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By Nick McCrea, BDN Staff Posted Sept. 01, 2016, at 5:43 p.m. NEW GLOUCESTER, Maine — A nonprofit that works with youth at risk of not making it through high school has applied to fill the last open charter school slot in the state. New Gloucester-based Wayfinder Schools wants to start Wayfinder Academy, which would begin with about 100 high schoolers, primarily teen parents and other at-risk youth. The group already runs residential and home-based programs for about 80 teens who risked...

Date: September 1, 2016 Source: Elsevier Science Daily The children of traumatized people have long been known to be at increased risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and mood and anxiety disorders. However, according to Rachel Yehuda from the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who led a new study in Biological Psychiatry , there are very few opportunities to examine biologic alterations in the context of a watershed...

Futures Without Violence has developed a funding guide for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). They hope the guide will be useful in your efforts to ensure that all students can attend school safe, healthy, and ready to learn. The United States Department of Education will be issuing both regulations and non-regulatory guidance in the weeks and months ahead to provide additional clarity about ESSA. We encourage you to visit the Department’s dedicated website to ESSA, www.ed.gov/essa, for...

You might call it a silent epidemic. Up to one in five kids living in the U.S. shows signs or symptoms of a mental health disorder in a given year. So in a school classroom of 25 students, five of them may be struggling with the same issues many adults deal with: depression, anxiety, substance abuse. And yet most children — nearly 80 percent — who need mental health services won't get them. Whether treated or not, the children do go to school. And the problems they face can tie into major...

One city’s attempt to professionalize early education could be a model for the nation. “We believe that preschool is an integral part of the public school system and public school should be universally available because every child can benefit from it,” said Josh Wallack, Deputy Chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education. “Therefore, preschool should be universal.” The changes have come with new money and support to ensure that the city is not only offering preschool to all, but...

Many of us have experienced in the distant past, the reality that in the US if one worked hard, studied hard, did well in school, one could move up the "ladder of economic opportunity," even those of us who grew up in extreme poverty. For me personally, this reality was my hope (and my only source of resilience at the time) that I might be able to escape severe adversity, homelessness and foster care. My goal at that time, "I will never be like my parents." I was going to be someone...

The first bullet under Early Diagnosis and Intervention of today’s release of Hillary Clinton’s mental health agenda is titled “ Increase public awareness and take action to address maternal depression, infant mental health, and trauma and stress in the lives of young children.” It states “We also know that infant mental health depends on children forming close and secure relationships with the adults in their lives, and that too many children are growing up in environments that cause them...

From 1999 to 2013, California’s Academic Performance Index boiled down everything about the state’s K-12 public schools to a single number between 200 and 1,000. That type of accountability is going away, to be replaced by a more nuanced system that is under construction. In the old model, the desirability of neighborhoods or even whole communities hinged in part on their school’s API score. Careers were made or lost based on how far a school or district was from the magic 800 target number.

On a hot summer afternoon in Tucson, Arizona, I decided to take a walk, visiting young people I care a lot about but don’t know. I didn’t walk alone, instead joining a group of remarkable community leaders. The heat didn’t bother us, nor did it stop us. We were walking with a purpose. Sheriff Chris Nanos, local pastor Grady Scott, and Tucson Unified School District dropout prevention specialist Lisa Gonzales walked with Abel Morado and me, knocking on the doors of students who have already...

On the first day of kindergarten, poor children are already behind . But the distance they need to cover to start school on par with richer kids has shortened – in spite of widening economic inequality – according to surprising new research co-authored by Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) Professor Sean Reardon . The study, conducted with Stanford GSE alumna Ximena Portilla, compared the achievement gaps between high- and lower-income children kindergarten in 1998 and 2010 using...

Brandy Young kicked off the new school year with a note for her kids to pass on to their parents. When it made its way to social media, it quickly went viral: Her note struck a powerful chord with parents everywhere . So far, it's been shared nearly 70,000 times by moms and dads who are tired of playing "homework police" or just want a little more quality time with their kids at night. Brandy Young is right: The research on the effectiveness of homework is a mixed bag , especially for kids...

Philly’s youngest students will no longer be suspended from school for misbehavior. The School Reform Commission announced today that it has approved revisions to the Student Code of Conduct that will remove suspensions as punishment for Kindergarten students. “We remain focused on academic achievement, children reading on grade level, and college and career readiness. The early years are the most important, and we need students in school,” said Superintendent William Hite in a statement .