Early Childhood Systems Building from a Community Perspective

Even when children and their families have access to support services from a variety of programs and organizations -- such as early learning centers, nutrition programs, and pediatric, nursing, dental and mental health care providers -- there are challenges in connecting families to these services. The result is that families often have a difficult time learning about, applying for and taking advantage of the services that could benefit their children. This Issue Brief, prepared for The Colorado Trust by Julia Coffman of the Center for Evaluation Innovation and Susan Parker of Clear Thinking Communications, explains systems building as an intentional, organized way to create or improve a system of early care and education services for children

Speech and language skills of Maltese children with bilateral cochlear implants : three case studies

The purpose of this study was to document the speech and language skills of three Maltese children with bilateral cochlear implants. One child was simultaneously implanted and had a hearing age (HA) of 2;10 years at the time of testing, another was sequentially implanted and had a HA of 3;06 years, while the third child was sequentially implanted and had a HA of 5;03 years. Maltese standardised speech and language assessments were used to gather information on the children’s speech and language skills, with data being collected during their speech and language therapy sessions. Following data transcription and analysis, the participants’ speech and language abilities were compared to those of their HA- and chronological age (CA)-matched peers using available norms for Maltese children. Additional information regarding the children’s speech and language history prior to and post-implantation was also collected, providing a holistic overview of the participants’ speech and language development. Results indicated that the children presented with speech and language delay when compared to their CA-matched peers. Variations across the participants were found in specific language skills. Similarities in language patterns were also noted, including expressive abilities in advance of receptive skills. These findings extend the limited data on the speech and language skills of Maltese children with cochlear implants, with comparison to norms for typically-developing children being a novel approach to research in this area.peer-reviewe

The Impact of a Summer Workshop: Staff Orientation at Mesa Community College

The Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers (ACEPT) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project to reform teacher preparation in Arizona. One of the major modes for initiating both collaboration and reform between and among university and community college staff has been the Summer Faculty Enhancement Workshops developed and offered by ACEPT co-principal investigators each summer since 1996. The summer of 1999 featured five workshops, one of which was the Geology Summer Workshop which brought participants into close contact with eighteen reformed practices appropriate for large lecture style classes. One of the nineteen participants was Ray Grant, Department of Science Chair at Mesa Community College, one of the collaborating institutions in ACEPT. This report describes what Ray, as department chair, did as a follow-up to the summer workshop. What occurred completely transformed the Department of Science staff orientation meeting held just prior to the fall semester. Some of the surprising events are described in this report. The transformation of the staff meeting not only speaks to the impact of the Geology Summer Workshop, but also suggests creative roles for staff orientation meetings in community college settings

Social Security: The Chilean Approach to Retirement

[Excerpt] This CRS report focuses on the Chilean individual retirement accounts system. It begins with a description of the U.S. Social Security policy debate, along with a brief comparison of Chile and the United States. Next, the report explains what Chile’s individual retirement accounts system is and how it works. The pension reform bill sent to the Chilean Congress for debate in 2007 is also discussed. The report does not address other components of Chile’s social security system, such as maternity, work injury, and unemployment

Building Community Partnerships in Support of a Postsecondary Completion Agenda

This report highlights key lessons from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Community Partnerships portfolio evaluation. It assesses the communities' progress over the course of the investment, and describes their work in the areas of building public commitment, using data, building and sustaining partnerships, and aligning policies and practices. The OMG Center served as the national evaluator of this initiative and the report also discusses the steps these communities can take to sustain their programs

Wolf-Rayet stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud as testbed for massive star evolution

The majority of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars represent the stripped cores of evolved massive stars who lost most of their hydrogen envelope. In low metallicity environments, such as the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), stellar winds are weaker and binary interaction is expected to dominate WR-star formation. However, the WR binary fraction appears to be ~40% at any metallicity. We use the recently determined physical properties of the twelve known SMC WR stars to explore their possible formation channels through comparisons with grids of SMC models, simulated with the detailed stellar evolution code MESA. These include models of rapidly rotating single stars, which experience (partial) chemically homogeneous evolution (CHE). We find that CHE is not able to account for the majority of the SMC WR stars. However, the apparently single WN star SMC AB12 and the double WR system SMC AB5 (HD 5980) appear consistent with this channel. We also analyze core helium burning stellar models assuming constant hydrogen gradients in their envelopes. We find a dichotomy in the envelope hydrogen gradients required to explain the observed temperatures of the SMC WR stars. Shallow gradients are found for the WR stars with O star companions, consistent with binary models where mass transfer occurs early, which is in agreement with their binary properties. On the other hand, much steeper hydrogen gradients are inferred for the group of hot apparently single WR stars. Since the hydrogen profiles in post main sequence models of massive stars become steeper with time, we conclude that these stars have likely been stripped by a companion during a phase of common envelope evolution. The companions, either main sequence stars or compact objects, are expected to still be present. A corresponding search might identify the first immediate double black hole binary progenitor with masses as high as those detected in GW150914.Comment: 17 pages, 23 figures, accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysic