ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Asthma and Environment Fact Sheet for Parents and Schools. Revised
Author: Healthy Schools Network, Inc.
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Pollution,Chronic Illness,Parent Materials,School Health Services,Child Health,Diseases,Disease Incidence,Environmental Influences,Elementary Secondary Education,Preschool Children,School Buildings,Public Health,Health Promotion,Drug Therapy,Special Health Problems,Educational Policy,Federal Legislation

Important facts about asthma and the environment include: (1) Asthma has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, affecting about 25 million people of all ages and races, including about 7 million children; (2) Nearly one in 10 school-aged children has asthma, and the percentage of children with asthma is rising more rapidly in preschool-aged children than in any other age group; (3) Asthma accounts for 13 million lost days of school missed annually, and is the leading cause of school absenteeism due to a chronic illness; (4) Asthma is the third-ranking cause of hospitalization among children; (5) There were 185 children who died from asthma in 2007; (6) The cost of treating asthma in children and adults was $50.1 billion in 2007, or about $3,300 per person; (7) Indoor contaminants and the outside environment can aggravate asthma or can cause new cases of asthma; (8) Indoor exposures can be 100-1,000 times more intense than outdoor exposures; (9) Schools are the workplaces of children, they are required to be there by law, yet the GAO estimates that roughly a third of schools have poor indoor air quality and that 14 million children are in buildings that threaten their health; (10) Schools with healthier indoor air have: fewer asthma attacks, better attendance, fewer bronchitis and upper respiratory illnesses, fewer visits to the school nurse with complaints of stomachaches, headache, sinus infection; and (11) Federal laws require schools to provide a "free appropriate public education" and to provide accommodations to students, including those with health problems, like serious asthma, that affect learning. Parents of children with asthma should be aware that asthma can be seriously aggravated by the environment, and that controlling asthma "triggers" can reduce a child's discomfort and health problems caused by asthma. Parents should also be aware that any medication has side effects, some of them potentially serious. A chart containing reliever medications for asthma, controller medications for asthma, and common adverse side effects is provided. (Contains 14 resources.)
Parent's Guide to School Indoor Air Quality. Revised
Author: Healthy Schools Network, Inc.
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: Pollution,School Personnel,School Maintenance,Parent Materials,Guides,Educational Environment,Hazardous Materials,Decision Making,Costs,Expenditures,Symptoms (Individual Disorders),Child Health,School Construction

Air pollution is air pollution, indoors or out. Good indoor air quality (IAQ) contributes to a favorable learning environment for students, protects health, and supports the productivity of school personnel. In schools in poor repair, leaky roofs and crumbling walls have caused additional indoor air quality problems, including contamination with lead and asbestos, dust, or radon. United States Environmental Protection Agency studies of human exposure to air pollutants indicate that indoor pollution levels may be 2-5 times, and sometimes 100 times, higher than outdoor levels. Most people spend 90% of their time indoors. It is easy to understand why school decisions to cut spending on cleaning and repair ("deferred maintenance") are penny-wise and pound-foolish: resulting air pollution will harm occupants and multiply the cost to repair buildings later. This paper shows some typical signs/symptoms of IAQ problems and what schools should be doing. It also offers tips on when parents should suspect a school has an IAQ problem and what they should do if schools ignore IAQ problems. A list of resources is included.
Towards Healthy Schools 2015: Progress on America's Environmental Health Crisis for Children
Author: Healthy Schools Network, Inc.
Date: 2013-01-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Health Insurance,Risk,Public Health,Diseases,Educational Facilities,Water,Child Health,Poverty,Health Conditions,Environmental Influences,Children,Hazardous Materials,Intervention,Enrollment,School Personnel,Special Education,Minority Group Students,Economically Disadvantaged,Low Income Groups,Lunch Programs,Breakfast Programs,Poisoning,Court Litigation,Pollution

States compel children to attend school; in fact, 98% of all school-age children attend schools--irrespective of conditions. Yet the environmental conditions of decayed facilities or facilities close to hazards can damage children's health and ability to learn. At the same time, it is well documented that healthy school facilities can help children learn, grow, and stay healthy. Today, justice for children can be achieved, but that demands swifter, surer progress on federal, state, and local fronts to ensure that all children have environmentally healthy schools that are clean and in good repair--and when children do not, that they have timely on-site public health interventions to help reduce exposures and have necessary support services. This is a profound pediatric health and environmental justice issue that must not be set aside. "Towards Healthy Schools 2015: Progress on America's Environmental Health Crisis for Children" is the third triennial state-by-state data and policy report on this topic since 2006. "Sick Schools" (2009) and before it "Lessons Learned" (2006) researched and assessed state-by-state data and policies on environmental conditions at schools and risks to children's health, compiling them into a single, unique resource that painted a deeply disturbing picture, in which vulnerable children endure unhealthy schools. "Towards Healthy Schools 2015" cites, as did the two previous reports, basic federal data for public schools, such as total number of buildings; total enrollment; total number of personnel; percentage of children with asthma; percentage of children without health insurance; total number of children receiving special education; total number of children of minority status; and more. New in this edition are three data sets used to illustrate additional risk factors not covered in the first two reports: (1) total number of children eligible for free or reduced price meals (a proxy for poverty status); (2) states requiring schools to keep asthma/allergy incident reports; and (3) states requiring inspection of school drinking water outlets for lead. Appended are: (1) State Data Table Footnotes; (2) US Environmental Protection Agency: Office of Children's Health; (3) US Department of Education: Green Ribbon Schools; (4) Map: School Equity Funding Lawsuits in the States; and (5) Coalition for Healthier Schools: Position Statement and Policy Recommendations. (Contains 30 endnotes.) [Additional funding was provided by the Wallace Genetic and the Marisla Foundation.]
From Large School Buildings to Small School Campuses: Orchestrating the Shift
Author: New Visions for Public Schools
Date: 2005-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Urban Schools,High Schools,Public Schools,Federal Legislation,School Effectiveness,Low Achievement,Educational Strategies,School Restructuring,Campuses,Small Schools,School Buildings,Neighborhoods,Individualized Instruction,Educational Facilities Improvement,Interior Space,Space Utilization,Science Laboratories,Color,Classification,Educational Change

The New York City Department of Education, like other urban public school systems, is facing the task of reforming many large high schools that have had graduation rates under fifty percent for many years. With new federal sanctions for failing schools under the No Child Left Behind Act, many schools nation-wide that have been prominent institutions in their neighborhoods for decades are now slated to close. One promising strategy to reform secondary education is to create small schools with rigorous and personalized instruction for students in the place of large low-performing schools. With limited construction funding, New York City has turned to adaptive reuse of large high school structures to house a substantial majority of the new small secondary schools opened as part of this reform effort since 2002. The need to maintain the use of existing buildings meant that growing small schools and phasing-out large schools share the same buildings over a multi-year transition period. This book describes the Department of Education's dynamic approach to the nexus of academic reform and architectural adaptation, as buildings evolved to become campuses of small schools. As other school systems embark on large-scale high school reform strategies, the solutions New York found may assist them in this transition. This book describes the redesign of 21 campuses over the course of the past year. [This paper was written with Laura Kurgan.]
Key Implementation Considerations for Executing Evidence-Based Programs: Project Overview. ASPE Research Brief
Author: US Department of Health and Human Services
Date: 2013-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Evidence,Program Implementation,Human Services,Performance Factors,Focus Groups,Brainstorming,Replication (Evaluation),Change Strategies,Best Practices,Thematic Approach,Research Utilization,Evaluation Utilization,Improvement Programs,Program Improvement,Guidance Programs

In April 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) hosted a Forum, Emphasizing Evidence-Based Programs for Children and Youth, to convene the nation's leading practitioners and researchers with experience using and evaluating an array of evidence-based programs. During the Forum, experts discussed challenges encountered when selecting and replicating evidence-based programs (EBPs) and also identified approaches for developing evidence-informed programs when EBPs are not available or applicable for a given population. This brief introduces key themes that emerged from the discussion. The remaining briefs in the series document the importance of implementation and provide guidance on ensuring quality program implementation identify, strategies for identifying a program's core components, and explore techniques that can be used to inform the development of new social programs. (Contains 5 resources.)
Reforming High Schools: Lessons from the New Century High Schools Initiative, 2001-2006
Author: Galiatsos, Stacy
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: High Schools,Public Schools,Urban Schools,School Restructuring,Educational Change,Politics of Education,Partnerships in Education,Sustainability,Educational Strategies,Outcome Measures,Performance Based Assessment

New Visions for Public Schools is the largest education reform organization dedicated to improving the quality of education children receive in New York City's public schools. For 16 years, New Visions has worked with the public and private sectors to develop programs and policies that energize teaching and learning and increase student achievement. In 2001, in partnership with the New York City Department of Education (DOE), the United Federation of Teachers, and the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, New Visions launched the New Century High Schools Initiative (NCHSI) to transform secondary education in New York City. This paper first provides an overview of the New Century schools, students, and emerging results. Next, the author places the initiative in the context of overall systemic secondary reform by: (1) Addressing high school reform from 2001 to the present; (2) Describing the original New Century High Schools Initiative's Theory of Action for secondary school reform; (3) Outlining the initiative's work with data and reviewing preliminary performance data; and (4) Summarizing the outcomes, strategies, and emerging conclusions from the following three areas of work, which are based on third-party evaluations and studies, as well as internal reports: (a) Creating a significant number of small high schools; (b) Supporting the New Century schools in implementing effective strategies through the Ten Principles of Effective Schools; (c) Developing ownership and sustainability of secondary level reform; and (d) Finally, this paper ends with a look ahead for the New Century High Schools Initiative. The author briefly discusses some of the overarching challenges to high school transformation and proposes ways to address those challenges at the practitioner and policy levels. (Contains 32 notes.)
Ten Principles of Effective School Design
Author: New Visions for Public Schools
Date: 2006-03-28
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: School Effectiveness,Teacher Expectations of Students,Instructional Effectiveness,Advanced Courses,Course Content,Difficulty Level,Learning Strategies,Cognitive Style,Individualized Instruction,Instructional Leadership,School Culture,Academic Achievement,Faculty Development,Cooperation,Communities of Practice,Formative Evaluation,Partnerships in Education,Parent School Relationship,Student Participation,Student Empowerment,Technology Integration

This brief document offers ten principles of effective school design. They are: (1) Clear Focus and High Expectations for staff and students are defining features of an effective school; (2) A Rigorous Instructional Program provides equitable opportunities to learn and enables every student to master challenging content, skills, and learning strategies; (3) A Personalized Learning Environment is characterized by knowledge of each student's learning style, social and family conditions, strengths, aspirations, and needs; (4) Instructional Leadership by the principal and other school leaders is characterized by a schoolwide focus on student achievement; support for improving and enhancing school culture, teaching, and learning; and effective collaboration among school leaders, teachers, parents, students, and partners in the community; (5) School-based Professional Development and a culture of professional collaboration improve instruction and student achievement and cultivate adult learning communities within the school; (6) Meaningful Assessment of student learning occurs continuously and gives students a variety of opportunities to demonstrate that they meet content and performance standards and can apply their learning; (7) Partnerships with Organizations strengthen the ability of the school to serve the academic and developmental needs of its students; (8) Parent and Caregiver Engagement is an ongoing process that integrates families into the life of the school in a variety of ways; (9) Student Voice and Participation ensure that students have significant opportunities to collaborate with school staff, exercise leadership, and make choices and decisions; and (10) Integration of Technology into Teaching and Learning allows all students to access and analyze information, communicate ideas, and express themselves creatively.
Student Progress to Graduation in New York City High Schools. Part II: Student Achievement as &quot;Stock&quot; and &quot;Flow&quot;--Reimagining Early Warning Systems for At-Risk Students
Author: Fairchild, Susan
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Urban Schools,Data Analysis,Identification,At Risk Students,School Administration,Student School Relationship,Systems Approach,Rhetoric,Human Capital,Academic Achievement,Cohort Analysis,Achievement Gains,Graduation Requirements,Program Development,Intervention

New Visions for Public Schools has leveraged student-level data to help schools identify at-risk students, designed metrics to capture student progress toward graduation, developed data tools and reports that visualize student progress at different levels of aggregation for different audiences, and implemented real-time data systems for educators. Central to New Visions' early warning system is the point-in-time index--the four-color Progress to Graduation Metric--made possible through the greater availability of real-time student data such as graduation rates, attendance rates, credit accumulation, Regents' passage rates, student assessments, and other key indicators of student performance. Student performance benchmarks like New Visions' Progress to Graduation Metric serve as one of a school's tools for identifying at-risk students and help to inform early-warning interventions. These same student performance benchmarks, when aggregated at the school level, become one of a district's tools for identifying at-risk schools and informing interventions. Early warning systems, like New Visions' Progress to Graduation Metric, while providing a solid basis for characterizing a student, a classroom, a department, a school, or a district at a moment in time, are also limited. The primary intent of this paper is to present a new framework that will guide the next phase of New Visions' early warning data work. These are the goals of this paper: (1) To illustrate how a &quot;systems thinking&quot; approach adds dimension and depth to the understanding of student performance, allowing to reimagine data systems; (2) To introduce the concept of &quot;structural volatility&quot;--and the new data tool that begins to capture this phenomenon; (3) To suggest how the terms &quot;at risk&quot; and &quot;early warning,&quot; despite the passion and urgency with which they were first introduced in &quot;A Nation at Risk,&quot; have become the politic, specialist language Wendell Berry cautions against; and how, by shifting the framework through which the nation understands risk, the nation restores and reclaims them. Appended are: (1) New Visions' Progress Toward Graduation Metric: 2 Term Schools; and (2) Technical Notes. (Contains 12 figures, 2 tables, and 26 footnotes.)
Core Intervention Components: Identifying and Operationalizing What Makes Programs Work. ASPE Research Brief
Author: Blase, Karen
Date: 2013-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Program Implementation,Program Evaluation,Evidence,Research Design,Research Methodology,Identification,Operations Research,Data Analysis,Intervention,Theory Practice Relationship,Socialization,Public Policy,Epistemology,Research and Development

This brief is part of a series that explores key implementation considerations. It focuses on the importance of identifying, operationalizing, and implementing the "core components" of evidence-based and evidence-informed interventions that likely are critical to producing positive outcomes. The brief offers a definition of "core components", discusses challenges and processes related to identifying and validating them, highlights rationales for the importance of operationalizing core components, and explores implications for selecting, funding, implementing, scaling up, and evaluating programs. Since the issues related to core components of interventions are relevant to producing new knowledge about what works and for moving science to service in socially significant ways, this brief is relevant for a range of professionals and stakeholders, including program developers, researchers, implementers, and policy makers. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)
Plan. Act. Learn. Go. Applying to College Starts Now
Author: New Visions for Public Schools
Date: 2007-00-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: College Preparation,High School Students,Student Educational Objectives,Standardized Tests,Academic Achievement,Time Management,Grade 9,Grade 10,Grade 11,Grade 12,College Entrance Examinations,Advanced Placement,Credits,Financial Aid Applicants,Need Analysis (Student Financial Aid),Student Financial Aid

Getting ready for college is a process--one that starts as soon as one enters high school. It has many steps and many deadlines. The good news: There are resources to help you stay organized. Talk to your college advisor, and use the resources in this guide to get information and to identify test dates and other important deadlines. Make your plans, register for tests and events, and then mark your calendar so you'll be in the right place at the right time. This guide offers help in planning for and applying to college. Learn what to do, when to do it and where to find help. [Adapted from the &quot;The Citi College Planning Guide.&quot;]
New Century High Schools and the Small Schools Movement in New York City. Interim Report Card
Author: Melcher, Michael F.
Date: 2005-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: High Schools,Urban Schools,Public Schools,Educational Change,School Restructuring,Small Schools,Attendance,Community Involvement,Partnerships in Education,Educational Assessment,Educational Indicators,Educational Policy,Evaluation Methods,Standardized Tests

For too long New York City's high schools have not prepared even a majority of students for graduation. There is no single solution to the problems confronting the city's schools, but the city needs to do better--and it can. Over the past several years, New York City has undertaken a far-reaching process of education reform. This report describes one of the most exciting aspects of this reform, the creation of innovative, new small high schools as part of the New Century High Schools Initiative. The state has worked closely with New Visions for Public Schools to involve thousands of New Yorkers who deeply care about the children's education. This initiative represents the best of what New York City can be. Four years into a decade-long process, the New Century High Schools Initiative has created a portfolio of 75 new small high schools, with 15 more opening in 2005 and 2006, using a selective process that incorporates everything one knows about what works in education--rigorous and relevant curricula, strong parent and community involvement and greater personal attention for every child. These new schools are preparing New York City students to meet the challenges of higher education, work and citizenship in the 21st century. They are moving the City forward.
The Importance of Quality Implementation for Research, Practice, and Policy. ASPE Research Brief
Author: Durlak, Joseph
Date: 2013-02-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Evidence,Program Implementation,Educational Quality,Quality Assurance,Educational Policy,Educational Practices,Performance Factors,Responsibility,Program Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Program Administration,Task Analysis,Best Practices,Program Descriptions

Sometimes, program evaluations report no difference in outcomes between persons given a program and those not given the program. Is this because the program does not work, or because it was poorly implemented? Achieving high quality program implementation is critical to achieving anticipated outcomes, and researchers have made considerable progress in clarifying its importance in the past several decades. This brief defines program implementation, highlights the importance of high quality implementation, identifies key factors that affect implementation, presents the steps involved in achieving quality implementation, and specifies who has responsibility for quality implementation. The last section describes some practical lessons that have been learned about implementation through systematic research and practice. The focus here is on evidence-based programs, although implementation is relevant in all program operations and evaluations. Whenever any program is being conducted, it is important to monitor the level of implementation that has been achieved so its impact can be interpreted appropriately. "Resources That Provide Assistance on Selecting and Implementing Programs" are contained in the appendix. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)