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By Health News Digest, Jan 20, 2010
(HealthNewsDigest.com) – ANN ARBOR, Mich.—School psychologists, counselors and social workers are often the first line of support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems. Problems can range from attention deficit disorder and homelessness to depression and bullying all of which can make academic success a challenge.
The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health asked nearly 1,100 parents across the United States to grade their children’s public schools on how well they support children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
Thirty-seven percent of parents gave primary schools an A for support for children with ADHD and other behavioral problems, and 34 percent gave an A for support for children with emotional or family problems. Twenty-two percent of parents gave secondary schools an A for support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
In contrast, for overall education 52 percent of parents gave primary schools an A and 38 percent of parents gave secondary schools an A.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Mental Health, News Articles, Recent Posts, Special Education on January 21, 2010 - ו' שבט תש"ע at 4:36 am
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JERUSALEM — He can be impulsive. She has a touch of bossiness. Next-door neighbors for nearly a year, they talk, watch television and explore the world together, wandering into each other’s homes without a second thought. She likes his mother’s eggplant dish. He likes her father’s rice and lamb.
Friendship often starts with proximity, but Orel and Marya, both 8, have been thrust together in a way few elsewhere have. Their playground is a hospital corridor. He is an Israeli Jew severely wounded by a Hamas rocket. She is a Palestinian Muslim from Gaza paralyzed by an Israeli missile. Someone forgot to tell them that they are enemies.
“He’s a naughty boy,” Marya likes to say of Orel with an appreciative smile when he gets a little wild.
When Orel arrived here a year ago, he could not hear, see, talk or walk. Now he does them all haltingly. Half his brain is gone. Doctors were deeply pessimistic about his survival. Today they are amazed at his progress although unclear how much more can be made.
Marya’s spinal cord was broken at the neck and she can move only her head. Smart, sunny and strong-willed, she moves her wheelchair by pushing a button with her chin. Nothing escapes her gaze. She knows that Orel is starting to prefer boys as playmates and she makes room. But their bond remains strong. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts, Special Education on December 31, 2009 - י"ד טבת תש"ע at 6:46 pm
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By comparing how a gene critical for language works in humans and chimpanzees, researchers have identified an entire network of genes involved in the incredible linguistic powers of Homo sapiens.
The findings don’t explain how language functions at the biological level, or exactly what changes were needed to put an otherwise unremarkable monkey on its chattering, Earth-dominating trajectory. But they do give researchers a foundation for investigating these questions.
“We know a fair amount about the brain structures involved in speech and language, but we know very little about how that evolved, or how genes contribute to that,” said Daniel Geschwind, a University of California, Los Angeles neurogeneticist.
The target of Geschwind’s analysis was FOXP2, a gene that rose to scientific prominence during the study of a London-based family afflicted by hereditary speech disorders. Of the extended family’s 30 members, one-half have severe linguistic deficiencies, as well as a FOXP2 mutation. Those who don’t have the mutation are able to speak normally.
That connection was revealed in 2001, and subsequent research has shown FOXP2 to be play a role not only in acquiring grammar and syntax, but in developing motor skills and helping brain cells form new connections. Studies also suggested FOXP2 had mutated rapidly in the Homo sapiens lineage, and worked differently in humans than in chimpanzees, our closest genetic relative.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Science, Special Education on November 13, 2009 - כ"ו חשון תש"ע at 3:42 am
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By Carrie Mulherin – Vice President, BioBehavioral Diagnostics
Health News Digest, Aug 26, 2009
What is ADHD?
(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common condition of the brain that makes it difficult to control behavior. Everybody knows someone with ADHD. It affects approximately 9.5 million school-aged boys and girls, adolescents and adults. People with ADHD have trouble paying attention, controlling impulsive behaviors, and in some cases, are overly active. Three times more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADHD. Symptoms persist into adulthood in as many as 60 percent of cases. Although these characteristics are present to some extent in everyone, when the symptoms are developmentally extreme, pervasive and persistent, it might be ADHD.
Although individuals with ADHD can be very successful in life, without identification and proper treatment, ADHD may have serious consequences, including school failure, family stress and disruption, depression, problems with relationships, substance abuse, delinquency, risk for accidental injuries and job failure. Early identification and treatment are extremely important.
There are three sub-types of ADHD.
These symptoms are present in everyone at some level. If symptoms are extreme, consider making an appointment for a full evaluation. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Recent Posts, Special Education on August 28, 2009 - ח' אלול תשס"ט at 7:14 am
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By Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, March. 27, 2009
New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months.
The study also indicated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children’s growth.
The latest data paint a very different picture than the study’s positive initial results, reported in 1999.
One principal scientist in the study, psychologist William Pelham, said that the most obvious interpretation of the data is that the medications are useful in the short term but ineffective over longer periods but added that his colleagues had repeatedly sought to explain away evidence that challenged the long-term usefulness of medication. When their explanations failed to hold up, they reached for new ones, Pelham said.
“The stance the group took in the first paper was so strong that the people are embarrassed to say they were wrong and we led the whole field astray,” said Pelham, of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Pelham said the drugs, including Adderall and Concerta, are among the medications most frequently prescribed for American children, adding: “If 5 percent of families in the country are giving a medication to their children, and they don’t realize it does not have long-term benefits but might have long-term risks, why should they not be told?”
The disagreement has produced a range of views among the researchers about how to accurately present the results to the public. One e-mail noted that an academic review of the group’s work, called the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD (MTA), asked why the researchers were “bending over backward” to play down negative implications for drug therapy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Special Education on March 27, 2009 - ב' ניסן תשס"ט at 7:16 am
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By Scott J. Cech, Education Week, September 16, 2008
There’s a war of sorts going on within the normally staid assessment industry, and it’s a war over the definition of a type of assessment that many educators understand in only the sketchiest fashion.
Formative assessments, also known as “classroom assessments,” are in some ways easier to define by what they are not. They’re not like the long, year-end, state-administered, standardized, No Child Left Behind Act-required exams that testing professionals call “summative.” Nor are they like the shorter, middle-of-the-year assessments referred to as “benchmark” or “interim” assessments.
Or they shouldn’t be, at least according to experts inside and outside the testing industry, who believe that truly “formative” assessments must blend seamlessly into classroom instruction itself.
“It makes me want to scream and run out of the room,” said Ray Wilson, the executive director of assessment and accountability for the 33,000-student Poway Unified School District in Poway, Calif., referring to off-the-shelf commercial products labeled “formative assessment” that major test-makers try to sell him. “I still contend that so long as a teacher doesn’t have primary control [over assessment content],” he added, “you will never have truly formative assessment.”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Recent Posts, Special Education on September 16, 2008 - ט"ז אלול תשס"ח at 6:18 pm
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By Karin Kloosterman, Israel 21C, August 18, 2008
Spellcheckers on computer software did to language what calculators have done to math, unless you are one of the 15 percent of Americans who suffer from dyslexia. While Microsoft Word’s spellchecker can tell you how to spell your words properly, it can’t handle the complex language problems that dyslexics face on a daily basis.
"The problem they have is connecting the sounds of letters to the symbols of the written language," says Yael Karov, the CEO of Ginger Software who co-founded the Israeli company with her husband Avner Zangvil. They aim to give dyslexics software that can reduce spelling errors and improve their learning and communication skills dramatically.
Based in Tel Aviv, the company employs 15 and come October its software will be ready for Americans. Currently undergoing a Beta test, Ginger is available online for a free trial, or as a download, and will seamlessly connect to Microsoft Word as an add-on. After typing sentences, a screen will show users correct alternatives. They will also get an option to hear their sentences aloud.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Recent Posts, Science and Technology, Special Education on August 19, 2008 - י"ח אב תשס"ח at 6:35 pm
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Reprinted from News-Medical.net, July 29, 2008
The article from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (NBDPS), “Diabetes Mellitus and Birth Defects,” shows that pregnant women with pre-gestational diabetes mellitus (pre-pregnancy diagnosis of diabetes, such as type 1 or type 2 diabetes) are more likely than a mother with no diabetes or a mother with gestational diabetes mellitus (pregnancy-induced diabetes) to have a child with various types of individual or multiple birth defects. This includes heart defects, defects of the brain and spine, oral clefts, defects of the kidneys and gastrointestinal tract and limb deficiencies. This study is the first to show the broad range and severity of birth defects associated with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
“The continued association of diabetes with a number of birth defects highlights the importance of increasing the number of women who receive the best possible preconception care, especially for those women diagnosed with diabetes,” says Adolfo Correa, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., lead author and epidemiologist at CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. “Early and effective management of diabetes for pregnant women is critical in helping to not only prevent birth defects, but also to reduce the risk for other health complications for them and their children.”
Researchers also found that some of the pregnant women with gestational diabetes were more likely to have a child with birth defects. Because birth defects associated with diabetes are more likely to occur during the first trimester of pregnancy and before a diagnosis of gestational diabetes is made, the observed associations suggest that some of the mothers with it probably had undiagnosed diabetes before they became pregnant. However symptoms went unnoticed until pregnancy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Special Education on July 30, 2008 - כ"ז תמוז תשס"ח at 10:54 am
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By Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Special Education on May 5, 2008 - ל' ניסן תשס"ח at 6:27 pm
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From Ann Logsdon,
Your Guide to Learning Disabilities.
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If your child shows signs of a learning disability, assessment can confirm a diagnosis. If a learning disability is diagnosed, your child may qualify for important special education programs for remediation. Most children with learning disabilities are diagnosed through the public school system during elementary years.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Special Education on February 4, 2008 - כ"ח שבט תשס"ח at 6:40 pm
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