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Parent involvement in students’ learning has been recognized as an important aspect of children’s education and is empirically related to students’ academic performance and engagement. In the present study we constructed a measure of parent involvement, drawing on items from the 2012 National Household Education Surveys (NHES) Program. Survey items included in the measure addressed parent participation in school activities, participation in school meetings, learning activities at home, learning activities in the community, and parent involvement in homework. The resulting measure of Parent Involvement in Children’s Learning (PICL) was used to investigate predictors associated with variation in parent involvement. Following a review of the literature on parent involvement, potential predictor variables were selected from the NHES data set, including child characteristics, family demographics, school characteristics, the child’s school experience, and parent satisfaction with school services. Preliminary multivariate linear regression models were created to screen potential predictors and the final multivariate linear regression model identified significant predictors of parental involvement. We consider how the correlates contribute to the evolution of the construct of parent involvement in children’s learning.

Disproportionate representation of minority students in special education remains a very controversial, unresolved issue. This synthesis summarizes historical perspectives and current knowledge about disproportionate representation with respect to: (a) definitions of disproportionate representation and related issues of interpretation; (b) national and state-level estimates of disproportionality for four ethnic groups; (c) legal, policy, research and teacher education responses to disproportionality; and (d) hypothesized causes and predictors of disproportionality. Authors stress the need for: coherent and well-articulated conceptual frameworks, responsible use and representation of data, research dialog that is informed by appreciation of the complex sociopolitical history and current context, and the need for effective advocacy to improve the educational success of minority students.

The Comprehensive Services Act for At Risk Youth and Families of Virginia (CSA), is a service, funding, and organizational reform initiative designed to improve the provision of child centered and family focused services within a community setting. We conducted this study in order to assess the feasibility of applying utilization management principles to the CSA in order to improve the appropriateness, quality, and cost effectiveness of this service delivery system. Data were gathered through focus groups, surveys, clinical profiling, and analysis of costs, and service utilization. While overall program costs increased since inception of the program, the costs per child served rose less than the rate of inflation. CSA appeared to be serving children with a high degree of emotional and behavioral difficulties. There was considerable variation among localities in placement patterns. A majority of survey and focus group respondents were willing to consider the application of utilization management principles to the CSA as long as decision making remained within localities. We concluded that there is a constructive role for utilization management approaches to improve the appropriateness and quality of services as well as enhancing efficiency in child mental health.

With the release of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health report (2003), mental health clinicians and researchers have displayed a new level of interest in the concept of “recovery” as it applies to individuals with mental illness. Previously, outside a relatively small group of consumers and advocates, the concept of recovery as it applied to mental illness was generally unknown or misunderstood. For some, “recovery” has carried with it a tinge of grubbiness—associations with addictions and the struggle to overcome them, visions of folk who appear to be living on the edge of society gathering anonymously in smoky rooms, and God knows what they do there. The popular meaning of recovery is generally associated with physical illness. Recovery has to do with healing or curing, the body overcoming an assault and returning to a state of normalcy like that experienced before the illness. Because of this association, and because of the assumptions about the chronicity of mental illness that have crept into our public consciousness, the application of the term to mental illness has sometimes been viewed as inappropriate or unrealistic. But recovery, in the context of mental illness, has become a movement that, for better or worse, has been institutionalized in the language of a federal commission report; and this fact has forced the field of child mental health to seek to understand what the term means for children and families. In some cases, recovery might mean that individuals must recover from the ill effects of a broken system of child mental health services. We might realistically ask: “To what extent has the child mental health system created the circumstances and contributed to the outcomes from which adults with mental illness must now recover?” With no doubt the best of intentions, we have at times promulgated treatment approaches and interventions that have actively diminished resiliency, adaptation, and personal management of the effects of mental illness. In some phases of our history, the field of child mental health has blamed, undermined, and attacked parents of children with mental disorders. The

Interpreting and responding appropriately to facial expressions of emotion are important aspects of social skills. Some children, adolescents, and adults with various psychological and psychiatric disorders recognize facial expressions less proficiently than their peers in the general population. We wished to determine if such deficits existed in a group of 133 children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The subjects were receiving in-patient psychiatric services for at least one of substance-related disorders, adjustment disorders, anxiety disorders, mood disorders or disruptive behavior disorders. After being read stories describing various emotional reactions, all subjects were tested for their ability to recognize the 6 basic facial expressions of emotion depicted in Ekman and Friesen's (1976) normed photographs. Overall, they performed well on this task at levels comparable to those occurring in the general population. Accuracy increased with age, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, or clinical diagnosis. After adjusting for age effects, the subjects diagnosed with either adjustment disorders, mood disorders, or disruptive behavior disorders were significantly more accurate at identifying anger than those without those diagnoses. In addition, subjects with mood disorders identified sadness significantly more accurately than those without this diagnosis, although the effect was greatest with younger children.

The number of children identified as mentally retarded by the special education system in the United States has declined dramatically over the past 15 years. Hypotheses regarding this decline have generally focused on changes in state definitions and social factors related to the stigma of the mental retardation classification. In the present study, we investigated differences in state definitions of mental retardation as well as demographic and economic variables as predictors of states' MR identification rates. Definition variables failed to relate significantly to identification rates while several race and per capita expenditure variables were significant predictors. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of investigating demographic and economic variables in understanding the variation in state MR identification rates.