Youth development program helps kids get out of poverty in adulthood

 

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949982

 

 News Release 18-Apr-2022
Study measured outcomes after 33-year follow-up with program alumni
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

 

A free youth development program serving Black children and teens living in a low-income segregated community demonstrated positive long-term educational and financial outcomes in its alumni, according to a study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago published in the journal BMC Public Health.

A 33-year follow-up revealed that alumni graduated from college at twice the rate of their peers who did not participate in the youth development program. For each year of program enrollment, alumni were 10 percent more likely to complete college. Alumni also were more likely to save money at the end of the month and to report a better standard of living than their parents.

-----

 

How does homeschooling affect adolescents’ character, health and well-being?

 

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/933673

 

 News Release 10-Nov-2021
Peer-Reviewed Publication
PLOS

Compared to peers at public schools, adolescents who are homeschooled are more likely to report greater character strengths and fewer risky health behaviors later in life, but are less likely to attain a college degree, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, US, and colleagues.

-----

Few statistically significant differences were seen between children who attended public schools, private independent schools and private religious schools. However when comparing students who were homeschooled with those that attended public schools, some differences emerged.  Homeschooled children were more likely to report volunteering activities (β=0.33, 95% CI 0.15-0.52, p<0.002), forgiveness of others (β=0.31, 95% CI 0.16-0.46, p<0.002) and religious service attendance (RR=1.51, 95% CI 1.27-1.80, p<0.002) but less likely to have attained a college degree (RR=0.77, 95% CI 0.67-0.88, p<0.002). They were also somewhat less likely to have used marijuana, had a lower number of lifetime sexual partners, and a greater sense of mission. The results were limited by the fact that the children were all children of nurses and were mostly non-Hispanic White; findings may not be generalizable to other populations.

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New research shows learning is more effective when active

 

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/929505

 

 News Release 30-Sep-2021
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Carnegie Mellon University

 

Engaging students through interactive activities, discussions, feedback and AI-enhanced technologies resulted in improved academic performance compared to traditional lectures, lessons or readings, faculty from Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute concluded after collecting research into active learning.

The research also found that effective active learning methods use not only hands-on and minds-on approaches, but also hearts-on, providing increased emotional and social support.

-----

 

 

Study finds praising middle school students improves on-task behavior by up to 70%

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/926483

 

News Release 25-Aug-2021
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Brigham Young University

 

Students speaking out of turn, texting, telling rude jokes, falling asleep in class, making distracting gestures — managing these behaviors is all in a day’s work for many middle school teachers, who shepherd adolescents through some of their most trying years. Add in the disruptions of a global pandemic to exacerbate student anxiety and depression, and this year middle school teachers may find themselves with more challenging behaviors to address than ever before.

But a recent BYU paper points out the power of focusing on the positive in sixth through eighth grade.

The study found that when middle school teachers praised students at least as often as they reprimanded them, class-wide on-task behavior improved by 60–70%. Students at high risk for emotional and behavioral disorders were also more likely to be on task, and their classroom marks went up by a full letter grade, compared to high-risk students in classrooms where teachers rarely offered praise. While there was no magic ratio, when teachers praised students more often than correcting them, or even stopped reprimanding completely, behavior improved dramatically — every bit of praise counts.

•••••

Study finds boys' dislike for reading fiction is actually fiction!

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-07/tfg-sfb070521.php

 

News Release 6-Jul-2021
Taylor & Francis Group

 

Gender stereotypes around reading may be holding boys back in the classroom, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Inclusive Education.

In what is described as an 'unexpected' and 'significant' finding, fiction is the most favoured reading genre for schoolboys compared with non-fiction, comics and magazines.

Well over half (57%) of the boys said they liked fiction or story books 'a lot' according to research based on more than 300 pupils aged from seven to eight in Australia.

Girls were more likely to rate enjoyment of reading non-fiction more highly than boys (55% vs 51%).

The results have important implications for parents, teachers and policy-makers. They suggest that the range of boys' reading preferences may have been underestimated.


•••••

Library visits are 'particularly important for emerging readers' according to Scholes who says these may especially broaden the experience of boys and students from under-resourced homes. 

Greater access to birth control leads to higher graduation rates

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-05/uoca-gat050421.php

 

News Release 5-May-2021
Colorado family planning initiative closes women's graduation gap by 14%
University of Colorado at Boulder

 

When access to free and low-cost birth control goes up, the percentage of young women who leave high school before graduating goes down by double-digits, according to a new CU Boulder-led study published May 5 in the journal Science Advances.

The study, which followed more than 170,000 women for up to seven years, provides some of the strongest evidence yet that access to contraception yields long-term socioeconomic benefits for women. It comes at a time when public funding for birth control is undergoing heated debate, and some states are considering banning certain forms.


•••••

PSU study challenges idea that students with cognitive disabilities can't be in STEM

Seems to me that the language is misleading.  I would not say that these people have what I would think of as a "cognitive disability".

 

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-04/psu-psc042021.php

 

News Release 21-Apr-2021
Portland State University

 

A new Portland State study challenges the idea that youth with cognitive disabilities are unable or lack potential to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

In a study using national data on more than 15,000 adolescents, the researchers found that undergraduates with medicated ADHD or autism appear to be more likely to major in STEM than youth without cognitive disabilities, and youth with autism have the most positive STEM attitudes.

Dara Shifrer, the lead author and an associate professor of sociology at PSU, says that increasing access to STEM fields for youth with disabilities depends not only on encouraging them to pursue STEM majors but also to enroll in college because STEM occupations often require bachelor's degrees at higher rates.

"We need a diverse STEM workforce so innovation and technologies are meeting the needs of the whole populace," she said.

Shifrer said the findings counter the notion that all youth with cognitive disabilities lack potential and ability. Instead, she says their potential often remains untapped due to inconsistent and subjective disability classifications, placement in lower-level courses, and lower expectations that are then likely to lead to self-fulfilling prophecies of poorer academic achievement and attitudes.

Both achievement and attitudes are important for postsecondary STEM outcomes, she said. The study found that if a student identifies as a math or science person, feels efficacious in their abilities and perceives math and science as useful for their goals, they're more likely to major in STEM. While achievement is important for college enrollment, attitudes are more strongly associated with pursuing a degree in a STEM field.

 .....

Fewer kids are going to college because they say it costs too much

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/14/fewer-kids-going-to-college-because-of-cost.html

Published Sun, Mar 14 202110:00 AM EDT
Jessica Dickler
@jdickler


•••••

“I grew up with not a lot of money and that was a fear of mine — the money,” he said. “I would not be able to feasibly pay for college.”

Instead, Neuharth enlisted in the National Guard with an eight-year commitment. “This second option, this get-out-of-jail-free card, which was the military, seemed like a no-brainer.”

•••••

A year into the coronavirus crisis, many high school seniors have dramatically changed their expectations about the future.

A recent survey of high school students found that the likelihood of attending a four-year school sank nearly 20% in the last eight months — down to 53%, from 71%, according to ECMC Group, a nonprofit aimed at helping student borrowers.

High schoolers are putting more emphasis on career training and post-college employment, the report found.

More than half said they can achieve professional success with three years or less of college, and just one-fourth believe a four-year degree is the only route to a good job. ECMC Group polled more than 1,000 high school students three times over the last year.

Even before the pandemic, families were starting to question the return on investment, said Jeremy Wheaton, ECMC Group’s president and CEO.

″There is going to be a reckoning here.″

•••••

The price tag increasingly is a problem.

Tuition and fees plus room and board for a four-year private college averaged $50,770 in the 2020-21 school year; at four-year, in-state public colleges, it was $22,180, according to the College Board, which tracks trends in college pricing and student aid.

The significant increase in the cost of college has outpaced both inflation and — even more starkly — family income over recent decades.

•••••

For college-bound students and their parents, a whopping 98% of families said financial aid would be necessary to pay for college and 82% said it was “extremely” or “very” necessary, The Princeton Review found.

•••••

13-year-old girl lied about French teacher who was later beheaded, her lawyer says

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/samuel-paty-beheading-france-girl-lied/

March 9, 2021 / 4:46 PM

A 13-year-old schoolgirl confessed that she lied about a French teacher who was beheaded after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, according to the girl's lawyer. Samuel Paty, a secondary school teacher in a town near Paris, was killed last October by a radical Chechen teenager after showing the cartoons to students during a civics class about free speech.\

The unidentified girl told police that she lied about being in the class and falsely accused Paty of asking Muslim children to leave the class while he showed the pictures.

Her father, who has been charged in connection with the murder, posted several incendiary videos on Facebook based on his daughter's testimony which identified Paty.

"Everything in the investigation showed very early that she lied," the Paty family's lawyer Virginie Le Roy told RTL radio on Tuesday.

•••••

Adult life expectancy falling for those without a college degree

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uosc-ale030721.php

 

News Release 8-Mar-2021
Before COVID-19, adult life expectancy declined for less-educated Americans
University of Southern California

 

American adults without a college degree have experienced greater reductions in life expectancy when compared to their more-educated counterparts, USC and Princeton researchers have found.

The study reveals that after nearly a century of declining mortality up to the late 1990s, the progress continued into the 21st century for more-educated Americans but stalled for the population as a whole and reversed for the two-thirds of Americans who do not have a college degree.

The study appeared Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


•••••

"The United States has this increasingly sharp societal division between people who have a college degree and those who don't," said Deaton, Presidential Professor of Economics at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Distinguished Fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs, Emeritus, at Princeton. "If you don't have a four-year degree, not only have your wages been falling for 50 years but our study shows your adult life expectancy is also decreasing."

"America is the richest large country in the world, with frontier medical technology, yet we still see large declines for Americans without a four-year degree, even prior to the arrival of COVID-19," said study author Anne Case, the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus, at Princeton University. "Without a four-year college diploma, it is increasingly difficult to build a meaningful and successful life in the United States."

The researchers found that although the adult life expectancy gap widened between those with and without a college degree, it narrowed based on race. By 2018, the adult life expectancy of Black Americans with a bachelor's degree -- who in the past had a lower adult life expectancy than whites without a degree -- was closer to whites with a college degree than to Black Americans without a degree. This is in stark contrast with the larger racial divides of the 1990s.

•••••

"Good jobs have become increasingly rare for workers without a college diploma, many of whom have lost their jobs to globalization and automation and for whom the cost of employer-provided health care has increasingly priced them out of the high-quality labor market," said Deaton. "There has been a real loss of the pillars of working-class life, and it has contributed to this decline in adult life expectancy."

The study's data predate the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.

•••••

Case and Deaton predict the pandemic will only exacerbate the education divide in life expectancy. They point to the fact that those without a bachelor's degree are more likely to work in sectors where they may face a greater risk of exposure than those with college degrees who are more likely to be able to work at home.

In their book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Case and Deaton documented the deaths of despair -- a devastating epidemic that preceded COVID-19, taking the lives of 158,000 Americans in 2018 and contributing to the first three-year drop in U.S. life expectancy since the Spanish flu. They explored the struggles that have primarily affected those without a college degree, which led them to suicide, alcoholism, drug overdoses and premature death. 

Judge Merrick Garland has been tutoring 2nd graders at Northeast DC elementary school for 21 years

https://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/judge-merrick-garland-attorney-general-washington-dc/65-47e0fc16-a85e-4284-be52-52a8df69b791?fbclid=IwAR1nfJTE6aEbymM1VFRVLjhsfdT1l-KC32xMxDcsONewmyjLeG-omW4aSrM

 Author: Bruce Leshan
Published: 8:22 PM EST February 22, 2021
Updated: 12:31 AM EST February 23, 2021

"It goes to show the character of the man," says a D.C. mom whose children have gone from struggling to honor roll since Judge Garland started tutoring them.

He's been nominated for Supreme Court justice and Attorney General, but Judge Merrick Garland's favorite work may be at J.O. Wilson Elementary School in Northeast D.C.

He has tutored children at the school for more than two decades.

•••••



For nearly 22 years, a teacher at JO Wilson Elementary has picked a second grader to work with the judge. "I think that's the longest we've ever had anyone just stick to it," said Charlene Wilburn, a second-grade teacher, in a video released by the White House, when President Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2016.

Garland stays with the child at least until they go off to middle school. "This is an opportunity to affect a child's life," said Garland in the White House video. "This is an enormous opportunity to watch someone go from being a hesitant reader to a good reader."

The judge has recruited dozens of other people at the courthouse to help tutor too. "I think he's very committed to the students and making sure they know there are people in places of power that care about them," said Carolyn Lerner, a mediator at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where Garland is chief judge.


•••••

A School District Vowed to Stay Open, Until Its Staffing Ran Out

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/us/coronavirus-schools-georgia.html

By Dan Levin

    Jan. 21, 2021Updated 1:56 p.m. ET

•••••

Twice, Lizzy was forced to stay home for 14 days after exposure to infected classmates. The school closed its doors twice during the fall. Then, just after students returned from winter break, every school in the district shifted to remote classes as staffing shortages grew unmanageable and the local hospital was overwhelmed.

“This is what you get when you don’t try to protect the people in the schools,” said Lizzy, 17.

She attends River Ridge High School in Cherokee County, a largely white stretch of suburbs north of Atlanta that is among the state’s wealthiest. Despite heated opposition from some parents and teachers, the district’s approach to the fall semester reflected the urging of former President Donald J. Trump, who won nearly 70 percent of the county’s vote in November, and Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican: Open the schools, and keep them that way.

The community largely supported that direction, and teachers, who lack the union protections of their peers in some other parts of the country, had little power to push back.

Some families said they felt pressured to return — the district offered an unappealing remote alternative, and students enrolled in it couldn’t take certain courses or participate in sports. As a result, nearly 80 percent of the district’s 41,000 students chose to return in August for full-time, in-person classes.

When the doors opened, classrooms and hallways were crowded, football games were packed and masks were optional for students. Nearly 1,200 students were required to quarantine, and three high schools were closed temporarily within the first two weeks of the semester’s start.

•••••

That month, the family of a hospitalized middle school math teacher started a GoFundMe campaign to help pay his medical bills, and half of the district’s six high schools and an elementary school temporarily ceased in-person instruction and gave final exams online because of a rise in cases at each campus.

Yet the district maintained course, with many parents saying they were convinced the schools did the right thing by teaching in person.

•••••

Beckett Blencoe, 11, said he was floundering in virtual sixth grade, and even his parents have struggled to help him at times. In one case, they discovered that the material in his computer applications class matched that of a university marketing course.

“This kid just came out of elementary school, and he is basically teaching himself,” said his mother, Ashley Blencoe. “It’s really tough because he’s smart, but he’s getting no actual teacher instruction.”

Throughout the fall, as infections and quarantine orders continued to rise, some parents took to Facebook, urging others to keep sick children home and to stop testing them for the coronavirus or reporting positive cases to schools, out of fear that the district might shift to remote learning if enough cases were discovered.

“No sense in affecting other kids who need in-person schooling for academic success and those who need sports,” one mother wrote.

Many teachers said they were reluctant to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. But a local group called Educators for Common Sense and Safety lobbied on their behalf throughout the summer and fall for a student mask requirement and other safety precautions — without success.

•••••

At school board meetings, some parents expressed doubt about the need for masks and said they infringed on personal freedom. Their sentiments were echoed by board members, one of whom dismissed the idea of a student mask mandate as a “warm, feel-good fuzzy thing.”

•••••


The district had no plans to change anything for the spring semester, Barbara Jacoby, a spokeswoman for the schools, said in an email in December. “As long as we are operating in-person school during a pandemic, there will be positive cases among students and staff due to the virus circulating in our community,” she wrote.

All that changed on Jan. 8, when the superintendent, Brian V. Hightower, took a drastically different position in an email to families: More than 400 teachers and other staff members couldn’t report to school, he said, because they were infected or quarantined, and there weren’t enough substitutes to fill in.

“Cases are higher in our community, our state and our nation than ever before,” Mr. Hightower said. “Health experts are voicing concerns that a new Covid-19 strain now circulating in our nation will spread faster among everyone, including school-age children. Our hospitals are full.”

As a result, he closed all of the district’s schools and shifted to remote learning for at least a week to allow students, families and staff members “to get healthier.” Then it became at least two weeks. Dr. Hightower said the district remained committed to in-person instruction but could not operate safely with so many staff absences.

Tiffany Robbins, an English teacher at Dean Rusk Middle School and the president of the Cherokee Educators Association, bemoaned the fact that it took a staffing crisis for the schools to take significant action. “It’s not about safety,” she said.

She said that many people in the district had shown little interest in slowing down the virus, and that the constant disruptions had been the cost: “Our community hasn’t looked at this and said, ‘Oh, wow, maybe we could do something to mitigate the spread.’”

New study suggests that college campuses are COVID-19 superspreaders

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-01/tfg-nss011121.php

 

News Release 13-Jan-2021
Taylor & Francis Group

 

College campuses are at risk of becoming COVID-19 superspreaders for their entire county, according to a new vast study which shows the striking danger of the first two weeks of school in particular.

Looking at 30 campuses across the nation with the highest amount of reported cases, experts saw that over half of the institutions had spikes - at their peak - which were well above 1,000 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people per week within the first two weeks of class.

In some colleges, one in five students had been infected with the virus by the end of the fall term. Four institutions had over 5,000 cases.

In 17 of the campuses monitored, a new computer model developed by scientists at Stanford University shows outbreaks translated directly into peaks of infection within their home counties.

•••••

Tuition costs of colleges and universities

See the link below for more details.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

Question:
What are the trends in the cost of college education?

Response:

For the 2017–18 academic year, annual current dollar prices for undergraduate tuition, fees, room, and board were estimated to be $17,797 at public institutions, $46,014 at private nonprofit institutions, and $26,261 at private for-profit institutions. Between 2007–08 and 2017–18, prices for undergraduate tuition, fees, room, and board at public institutions rose 31 percent, and prices at private nonprofit institutions rose 23 percent, after adjustment for inflation. The price for undergraduate tuition, fees, room, and board at private for-profit institutions decreased 9 percent between 2007–08 and 2017–18, after adjustment for inflation.


•••••

Average total tuition, fees, room and board rates charged for full-time undergraduate students in public 4-year degree-granting institutions, in constant 2017–18 dollars

1985–86 : $8,798

2017–18 : $20,050

‘We’re No. 28! And Dropping!’

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/united-states-social-progress.html

By Nicholas Kristof
Sept. 9, 2020

This should be a wake-up call: New data suggest that the United States is one of just a few countries worldwide that is slipping backward.

The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s.

•••••

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being — nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more — to measure quality of life. Norway comes out on top in the 2020 edition, followed by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. South Sudan is at the bottom, with Chad, Central African Republic and Eritrea just behind.

•••••

The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th — having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.

“We are no longer the country we like to think we are,” said Porter.

The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities, but No. 91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality health care.

The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, and most other advanced countries have lower traffic fatality rates and better sanitation and internet access.

•••••

The decline of the United States over the last decade in this index — more than any country in the world — is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.

David G. Blanchflower, a Dartmouth economist, has new research showing that the share of Americans reporting in effect that every day is a bad mental health day has doubled over 25 years. “Rising distress and despair are largely American phenomenon not observed in other advanced countries,” Blanchflower told me.

•••••

Spill-over effects show prioritising education of very poorest improves attainment of all

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uoc-ses111720.php

News Release 19-Nov-2020
University of Cambridge

International development projects that target the education of the world's very poorest children and marginalised girls also significantly improve other young people's attainment, according to new research that suggests such initiatives should become a priority for international aid.

The newly-reported study, by academics at the University of Cambridge, is one of the first to measure the complete value that interventions targeting poor and marginalised children also have for many of their peers, principally through 'spill-over' effects which improve the wider education system.


•••••

Strikingly, for every $100 spent per girl, per year, the programme resulted in learning gains equivalent to an additional two years of education for all girls and boys at those schools.

•••••

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre, added: "While it may cost more to reach the most marginalised pupils, the impact of those efforts is far more impressive than we tend to imagine. This research explains why system reforms should focus on those who need the most support. Education systems that function for the most marginalised children function for everyone."

•••••

Pupils attending CAMFED-supported schools made significant academic improvements compared with their peers. The improvement in English test scores among girls receiving financial support was about 35% better than comparable girls in the control group. Other girls performed similarly, while the boys did about 25% better. Girls who received financial support were 25% less likely to drop out of school than those in the control group.

•••••

A wealthy businessman was charged with bribery over alleged payments of $1.5 million to get his sons into Harvard

https://news.yahoo.com/wealthy-businessman-charged-bribery-over-063042643.html

Sarah Al-Arshani
Tue, November 17, 2020, 1:30 AM EST

A wealthy Maryland businessman and the former Harvard fencing coach were arrested and charged with bribery on Monday for giving and accepting $1.5 million to get the businessman two sons accepted into the prestigious university, according to the US Attorney's Office in the District of Massachusetts.

According to federal prosecutors, in the span of five years, Jie "Jack" Zhao, the CEO of telecom company iTalk Global Communications, donated $1 million to a fencing charity "operated by a co-conspirator."

His oldest son was accepted into the university in December 2013 as a fencing recruit.

•••••

Zhao's younger son matriculated to Harvard in 2017, also as a fencing recruit. In the time since his initial donation, Zhao also paid for Brand's car, made college tuition payments for Brand's son, paid the mortgage on Brand's home in the suburb of Boston, and would later buy it above its market value. That allowed Brand to buy a more expensive home in Cambridge, which Zhao also paid to renovate, the US Attorney's Office alleges.

Brand was fired in 2019, following a Boston Globe investigation into the sale of his home. The Globe found that Zhao bought Brand's home which was worth $549,300, for close to $1 million and then sold it more than a year later for a loss of more than $300,000.

The former fencing coach never disclosed to the university that he accepted money prior to recruiting Zhao's two sons, federal prosecutors allege. 

Judge slams DeVos for rejecting 94% of loan relief claims

https://news.yahoo.com/judge-slams-devos-rejecting-94-181522331.html

 

COLLIN BINKLEY
,Associated Press•October 21, 2020

Months after vowing to process a backlog of 160,000 requests for loan forgiveness from students who say they were defrauded by their schools, the U.S. Education Department has rejected 94% of claims it has reviewed, according to a federal judge who is demanding justification for the “blistering pace” of denials.

In a biting decision issued Monday in California, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the department has been denying claims using template letters that are “alarmingly curt." Alsup threatened to suspend the agency from rejecting further requests, saying its approach “hangs borrowers out to dry.”

•••••

The dispute stems from a 2019 lawsuit brought by 160,000 borrowers who say the Education Department illegally stalled their claims for loan relief. The claims were filed through a program known as borrower defense, which forgives federal student loans for borrowers who are cheated by their colleges. It's most often used by students who attended for-profit colleges.

•••••

“We need to know what is really going on," wrote Alsup, who was appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton. He said DeVos will not be required to appear for deposition “at this time,” but he suggested it may be necessary later.

DeVos set out to overhaul the loan forgiveness program in 2017 and last year released new rules making it more difficult for borrowers to get loans erased. In the meantime, claims were piling up. When the lawsuit was filed, it had been a year since the department issued a final decision on any claim.

The program had been expanded by President Barack Obama to erase loans for students who attended the Corinthian Colleges chain and other for-profit colleges found to have lied about the success of their graduates. DeVos opposed the expansion, saying it made it too easy for students to get their loans erased at the expense of taxpayers.

•••••

Rejections were delivered through standardized letters that included information on how to appeal the decision, but Alsup said the letters fail to explain the decision. It leaves borrowers in a “disturbingly Kafkaesque" situation, he wrote.

•••••

Keeping COVID-19 out of classrooms: Open windows, use glass screens in front of desks

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/aiop-kco101420.php

News Release 20-Oct-2020
American Institute of Physics

As the COVID-19 virus continues to spread around the globe, studying aerosol and droplet transport within different environments can help establish effective, physics-informed measures for virus mitigation. One of the most important environments to gain a rapid understanding about COVID-19's spread is inside the school classroom.


•••••

They discovered opening windows increases the fraction of particles that exit the system by nearly 40%, while also reducing aerosol transmission between people within.

"Nearly 70% of exhaled 1-micron particles exit the system when windows are open," said Khaled Talaat, one of the authors. "And air conditioning removes up to 50% of particles released during exhalation and talking, but the rest get deposited onto surfaces within the room and may reenter the air."

Particles are transmitted in significant quantities (up to 1% of exhaled particles) between students -- even at 2.4 meters (7.8 feet) of separation distance because of air flow.

"The aerosol distribution within the room isn't uniform, because of air conditioning and source location," said Talaat. "Student position within the room affects the likelihood of transmitting particles to others and of receiving particles."

The researchers were surprised to find that glass droplet screens placed in front of desks significantly reduced the transmission of 1-micron particles from one student to another, according to Talaat.

"Screens don't stop 1-micron particles directly, but they affect the local air flow field near the source, which changes the particle trajectories," he said. "Their effectiveness depends on the position of the source with respect to the air conditioning diffusers."

For school reopenings, the group recommends keeping windows open when possible and installing glass screens in front of desks. Students at higher risk of COVID-19 complications can be seated where they are exposed to fewer particles, which will depend on the air conditioning layout within the room. 

School absences correlate to impaired air quality

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/uou-sac100920.php

News Release 9-Oct-2020
Even mildly elevated air pollution associated with increase in absences in Salt Lake City

University of Utah

In Salt Lake City schools, absences rise when the air quality worsens, and it's not just in times of high pollution or "red" air quality days--even days following lower levels of pollutions saw increased absences.

Research is still ongoing, and the evidence isn't yet conclusive enough to draw a cause-and-effect relationship between air quality and children's absences from school but the correlation, according to Daniel Mendoza, a research assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and visiting assistant professor in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, merits further exploration. Mendoza and his colleagues published their results in Environmental Research Letters.

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