Given a paragraph and a claim, classify it this way: If the claim contradicts the evidence present in the paragraph, classify the claim as '0'. If the claim has multiple supporting *AND* contradicting evidences, classify the claim as '1'. If the claim has supporting evidence and the paragraph is in overall favor of the claim, then classify the claim as '2'.

Q: Paragraph: Republican Gov. Charlie Baker administered oaths to the 40-member Senate and 160-member House in ceremonies signaling the start of the 191st term for one of America’s oldest legislative bodies. Formally known as the General Court, the Legislature traces its roots to the Colonial era. The first order of business in each chamber — both firmly controlled by Democrats — was the re-election of presiding officers. Rep. Robert DeLeo, of Winthrop, already the longest-serving House speaker in the state’s history having first taken the gavel in 2009, returned for another two-year term. Ashland Democrat Karen Spilka will serve her first full term as Senate president after first assuming the post in July. Speaking in the ornate Senate chamber, which reopened Wednesday for the first time in more than 18 months following a $20 million renovation, Spilka called for several “bold” initiatives in response to what she said were demands from Massachusetts residents to move beyond “small ideas and incremental change.” Spilka said her priorities would include legislation to better control health care spending by reining in the high cost of prescription drugs and redistribute state education funding to better serve children who live in poorer school districts. Recalling the untreated psychological trauma her father suffered as a result of his military service, the Senate leader also appealed for a broad expansion of mental health services throughout the state. “We simply cannot end the epidemic of addiction or solve the problems of chronic homelessness and unemployment, child abuse and neglect, veteran and first responder PTSD, childhood bullying, or repeated incarceration, without first addressing the underlying issue of mental health,” said Spilka. While not specifically calling for tax increases, Spilka said the state would need to “capture new revenues” to support new and existing programs. Spilka, a liberal Democrat, was widely expected to stake out a progressive agenda that could meet resistance in the House, which is also controlled by Democrats but is seen as more conservative than the Senate. Baker, a moderate Republican who remains opposed to any broad-based tax hikes, could also prove a stumbling block. In brief comments following his re-election on Wednesday, DeLeo declared that “no one’s rights will be infringed upon in Massachusetts,” an apparent swipe at the policies of President Donald Trump and other Republicans in Washington. DeLeo generally waits until a few weeks into a new session before outlining his legislative priorities. Sen. Bruce Tarr, of Gloucester, and Rep. Brad Jones, of North Reading, will again serve as the minority leaders in their respective chambers. There are 32 Republicans in the House and only six in the Senate, with the GOP having lost a handful of legislative seats in the November election. Claim: State Senate leader outlines agenda as lawmakers sworn in.

A: 2
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Q: Paragraph: A normal-sized gurney (L) is pictured alongside an oversized one at the children's and women's maternity ward at the University of Alabama Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, April 26, 2012. OBESITY/ REUTERS/Marvin Gentry The nation’s rising rate of obesity has been well-chronicled. But businesses, governments and individuals are only now coming to grips with the costs of those extra pounds, many of which are even greater than believed only a few years ago: The additional medical spending due to obesity is double previous estimates and exceeds even those of smoking, a new study shows. Many of those costs have dollar signs in front of them, such as the higher health insurance premiums everyone pays to cover those extra medical costs. Other changes, often cost-neutral, are coming to the built environment in the form of wider seats in public places from sports stadiums to bus stops. The startling economic costs of obesity, often borne by the non-obese, could become the epidemic’s second-hand smoke. Only when scientists discovered that nonsmokers were developing lung cancer and other diseases from breathing smoke-filled air did policymakers get serious about fighting the habit, in particular by establishing nonsmoking zones. The costs that smoking added to Medicaid also spurred action. Now, as economists put a price tag on sky-high body mass indexes (BMIs), policymakers as well as the private sector are mobilizing to find solutions to the obesity epidemic. “As committee chairmen, Cabinet secretaries, the head of Medicare and health officials see these really high costs, they are more interested in knowing, ‘what policy knob can I turn to stop this hemorrhage?’” said Michael O’Grady of the National Opinion Research Center, co-author of a new report for the Campaign to End Obesity, which brings together representatives from business, academia and the public health community to work with policymakers on the issue. The U.S. health care reform law of 2010 allows employers to charge obese workers 30 percent to 50 percent more for health insurance if they decline to participate in a qualified wellness program. The law also includes carrots and celery sticks, so to speak, to persuade Medicare and Medicaid enrollees to see a primary care physician about losing weight, and funds community demonstration programs for weight loss. Such measures do not sit well with all obese Americans. Advocacy groups formed to “end size discrimination” argue that it is possible to be healthy “at every size,” taking issue with the findings that obesity necessarily comes with added medical costs. The reason for denominating the costs of obesity in dollars is not to stigmatize plus-size Americans even further. Rather, the goal is to allow public health officials as well as employers to break out their calculators and see whether programs to prevent or reverse obesity are worth it. The percentage of Americans who are obese (with a BMI of 30 or higher) has tripled since 1960, to 34 percent, while the incidence of extreme or “morbid” obesity (BMI above 40) has risen sixfold, to 6 percent. The percentage of overweight Americans (BMI of 25 to 29.9) has held steady: It was 34 percent in 2008 and 32 percent in 1961. What seems to have happened is that for every healthy-weight person who “graduated” into overweight, an overweight person graduated into obesity. Because obesity raises the risk of a host of medical conditions, from heart disease to chronic pain, the obese are absent from work more often than people of healthy weight. The most obese men take 5.9 more sick days a year; the most obese women, 9.4 days more. Obesity-related absenteeism costs employers as much as $6.4 billion a year, health economists led by Eric Finkelstein of Duke University calculated. Even when poor health doesn’t keep obese workers home, it can cut into productivity, as they grapple with pain or shortness of breath or other obstacles to working all-out. Such obesity-related “presenteeism,” said Finkelstein, is also expensive. The very obese lose one month of productive work per year, costing employers an average of $3,792 per very obese male worker and $3,037 per female. Total annual cost of presenteeism due to obesity: $30 billion. Decreased productivity can reduce wages, as employers penalize less productive workers. Obesity hits workers’ pocketbooks indirectly, too: Numerous studies have shown that the obese are less likely to be hired and promoted than their svelte peers are. Women in particular bear the brunt of that, earning about 11 percent less than women of healthy weight, health economist John Cawley of Cornell University found. At the average weekly U.S. wage of $669 in 2010, that’s a $76 weekly obesity tax. The medical costs of obesity have long been the focus of health economists. A just-published analysis finds that it raises those costs more than thought. Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of Health Economics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese. Nationally, that comes to $190 billion a year in additional medical spending as a result of obesity, calculated Cawley, or 20.6 percent of U.S. health care expenditures. That is double recent estimates, reflecting more precise methodology. The new analysis corrected for people’s tendency to low-ball their weight, for instance, and compared obesity with non-obesity (healthy weight and overweight) rather than just to healthy weight. Because the merely overweight do not incur many additional medical costs, grouping the overweight with the obese underestimates the costs of obesity. Contrary to the media’s idealization of slimness, medical spending for men is about the same for BMIs of 26 to 35. For women, the uptick starts at a BMI of 25. In men more than women, high BMIs can reflect extra muscle as well as fat, so it is possible to be healthy even with an overweight BMI. “A man with a BMI of 28 might be very fit,” said Cawley. “Where healthcare costs really take off is in the morbidly obese.”   Those extra medical costs are partly born by the non-obese, in the form of higher taxes to support Medicaid and higher health insurance premiums. Obese women raise such “third party” expenditures $3,220 a year each; obese men, $967 a year, Cawley and Meyerhoefer found. One recent surprise is the discovery that the costs of obesity exceed those of smoking. In a paper published in March, scientists at the Mayo Clinic toted up the exact medical costs of 30,529 Mayo employees, adult dependents, and retirees over several years. “Smoking added about 20 percent a year to medical costs,” said Mayo’s James Naessens. “Obesity was similar, but morbid obesity increased those costs by 50 percent a year. There really is an economic justification for employers to offer programs to help the very obese lose weight.”   For years researchers suspected that the higher medical costs of obesity might be offset by the possibility that the obese would die young, and thus never rack up spending for nursing homes, Alzheimer’s care, and other pricey items. That’s what happens to smokers. While they do incur higher medical costs than nonsmokers in any given year, their lifetime drain on public and private dollars is less because they die sooner. “Smokers die early enough that they save Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare” trillions of dollars, said Duke’s Finkelstein. “But mortality isn’t that much higher among the obese.”   Beta blockers for heart disease, diabetes drugs, and other treatments are keeping the obese alive longer, with the result that they incur astronomically high medical expenses in old age just like their slimmer peers. Some costs of obesity reflect basic physics. It requires twice as much energy to move 250 pounds than 125 pounds. As a result, a vehicle burns more gasoline carrying heavier passengers than lighter ones. “Growing obesity rates increase fuel consumption,” said engineer Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois. How much? An additional 938 million gallons of gasoline each year due to overweight and obesity in the United States, or 0.8 percent, he calculated. That’s $4 billion extra. Not all the changes spurred by the prevalence of obesity come with a price tag. Train cars New Jersey Transit ordered from Bombardier have seats 2.2 inches wider than current cars, at 19.75 inches, said spokesman John Durso, giving everyone a more comfortable commute. (There will also be more seats per car because the new ones are double-deckers.) The built environment generally is changing to accommodate larger Americans. New York’s commuter trains are considering new cars with seats able to hold 400 pounds. Blue Bird is widening the front doors on its school buses so wider kids can fit. And at both the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, seats are wider than their predecessors by 1 to 2 inches. The new performance testing proposed by transit officials for buses, assuming an average passenger weight of 175 instead of 150 pounds, arise from concerns that heavier passengers might pose a safety threat. If too much weight is behind the rear axle, a bus can lose steering. And every additional pound increases a moving vehicle’s momentum, requiring more force to stop and thereby putting greater demands on brakes. Manufacturers have told the FTA the proposal will require them to upgrade several components. Hospitals, too, are adapting to larger patients. The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s hospital, the nation’s fourth largest, has widened doors, replaced wall-mounted toilets with floor models able to hold 250 pounds or more, and bought plus-size wheelchairs (twice the price of regulars) as well as mini-cranes to hoist obese patients out of bed. The additional spending due to obesity doesn’t fall into a black hole, of course. It contributes to overall economic activity and thus to gross domestic product. But not all spending is created equal. “Yes, a heart attack will generate economic activity, since the surgeon and hospital get paid, but not in a good way,” said Murray Ross, vice president of Kaiser Permanente’s Institute for Health Policy. “If we avoided that heart attack we could have put the money to better use, such as in education or investments in clean energy.”   The books on obesity remain open. The latest entry: An obese man is 64 percent less likely to be arrested for a crime than a healthy man. Researchers have yet to run the numbers on what that might save. Claim: As America's waistline expands, costs soar.

A: 2
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Q: Paragraph: "A supporter of basing student access to bathrooms and locker rooms on gender identity at birth declared that as things stand, Austin's schools teach children to choose their genders. Spicewood attorney Glenna Hodge, testifying before the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee, said parents should recognize that without a protective law, their children can’t count on privacy. Hodge went on: ""We also know that schools in Austin Independent School District are teaching children as young as 4 years old that their gender is fluid–that they’re not a boy or a girl and they can choose whichever gender they want."" Asked for examples of schools doing so, Hodge told the panel in July 2017 that Austin’s Kiker and Odom elementary schools trained teachers with ""Welcoming Schools"" materials devised by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. That campaign says it focuses on achieving equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. In each training, Hodge testified, teachers were told to tell children that gender identity is fluid. We asked Hodge how she reached her conclusion about what students are taught. By phone, she said 24 of the Austin district’s 85 elementary schools undertook the training, which she described as clearing the way for students to be taught gender-fluid lessons. ""What are the teachers supposed to do with the training? What’s the point if not to affirm transgenderism?"" Hodge said. A 2017 web post Hodge pointed us to a January 2017 web post by the Southern Baptist Texan, a religious publication. The post, ""Trojan Horse: Austin ‘anti-bullying’ program pushes progressive views on gender, sexual identity,"" says the Welcoming Students material ""is taught to students as young as 4 years old"" and ""affirms same-sex marriage and parenting, gay and lesbian relationships, and transgenderism."" In one module of the teacher training, the post says, ""teachers are asked to answer questions about their preconceived ideas about gender (i.e. gender bias). The lesson states, ‘By embracing the richness of the gender spectrum, teachers and other adults can help broaden children’s understandings of gender in order to help every child feel seen and recognized.’"" The post goes on: ""By Module 5, children are told they can choose their gender identity even if that identity conflicts with biological reality. Questioning the child’s choice of gender is not an option for teachers or students,"" the post says. A teacher’s recollection Hodge also put us in touch with Caryl Ayala, who described herself by phone as a former Odom pre-kindergarten teacher where, she said, the Welcoming Schools training took place in 2015-16. She said she had no recording or notes taken during the training but pointed us to a Concerned Parents of Austin website presenting what appeared to be part of the training presentation. According to one training module, ""What is Gender?,"" presenters were to get teachers to ""recognize that gender expression is a social construct, without meaning other than the meaning we have given it."" School district responses Seeking a full grasp on what teachers were taught and what students are told, we queried the Austin district. By email, a spokeswoman, Tiffany Young, initially conveyed a statement from Peter Price, district director of social and emotional learning, stating that in the 2014-15 through 2016-17 school years, 24 elementary campuses requested and received Welcoming Schools ""professional development,"" which Price described as a ""training for teachers to provide safe, supportive, inclusive environments for students and their families and to create a conversation among adults on campus to examine our language and practices."" In each instance, Price, said, a letter was sent home at the start of the school year and parents were invited to attend a module. Young emailed us an undated letter to parents stating the training focuses on embracing family diversity, ending bullying and avoiding ""gender stereotyping and accepting diverse gender identities."" From the parent letter: ""Pressure to conform to specific gender roles can limit a child’s development by limiting experiences and expectations. We believe it is important to allow all students to reach their full potential and to feel safe expressing their individuality."" So, are students taught that gender is fluid? In a follow-up statement, Price said ""one of the biggest misconceptions about our Welcoming Schools training for teachers is that they turn around after the training and present a curriculum/lessons to students about LGTBQ topics. That does not happen. The training is for adults, so they can be better prepared to welcome all students to our schools and to ensure all students feel safe and valued. There is no curriculum or lessons for the students."" We later connected with Lisa Goodnow, the district’s executive director for academic and social emotional learning, who said by phone that children in pre-kindergarten are taught about health and safety issues, not gender identity. Human sexuality gets taken up in middle and high school, Goodnow said. Goodnow emailed us a document showing topics addressed in the district’s human sexuality curriculum from kindergarten through fifth grade. Human sexuality gets mentioned in third grade, the document says, with puberty discussed in fifth grade; there’s no direct mention of gender identity in the document. When we asked Young about Austin schools doing the Welcoming Schools training in 2017-18, she replied that no schools were doing so but the district was ""looking into creating its own training program in the future for teachers and is taking the next year to develop it."" Documentation At our inquiry, the district also gave access to hundreds of pages of emails and other documents from recent years about the Welcoming Schools trainings and gender-related topics. We didn’t spot material suggesting teachers were telling students that gender is fluid. But documents did show interest among teachers and other staff in helping students come to terms with gender identity issues. Among the documents: --A 2015 paper, ""Beyond the Gender Binary: A Group for Teens,"" suggesting middle and high schools could provide opportunities for students to explore ""the many facets of gender identity and increase feelings of well-being in trans youth."" --A 2015 email from Superintendent Paul Cruz to principals and staff sharing changes in policy adopted by the school board to protect gender identity and expression. The email said: ""Gender identity refers to a person’s innate, deeply felt psychological identification as male, female or another gender. Gender expression refers to the external manifestation of a person’s gender identity, which or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine."" Cruz’s email further said he hoped to see the Welcoming Schools curriculum extended to all campuses. --A 2016 email from a district official to another sharing a CNN story on what it means to be ""gender-fluid."" --A Welcoming Schools packet about using books in grades one through three to look at gender stereotyping. --A list of ""gender identity"" books for students including picture books for students starting in pre-k. ""Adventures of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy,"" the list says, follows Tulip ""as he deals with the birthday wishes of all the nine-year-olds in North America. Tulip receives a wish from a child known as David to live as Daniela. He doesn’t know how to help, so he seeks the wise counsel of the Wish Fairy Captain."" Another listed book: ""All I Want to Be is Me,"" is described as giving voice ""to the feelings of children who don’t fit gender stereotypes, and who just want to be free to be themselves. Includes children who are fluid in their gender identity, as well as those that feel their body doesn’t match who they really are,"" the summary says. Human Rights Campaign We also heard back from the Human Rights Campaign about its training materials. By email, spokeswoman Sarah McBride provided responses from Johanna Eager, director of Welcoming Schools, who said: ""We do not say that gender is a choice, but in workshops with educators, Welcoming Schools does reference the research and data which demonstrate that children begin to understand their gender identity as early as the age of four."" We looked over the foundation’s suggested Welcoming Schools lesson plans, noticing that none focus on children in pre-kindergarten and the lesson plan on ""understanding transgender children"" contains no language saying children should be told gender identity is fluid though there’s reference to gender as a spectrum. That particular lesson plan, intended for teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade, lists among goals the expansion of ""students’ perception and understanding of gender"" and also understanding ""what it means to be transgender using developmentally appropriate language for younger students."" The plan also calls for students to read and discuss a nonfiction story, ""I Am Jazz,"" and it says students ""will learn new vocabulary words related to gender."" From the publisher’s summary of the story: ""From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl's brain in a boy's body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and didn't feel like herself in boys' clothing. This confused her family, until they took her to a doctor who said that Jazz was transgender and that she was born that way. Jazz's story is based on her real-life experience and she tells it in a simple, clear way that will be appreciated by picture book readers, their parents, and teachers."" The lesson plan says teachers should understand before reading the book to students ""that gender is a spectrum, not a binary, and that we all express ourselves in many different ways along that spectrum. Each child is an individual with their own unique expression of who they are in the world,"" the plan says. Definitions offered with the lesson plan include: ""GENDER IDENTITY: How you feel — male, female, neither or both. This can be different from the anatomy that you were born with (sex assigned at birth)."" ""TRANSGENDER/TRANS: When your gender identity (how you feel) is different than how your body is (your anatomy). When a person with a boy body feels like a girl inside their heart and brain. Or, when a person with a girl body feels like a boy inside their heart and brain. "" ""GENDER BINARY: The idea that there are two distinct and opposite genders — male and female / boy and girl. This idea is limiting and doesn’t allow for the many ways that children and adults express themselves."" We followed up with Young, who noted by email that the Austin district didn’t adopt the Welcoming Schools curriculum for classroom instruction. Further, she said: ""We are not aware of any elementary school teachers who are teaching gender fluidity."" Our ruling Hodge said: ""Schools in Austin Independent School District are teaching children as young as 4 years old that their gender is fluid – that they’re not a boy or a girl and they can choose whichever gender they want."" Hodge didn’t deliver proof of Austin students including toddlers getting told that gender is fluid nor did we confirm such instruction. It’s clear otherwise that the district has put energy into teachers understanding that each child comes to terms with gender identity among developmental issues. Teacher training materials include a lesson plan describing gender identity varying along a spectrum. – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression." Claim: Schools in Austin Independent School District are teaching children as young as 4 years old that their gender is fluid – that they’re not a boy or a girl and they can choose whichever gender they want.

A:
0
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