June 2017

This brief examines the research on community schools, with two primary emphases. First, it explores whether the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opens the possibility of investing in well-designed community schools to meet the educational needs of low-achieving students in high-poverty schools. And second, it provides support to school, district, and state leaders as they consider, propose, or implement a community school intervention in schools targeted for comprehensive support. [For...

Has the conversation swirling around replacing the Affordable Care Act focused on the wrong thing? For weeks the steady stream of tweets, studies, numbers, and pleas to save Obamacare has largely focused on the people who gained coverage through the health law’s state insurance exchanges. But under the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, in my view the most important feature of the law, far more people gained health insurance coverage. For millions of people, that was the first time in their lives...

The spiral of opioid addictions and overdoses is unrelenting. But there are bright spots all across the country: Men and women working in classrooms and courtrooms, in private labs and public offices, in clinics and on the street — all trying to find the next big way to save lives. STAT has identified 12 potential game changers that could begin to bend the curve of the opioid epidemic. Some of these are experimental ideas, not yet subjected to rigorous clinical trials or peer review. But...

A new policy brief (attached) issued this week by the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) forcefully develops the case for trauma-informed approaches to address the opioid crisis—to prevent and treat addiction—based on strong evidence that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at the root of the crisis. CTIPP is a national organization that advocates for trauma-informed prevention and treatment programs at the federal, state and local levels. Successful strategies to...

In an all-day workshop that Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) advisor Laura Porter was leading with community organizers and parents, she told the story of a woman from the Congo who had to leave her homeland. Before the woman left, she had a dream about living in the United States. The woman said she imagined opening her door, letting her children run free, hearing them laugh and play. She envisioned people asking one another, “How are you?” without any compulsion to evade...

Lance leans over his desk, his round belly situating his body tightly between the wooden chair and plastic desk—both too small for someone with his girth. A collection of yellow notepad papers, their edges frayed after being torn from their original binding, wrestle alongside one another in his hands. It is a Saturday morning, and the classroom is small, and silent but for the friction of Lance’s papers and the grinding on the pen he bites out of nervous habit. His large fingers fiddle about...

I t would have been a mistake to follow through with an initial plan to abruptly close North Highland Elementary School without taking time to consult with the community or to make plans. To her credit, Superintendent Aurora Lora has backed off from that approach . [For more of this story, written by John Thompson, go to https://nondoc.com/2017/06/27/north-highland-elementary-history/]

On Sunday , police officers in Seattle shot and killed Charleena Lyles in her home. She died in front of “several children,” according to reports, and her family members say she was pregnant. Just days before, Jeronimo Yanez, the Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop, was acquitted of all charges. Earlier this spring, an unarmed teenager named Jordan Edwards was shot and killed by police as he was driving away from a party. By now, it’s become a...

Human jobs in the future will be the ones that require emotional labour: currently undervalued and underpaid but invaluable Early last year, the World Economic Forum issued a paper warning that technological change is on the verge of upending the global economy. To fill the sophisticated jobs of tomorrow, the authors argued, the ‘reskilling and upskilling of today’s workers will be critical’. Around the same time, the then president Barack Obama announced a ‘computer science for all’...

Wilhelmina Delco learned to swim at 80. Harold Berman is in his 67th year practicing law. Mildred Walston spent 76 years on the job at a candy company. And brothers Joe and Warren Barger are finding new spots in their respective homes for the gold medals they’ve just earned in track-and-field events at the National Senior Games. These octogenarians and nonagenarians may not be widely known outside their local communities, but just as their more famous peers — think Carl Reiner, Betty White,...

Monique Taylor started developing mental health issues as a child following a traumatic sexual assault, but because she wasn't able to deal with the trauma as a child, she turned to methamphetamine as an adult. As a child, Taylor spent years being sexually assaulted by her stepfather and even after he was arrested, she had to relive the trauma through testimony at his trial and probation hearing. Years later, not only was she dealing with a mentally and physically abusive husband, but she...

The shooting death of Charleena Lyles, a 30-year-old pregnant mother of four, by Seattle police has brought anger and criticism yet again of the way police engage African Americans . The Seattle Police Department’s history of using excessive force and employing discriminatory practices against Black Seattleites prompted the 2011 U.S. Justice Department investigation into the SPD’s conduct, resulting in court-ordered reforms . In 2015, the SPD began training officers in crisis intervention...