News Items For The Week

R.I. Senate Passes School Safety Bills, Including Measures to Keep Safety Plans, Discussions Secret The Rhode Island Senate has passed a package of school safety bills, including one that would keep all meetings and documents about school safety plans secret. One bill would require all schools to conduct school safety assessments and establish training and protocols for "responding to acts violence" including bomb threats, hostage-takings, intrusions, and kidnappings. (Providence Journal, 05/21/13) See Article

Free Tuition for Arizona Foster Kids Advances Arizona's foster children came one step closer to qualifying for free tuition at the state's three universities under a bill that requires one more vote to reach Gov. Jan Brewer's desk. Senate Bill 1208 establishes a five-year pilot program intended to more than double the number of Arizona foster youths who attend and graduate from college each year. (Arizona Republic, 05/08/13) See Article

AERA new analysis on the state of bullying research in the United States. The report includes several action items for improvement, aimed at both scholars and schools. Each part addresses a specific aspect of bullying, with 11 parts in total, including the fact that researchers do not agree on the definition of bullying. (May, 2013) Report

Transforming Diagnosis A brief policy statement from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) states why NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories. Excerpt: Going forward, MIMH “will be supporting research projects that look across current categories –– or sub-divide current categories –– to begin to develop a better system. What does this mean for applicants? Clinical trials might study all patients in a mood clinic rather than those meeting strict major depressive disorder criteria. Studies of biomarkers for “depression” might begin by looking across many disorders with anhedonia or emotional appraisal bias or psychomotor retardation to understand the circuitry underlying these symptoms. What does this mean for patients? We are committed to new and better treatments, but we feel this will only happen by developing a more precise diagnostic system. The best reason to develop RDoC is to seek better outcomes.” (April 29, 2013) See the full statement (it’s only a page long).

New Mexico's Early Dropout Warning System Using information already compiled by the New Mexico Public Education Department, reports on students at risk for dropping out will be generated for schools statewide so early support can be provided. "We shouldn't wait until high school to have the discussion with our students about graduation," said Governor Susana Martinez, who made the announcement . The warning system weighs 3rd-grade reading proficiency, middle school truancy and course failures, 9th-grade truancy, a 9th- grade GPA below 1.5, and failure of any core courses during the 9th-grade year. It will be the foundation for the "Next Step" plan, which now is in place and serves as a road map to graduation developing year-by-year class requirements based on a student's post-secondary plans. The early warning system begins in August. See Announcement

*Gainesville City Schools’ Achieves Good Results from Developing a Unified and Comprehensive System of Learning Supports

The Education Development Center (EDC) has released a report highlighting the processes and outlining the successes of Gainesville City Schools (GA) as they create a unified and comprehensive system of learning supports. As part of the AASA/Scholastic/UCLA leadership initiative, Gainesville has created new policies and modified or expanded existing strategies, policies and practices to develop a system of student and learning supports that enables learning and enhances equity of opportunity for succeeding at school. Results-to-date: Graduation rates have increased from 73.3% in 2009 to 81.3% in 2010 and 84.9% in 2011. Referrals for disciplinary action in the middle and high schools have dropped from 91 disciplinary tribunals in 2008-09 to 47 in 2010-11, and the elementary schools saw a 75% decrease. See the report entitled: Rebuilding for Learning -- Addressing Barriers to Learning and Teaching, and Re-engaging Students http://www.smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/casestudy.pdf

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Among the sources used in gather the above items are:

The ECS e-clip at http://www.ecs.org/e-clips
The Update from the American Orthopsychiatric Association at: http://www.aoatoday.com/news.php
AAP MENTAL HEALTH NEWSLETTER at: http://www.aap.org/commpeds/dochs/mentalhealth/mh5n.html