Search

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), signed into law on January 8, 2002, states that its primary purpose is "to close the achievement gap through accountability, research-based instruction, flexibility and options for parents, so that no child is left behind." The goals of NCLB, according to the U.S. Department of Education, include improving the academic achievement of children in high-poverty schools, using scientifically based research to provide high-quality reading instruction for grades K-3, supporting charter schools, improving math and science education, supporting the use of education technology, and providing states with grants to help fund teacher professional development and training. In a recent Arts Education Policy Review issue, Laura Chapman shared her concerns regarding some of the implications of NCLB for arts education. This article focuses specifically on professional development policy within NCLB. (Contains 31 notes.)

Arts educators need specific professional development. Generic professional development alone will not work for arts teachers. Arts teachers also need more than one type of professional development as the narratives in the stories in this article make clear. The first music teacher provides narrative support for Bowles's research finding that music teachers are willing to and do seek and pay for their own professional development. The author also highlights what may be typical of large urban districts: (a) even content-specific professional development focuses more on "cheerleading" than on teacher learning (or student achievement), and (b) it may be hard for the large urban district to meet the variety of needs of all content specialists due to the sheer numbers of teachers and variety of teaching contexts. The experiences of the second teacher support the need for appropriate mentor and induction experiences for beginning arts teachers. It specifically provides support for the concept of two types of assistance for music teachers: general schoolwide and content-specific assistance. It leads the reader to believe that flexibility in design may be one of the keys to successful professional development. The story of the third teacher supports research that suggests that state music organizations should take a proactive role in providing content-specific professional development, which should not be left out of teacher in-service education. It is one's mastery of content that is a cornerstone of one's ability to teach. In addition, this particular story supports the concept of learning communities--places where arts teachers come together and focus on important issues of teaching and learning. (Contains 4 notes.)

Cyanobacterial mats collected in hypersaline salterns were incubated in a greenhouse under low sulphate concentrations ([ ]) and examined for their primary productivity and emissions of methane and other major carbon species. Atmospheric greenhouse warming by gases such as carbon dioxide and methane must have been greater during the Archean than today in order to account for a record of moderate to warm palaeoclimates, despite a less luminous early sun. It has been suggested that decreased levels of oxygen and sulphate in Archean oceans could have significantly stimulated microbial methanogenesis relative to present marine rates, with a resultant increase in the relative importance of methane in maintaining the early greenhouse. We maintained modern microbial mats, models of ancient coastal marine communities, in artificial brine mixtures containing both modern [ ] ( c. 70 m m) and ‘Archean’[ ] (<0.2 m m). At low [ ], primary production in the mats was essentially unaffected, while rates of sulphate reduction decreased by a factor of three, and methane fluxes increased by up to 10-fold. However, remineralization by methanogenesis still amounted to less than 0.4% of the total carbon released by the mats. The relatively low efficiency of conversion of photosynthate to methane is suggested to reflect the particular geometry and chemical microenvironment of hypersaline cyanobacterial mats. Therefore, such mats were probably relatively weak net sources of methane throughout their 3.5 Ga history, even during periods of low environmental levels oxygen and sulphate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicide prevention requires risk identification, appropriate intervention, and follow-up. Traditional risk identification relies on patient self-reporting, support network reporting, or face-to-face screening with validated instruments or history and physical exam. In the last decade, statistical risk models have been studied and more recently deployed to augment clinical judgment. Models have generally been found to be low precision or problematic at scale due to low incidence. Few have been tested in clinical practice, and none have been tested in clinical trials to our knowledge., Methods: We report the results of a pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) in three outpatient adult Neurology clinic settings. This two-arm trial compared the effectiveness of Interruptive and Non-Interruptive Clinical Decision Support (CDS) to prompt further screening of suicidal ideation for those predicted to be high risk using a real-time, validated statistical risk model of suicide attempt risk, with the decision to screen as the primary end point. Secondary outcomes included rates of suicidal ideation and attempts in both arms. Manual chart review of every trial encounter was used to determine if suicide risk assessment was subsequently documented., Results: From August 16, 2022, through February 16, 2023, our study randomized 596 patient encounters across 561 patients for providers to receive either Interruptive or Non-Interruptive CDS in a 1:1 ratio. Adjusting for provider cluster effects, Interruptive CDS led to significantly higher numbers of decisions to screen (42%=121/289 encounters) compared to Non-Interruptive CDS (4%=12/307) (odds ratio=17.7, p-value <0.001). Secondarily, no documented episodes of suicidal ideation or attempts occurred in either arm. While the proportion of documented assessments among those noting the decision to screen was higher for providers in the Non-Interruptive arm (92%=11/12) than in the Interruptive arm (52%=63/121), the interruptive CDS was associated with more frequent documentation of suicide risk assessment (63/289 encounters compared to 11/307, p-value<0.001)., Conclusions: In this pragmatic RCT of real-time predictive CDS to guide suicide risk assessment, Interruptive CDS led to higher numbers of decisions to screen and documented suicide risk assessments. Well-powered large-scale trials randomizing this type of CDS compared to standard of care are indicated to measure effectiveness in reducing suicidal self-harm. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05312437.

Background:  Electronic health records (EHRs) present navigation challenges due to time-consuming searches across segmented data. Voice assistants can improve clinical workflows by allowing natural language queries and contextually aware navigation of the EHR., Objectives:  To develop a voice-mediated EHR assistant and interview providers to inform its future refinement., Methods:  The Vanderbilt EHR Voice Assistant (VEVA) was developed as a responsive web application and designed to accept voice inputs and execute the appropriate EHR commands. Fourteen providers from Vanderbilt Medical Center were recruited to participate in interactions with VEVA and to share their experience with the technology. The purpose was to evaluate VEVA's overall usability, gather qualitative feedback, and detail suggestions for enhancing its performance., Results:  VEVA's mean system usability scale score was 81 based on the 14 providers' evaluations, which was above the standard 50th percentile score of 68. For all five summaries evaluated (overview summary, A1C results, blood pressure, weight, and health maintenance), most providers offered a positive review of VEVA. Several providers suggested modifications to make the technology more useful in their practice, ranging from summarizing current medications to changing VEVA's speech rate. Eight of the providers (64%) reported they would be willing to use VEVA in its current form., Conclusion:  Our EHR voice assistant technology was deemed usable by most providers. With further improvements, voice assistant tools such as VEVA have the potential to improve workflows and serve as a useful adjunct tool in health care., Competing Interests: None declared., (Thieme. All rights reserved.)