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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Randy Ratledge doesn’t get out much. Since he was arrested in 2012, Ratledge, 61, has a fear of the police. He doesn’t like leaving his home, and definitely doesn’t like coming downtown, where he was locked up for 117 days. He faced 120 years in prison, and under the state’s minimum mandatory laws, a judge would have had no choice but to impose that sentence if he’d been convicted. [For more on this story by Larry Hannan, go to...

M entorship in middle and high school has the power to impact the course of students’ academic and personal life trajectories. Human connection built on trust is the glue that binds students’ academic and personal lives and helps them make sense of their futures; it’s also the reason that most teachers enter education in the first place. One of three foundational components of the Summit Learning experience, 1:1 mentorship allows all students the chance to meet with a dedicated teacher or...

Donald Trump voters, and people who identify with similar political movements in other nations, are perhaps best described as angry nationalists. But consider, for a moment, just how odd and seemingly contradictory that description is. White populists complain they are losing ground to minorities in terms of status and power. At the same time, they assert with increasing belligerence that their country is the greatest in the world. On its face, this pair of claims is puzzling: Why would your...

By P. Berman, K. Hecht, & A. Hosack I am going to figure this mother thing out. I will be a great mom like I promised God. He made Davy love me like I asked; Mrs. Carson said so! While Davy was napping the next day, Claire went back to www.zerotothree to learn more about her Davy; yes, Claire was really feeling like he was “her” son and when she said this to herself, it felt good. She was going to learn everything on this site and then she would be a great mother – not a waste of space.

In the summer of 2018, Ascend convened more than two dozen state and national policymakers and content experts in the fields of health and early learning for the Aspen Early Childhood and Health Forum in Aspen, Colorado, to discuss the growing potential to leverage the 2Gen approach at the state level and identify emerging innovations with potential for scale. To embrace new funding streams and opportunities to integrate 2Gen into policies and programs to improve economic stability for...

My 16-year old client – a young woman who had already spent several years in foster care – just wanted to share her story in court. She hoped to tell the judge the ways in which group home staff were mistreating her. She wanted an outlet to share her dreams about what she was going to accomplish after exiting the system. She craved the opportunity to hear – firsthand – what was happening in her case. Her case was about her. She desired to be a part of it. Yet, hearing after hearing, the...

Psychologist John Van Dreal has spent almost 30 years working with troubled kids. Still, it's always unsettling to get the kind of phone call he received one morning eight years ago as he was on his way to a meeting. "I got a call from the assistant principal at North [Salem] High, reporting that a student had made some threats on the Internet," remembers Van Dreal, the director of safety and risk management for Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Salem, Ore. Threats of violence in a Facebook...

For the first time, a national health panel has recommended a way to prevent depression during and after pregnanc y. This condition, known as perinatal depression, affects up to one in seven women and is considered the most common complication of pregnancy. The panel, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, said two types of counseling can help keep symptoms at bay. Its recommendation means that under the Affordable Care Act, such counseling must be covered by insurance with no...

I was running errands this weekend with my preschooler, who operates at a leisurely pace under nearly all circumstances. Clutching my shopping list, I headed straight for the produce section as soon as I entered the grocery store. He decided to stop at the floral section. He picked out a bouquet, placed it in our shopping cart, and said, “This one is beautiful for you, Momma.” My son reminded me that love is a good reason to pause—and a recent study by psychologist Mirka Hintsanen and her...

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1552. He even described “more than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the same reason depopulated, and the land laid waste. On these islands I estimate there are 2,100 leagues of land that have been ruined and depopulated, empty of people.” Now a new study adds hard data, documenting the global cost of colonialism. Why does it matter? Because the invasion of the Americas changed everything on the...

America puts more people in jail and prison than any other country in the world. Although the country has managed to slightly reduce its prison population in recent years, mass incarceration remains a fact of the US criminal justice system. It’s time for a radical idea that could really begin to reverse mass incarceration: capping all prison sentences at no more than 20 years. It may sound like an extreme, even dangerous, proposal, but there’s good reason to believe it would help reduce the...

It looks like Congress may have reached a deal on immigration enforcement and border security to avoid another government shutdown, but President Trump says he is not happy. One of the major stumbling blocks in the negotiation has been an argument between Democrats and Republicans over limiting the number of spaces the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has available to detain immigrants while their cases are being adjudicated. Since taking office, the Trump administration’s ramp up...