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T he US federal government spends between $80 and $85 billion on information technology (IT) every year, or about 2 percent of its total budget. Much of that money is wasted on mismanaged programs—initiatives that deliver either the wrong thing or nothing at all. Our decrepit public IT infrastructure system has three root causes: Federal procurement rules are rigid and outdated, designed for a slower-moving era where the biggest problem was corrupt acquisition, not broken websites. The...

For the past five years, the  Hayward Unified School District has been focusing on its lowest-income neighborhoods, transitioning to a “community schools” approach that provides health, social and other services to students and their families. The East Bay Area district south of Oakland offers a case study in the potential of an approach whose goal is to transform schools into hubs for the entire community by offering a range of services, such as mental health...

Let me begin by saying I have experienced hunger. As the first person in my family to pursue and earn a post-secondary degree, there were times during that pursuit when I had no family support and little to no income. I struggled at times to get the nutrition I needed as I pursued my goals. But it was after I obtained my bachelor’s degree in psychology and began my career in various social work capacities that I witnessed real hunger and its effect on youth. Working as a case manager...

Alizah Olivo is eight years old and lives in the South Bronx. Her father, Nelson, works as the maintenance supervisor at a homeless shelter, and her mother, Carmen, registers admittances in an emergency room. Alizah has three brothers and one sister; she is the second youngest. The family’s apartment is on the fourth floor of a recently constructed apartment building on Washington Avenue, in the Morrisania section. On the building’s first and basement levels is the DreamYard...

Within the world of juvenile justice, law enforcement and corrections officials are re-examining theories and punishments associated with juveniles. This book is a valuable resource for academic courses designed to compare and contrast juvenile justice systems and gain an appreciation of how different cultures approach juvenile justice. But the potential audience also spans the judicial and general interest sectors. The text is organized, balanced and investigates a global concept of...

Most states continue to house youth in adult prisons, putting them at risk for physical and sexual abuse, says a new report. But as the number of youth in both juvenile and adult facilities decrease, states have the chance to end the practice of housing youth in adult facilities entirely, said the Campaign for Youth Justice in the report. [For more of this story, written by Sarah Barr, go to http://jjie.org/most-states-still-house-some-youth-in-adult-prisons-report-says/161302/]

About an hour after sunset recently, Ryan Hoffman rode his bike, a hot pink Huffy, into oncoming traffic on an unlit stretch of Highway 17-92 here. Hoffman, once a standout football player at the University of North Carolina , collided violently with a rusty white Ford Mustang, striking the front bumper and then slamming into the windshield with so much force it sounded like a gunshot. As the car skidded to a stop, Hoffman was hurled down the road. [For more of this story, written by Juliet...

Mark Zuckerberg is a dad! And he's marking the birth of his first child (and #GivingTuesday) with a promise to give away 99 percent of his shares in Facebook to make a brighter future. In an open letter to Max, their newborn daughter, Zuckerberg, 31, and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan, 30, pledged to give 99 percent of their shares in Facebook — worth about $45 billion today — over the course of their lifetime. The letter has a sweeping vision, traversing social and political...

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/when-grit-isnt-enough/418269/

Transitional kindergarten—the first year of a two-year kindergarten program for California children born between September 2 and December 2—is intended to better prepare young five-year-olds for kindergarten and ensure a strong start to their educational career. The goal of this study was to measure the success of the program by determining the impact of transitional kindergarten on students’ readiness for kindergarten in several areas. AIR researchers compared language,...

New research finds that an imbalance between two neurochemical systems in the brain is linked to posttraumatic stress disorder with the greater the imbalance, the more serious the symptoms. Researchers from Uppsala University and the medical university Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, found that people with posttraumatic stress disorder have an imbalance between two neurochemical systems in the brain, serotonin, and substance P. Experiencing a traumatic event is not uncommon...

Newspapers “reinforce ignorance” with simplistic reporting about mental health, the comedian Jo Brand has said as she condemned the current system of press regulation as a “sham”. The former mental health nurse spoke out on Tuesday about the reporting of suicide, in particular, after recent cases such as the death of actor Robin Williams and that of the 92-year-old woman said to have been “driven to kill herself” by charities bombarding her with requests...