives.
“Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying,” said Aryn Karpinski, a researcher in the education department at Ohio State University. “Every generation has its distractions, but I think Facebook is a unique phenomenon.”

Which Is Epidemic — Sexting or Worrying About It?

Carl Bialik:

It seemed like more troubling evidence that kids these days engage in behavior they wouldn’t want to write home about. Researchers recently found that one in five teenagers have shared nude or semi-nude photos of themselves by cellphone or online. That statistic has become a fixture in articles about “sexting” and its social and legal implications.
But that number may be inflated, because the same teenagers who have engaged in such behavior could be the ones most likely to say they have done so in an online poll. To find out how many teenagers are sharing personal information over new media, researchers last year asked teenagers personal questions using one of those new media, skewing the sample.
“These kinds of samples select Internet cowboys and cowgirls,” says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, who has used the telephone for his studies of teens and online behavior. “These are more likely to be the kind of people who engage in this kind of activity.” He guesses that online poll-takers might be two to four times more likely to send nude photos of themselves than the average teen.

Treating Autism as if Vaccines Caused ItThe theory may be dead, but the treatments live on.

Arthur Allen:

A federal court may have changed the public discourse about the safety of vaccines in February, when it dismissed the theory that they cause autism. But vaccine damage is still the reigning paradigm for a rump caucus of thousands of parents who turn to physicians with a remarkable set of beliefs and practices in hope of finding recourse for their children’s ills.

To sift through the 15,000-page record of the Autism Omnibus hearings and the decisions by the three special masters who considered the evidence is to peek into a medical universe where autism is considered a disease of environmental toxicity, rather than an inherited disorder, and where doctors expose children to hundreds of tests simply to justify the decision to “detoxify” them. In some cases, the judges found, doctors simply ignored data that didn’t fit the diagnosis.

The court came down hard on the alternative medical practitioners who tailor their treatments to fit theories of vaccine damage. Among the doctors criticized was Jeff Bradstreet, a former Christian preacher in Melbourne, Fla., who has treated 4,000 children with neurological disorders. Among the children was Colten Snyder, whose case was one of those considered by the court.

Oprah Winfrey school in South Africa faces second sex scandal

Caroline Hedley:

The girls were suspended last week for the alleged sexual harassment of fellow pupils at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy School For Girls in Henley-on-Clip, near Johannesburg.
According to the Afrikaans on Sunday newspaper, one 15-year-old “preyed” on a schoolmate and coerced others into lying to officials investigating the alleged incidents.
Six other pupils have been excluded from the $46 million (£32 million) girls-only boarding school after being alleged to have touched each other intimately, or “intimidating others into partaking of inappropriate behaviours”.
A letter sent to one of the suspended girls’ parents is said to have read: “You have been found guilty of physical contact of a sexual nature with another pupil on campus, harassment, bullying other girls on campus and of being dishonest by not telling investigators the whole truth”.
The girl claims the accusations are false and has blamed other girls.

Greens in cafe – culture call for school lunc

Timothy Chui:

Schools with cafeterias can reduce food wastage and save about 2.14 million disposable lunch boxes heading for landfills every year, Greeners Action project officer Yip Chui-man said yesterday.

Roughly 380,000 primary school students take lunch everyday, according to Yip, who said over one-third of 13,000 disposable lunch boxes went straight into the garbage, a February to March survey of 212 primary schools showed.

The survey suggested most primary schools want more funding to introduce canteens in a bid to cut down on waste.

With a mere 5 percent drop in the amount of disposable lunch boxes being junked, compared to seven years ago, Yip is calling on the Education Bureau and the Environmental Protection Department to set up regulations to control lunch-time garbage.

A resounding 95 percent of primary schools want public money to outfit them with a cafeteria.

Clever boys dumb down to avoid bullying in school

Jessica Shepherd:

Clever children are saving themselves from being branded swots at school by dumbing down and deliberately falling behind, a study has shown.

Schoolchildren regarded as boffins may be attacked and shunned by their peers, according to Becky Francis, professor of education at Roehampton University, who carried out a study of academically gifted 12- and 13-year-olds in nine state secondary schools.

The study, to be published in the Sociological Review next year, shows how difficult it is for children, particularly boys, to be clever and popular. Boys risk being assaulted in some schools for being high-achievers. To conform and escape alienation, clever boys told researchers they may “try to fall behind” or “dumb down”.

One boy told researchers: “It is harder to be popular and intelligent. If the subject comes naturally … then I think it makes it easier. But if the subject doesn’t come naturally, they work hard and other people see that and then you get the name-calling.” This may in part explain boys’ perceived underachievement, Francis said.

Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy

Adam Liptak:

Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.

RE: ’07 U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record

Douglas M. Newman:

It’s irresponsible that Erick Ekholm doesn’t mention well publicized research citing teen pregnancy being tied to racy TV in his article (‘07 U.S. Births Break Baby Boom Record, Mar. 18, 2009).
In the widely published Nov. 3, 2008 Associate Press news release by Lindsy Tanner, Rand Corp. published a study in the November 2008 issue of Pediatrics, linking TV viewing habits and teen pregnancy.
Paraphrasing the AP’s press release and Anita Chandra, lead author of Rand’s study, “teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant as those who didn’t. Previous research found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages. Shows highlighting only the positive aspects of sexual behavior without the risks can lead teens to have unprotected sex.”
Perhaps 2007 birth rates just might have been influenced by racy television shows teens are viewing – with parental consent and produced by adults in the name of corporate profits I might add.
Douglas M. Newman
Guilford, Connecticut
Cell: (203) 516-1006
Word count: 148 (after the hyphen in the last sentence, the word count is 166).

Lindsay Tanner:

Groundbreaking research suggests that pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior, compared with those who have tamer viewing tastes.
“Sex in the City,” anyone? That was one of the shows used in the research.
The new study is the first to link those viewing habits with teen pregnancy, said lead author Anita Chandra, a Rand Corp. behavioral scientist. Teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.
Previous research by some of the same scientists had already found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages.
Shows that only highlight the positive aspects of sexual behavior without the risks can lead teens to have unprotected sex “before they’re ready to make responsible and informed decisions,” Miss Chandra said.

ABC-TV:

The more sexual content in television and magazines that teens are exposed to, the more likely they are to have sexual intercourse at an early age, a new study says.
The University of North Carolina study, published in today’s issue of the journal Pediatrics, concludes that white adolescents who view more sexual content than their peers are 2.2 times more likely to have sexual intercourse by the time they are 14 to 16 years old.
“Some, especially those who have fewer alternative sources of sexual norms, such as parents or friends, may use the media as a kind of sexual superpeer that encourages them to be sexually active,” the study authors state.
And, as similar past studies have noted, “one of the strongest protective factors against early sexual behavior was clear parental communication about sex.”

Reports surface that teens are taking cow drugs for abortions

Erin Richards:

Veterinary and medical professionals in Wisconsin said Friday that they have been warned about a potentially alarming practice among the state’s rural youth: teenage girls ingesting livestock drugs to cheaply and discreetly end their unwanted pregnancies.
So far, the professionals in animal and human health and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction are treating the reports of girls inducing their own abortions with prostaglandins – drugs commonly used by cow breeders to regulate animals’ heat cycles – as rumors, because no cases have been officially confirmed by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
But Anna Anderson, the executive director of Care Net Pregnancy Center of Green County in Monroe, maintains that she has identified at least 10 girls ages 14 to 18 in a three-county area who admitted to taking some form of cow abortifacient in the past year.
Anderson said the girls told her they took it because they found it to be a cheap and easy way to end their pregnancies without their parents finding out.
At the American Veterinary Medical Association, Assistant Director Kimberly May said Friday that her organization first heard the rumor about the teenagers in mid-February from the Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association. Since then, the American Animal Hospital Association has also posted an advisory about the issue on its Web site.
Injected properly in livestock, prostaglandins shorten a heat cycle so a female animal can be bred again, May said.

Teachers Alleging Attacks by Youths Find Themselves Scrutinized

Bill Turque:

Woodson Academy teacher William Pow had just finished writing on the blackboard one January afternoon, he said, when he turned to face his algebra class and saw the textbook “Mathematics in Life” hurtling toward his head.
He ducked, he said, but it caught him in the neck and shoulder. His colleagues at Woodson have not been as lucky. English teacher Randy Brown said he was hit just above the left ear by a book thrown by a student last month. He was treated for a concussion and said he has since suffered from headaches and nausea.
“They think it’s a game to hit people in the head,” said Brown, who, like Pow, has not returned to school.
They say the 260-student ninth-grade academy, housed at Ronald H. Brown Middle School in Northeast Washington while a new Woodson High is under construction, is overcrowded and dangerous. Brown and Pow count five other teachers or administrators who they said have been attacked this academic year, including one who was pelted by textbooks and another pinned to a desktop and choked. Other teachers, Brown and Pow said, are routinely subjected to verbal threats of violence.

Just Say No….to Smarties? Faux Smoking Has Parents Fuming

Dionne Searcey:

Summit Middle School in Frisco, Colo., is a tobacco-free campus. Students who smoke cigarettes are suspended.
But when a lunchtime crew of sixth-graders last fall started “smoking” Smarties, the tart, chalky candy discs wrapped in cellophane, lunchroom monitors and the school nurse were flummoxed.
The children didn’t light the candy. They crushed it into a fine powder in its wrapper, tore off one end, poured the powder into their mouths and blew out fine Smarties dust, mimicking a smoker’s exhale.
“It was freaky,” says Corinne McGrew, a nurse for Summit School District. “My biggest concern was that they would aspirate the wrapper or a whole Smarties and it would be a choking hazard.”
The fad at Summit Middle School died down after a few days and some harsh words from the lunchroom staff. But at other schools and across the Internet, “smoking Smarties,” as the activity has been labeled, is gaining popularity. Some children have even taken to snorting it, all to the horror of parents, teachers and the 60-year-old company that manufactures the candy.

A State by State Look at High School Steriod Tests

AP:

A state-by-state look at results of results of steroids tests in high schools:
Florida
Tests administered: 600
Positive results: 1
Notes: Florida had a statewide testing program only during the 2007-08 school year.

France Set to Raise Drinking Age

David Gauthier-Villars:

Garçon! A glass of red.
Teenagers under the age of 18 could soon lose the right to drink wine in France because of a new bill that would tighten restrictions on alcohol sales.
The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy has drafted the bill, which would raise France’s minimum drinking age for wine and beer to 18 from 16. The government says it would reduce a dangerous addiction among youths. A vote on the bill is expected to take place Wednesday at the National Assembly, where it is likely to pass, as Mr. Sarkozy’s center-right coalition has a majority of the votes. A final vote in the Senate could take place in April.
France has had a liberal approach to alcohol thus far. Unlike most other countries, France has two drinking ages: Young people can drink or purchase wine and beer from the age of 16 and hard liquor from 18. Bartenders and shopkeepers don’t usually check the identification cards of their customers, however young.
The powerful lobby of French winemakers says it won’t try to derail the law, but thinks the government is making a big mistake. A stricter law, winemakers say, could reverse the age-old French custom of parents teaching children how to taste and appreciate wine at the family meal.
The risk of the new law, they say, is a habit of binge drinking imported from the U.S., where the drinking age is 21, and the U.K., where studies show one in four adult men and one in three adult women are heavy drinkers.

How To Stop Google From Following You

Lauren Aaronson:

A simple tool lets you opt out of advertising programs that track your Web clicks
Hundreds of thousands of Web sites show ads provided by Google, such as those little text ads that offer you everything from diets to dog training. Now Google has announced plans to track your clicks across all these sites, and then serve up ads personalized to your tastes. Visit a bunch of electronics-related sites, say, and the next site you view may show you an ad for the latest must-have gadget, even if you’re now reading about ways to reduce stress through yogic meditations.
As Big Brother as it sounds, this is actually something that many advertising companies already do. But don’t worry: There’s a way to stop Google–and all the others–from prying.
First, Google has offered up several ways to change and reduce the info it stores about you. Using its new Ads Preferences Manager, you can delete any of the interests that Google believes you have, such as Entertainment or Travel. You can even add interests, if you happen to like personalized advertising.

Runaway daughters

Katharine Mieszkowski:

Debra Gwartney was trying to escape a failed marriage when she moved from Tucson, Ariz., to Eugene, Ore., in the early ’90s with her four daughters in tow. What the newly single mother didn’t foresee was that, as she fled from her past to a different city and job, her relationship with her girls would be forever transformed, too. Enraged by the divorce and the move, her two oldest daughters, Amanda and Stephanie, soon ran away, seeking adventure on the streets and shelter in abandoned buildings with other teenagers like them.
In “Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love,” Gwartney relives the private desperation and shame of being a mother whose teenage daughters disappear for days at a time, only dropping in occasionally when no one else is home to stock up on supplies, leaving empty beer cans, fetid clothes, empty cigarette boxes and puddles of brilliant Manic Panic hair dye behind. As the girls’ absences stretch to weeks and months, Gwartney recalls her frantic searches for them, first in Eugene and then in San Francisco. Along the way, she delves into her own culpability in the family dynamic that drove them away.
A former correspondent for the Oregonian and Newsweek, Gwartney wrote about her relationship with her eldest daughter, Amanda, in Salon back in 1998. Debra, Amanda and Stephanie also appeared together on “This American Life” in March 2002, in an episode tellingly titled “Didn’t Ask to Be Born.”

Written Bomb Threat at Madison West High School: Letter to Parents

Principal Ed Holmes [9K PDF] via a kind reader’s email:

When Madison Schools receive any information that jeopardizes or threatens the safety of our schools, we immediately report the incident to Madison Police and consult with them to determine what the best course of action should be.
The Madison School District has well-defined protocols that are implemented anytime a threat is made against schools. The decisions regarding a response to safety situations are always made in close consultation with the Madison Police Department and other law enforcement agencies.
The safest place for students is in school where we provide structure and supervision. Therefore any decision to remove students from that environment has to be weighed carefully with a potential for placing them in a less structured environment that potentially raises other safety concerns.
These procedures were followed today at West High in response to a written bomb threat.
After consulting with District Administration, the building was searched at 6:00 a.m. using trained Madison Metropolitan School district engineers, architects and custodial supervisors. This procedure has been used in other schools under similar circumstances. Our goal is to maintain a safe educational environment for all students and staff. We have an excellent relationship with our students and encourage them to talk with us about possible issues. We ask you, as families, to help keep our lines of communication open by encouraging your students to talk about their concerns.
West High continues to be a safe place. We pledge that we will continue to focus our time, attention, and resources to keep it so.
Ed Holmes, Principal
Madison West High School [Map]

Related: Police calls near Madison high schools 1996-2006 and recent Madison police calls (the event referenced in the letter above is not present on the police call map as of this morning (3/13/2009)).

Battling childhood obesity in the US: An interview with Robert Wood Johnson’s CEO

Matt Miller & Lynn Taliento:

Obesity used to be a privilege reserved for wealthy people in wealthy countries. Now, however, this and other lifestyle diseases also afflict better-off people in poorer countries and poorer people in richer ones, particularly the United States. In 2007, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation–the biggest US philanthropy devoted solely to health care and health, with roughly $8 billion in assets–announced that it would award $500 million in grants to reverse the soaring incidence of US childhood obesity over the past 40 years. These grants support programs designed to raise levels of physical activity and improve nutrition for kids; to identify other levers for reversing the childhood obesity epidemic; and to determine, advocate, and implement the requisite policy and environmental changes. The foundation also focuses on issues such as improving the quality of the US health care system; increasing access to stable, affordable health care; strengthening the public-health system; and addressing the health needs of vulnerable populations.
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, who holds both an MD and an MBA, has been president and CEO of the foundation since late 2002. Matt Miller, a senior adviser to McKinsey, and Lynn Taliento, a principal in the Washington, DC, office, interviewed her at the foundation’s headquarters,…

Older Fathers Linked to Lower I.Q. Scores

Roni Caryn Rabin:

The children of older fathers scored lower than the offspring of younger fathers on I.Q. tests and a range of other cognitive measures at 8 months old, 4 years old and 7 years old, according to a study released Monday that added to a growing body of evidence suggesting risks to postponing fatherhood.
The study is the first to show that the children of older fathers do not perform as well on cognitive tests at young ages. Although the differences in scores were slight and usually off by just a few points on average, the study’s authors called the findings “unexpectedly startling.”
“The older the dads were, the slightly worse the children were doing,” said Dr. John J. McGrath, the paper’s senior author and a professor of psychiatry at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane, Australia. “The findings fit in a straight line, suggesting there may be some steady beat of mutations happening in the dad’s sperm.”
Earlier studies have found a higher incidence of schizophrenia and autism among the offspring of men who were in their mid-to-late 40s or older when they had children. A study published in 2005 reported that 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds with older fathers scored lower on nonverbal I.Q. tests, as did the offspring of teenage fathers.

A Family Illness, and Fewer Friends Who Can Help

Vanessa Fuhrmans:

Chris and Vickie Cox’s health insurance never covered the full cost of treating their children’s bone-marrow disorder. They relied on donations from their church, neighbors and family to plug the holes in their coverage, which ran as high as $40,000 a year.
That safety net is now unraveling. The slumping economy is pulling down fragile networks of support that in better times could keep families with insurance but big bills from falling into a financial hole.
The three Cox children have a rare disease called Shwachman Diamond Syndrome, which curtails the production of bacteria-fighting blood cells and digestive enzymes needed to absorb nutrients properly. It can lead to life-threatening infection, bone-marrow failure or a deadly form of leukemia.
After Samuel, 7, Grace, 12, and Jake, 15, were diagnosed with the genetic disease earlier this decade, landing a job with good health benefits became the biggest priority for Mr. Cox. He gave up plans to run his own home respiratory-care business to work as a salaried medical-equipment salesman. In 2006, the family moved to North Carolina from Kansas City to be closer to specialists at Duke University.

Red Cross Teaches Madison Students CCR

Channel3000:

The American Red Cross Badger Chapter taught cardio cerebral resuscitation, or CCR, to Madison Memorial freshmen Friday.
The students learned the life-saving benefits of the new technique used to treat people who stop breathing. It provides oxygenated blood to the brain quickly when someone collapses, saving valuable time.
“It’s all about getting not only the youth involved but our community involved, and if we can get every freshman in the city of Madison and the surrounding area to learn this new technique by the time they’re seniors, then we’ll have every student in the entire high school trained knowing this new technique,” said Tom Mooney, CEO of the Badger Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Student Beaten in Toki Middle School Bathroom

WKOW-TV via a kind reader’s email:

Parents of students at a Madison middle school worry about safety after a child was beat up in one the school’s bathroom.
The incident happened last week Thursday.
According to a letter sent home to parents Monday, a group of students followed a male student into the boy’s bathroom where another student assaulted him.
The group blocked entrance to the bathroom.
Surveillance cameras show the beating along with a group of witnesses cheering on the violence.
Toki [Map] Principal Nicole Schaefer says the school sent the letter to alert parents that the proper actions were taken and assure them the school is safe.
Schaefer would not tell 27 News if any students were suspended or if the victim is back in school.

Toki Middle School Restorative Justice Plan [82K PDF]:

Judicious discipline is a three pillared process set on a solid educational foundation. The first pillar is prevention through education and positive behavior supports; the second pillar is equity through fair and consistent consequences, and the third pillar is restoration through empathy, forgiveness and conflict resolution. The educational foundation that these pillars stand on is curriculum, instruction and assessment practices that are engaging, rigorous, culturally responsive, and individualized. In summary, kids who are engaged in learning are less likely to engage in misconduct.
The backbone of our discipline policy is that all staff and students must be treated with dignity and respect, including those who harm others. We want everyone to know that misconduct is never acceptable, but always fixable. We will be warm but strict, and follow through with clear, fair and consistent consequences, but also encourage students to repair the harm they caused, earn forgiveness, and restore their reputations.
When a student engages in misconduct, we must care for two interests:

The student who misbehaves – We teach the student how to repair the harm, earn forgiveness, and restore his or her reputation
All other students – We protect their health, safety, property, and opportunity to learn in an environment free from distractions

Therefore, when a student engages in misconduct, he or she has two options:

Fix the harm (ex: Apology, Mediation, Repair or Replace, Community service, Extended learning)
Accept a consequence (ex: Lunch detention, After school detention, In school suspension, Out of school suspension, Suspension alternatives)

The consequences for misconduct will vary, depending on how the behavior harms the health, safety, property and learning opportunities of other students. Although choosing to “fix the harm” may reduce or replace consequences for less harmful misconduct, behaviors that significantly or severely harm others will result in mandatory suspension days, up to a recommendation for expulsion.

40 students ( 2008/2009 student population is 538) open enrolled out of Toki Middle school for the 2009/2010 term according to this Madison School District document. Much more on Toki here.

Parents wonder whether Madison’s school lunches are healthy for kids

Mary Ellen Gabriel:

The “hot lunch” line snakes out the door of the multipurpose room at Franklin Elementary School. Kids dressed in snow boots and parkas file past a table where a staff member is handing out plastic-wrapped containers of hot dogs and fries, canned peaches and a cookie. Forget trays or plates. The kids clutch the packages in both hands and, after a student helper plunks a carton of milk on top, hug the whole load to their chests, trying not to drop mittens and hats. They scurry into the gym and squeeze into a spot at one of the crowded lunch tables, where the “cold lunch” kids are chowing down with a 10-minute head start. Twelve minutes left before the bell rings. Better eat fast.
Is the Madison Metropolitan School District’s school lunch program unhealthy for kids?
It depends who you ask. On one side is a well-trained food service department that manages to feed 19,000 kids under a bevy of guidelines on a slim budget. On the other is a growing number of parents and community advocates armed with research about the shortcomings of mass-produced food and race-to-the-finish mealtimes.
“We’re perpetuating a fast-food mentality,” said Pat Mulvey, a personal chef and the parent of a second-grader and a kindergartner at Franklin. “We can do better.”
Mulvey has joined a small group of parents at south side Franklin and affiliated Randall Elementary calling for changes to the school lunch program. Among their concerns: a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, high fat and salt content in items perceived as “processed” or “junk food,” little nutritional information on the Web site, too much plastic, too much waste and too little time to eat.
This isn’t the first time parents in the district have raised concerns about school lunch. For the past decade, parents, educators and healthy food advocates in the Madison area have asked the School Board, principals and the district’s food service to serve more fresh foods and make lunch longer than 25 minutes.

This issue has come up a number of times over the years.

Naughty Teenagers

The Economist:

There is the usual and predictable outrage in the British papers and on the radio today about the latest figures for teenage pregnancy–which has become a bit more common at the last count, and which, despite the government’s best and lavish efforts, remains much more prevalent in Britain than in most of continental Europe (though less so than in America). The idea of wildly libidinous adolescents feeds usefully into a general tabloid narrative of rampant teenage delinquency, parental fecklessness and a country that is going to the dogs.
So here’s an inconvenient fact for the moral declinists: teenage pregnancy and births to teenage mothers were very much more common fifty years ago, before the invention of the pill and the legalisation of abortion, than they are today. Teenagers are rutting no more now than they ever have. What has changed is that teen pregnancies used frequently to result in shotgun marriages, and so the eventual infants were less of a burden on the state than those born to unwed mothers are today. In other words, the deterioration is fiscal rather than moral.

Students Stand When Called Upon, and When Not

Susan Saulny:

From the hallway, Abby Brown’s sixth-grade classroom in a little school here about an hour northeast of Minneapolis has the look of the usual one, with an American flag up front and children’s colorful artwork decorating the walls.
But inside, an experiment is going on that makes it among the more unorthodox public school classrooms in the country, and pupils are being studied as much as they are studying. Unlike children almost everywhere, those in Ms. Brown’s class do not have to sit and be still. Quite the contrary, they may stand and fidget all class long if they want.
And they do.
On one recent morning, while 11-year-old Nick Raboin had his eye on his math problems, Ms. Brown was noticing that he preferred to shift his weight from one foot to the other as he figured out his fractions. She also knew that his classmate Roxy Cotter liked to stand more than sit. And Brett Leick is inclined to lean on a high stool and swing his right foot under a desk that is near chest level. Helps with concentration, he and Ms. Brown say.

Kung fu school hopes to boom in tough times

Celine Sun:

A local kung fu school hopes to cash in on the financial crisis, with more people expected to attend courses to tone up their bodies and get rid of negative emotions.
The Hong Kong Shaolin Wushu Culture Centre in Tai O, Lantau Island, has seen a rise in visitor numbers over the past few months, its low season, and has already received bookings for the summer holidays.
Lee Kok-keung, director of the Hong Kong Culture Association, which established the centre in 2006, said the increased interest could have something to do with the economic downturn.
“When the economy is good, people are so busy trading stocks and making money,” he said. “But when the economy is going down, people tend to pay more attention to their health.
“Practising kung fu is not only good for the body, but also an ideal way to cheer you up.”

Parents can fight ‘sexting’ stupidity

Laurel Walker:

Is there a difference between a stupid teen trick – passing around a girl’s naked picture she’d earlier provided her now-ex-boyfriend – and child molestation?
Without a doubt.
Is there a difference even between that stupid teen behavior and being a teenager who threatens to use naked pictures obtained under a ruse as ammo for extorting sex?
Of course.
But under state law, all of them could become convicted felons who land on the state’s registry of sex offenders, leaving little distance between them. They would, most likely, be vilified and haunted by the label for decades, if not life, and increasingly told by communities where they can and cannot live.
Dangerous, devious sex offenders who are a risk to public safety deserve it.
Teens with unbelievably cavalier attitudes about sexual limits, to the point of stupidity, do not.
Parents, educators, communities and – we can only hope – kids have had their eyes opened by recent, revolting revelations.
The earlier case, as described in criminal charges, involved since-expelled New Berlin Eisenhower student Anthony Stancl, 18, who, pretending to be a girl on Facebook, got at least 31 boys to send him pictures of themselves naked. Threatening to circulate the pictures to schoolmates, he coerced at least seven of them into sex acts.

6,473 Texts a Month, But at What Cost? Constant Cellphone Messaging Keeps Kids Connected, Parents Concerned

Donna St. George:

Julie Zingeser texts at home, at school, in the car while her mother is driving. She texts during homework, after pompon practice and as she walks the family dog. She takes her cellphone with her to bed.
Every so often, the hum of a new message rouses the Rockville teen from sleep. “I would die without it,” Julie, 15, says of her text life.
This does not surprise her mother, Pam, who on one recent afternoon scans the phone bill for the eye-popping number that puts an exclamation point on how growing up has changed in the digital age. In one busy month, Pam finds, her youngest daughter sent and received 6,473 text messages.
For Pam Zingeser, the big issue is not cost — it’s $30 a month for the family’s unlimited texting plan — but the effects of so much messaging. Pam wonders: What will this generation learn and what will they lose in the relentless stream of sentence fragments, abbreviations and emoticons? “Life’s issues are not always settled in sound bites,” Pam says.

Protecting kids from harassment in cyberspace

The Economist:

THE wireless network at Mayhem Manor spreads from the router in the workroom to the living area of the one-storey hillside dwelling, but not as far as the bedrooms. And that’s important.
Your correspondent has often been tempted to upgrade his WiFi router with the latest 802.11n technology–as much for the increased range as for the four-fold boost in speed. Being eight time-zones behind many of his colleagues, he often checks e-mail in the middle of the night. His trusty little Hewlett-Packard palmtop computer, with its Cisco wireless card, would slip easily under the pillow.
But he’s resisted boosting Mayhem Manor’s wireless signal for several reasons. First, while it would quicken transfers between computers in the house, the internet connection would be no faster. Its speed is governed by the pathetic dribble of a broadband connection that’s 15,000 feet from the nearest telephone exchange in the village below.
The other reason for not upgrading is that he would prefer his tweenage daughter to do all her web surfing, e-mailing, online gaming and social networking not from the privacy of a bedroom, but from a common area of the house where an adult is invariably present.

Madison Crime Maps

The Madison Police Department is posting police call data on crimereports.com. Check out these links:

A Fitness Gap in Austin Schools?

Molly Bloom:

Austin students from poor families tend to be less physically fit than students from wealthier families, an American-Statesman analysis of school district data shows. And Hispanic students tend to be less physically fit than students of other races.
A 2007 state law required all school districts to give students standardized fitness evaluations measuring height-weight proportionality, cardiovascular capacity, strength and flexibility. The first evaluations were given to students in the 2007-08 school year.
Austin’s trend mirrors statewide results and national studies that show higher rates of physical inactivity and obesity among Hispanic and poor adults and children put them at higher risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, joint and bone disease, and other health problems.
Regardless of fitness trends among various demographic groups in Austin, “what’s really striking is the absolute level of poor fitness across the board in general,” said Dr. Aliya Hussaini , a health program grant officer at the Dell Family Foundation, which has invested $85 million in childhood health issues in Texas, including support for health and fitness programs at 97 Travis County public elementary schools.

You’ve Raised the Children; Time for a Job?

Neal Templin:

I had a working mom, so I assumed my wife would be one, too. Clarissa Acuña, the woman I married, also planned on having a career of her own.
But we were both wrong. Clarissa hasn’t worked since the summer of 1991, shortly before she had delivered our third child.
At the time, it no longer made sense financially for her to work. After paying taxes on her wages and child care for three children, we wouldn’t have come out ahead.
[Cheapskate] Getty Images
But over the years, that fateful decision has locked us into two different roles. I work and earn. She takes care of the kids.
Having a stay-at-home wife has given me enormous career flexibility. Unlike some of my colleagues, I’ve never missed days because of a sick child. I’ve been able to work late when needed, travel whenever I wanted for stories, and move around the country for better jobs.
That’s the upside. There are also big downsides. There’s good reason to believe that Clarissa, who is bilingual and has a marketing degree, would have been successful in a multitude of careers. She never got the chance.
And as the kids grew older, living on one salary was a squeeze financially. I come from a long line of cheapskates. But I’ve been made cheaper because it was tough supporting three kids — particularly putting the eldest two through college — on one salary.
Periodically, I bring up the subject of Clarissa rejoining the work force. It’s not so much the extra money, though I do worry about our household being completely dependent on one wage earner in a contracting economy. Mostly, I just think she’s ready for something new, and she’s very talented.

Waukesha parents warned about illicit photos on students’ cell phones

Jacqui Seibe & Erin Richards:

Police and school officials are urging parents to check for naked photos on their children’s cell phones after a 14-year-old girl learned that her nude photo ended up in the hands of hundreds of area high school students.
The Waukesha West High School [Map] student sent the photo to her boyfriend, but when the couple broke up, he forwarded it to other students using his cell phone, Waukesha police Capt. Mark Stigler said Tuesday. Police have talked to the core group responsible and may recommend felony possession of child pornography charges, he said. Police have recovered computers belonging to the teens to investigate whether they also sent the photos over the Internet.
“We know it’s a hard stance, but how else do we deal with this?” Stigler said. “Kids are being immature and doing foolish things.”
An automated phone message from the Waukesha School District went to parents Monday and Tuesday asking them to talk to their children and check the phones for illicit photos.
Police want parents to delete any inappropriate photos because the magnitude of the potential proliferation of photos is too large to investigate, Stigler said.

Kids’ Cholesterol Study Is Reassuring, Doctors Say

AP:

Fewer than 1% of American teens are likely to need cholesterol drugs, says a new study that offers some reassuring news on the childhood obesity front.
Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued eyebrow-raising new guidelines: Doctors were urged to consider cholesterol drugs for more kids, even as young as 8, if they had high levels of “bad cholesterol,” or LDL, along with other health problems like obesity and high blood pressure.
The academy didn’t address how many children might fall into that category. Now, a new study published online Monday in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation helps allay concerns that “many, many” children might need to be on cholesterol drugs, said Stephen Daniels, lead author of the pediatric guidelines.
“The concern was I think, because there’s an increasing level in obesity, that it would lead to higher and higher cholesterol levels. They don’t seem to be going up,” he said.
The new pediatrics guidance was based on growing evidence that damage leading to heart disease begins early in life. At the same time, recent research has shown that cholesterol-fighting drugs are generally safe for children.

Textual Misconduct What to do about teens and their dumb naked photos of themselves.

Dahlia Lithwick:

Say you’re a middle school principal who has just confiscated a cell phone from a 14-year-old boy, only to discover it contains a nude photo of his 13-year-old girlfriend. Do you: a) call the boy’s parents in despair, b) call the girl’s parents in despair, or c) call the police? More and more, the answer is d) all of the above. Which could result in criminal charges for both of your students and their eventual designation as sex offenders.
Sexting is the clever new name for the act of sending, receiving, or forwarding naked photos via your cell phone. I wasn’t fully persuaded that America was facing a sexting epidemic, as opposed to a journalists-writing-about-sexting epidemic, until I saw a new survey done by the National Campaign To Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The survey has one teen in five reporting he has have sent or posted naked photos of himself. Whether all this reflects a new child porn epidemic or just a new iteration of the old shortsighted teen narcissism epidemic remains unclear.
Last month, three girls (ages 14 or 15) in Greensburg, Pa., were charged with disseminating child pornography for sexting their boyfriends. The boys who received the images were charged with possession. A teenager in Indiana faces felony obscenity charges for sending a picture of his genitals to female classmates. A 15-year-old girl in Ohio and a 14-year-old girl in Michigan were charged with felonies for sending along nude images of themselves to classmates. Some of these teens have pleaded guilty to lesser charges; others have not. If convicted, these young people may have to register as sex offenders, in some cases for a decade or two. Similar charges have been filed in cases in Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Boy’s Essay Lands Dad With Child-Abuse Charge

Channel3000:

A 9-year-old Dane County boy wrote about being shot with a BB gun, and now his father is charged with child abuse.
The boy had written an essay about the “painful afternoon my Dad shot me with a BB gun.”
The elementary-school teacher turned the essay over to authorities.
Prosecutors charged 36-year-old David J. Peschl on Friday with one felony count of child abuse.

Top 10 Sites Parents Don’t Want Kids To See

Dan Frommer:

What Web sites do parents, schools, and small businesses censor the most on their networks? Porn? Time wasters? Shopping? Social networks? All of the above!
These are currently the ten most-blocked Web sites on home, school, and small business networks, via OpenDNS’s domain filtering tool.
1. MySpace.com
2. Facebook.com
3. YouTube.com
4. Playboy.com
5. Ebay.com
6. Meebo.com
7. Friendster.com
8. Orkut.com
9. AdultFriendFinder.com
10. Espn.com

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

Nick O’Neill:

Everyday I receive an email from somebody about how their account was hacked, how a friend tagged them in the photo and they want a way to avoid it, as well as a number of other complications related to their privacy on Facebook. Over the weekend one individual contacted me to let me know that he would be removing me as a friend from Facebook because he was “going to make a shift with my Facebook use – going to just mostly family stuff.”
Perhaps he was tired of receiving my status updates or perhaps he didn’t want me to view photos from his personal life. Whatever the reason for ending our Facebook friendship, I figured that many people would benefit from a thorough overview on how to protect your privacy on Facebook. Below is a step by step process for protecting your privacy.

Schools See Flex Time As Valuable Exercise

Ian Shapira:

They sound like workout sessions at a gym, but “flex periods” are fast becoming a scheduling strategy among Northern Virginia high schools that want to offer students remediation or enrichment during the school day rather than before or after classes.
High schools in Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun counties have been inserting these chunks of time — from 40 to 90 minutes, depending on the school — for several years, often to reduce after-school tutoring costs but also to raise achievement in the era of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The program varies among schools, but the premise is similar: Between regular courses, students are assigned to a flex classroom to review material or work independently. Flex time can also be used for attending schoolwide events. And if a student needs help from a teacher in another part of the building, he or she can get a pass and visit the teacher during flex time.

Student Fights Record of ‘Cyberbullying’

Carmen Gentile:

Katherine Evans said she was frustrated with her English teacher for ignoring her pleas for help with assignments and a brusque reproach when she missed class to attend a school blood drive.
So Ms. Evans, who was then a high school senior and honor student, logged onto the networking site Facebook and wrote a rant against the teacher, Sarah Phelps.
“To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms. Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred,” she wrote.
Her posting drew a handful of responses, some of which were in support of the teacher and critical of Ms. Evans. “Whatever your reasons for hating her are, they’re probably very immature,” a former student of Ms. Phelps wrote in her defense.
A few days later, Ms. Evans removed the post from her Facebook page and went about the business of preparing for graduation and studying journalism in the fall.
But two months after her online venting, Ms. Evans was called into the principal’s office and was told she was being suspended for “cyberbullying,” a blemish on her record that she said she feared could keep her from getting into graduate schools or landing her dream job.

Time for that ‘sextortion’ talk with your teen

Jim Stingl:

As a parent, I thought I knew a few things about teenagers. And as a male, I figured I understood how guys think.
After hearing last week about the New Berlin Facebook sextortionist, I’m not so sure.
It made me wonder:
Did Anthony Stancl, the 18-year-old defendant, just one day dream up this scheme he’s charged with and decide to prey on his classmates at Eisenhower High and risk going to prison? Was sex by blackmail really his best hookup option?
Could he have dreamed that 31 guys, tricked into believing he was a female classmate on Facebook, would send along a naked photo or video of themselves? How many said no is not clear, but 31 thought, yeah, where’s my camera?
Do guys now have a good reason to believe that a girl at school truly wants naked pictures of them? And that she’ll send one of herself back to them? And that it’s perfectly safe to swap pics on the Internet where nothing ever falls into the wrong hands?
Isn’t everyone who approaches you online potentially someone other than who they say they are? Kids are adults. Boys are girls. Girls are cops.
Isn’t the Internet both the most fantastic and most monstrous invention in our lifetime?

New Berlin teen accused of using Facebook for sexual blackmail

Jacqui Seibel and Mark Johnson:

A former New Berlin Eisenhower student was accused Wednesday of a pattern of manipulation and deception using the social networking site Facebook to coerce male schoolmates into sexual encounters.
Anthony R. Stancl, 18, posing as a female on Facebook, persuaded at least 31 boys to send him naked pictures of themselves and then blackmailed some of the boys into performing sex acts under the threat that the pictures would be released to the rest of the high school, according a criminal complaint.
All 31 boys attend New Berlin Eisenhower Middle/High School, said Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel.
The sexual assaults occurred in a bathroom at the high school, the school parking lot, a New Berlin Public Library restroom, Valley View Park, Malone Park, Minooka Park and at some of the victims’ homes.
At least seven boys, 15 to 17, were forced into performing sex acts, Schimel said. The incidents occurred from spring 2008 until the time of Stancl’s arrest in November. Stancl had 300 photos and movie clips on his computer of boys from the school, ages 13 to 19, Schimel said.

Wisconsin Governor Stumps for Mandatory Autism Insurance Coverage

Channel3000:

Gov. Jim Doyle is stumping for a bill that would require insurance companies to cover autism.
Most insurance companies don’t cover autism because it is classified as an emotional disorder rather than a neurological condition.
A host of lawmakers and Drew Goldsmith, a 12-year-old autistic boy from Middleton, backed Doyle at a press conference in his office Tuesday.
Doyle is proposing strengthening current legislation to include minimum coverage levels of $60,000 for intensive treatment and $30,000 for post-intensive services. He said it would cut the waiting list to join a state-run program for autism services by a third.
Lawmakers on Tuesday said they hope to win support for the bill in the Legislature.

DC Discipline Code Under Review As Suspensions Lose Impact

Bill Turque:

Senior class president Christopher Jolly says suspensions are so common at Anacostia High School — where eight students were injured, including three who were stabbed, in a melee two months ago — that they have become meaningless as a form of discipline.
“The fact that everyone knows someone who has been suspended before often causes kids not to respect the suspension process,” Jolly said at a community forum this month on D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s proposal to revise the District’s student behavior code.
Rhee’s changes would move the system in a direction that makes sense to Jolly: away from out-of-school suspension as the disciplinary method of choice and toward counseling, peer influence and more options for keeping suspended students in school.
Officials said reliable data on suspensions are hard to come by because recordkeeping has been slipshod. But the available numbers suggest a dramatic surge. According to District figures, suspensions grew 72 percent between the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years, from 1,303 to 2,245. That represents 4.5 percent of total enrollment. Numbers through November, the latest available for the current academic year, show suspensions running slightly behind last year.

Challenging Assumptions About Online Predators

Mike Musgrove:

Are your kids safe online? A recent report about this sensitive subject is stirring up controversy.
The study, released by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, finds that it’s far more likely that children will be bullied by their peers than approached by an adult predator online.
The 278-page document cites studies showing that sexual solicitation of minors by adults via the Web appears to be on the decline. “The image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture,” reads one of document’s conclusions. “The risks minors face online are complex and multifaceted and are in most cases not significantly different than those they face offline.”
In other words, children are about as savvy online as they are offline, said Ernie Allen, president of the Alexandria-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which contributed to the report.
“The vast majority of kids in this country have heard the messages about the risks online and are basically dealing with them as a nuisance, as a fact of life, and aren’t particularly vulnerable,” he said. “This report should not be read as saying there are not adults out there doing this.”

Brave New Dorms

George Leef:

Political indoctrination in the guise of “Residence Life” programs took a pounding during a National Association of Scholars debate.
In last week’s Clarion Call, I wrote about the debate over academic freedom at the recent National Association of Scholars conference in Washington, D.C. But equally important was the contentious final session, devoted to the agenda of the “Residence Life” movement.
That movement is a nationwide initiative that has managers of student dorms teaching a leftist political catechism to students under their control in an effort to radicalize them.
The discussion focused on the infamous ResLife program at the University of Delaware. It took some interesting turns, including opposition to the programs from AAUP president Cary Nelson. He is a man of the left, but nevertheless doesn’t want to see curriculum and instruction handed over to people who aren’t even remotely scholars.
First to speak was Adam Kissel of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He explained the objectives of the Residence Life movement generally and concentrated on the University of Delaware, where the program was first seen in all its authoritarian splendor: prying questions, indoctrination sessions, and special “treatment” for students who were either uncooperative or, worse, had the temerity to disagree. Kissel made it clear that the ResLife agenda consists of clumsy, authoritarian indoctrination of students meant to color their thinking toward leftist bromides about the environment, capitalism, institutional racism and so forth.

(more…)

How to Become a More Effective Learner

Kendra Van Wagner:

I’m always interested in finding new ways to learn better and faster. As a graduate student who is also a full-time science writer, the amount of time I have to spend learning new things is limited. It’s important to get the most educational value out of my time as possible. However, retention, recall and transfer are also critical. I need to be able to accurately remember the information I learn, recall it at a later time and utilize it effectively in a wide variety of situations.
1. Memory Improvement Basics
I’ve written before about some of the best ways to improve memory. Basic tips such as improving focus, avoiding cram sessions and structuring your study time are a good place to start, but there are even more lessons from psychology that can dramatically improve your learning efficiency.

Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies

nternet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States:

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The scope of the Task Force’s inquiry was to consider those technologies that industry and end users – including parents – can use to help keep minors safer on the Internet.

Records show Waunakee School District didn’t slow drinking party investigation

Matthew DeFour:

In the weeks following an underage drinking party near Waunakee in September 2007, rumors swirled about why the School District didn’t move more quickly to discipline football players who were involved.
Though the insinuation in some circles was school officials were dragging their feet to keep Waunakee at full strength in the playoffs, recently released documents show the district investigation was delayed at the insistence of a Dane County sheriff’s detective investigating criminal activity at the party.
State law allows law enforcement agencies to release reports that could help school officials discipline students, but individual police departments set their own policies and not everyone agrees on the best policy.
If a police agency is stingy with how it chooses to share information, it can delay the school’s ability to mete out swift punishment intended to deter underage drinking in the first place.
In the case of the Waunakee football players, the district got mixed messages from the Dane County Sheriff’s Office.

Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex

William McGurn:

The chain reaction was something out of central casting. A medical journal starts it off by announcing a study comparing teens who take a pledge of virginity until marriage with those who don’t. Lo and behold, when they crunch the numbers, they find not much difference between pledgers and nonpledgers: most do not make it to the marriage bed as virgins.
Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in.
“Virginity Pledges Don’t Stop Teen Sex,” screams CBS News. “Virginity pledges don’t mean much,” adds CNN. “Study questions virginity pledges,” says the Chicago Tribune. “Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds,” heralds the Washington Post. “Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data,” reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.
In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: “Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study.”
Here’s the rub: It just isn’t true.
In fact, the only way the study’s author, Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers. The study is called “Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers,” and it was published in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics.
The first to notice something lost in the translation was Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of both the Red Cross and the National Institutes of Health. Today she serves as health editor for U.S. News & World Report. And in her dispatch on this study, Dr. Healy pointed out that “virginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general — a fact that many media reports have missed cold.”

Study: Risky behavior prominent on teen MySpace profiles

UW-Madison News:

More than half of adolescent MySpace users mention risky behaviors such as sex, violence or substance use on their personal Web profiles.
That’s according to the findings of Megan Moreno, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, and other researchers who analyzed 500 MySpace profiles in 46 states to determine how young people use the Internet as a means of presenting themselves to their peers.
The study, along with a companion study on how to reduce such postings, is published in the January issue of Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. Moreno was co-leader of the study while a research fellow at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
According to Moreno, 37 percent of profiles mentioned alcohol use, 24 percent mentioned sex, 14 percent mentioned or implied they were involved in acts of violence, and 13 percent mentioned tobacco use. In a number of cases, the profilers claimed to have engaged in several of these activities.

On Adoption: My Secret Life

Ellen Ullman:

I AM not adopted; I have mysterious origins.
I have said that sentence many times in the course of my life as an adopted person. I like it so much I put it into the mouth of a character in the novel I’m writing. The character and I are both fond of the idea. We can think of ourselves as living in the dense pages of 19th-century fiction, where one’s origins — the exact mother and father — are not nearly as important as one’s “circumstances.”
Some might say I came to this rationalization because, until recently, everything surrounding my adoption was kept secret from me. Even the date it was finalized was a secret. (The woman on the phone said, “Those records are sealed.” I said, “I know I can’t see what’s in them, but can I find out the date from which I couldn’t see what’s in them?” She replied, “Even the outsides of the records are sealed” — a confounding statement, as I envisioned envelopes surrounding envelopes, all sealed into infinity.)
Of course, mysterious origins are a confusing business these days. One might be gestated in an unknown womb while having genes from some combination of one’s mother and father and a stranger; from a mother’s womb with some combination of known and unknown genes — not to mention the complication of untold numbers of half-siblings who might be out there from the sperm donations of one man. There are adoptive parents and biological parents, surrogates and donors — adults of all sorts claiming parenthood by right of blood, genes, birth, law and affection.

Ullman is author of The Bug.

Is Recess Necessary?

Jay Matthews:

I often spout opinions on matters about which I know nothing, so I understand when my favorite peer group — the American people — does the same. The latest example is a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults [931K PDF] by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which specializes in public health projects, and Sports4Kids, a national nonprofit organization that supports safe and healthy playtime in low-income elementary schools.
According to the survey’s press release, “seven out of 10 Americans disagree with schools’ policies of eliminating or reducing recess time for budgetary, safety or academic reasons.” I realize most people don’t know how poisonous recess can be for urban schools with severe academic needs, but I was surprised to see the news release fail to acknowledge this. It even suggests, without qualification, that “in low-income communities” recess time “offers one of our best chances to help children develop into healthy, active adults who know how to work together and resolve conflicts.”
Few Americans have an opportunity to experience what teaching in urban schools is like. The people I know who have done so have developed a well-reasoned antipathy for the typical half-hour, go-out-and-play-but-don’t-kill-anybody recess. In my forthcoming book, “Work Hard. Be Nice,” about the Knowledge Is Power Program, I describe the classroom and playground chaos KIPP co-founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin encountered before starting their first KIPP fifth grade in a Houston public elementary school, the beginning of their successful program:

Local, Fresh Lunches Would be a Tasty Change

Margaret Krome:

My friend gave a guest presentation at a local high school last week and was invited to stay for lunch. “Horrible,” was her description of the meal. “I appreciated the generous invitation, and I’m sure the lunch ladies worked hard, but it was awful. Pizza, totally tasteless chicken sandwiches and fried food — that’s what we offer our children at school.”
Any parent who has peered into their school cafeteria’s garbage can to see what children throw out knows my friend is right. But it’s not for lack of caring on the part of school nutritionists. The amount of funding they receive for school meals is ridiculously low and not been updated for years. Fruits and vegetables are reimbursed at 10 cents a day, and the state school meal reimbursement rates haven’t changed since 1981.
But panels of legislators, medical experts, school dieticians, educators, agency staff and others have been working this year to change the situation. They are motivated largely by the high and increasing rates of overweight and obese adults in Wisconsin.
Obesity’s significance for health is clear. Being obese or overweight increases one’s risk of chronic diseases like hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and osteoarthritis. Our state’s annual obesity-related medical costs were estimated in 2004 to be $1.5 billion.

Scientists discover gene that explains why naughty children are popular

Kate Devlin:

Researchers found that people find those who are more likely to break the rules more likeable, even after meeting them for just a short time.
They found that the people who achieve popularity by defying authority all tend to carry a specific “rebel” gene.
The findings could explain how Just William inspired the devotion of his bunch of Outlaws in the famous novels and why children labelled “teachers’ pets” have traditionally attracted the attention of bullies.
“The idea is that your genes predispose you to certain behaviours and those behaviours elicit different kinds of social reactions from others,” said Alexandra Burt, assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University.
“And so what’s happening is, your genes are to some extent driving your social experiences.
“So the gene predisposes (people) to rule-breaking behaviour and their rule-breaking behaviour made them more popular,” Burt said.

More here.

Fast food + nearby schools = fat kids

Julie Steenhuysen:

Youth who study just a short walk from a fast-food outlet eat fewer fruit and vegetables, drink more soda and are more likely to be obese than students at other schools, according to research published Tuesday.
The study, which involved more than 500,000 adolescents at middle schools and high schools in California, lends new fuel to a growing backlash against the fast-food industry as studies suggest they contribute to the rising obesity epidemic in the United States.
“We’ve basically discovered that kids who are going to a school that is near a fast-food restaurant have a higher chance of being overweight and obese than kids who are at a school that is not near a fast-food restaurant,” said Brennan Davis of Azusa Pacific University in California, whose study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.
U.S. youth obesity rates have tripled since 1980, although they leveled off this decade. The government says 32 percent of U.S. children are overweight and 16 percent are obese.

Hawaii attempts random drug tests of teachers

Mark Niesse:

Hawaii public school teachers signed off on first-in-the-nation statewide random drug testing in exchange for pay raises, but now the state claims the educators are trying to take the money and run.
Since the teachers’ union approved the pact nearly two years ago, they’ve accepted the 11 percent boost in pay while fighting the random tests as an illegal violation of their privacy rights. No teacher has been tested.
The showdown over teacher drug testing arose from the highly publicized arrests of six state Education Department employees in unrelated drug cases over a six-month period. One, special education teacher Lee Anzai at Leilehua High School, pleaded guilty to selling more than $40,000 worth of crystal methamphetamine to an undercover agent.

College Students Using ADHD Drugs to Study for Exams

Channel3000:

It’s final exam week for thousands of UW students on campus.
For years, some students have quietly taken drugs like Ritalin and Adderall to help them focus and prepare for exams.
The drugs are widely prescribed by physicians to help school children focus longer and perform better in school.
College students told WISC-TV it’s no secret that students use the medicines and get them illegally
An opinion article in Nature Magazine on Sunday suggested there is a responsible way for the “healthy to use the drugs without an ADHD diagnosis” – but many medical doctors disagree.
UW student Jonathan Roffee has been studying all weekend.
“Ten to twelve hours a day, takes a toll after a while,” said Roffee.

Flirting goes high-tech with racy photos shared on cellphones, Web

Sharon Jayson:

Passing a flirtatious note to get someone’s attention is so yesterday. These days, young people use technology instead.
About a third of young adults 20-26 and 20% of teens say they’ve sent or posted naked or semi-naked photos or videos of themselves, mostly to be “fun or flirtatious,” a survey finds.
A third of teen boys and 40% of young men say they’ve seen nude or semi-nude images sent to someone else; about a quarter of teen girls and young adult women have. And 39% of teens and 59% of those ages 20-26 say they’ve sent suggestive text messages.
“One of the reasons we wanted to do the survey was to put some sort of structure around the anecdotes,” says Marisa Nightingale of the non-profit National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which commissioned the survey with the Hearst Digital Media site CosmoGirl.com. Chicago-based market research firm Teenage Research Unlimited surveyed 1,280 teens and young adults online Sept. 25 to Oct. 3.

Safe & Sound: A Parent’s Nightmare

Liz Rappaport:

‘Liz, you have to come to the hospital now,” my husband, David, said in the office voicemail message that late April morning. “We’re in an ambulance. … Something happened to Georgia. She had some kind of seizure. I don’t know. Just come.”
My 3-year-old daughter — who just days earlier was hosting a tea party for me and her dolls — was in trouble. That’s how this mystery begins.
I rushed from the office and grabbed a taxi to our local hospital in Brooklyn. “She’s unresponsive to pain, to everything,” David told me when I called him from the taxi.
Georgia’s breathing had slowed to nearly a full stop, he said. The EMTs had jabbed her heel with a needle to gauge her responsiveness, he said. Nothing. They had then given her a shot of seizure medication. Still nothing.
I arrived through the swinging emergency-room doors to see my daughter’s tiny feet on a gurney through a gap in the white curtains. At least a dozen doctors and nurses huddled around her, working to push a tube down her throat and get her started on a mechanical ventilator.

Laugh and the World Laughs With You: How Happiness Spreads

Alice Park:

Ever wonder whether happy people have something you don’t, something that keeps them cheerful, chipper and able to see the good in everything? It turns out they do — they have happy friends.
That’s the conclusion of researchers from Harvard and the University of California at San Diego, who report in the British Medical Journal online that happiness spreads among people like a salubrious disease. Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler studied nearly 5,000 people and their more than 50,000 social ties to family, friends and co-workers, and found that an individual’s happiness is chiefly a collective affair, depending in large part on his or her friends’ happiness — and the happiness of their friends’ friends, and even the friends of their friends’ friends. The merriment of one person, the researchers found, can ripple out and cause happiness in people up to three degrees away: So, if you’re happy, you increase the chance of joy in your close friend by 25%; a friend of that friend enjoys a 10% increased chance. And that friend’s friend has a 5.6% higher chance.
“This is a very serious piece of research; it’s pioneering,” says Dr. Richard Suzman, director of the division of behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging. “We are barely beginning to understand its translational and applied aspects.”
The authors analyzed data from the Framingham Heart Study, an historic study of heart disease among nearly 5,000 people begun in 1948. Because it was designed to follow participants and their offspring over several generations, the study’s creators recorded detailed information about each person’s closest relatives and friends, to better keep tabs on the original participants. That database served as an ideal social laboratory for Christakis and Fowler, who questioned each participant and his or her friends and family about their emotional state three times over 20 years.

Media Bombardment Is Linked To Ill Effects During Childhood

Donna St. George:

In a detailed look at nearly 30 years of research on how television, music, movies and other media affect the lives of children and adolescents, a new study released today found an array of negative health effects linked to greater use.
The report found strong connections between media exposure and problems of childhood obesity and tobacco use. Nearly as strong was the link to early sexual behavior.
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Yale University said they were surprised that so many studies pointed in the same direction. In all, 173 research efforts, going back to 1980, were analyzed, rated and brought together in what the researchers said was the first comprehensive view of the topic. About 80 percent of the studies showed a link between a negative health outcome and media hours or content.
“We need to factor that in as we consider our social policies and as parents think about how they raise their kids,” said lead researcher Ezekiel J. Emanuel, director of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, which took on the project with the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media. “We tend not to think of this as a health issue, and it is a health issue.”
The average modern child spends nearly 45 hours a week with television, movies, magazines, music, the Internet, cellphones and video games, the study reported. By comparison, children spend 17 hours a week with their parents on average and 30 hours a week in school, the study said.
“Our kids are sponges, and we really need to remember they learn from their environment,” said coauthor Cary P. Gross, professor at Yale School of Medicine. He said researchers found it notable how much content mattered; it was not only the sheer number of hours of screen time. Children “pick up character traits and behaviors” from those they watch or hear, he said.

High Schools Fight Doping With Little Consensus

Jere Longman:

The sheriff of St. Landry Parish announced in July that an undercover investigation of area gyms had produced the largest anabolic steroid bust ever in this rural Cajun county.
In an investigation that has identified about 100 suspected steroid users and 15 dealers in the county, 10 people have been arrested, including two former high school football players, the sheriff said. He added that of those 100 suspected users, as many as 20 were high school athletes. That number stunned educators and law enforcement officials who had considered performance-enhancing drugs to be more of a big-city problem.
“I think there’s more steroid use, after talking to my investigators, in sports activities than originally thought,” said Bobby J. Guidroz, the sheriff of St. Landry Parish, population 90,000, about two hours west-northwest of New Orleans.

School Soda Ban Has Limited Effect Eliminating sugary beverages did not affect overall consumption, study finds

HealthDay:

A new study suggests that cutting sodas and other sugar-sweetened drinks from school cafeteria menus will have little effect on teens’ overall consumption of the beverages.
Because these drinks are believed to be a major contributor to increasing rates of childhood obesity in the United States, many schools across the nation are banning them or curbing their availability to students. To assess the impact of this strategy, researchers followed 456 students at seven schools in southern and central Maine over two school years. Four of the schools reduced the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) for one school year (intervention schools), while the other three took no action (control schools).

Obese kids have arteries of 45-year-old

John Fauber:

Neck arteries of obese children as young as 10 resembled those of a typical 45-year-old, a new study has found.
The research is more evidence that the process of artery disease can begin early in life, increasing the risk of premature heart disease in adulthood.
“These findings confirm some of our big picture concerns about childhood obesity,” said Aaron Carrel, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It is a very direct link with disease.”
Carrel, who was not a part of the research, said artery disease in obese children was something that doctors had long suspected, but the level of disease found in the study was higher than anticipated.
UW doctors also have been finding abnormally high levels of cholesterol in obese kids ages 5 to 18, Carrel said.

DeForest High To Reopen After Threat Closed School Tuesday

Channel3000:

DeForest Area High School was closed Tuesday after school officials found a threatening note, but officials said the school will reopen on Wednesday.
Officials said that the note, which was found on Monday afternoon in the school, said that there would be a bomb in a boys’ restroom.
School officials, along with the DeForest Police Department, were unable to determine whether the threat had merit. As a precaution, officials made the decision to cancel all classes, events and after-school activities Tuesday at the high school.
On Tuesday, the DeForest police, along with school administrators and a canine unit from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, searched the entire high school and grounds, and did not find any signs of explosive devices. Based on the search and the status of the investigation, school officials and law enforcement personnel said they feel confident that they can reopen the school Wednesday.

Are Schools Really to Blame for Poor Eating?

Tara Parker-Pope
Schools have been vilified for giving kids access to soda in vending machines. But new data suggests that school soft drink sales may not be an important factor in how much soda kids drink.
In the current issue of The Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, researchers compared soda consumption among nearly 500 students in Maine who attended seven schools over two school years. Four of the schools cut back on soft drink availability at the schools, while three of the schools made no changes.
Notably, all the students were drinking less soda by the end of the study period, but there were no meaningful differences in overall soft drink consumption among the different schools. The data suggest that curbing soft drink availability at school doesn’t result in meaningful changes in beverage consumption patterns. While there were no changes in overall soda consumption, there was a notable shift in diet soda drinking among girls. If the school cut back on soda availability, girls were less likely to drink diet soda, compared to girls in schools that made no changes.
The data are the latest to suggest that schools may not play as big of a role in kids’ poor eating habits as widely believed. Last year, The American Journal of Public Health published a provocative study showing that childhood weight problems often get worse in the summer, when kids are out of school.
Data from kindergarteners and first graders found that body mass index increased two to three times as fast in summer as during the regular school year. Minority children were especially vulnerable, as were children who were already overweight.

School Bake Sales Fall Victim to Push for Healthier Foods

Patricia Leigh Brown:

Tommy Cornelius and the other members of the Piedmont High School boys water polo team never expected to find themselves running through school in their Speedos to promote a bake sale across the street. But times have been tough since the school banned homemade brownies and cupcakes.
The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie, is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students. The guidelines were passed by lawmakers in 2005 and took effect in July 2007. They require that snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat.
The Piedmont High water polo team falls woefully short of these standards, selling cupcakes, caramel apples and lemon bars off campus in a flagrant act of nutritional disobedience.

Stoughton teacher hopes to get kids stuck on fruits, veggies

Pamela Cotant:

Physical education teacher John Ames wants to teach kids about the importance of healthy eating habits while they’re young.
So for the last couple of months Ames has been spending his lunch hour in the Kegonsa Elementary School cafeteria handing out stickers to kids who eat a fruit or vegetable in their lunch. The students have been excitedly showing him empty grape vines, apple cores and banana peels — evidence that they are eating fruit.
The students placed the stickers on the large wall poster that reads, “We Go Bananas for Physical Education.” The students filled up one letter and then moved on to the next on the poster in the cafeteria, which also is the school’s gym.
Ames calls the effort Project Banana.
“I wanted to get the kids excited about physical education class and add a health component to it,” said Ames, who was wearing a yellow “Banana Man” T-shirt he found on the Internet. “Diet and exercise are the main staples to a healthy life.”

Are We Pushing Our Young Athletes Too Hard?

Scott Shafer:

When Lori Molitor’s 9-year-old daughter, Madison, participates in gymnastics, she wears a heel cushion. After her training session she ices. And before she goes to bed she stretches. All of this is done in hopes of keeping her injury-free as she continues her progression as a budding gymnast.
The Verona mother’s cautious approach with her daughter was borne partially from observing her eldest daughter deal with injuries while competing in sports, but many parents remain in the dark about the dangers of overtraining.
To address that problem, Harbor Athletic Club will host a presentation on the topic on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Guest speakers include Dr. David Bernhardt, a pediatric physician at UW Sports Medicine, and Kierstin Kloeckner, a personal trainer at the Middleton club.
Their message: Young athletes may think they’re indestructible, but they must be treated with care.

Food allergies on rise in children

Erin Richards:

One M&M, swallowed whole, and little Noelle’s skin turned as red as a Cortland apple.
A month later, after eating soy ice cream, the 2-year-old turned colors again and started drooling, prompting her mother to inject a syringe full of epinephrine into the child’s leg.
Karen Tylicki of Mukwonago has no idea why her daughter’s body treats certain foods as if they were poison. Tylicki, like parents of a growing number of food-allergic kids in Milwaukee and elsewhere around the country, is familiar with the fear, uncertainty, grief and sorrow that frequently accompany the condition.
Add hope to that list. Thanks to a La Crosse clinic that’s gaining attention for its work desensitizing patients with food allergies, Noelle, now 6, can ingest almost 2 ounces of milk without a reaction.
The spike in the number of kids with food allergies – an 18% increase nationwide over the past decade, according to a newly released study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – has prompted many schools and day-care facilities to develop new safety measures.

Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies

Rob Stein:

Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring flirting, necking, discussion of sex and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link steamy programming to teen pregnancy.
The study, which tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least.
“Watching this kind of sexual content on television is a powerful factor in increasing the likelihood of a teen pregnancy,” said lead researcher Anita Chandra. “We found a strong association.” The study is being published today in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
There is rising concern about teen pregnancy rates, which after decades of decline may have started inching up again, fueling an intense debate about what factors are to blame. Although TV viewing is unlikely to entirely explain the possible uptick in teen pregnancies, Chandra and others said, the study provides the first direct evidence that it could be playing a significant role.

Healthier meals served at pricier Long Island private schools

Jennifer Sinco Kelleher:

Typical lunchtime fare includes quinoa, bean cakes, Swiss chard, fresh beets, tofu, tempeh, kimchee.
There are no sloppy joes. Hamburgers are served only three times a year during field days, and the beef is organic.
Private schools such as the Ross School in East Hampton don’t operate under the same cost constraints public schools face when attempting to serve healthy food, allowing them more freedom to go beyond traditional school cafeteria meals.
Ross’ food often is held up as a model for student dining.
A staff of 17 line chefs with impressive culinary backgrounds cook from scratch in a kitchen that rivals a five-star restaurant. And students actually like the healthy offerings, evidenced by the fact that they go through about 25 pounds of tofu per day.

Fight at Madison Memorial shows difficulty of keeping school hallways safe

Jessica VanEgeren:

If art really does imitate life, then a peek into the interracial dynamics of high school life in Madison can be found every morning inside Room 272 at West High School. There, the students, hand-picked because of their ethnicity, respond to bullying, gang-related activities, body awareness issues and racial stereotyping by creating skits that mimic common situations students experience in school.
Lounging on pillows and passing around a bag of suckers at 9 a.m., the students, from varying backgrounds including Hmong, Chinese, African-American, Albanian and Laotian, are at ease with one another. This is not a dynamic reflected by every student in every school.
Sometimes an inspiration for a skit can be found right outside the classroom door, as junior Louisa Kornblatt found out on a recent morning when a student yelled, “Watch where your tall white ass is going, bitch,” during a break between classes. Although Kornblatt returned to the classroom with a flushed face, asking if anyone else had heard the comment, most of the students reacted to it nonchalantly.
“That’s just part of a day,” said senior John Reynolds, one of the students in the Multico theater group, which performs in schools all over the district. “You learn to ignore it. West is a culturally diverse place, and you’ll hear those kinds of statements in the hallways. You just need to learn to focus on the good, not the bad.”

Busy roads, bicyclists make for uneasy mix at Cottage Grove school

Gena Kittner:

The confines of school are shed the instant scores of students at Glacial Drumlin School hop on their bicycles and whiz — many helmetless and some riding two to a bike — down the hill and across the busy streets of this fast-growing village.
Some cruise down the middle of the nearby residential streets, heedless of cars and buses. Others take more care, stopping at stop signs and looking both ways — but not enough.
“A lot of kids just bike right across the intersection,” said Stephanie Carney, who lives in a subdivision near the school. “The kids don’t seem to look either way,” she said.

An In-depth Look at School Lunches on Long Island

Newsday:

Newsday examined hundreds of school menus, budgets and vending machine contracts, and spoke to professionals and leaders. What we found might disturb you.

Kids’ Cereals Saltier, Report Says

Julie Jargon & Aaron Patrick:

Cereal makers that reduce the amount of sugar in kids’ cereals tend to ratchet up the salt content to improve flavor, says a report expected to be released Tuesday by Consumers International.
Cereal makers have been under pressure from consumer groups to reduce the sugar content of their kids’ cereals, and Consumers International, in its report, “Cereal Offenses,” says “manufacturers are likely to add salt to boost the flavor of the product, and may use salt to maintain customer appeal when sugar levels are reduced.”
The London-based organization, an umbrella group representing 220 consumer groups globally, focused on products made by two of the world’s largest makers of cereal for children, Nestlé SA of Vevey, Switzerland, and Kellogg Co., Battle Creek, Mich. The group defined children’s cereals as those that feature cartoon characters on the packaging, are endorsed by celebrities popular with kids and are advertised on kids’ television programming.

Parents upset that Arlington school sex assault case wasn’t reported earlier

Chris Hawes:

A suspect was put in custody Friday but many parents of children at Coble Middle School say that’s not the issue. They’re outraged they weren’t told an assault had taken place on campus.
Parents lining up to pick up their children Friday received something else – a letter. The more they read, the more disturbed they became: A young girl reported she was sexually assaulted at school.
But two weeks passed before the children were told what was going on. The school says they had to protect the investigation.
Counselors handed out the letter in the car lane. The letter detailed the reported the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl on campus, during school.
“He had a valid reason to be on campus and chose to pull this girl into a locker room and sexually assault her,” said Lt. Blake Miller from Arlington police.
But even more disturbing to one father was the date of the crime, Sept. 26.

Schools Sans Sodas

Jennifer Huget:

Substantial headway has been made lately in getting sugary (and high-fructose corn syrup-laden) sodas out of schools.
But that might not make much difference in kids’ overall soda consumption.
Both pieces of news came across my desk as I was writing today’s “Eat, Drink and Be Healthy” column about school lunch nutrition. Together they demonstrate how daunting a goal it is to try to change eating and drinking habits — other people’s and our own.
The good news, coming from the American Beverage Association, is that sweetened soft drinks accounted for less than 25 percent of beverages sold in schools last year; that’s down from 40 percent in 2004. The ABA has been working with the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation (as in former President Bill) to affect a shift toward healthier drinks — those with fewer calories and offered in smaller portions than your standard can of pop — in schools. Bottled water has filled much of the gap, moving from 13 percent of the beverages sold in schools in 2004 to almost 28 percent last year.

Reinventing the School Lunch

TedTalks:

Speaking at the 2007 EG conference, “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper shares her passionate belief in remaking the school lunch. She uses scathing language to describe how most American kids are fed at the noon bell, out of cans, boxes and plastic bags — sowing the seeds of the obesity epidemic that is spreading from the US around the globe. But, she says, there’s a coming revolution in the way kids eat at school — local, sustainable, seasonal and even educational food. (Recorded December 2007 in Los Angeles, California. Duration: 19:42.)

Schools Sour on Giving Students Sweet Rewards

Daniel de Vise:

Schools around the Washington region are quietly removing Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Pops from the teacher’s desk, ending a long tradition of rewarding classroom obeisance with candy.
In the District and many suburbs, school systems have imposed rules during the past two years that discourage teachers from using candy or other junk food as an incentive. Some policies reject any offer of food as reward, or denial of food as punishment, on the theory that students should not be taught it is a privilege to eat.
Regulation of classroom candy is part of a broader “wellness” movement that has swept public schools this decade. Federal law required school systems to establish rules by fall 2006 to govern Gummi Worms in cafeterias and sodas in vending machines, birthday cupcake parties and Halloween binges, physical education and recess, as well as the proliferation of candy and other food of questionable nutritional value in contests, promotions and everyday classroom activities.

The “Well Equipped Teen”, circa 2008

Well Equipped Teen, 2008: Headphones and an iPod

Spotted at a recent swim meet. What was it in my day? An AM Radio?

Stained-glass window will honor school library aide

Andy Hall:

One year ago today, as she walked across Cherokee Drive to her job, school library assistant Becky Sue Buchmann was killed by a motorist dropping off his son at Cherokee Middle School.
Buchmann, 48, parked across the street from the Near West Side school on Cherokee Drive — a common practice for staff at the school — and was hit as she walked across to the school mid-block.
Since then, students and staff have raised thousands of dollars to build a stained glass window in her honor, but the traffic patterns outside the school remain unchanged.

Schools warned of pupils hooked on energy drinks

Polly Curtis:

Children are becoming dependent on energy drinks that have dramatic effects on their concentration and behaviour in schools, drug experts have warned.
Schools are being advised to observe children for signs of agitation which could be a result of excessive caffeine consumption. It follows reports of pupils drinking large quantities of energy drinks or taking caffeine-based pills.
The warning, from the anti-drugs advisory group Drug Education UK, comes as ministers prepare to unveil new measures tomorrow to improve school dinners and advise parents on children’s packed lunches.
Bob Tait, from Drug Education UK, said: “There is a growing problem of caffeine abuse in schools. Most schools have a drug education programme to advise kids against illegal drugs, but there is less known about legal highs.”
He made his warning at a conference of school nurses this week, the Nursing Standard reported. Tait said: “Children will drink them on the walk to school, at break and lunch time. If you have got a child who is worked up on an energy drink, they are going to be agitated during lesson time.”

Soda Bans & Schools

Rosie Mestel:

Eliminate soft drinks at schools and you’ll make a change in how many sodas the nation’s kids slurp down, right? Hmm. A new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Assn. suggests that the effect is less than huge.
The study, by Meenakshi Fernandes at the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, analyzed data from nearly 11,000 fifth-graders in more than 2,000 schools in 40 states. She looked at how many soft drinks the kids consumed overall, and how many soft drinks they consumed in school. She also compared the consumption rates for kids who went to schools that banned soft drinks with those that permitted them.
Fernandes’ conclusion from this: Soft drink bans in schools led to a 4% reduction in soft drink consumption. “Greater reductions in children’s consumption of soft drinks will require policy changes that go beyond food availability in school,” she writes.

New Study Raises More Questions Over Antidepressants, Teen Suicide

Sarah Rubenstein:

A new study raises fresh questions over whether strong warnings about the use of antidepressants among young people have sparked an increase in teen-age suicides.
Researchers said an analysis that included 2005 data — the latest available — indicates that a surprising rise seen in the suicide rate in 2004 continued into the next year. While the rate dropped somewhat in 2005, researchers say, it remained higher than expected.
Last fall, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a widely publicized finding, said the suicide rate for 10-to-24-year-olds increased by 8% from 2003 to 2004 — after a drop totaling more than 28% from 1990 to 2003. But the agency cautioned that it didn’t know if the rise was “short-lived” or the “beginning of a trend.”
The CDC has monitored the data since then, but has not come to a conclusion, saying several years of data are needed. The new analysis by outside researchers suggests the prior increase “was not a single-year anomaly” and may reflect “an emerging public health crisis,” according to a paper being published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Columbia University’s Teen Screen Program
Journal of the American Medical Association: Suicide Trends Among Youths Aged 10 to 19 Years in the United Google News Search by Jeffrey Bridge and Joel Greenhouse.

Spot on Popularity Scale Speaks to the Future; Middle Has Its Rewards

Benedict Carey:

The cult of popularity that reigns in high school can look quaint from a safe distance, like your 20th reunion. By then the social order may have turned over like an hourglass: teenagers who were socially invisible have emerged as colorful characters, confident, transformed. Others seem preserved in time, same as ever, while some former princes and queen bees are diminished or simply absent, now invisible themselves.
For years researchers focused much attention on those prominent teenagers, tracking their traits and behaviors. The studies found, to no one’s surprise, that social dominance in adolescence often involves an aggressive, selfish streak that may not play well outside the locker-lined corridors.
The cult disbands, and the rules change.
Yet high school students know in their gut that popularity is far more than a superficial, temporary competition, and in recent years psychologists have confirmed that intuition. The newer findings suggest that adolescents’ niche in school — their popularity, and how they understand and exploit it — offers important clues to their later psychological well-being.

To Be Young and Anxiety-Free

Andrea Petersen:

Last fall, 12-year-old John Morganti was a very anxious kid. He was too scared to ride the bus to school or have sleepovers at friends’ houses. He had frequent stomachaches, hid out in the nurse’s office and begged his mother to let him skip school.
“He would get so scared, he would be in a little ball in the corner,” says John’s mother, Danielle Morganti, of Pittsgrove, N.J.
John was later diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and underwent a treatment known as cognitive behavioral therapy. By spring, he had largely recovered and was happily taking the bus and playing with friends at parties.
Historically, anxiety disorders were seen as something that primarily hit teens and adults. Anxious kids, many experts thought, would simply grow out of their fears. But now, many doctors believe that John’s illness was caught at the ideal time. Indeed, there’s a new push by doctors and therapists to identify children afflicted with anxiety disorders — even those as young as preschool age — and treat them early.

Regarding alcohol, middle and high schools’ only message is ‘just say no.’ That leaves alcohol education to parents and, increasingly, colleges, where newfound freedom can send students off track.

Susan Brink:

Whether the legal drinking age is 18, 21 or something in between, at some point the odds are better than even that eventually a young adult is going to have that first drink. About 61% of American adults 18 or older said they’ve had alcohol in the last year, according to a 2006 national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For the most part, lessons in how to drink come through experimentation with excess, essentially trial and error, exploring how much can be consumed, as young people go through what has become a rite of passage to adulthood.
“It’s a forbidden-fruit sort of thing,” says Brenda Chabon, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Montefiore Medical Center, New York. “We haven’t done a good job on educating kids. We kind of demonize alcohol on one hand and embrace it in another way.”
With ignorance as a guide, the long-awaited rite of passage too often ends up with mangled cars and ruined lives.
But whose job is it to teach responsible drinking? Middle and high schools have their hands tied, says Robert Turrisi, professor of biobehavioral health at the Prevention Research Center at Pennsylvania State University. “School-based programs teach abstinence only,” he says. “Schools can’t legally teach how to do illegal behaviors.”

Related: A debate on lowering the drinking age (Yes, from my perspective).

Madison Police Chief Noble Wray Sees “Serious Gang Connection” in Crime Hike

Kristin Czubkowski:

Making connections among various types of crimes and ways to remedy them was the theme of the night as Police Chief Noble Wray gave a talk on public safety in Madison to the City Council Wednesday night.
Statistically, crime in Madison was a mixed bag in 2007, Wray said. While overall crime was up 5.5 percent from 2006, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, that increase stemmed primarily from an 8.3 percent increase in property crimes such as burglary, theft and arson. By contrast, violent crime, which includes acts such as homicide, rape and aggravated assault, decreased 14.2 percent in 2007.
Wray explained that the rising rates of property crimes came from the increased theft of precious metals, in particular copper, as well as thefts of big-ticket items such as televisions from businesses, which were directly related to gang activity and the drug trade, he said.
“This is the first time that I’ve noticed this, and I’ve worked for the Madison department for 24 years, that there is a serious gang connection with these (burglaries),” he said. “We haven’t had that in the past.”

Police calls near Madison High Schools: 1996-2006.
Gangs & School Violence Forum audio/video.

Jump in US measles cases linked to vaccine fears

Mike Stobbe:

Measles cases in the U.S. are at the highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of those involving children whose parents rejected vaccination, health officials reported Thursday.
Worried doctors are troubled by the trend fueled by unfounded fears that vaccines may cause autism. The number of cases is still small, just 131, but that’s only for the first seven months of the year. There were only 42 cases for all of last year.
“We’re seeing a lot more spread. That is concerning to us,” said Dr. Jane Seward, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Five Reasons to Warn Your Daughter about Alcohol

Barbara Kantrowitz & Pat Wingert:

In the next few weeks, parents of college freshmen will be helping their kids pack up all those seemingly indispensable items for dorm life. Sending a child off for what is probably his or her first extended period of independence is scary, and many parents try to cram in last-minute bits of advice. Here’s one more: talk about drinking. This is a critical conversation whether you have a son or a daughter, but it’s especially important for young women to understand the ways in which they risk both short-term and lifelong health problems if they abuse alcohol during these years.
First, a reality check. Laws against underage drinking don’t stop kids who really want to drink. Colleges around the country have made efforts to crack down at on-campus functions, but it isn’t easy when fake IDs are just a scanner away. So don’t count on fear of the law to do your work for you.

College Students Behaving Badly

Tara Parker-Pope:

Many people associate property crime and other delinquent behaviors with low social status and a lack of education. But new research has identified a surprising risk factor for bad behavior — college.
Men who attend college are more likely to commit property crimes during their college years than their non-college-attending peers, according to research to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Boston this weekend.
Sociologists at Bowling Green State University in Ohio examined data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which tracks education, crime levels, substance abuse and socializing among adolescents and young adults. Beginning with 9,246 students who were seventh through twelfth graders in the 1994-1995 academic year, the survey followed the students again in 1996 and 2001. The study defined “college students” or “college-bound youth” as those who were enrolled full-time in a four-year college for at least 12 months by the third wave of the survey. “Non-college students” were defined as those respondents who either did not attend college through the course of the study or were not enrolled full-time at a four-year university.

School’s Health Reviewed

Jessica Blanchard:

It wasn’t until he hand-delivered bottles of the discolored water to School Board members at a public meeting that the district took action.
That was five years ago, and Seattle Public Schools has addressed those problems and adopted tough water-quality standards since then. But Cooper warns of similar environmental health and safety problems in schools statewide – and that Washington’s code is woefully outdated.
With the state Board of Health on the cusp of revising its rule governing environmental health and safety in schools – the first major changes in nearly four decades – it’s time for the public to take note, Cooper said.
“If you don’t pay attention, and don’t get involved, it will be your own backyard, your own child being affected,” he said.
The proposal under consideration would modernize the rule, adding standards for indoor air and water quality and playground safety.

Dreams for school’s accessible playground prove boundless

The Capital Times:

Members of the Elvehjem Elementary School community, including students, teachers, parents and other supporters of a unique idea, watched Friday as groundbreaking occurred for a playground designed to be inclusionary to all.
The new playground is designed for use by all kids, including those with disabilities who could not participate in play with their peers on older models of playgrounds.
Last year members of the Elvehjem community decided to enter a national contest for a Boundless Playground and submitted an essay they hoped would win the day for the east side school. But they fell just short, finishing third out of 900 entries.

Milwaukee-area school districts grapple with sex-ed policies

Erin Richards:

For parents like the Timmermons in Milwaukee, who diligently pre-screen G-rated movies and forbid their daughter from playing with the made-up and mini-skirted Bratz dolls, when and how to start talking about the human body and sex can be a bit of a mystery.
Schools face a similar dilemma. Many districts teach what’s broadly known as human growth and development, but the thoroughness of the information varies widely among districts, schools and classrooms, based on an informal survey of schools by the Journal Sentinel.
Over the summer, Milwaukee Public Schools is addressing the unevenness in its human growth and development curriculum by revamping the entire program from kindergarten through high school, and making a plan to train teachers on how to deliver the information.

Many tweens watching ‘R’ films despite restriction

Greg Toppo:

Researchers know what your tween saw last summer: savage beatings, severed heads, murder, rape and torture.
In a study released Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from Dartmouth Medical School estimate more than 2.5 million children ages 10 to 14 watch the typical violent, R-rated movie.
A few movies, such as Blade, Hollow Man and Bride of Chucky, claim what researchers say are huge child audiences — as many as 7.8 million, including an estimated 1 million 10-year-olds.
“Ten isn’t far away from believing in Santa Claus,” says researcher Keilah Worth.

Kids Urged to Walk, Bike to School

Melissa Kossler Dutton:

Megan Schroeder rides her bike or walks to school to do her part to help the planet.
She also likes the incentives that her school, Bear Creek Elementary, uses to reward kids who ditch mom or dad’s car in favor of biking or walking.
“You get treats, too — usually some kind of food. I won a bike at the awards ceremony,” said Megan, 8, of Boulder, Colo. “Since I like animals, I want to save the environment.”
Across the country, schools are encouraging families to forgo their cars to promote healthy habits, relieve traffic congestion around school buildings and reduce auto emissions. Students who live too far to walk or bike are asked to form car pools, use public transportation or walk part of the way.

Tennessee 2nd in U.S. for texting and driving

Marti Davis:

Almost nine of 10 Americans agree that texting while driving spells trouble, yet South Carolina and Tennessee lead the nation in those who admit to sending or receiving text messages while behind the wheel.
A national survey of nearly 5,000 cell-phone users, released this week by Common Knowledge Research Services for the Vlingo Corp., revealed that Tennessee’s text-messaging motorists are topped only by those in South Carolina.
A bill that would have made driving while texting, or DWT, illegal failed to pass the Tennessee Legislature in March. So for now, at least, Tennessee’s text messengers can go on typing with their thumbs while steering with their pinkies, perhaps assisted by their knees.
“Clearly it’s an enormous danger for anybody to be texting while driving,” said Don Lindsey, longtime safety expert for AAA of East Tennessee. “Not only do you have the distraction of somebody thinking about what you’re going to say, you either have to either feel with your thumbs those little itty-bitty buttons or, worse, look down on the phone and do it.”

Girl Becomes Teen Driving Statistic

Brian Hicks:

When she got her permit on Monday, Cushire Akabidavis had license to drive on some of the most dangerous roads in the nation, governed by a state with some of the weakest teen driving laws.
Within minutes she became another young victim of that volatile mix.
Drivers between the ages of 15 and 17 were involved in 64 traffic fatalities and more than 8,400 injuries in 2006, according to a study by the motorist club AAA.
Those accidents cost taxpayers $629 million, roughly the price of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.
“South Carolina is in the top three worst states in the country for driving, and they have some of the worst laws in dealing with teen driving,” said Tom Crosby, vice president for communications at AAA Carolinas.
“This is the state that would not even pass a law to prevent teens from texting while driving.