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Completing Advanced Placement (AP) coursework is an important part of the selective college admissions process, and access to AP coursework can be viewed as a measure of equal opportunity. Relatively little research has fully examined how access to AP coursework is mediated by school characteristics. Rural schools are at a particular disadvantage in promoting AP success due to a lack of sufficiently prepared students, teaching constraints, and other logistical challenges. This study uses regression to analyze AP access, enrollment, and success across a rich data set of U.S. school districts. We find that remote, small, and poor rural schools are considerably less likely to offer any AP courses. Even for rural schools that do offer AP coursework, enrollment and success rates lag well behind more urban and affluent schools. We explore potential policy solutions and examine alternative advanced coursework options for those rural schools that do not offer AP.

The Excellent Educators for All initiative is the most recent federal policy effort to address unequal access to teacher quality in the United States. States were required to submit equity plans to the U.S. Department of Education that detailed how to ensure that poor and minority children do not receive instruction from less qualified teachers. States could extend their plans to include rural students, although this was not a statutory requirement. Past federal reform efforts around raising teacher quality have been widely criticized as being overly prescriptive, and ultimately failing to account for the unique contexts of rural schools. We examine the extent to which rural needs are addressed in all available state equity plans. We find that roughly half of U.S. states examine equity gaps along the urban-rural continuum, and roughly half propose rural-specific policy solutions to improve rural school staffing, although less than a third do both. States across the country employ a range of strategies in roughly equal measure, including grow your own programs, financial incentives, communities of practice, and capacity building. In addition to detailing findings and providing nuanced examples, this article also discusses implications for students and state policy.

Background: There are approximately 352,000 pharmacists practicing in the United States, with most (59%) being female. Editorial board membership and publications with a female as the first author in selected pharmacy journals has increased in the past 2 decades. This study determined whether these positive trends are also occurring in critical care pharmacy.Objective: To report publication rate and publication impact stratified by male and female gender among pharmacists designated Fellow of Critical Care Medicine (FCCM).Methods: Pharmacists designated FCCM from inception through the 2020 convocation year were identified in January 2021 using a list provided by the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Pharmacists were excluded if they were designated Master of Critical Care Medicine, did not have an active pharmacist license, or did not have data in the Scopus database. Data were collected in February 2021 including year of first publication, total number of publications, citations, and Hirsch index (h-index).Results: A total of 134 pharmacists were evaluable, including 76 males (57%) and 58 females (43%). Males had an earlier first publication year than females (2005 vs. 2010; P < 0.001). Males have produced a higher number of publications per individual pharmacist (29 vs. 13; P = 0.002) and a similar number of publications per year (2 vs. 1; P = 0.05). When comparing publication impact, males generated more citations (384 vs. 139; P = 0.001) and had a higher h-index (10 vs. 6, P < 0.001). These trends persisted when data from only the past 5 years were used.Conclusion: There is statistically significant gender disparity in publication rate and impact. However, this disparity seems to be decreasing with time as the rate of females designated FCCM is increasing. This is consistent with an overall increase in the proportion of pharmacists who are female and deserves further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study that surveyed reporting practices for expedited safety reports of industry sponsors for Investigational New Drug (IND) in the medical products industry. Topics covered include expedited timeframe reporting with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for serious adverse events (SAEs) and the institutional review board (IRB). Conclusions indicated benefits with reporting information on safety from aggregate analyses instead of focusing on expedited individual cases.

Students served in alternative and segregated settings tend to receive educational services that are not on par with their public school peers. To develop a better understanding of the problem, the authors conducted a national study of secondary psychiatric schools in the United States. Specifically, the authors administered a survey to mathematics teachers in psychiatric schools to investigate (a) student and classroom level characteristics, and (b) special education mathematics teachers' reported use of research-supported instructional practices with students classified with a learning disability (LD) or emotional/behavioural disorder (ED). The majority of the participating teachers stated that most of their students performed below grade level in mathematics. Teachers also reported frequently using a number of research-supported practices, including components of explicit instruction, strategy instruction, real-world problem solving, and instructional adaptations. However, the respondents also indicated that they seldom or never used a number of other research-supported practices. The authors provide implications for practice and future research based on the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stock car racing is one of the largest spectator sports in the United States. However, the experience of the driver participant has been largely unresearched. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between stock car driver performance, mental skills, and experience. Twenty male stock car drivers from throughout the United States participated. The Psychological Skills Inventory for Sports-R5 (PSIS-R5) was used to assess participants' use of mental skills. Success was evidenced by the drivers' track points ranking, regional, and national ranking. A Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to examine the relationships between these variables. Track points ranking (percentile) was negatively correlated with mental preparation (R = - 0.46, P = 0.004) and anxiety coping (R = -0.53, P = 0.028). The participants' age was negatively correlated with motivation (R = -0.56, P = 0.023). The participants' motivation was correlated with selfconfidence (R = 0.48, P = 0.047), mental preparation (R = 0.48; P = 0.03), and team emphasis (R = 0.46, P = 0.04). Concentration was correlated with self-confidence (R = 0.64, P = 0.002) and anxiety coping (R = 0.65, P = 0.002). Self-confidence was correlated with anxiety coping (R = 0.64, P = 0.003). Mental preparation was correlated with team emphasis (R = 0.50, P = 0.024). Stock car drivers, as well as sport psychologists who work with them, should emphasize strategies designed to reduce anxiety and should employ mental skills training to increase racing success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Examines the distribution, practice and attitudes of maternal-fetal medicine specialist in the United States. Expansion of education in obstetrical perinatology; Determination of patients with medical and surgical disorder; Evaluation of the health care system.

Background: The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of dental caries in Quebec adults aged 35 to 44. Methods: A stratified sample was used. The participation rate was 77% for the questionnaire and 44.5% for the oral examination. A total of 2,110 people were examined. The World Health Organization's caries criteria were used. Examiner agreement with gold standard dentist was excellent at the end of the nine-day training session (Kappa index > 0.8). Results: The level of caries experience is very high in Quebec adults aged 35 to 44. Almost half of dental surfaces (65 of 148) have been affected. These surfaces are mostly missing (39.3) or filled (23.9). However, there were 1.8 decayed surfaces in need of treatment per adult, and more than half the people (55.5%) had no untreated decayed surfaces. Almost three-quarters of decayed surfaces were present in only 14% of the people; lower family income and lower education are risk factors. Conclusion: Comparison between Quebec and industrialized countries (United States, England and the Netherlands) shows that in adults 35 to 44, the mean number of decayed teeth is low (between 1.0 and 2.2) and the mean number of filled teeth is relatively similar (between 9.6 and 11.1); however, Quebec has a higher percentage than the United States of edentulous people. As well, in dentate adults, there are 1.6 times more missing teeth among Quebecers than among Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]