The effectiveness of a targeted Title I pre-kindergarten program

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on June 2, 2009)Vita.Thesis (Ed. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2008.The focus of measure for this study was on readiness of children who attended a targeted Title I pre-kindergarten class a year prior to entering kindergarten. The purpose was to investigate the achievement in the areas of motor skills, mathematical concepts, language and pre-reading skills, and an overall composite as measured by the DIAL-3. Comparisons of those children who received the intervention to those who qualified but did not participate were conducted using independent sample t-tests. Of the 320 students with complete sets of data, 205 children participated in the targeted Title I intervention classroom, while 115 children were placed on the waiting list and were labeled as non-intervention. It was found, with statistical significance, the targeted Title I pre-kindergarten intervention program had a strong effect on the academic outcomes of all subgroups of all children who attended compared to children who qualified but did not attend. This significant difference included the differences between the subgroups of male, female, minority, and non-minority. Implications from this study indicated it would benefit children of academic need living in poverty to receive pre-kindergarten intervention. Additionally, school districts should monitor academic performance prior to the NCLB required years of grades three through eight. Monitoring should include the subgroups of race and gender to determine if Title I support is needed as young as pre-kindergarten.Includes bibliographical reference

Counseling in China: Implications for Counselor Education Preparation and Distance Learning Instruction

Counselor educators are preparing an increased number of international students to become counselors via online and distance education programs. There are also increasing mental health needs within schools and communities and limited counseling programs in the People’s Republic of China. The focus on educating and training Chinese and international students in Western counseling theories and practices is potentially limiting and fails to address the cultural differences among Chinese individuals. We discuss the implications for counselor education preparation through distance education and offer counselor educators culturally appropriate strategies and suggestions to best prepare students

NARRATIVES OF IRONY: ALIENATION, REPRESENTATION, AND ETHICS IN CARLYLE, ELIOT, AND PATER

In this study I argue that Victorian writers Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, and Walter Pater participated more fully than has previously been acknowledged in the aesthetic and ethical concerns surrounding romantic irony as it was articulated by philosophers such as Friedrich Schlegel and Søren Kierkegaard. In opposition to a twentieth-century critical trend that has tended to applaud German romanticism for its progressive insights, and dismiss nineteenth-century British texts as "regressive," I show how three key Victorian texts recognized, articulated, and sought to negotiate the phenomenon of irony. More specifically, I show that the ironic features of Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History, Eliot's Romola, and Pater's "Denys L'Auxerrois" are closely connected to the authors' concerns with, and attempts to formulate, a model of ethics in the face of the metaphysical indeterminacy that is a central feature of romantic irony.In Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History, I show how the narrator maps a gulf between language and referent onto a gulf between the social classes represented by the Sansculottes and the Girondin. This association of semiotic and political fragmentation suggests that for Carlyle, irony remained an external phenomenon, which may help explain why he sought an external solution to the chaos of the revolution by invoking the military force of the hero. In Eliot's Romola, I suggest that the sudden appearance of allegory toward the end of this otherwise realist novel serves as an indirect presentation of the heroine's ethical transcendence. The temporal nature of allegory reflects the novel's formulation of ethics as a process of forming character through repeated habits of action and thought—a process that recalls Kierkegaard's association of repetition with ethical choice. In Pater's "Denys L'Auxerrois" I show that the ability of art objects to conjure up living presence is presented ironically through a series of framing devices. This irony is closely connected to Pater's formulation of ethics as a matter of character-building through aesthetic exposure, but like Eliot and Kierkegaard, Pater presents this ethical model in an indirect aesthetic mode. This study helps deepen critical understanding of irony, ethics, and representation in Victorian texts

Potential health impacts of heavy metals on HIV-infected population in USA.

Noninfectious comorbidities such as cardiovascular diseases have become increasingly prevalent and occur earlier in life in persons with HIV infection. Despite the emerging body of literature linking environmental exposures to chronic disease outcomes in the general population, the impacts of environmental exposures have received little attention in HIV-infected population. The aim of this study is to investigate whether individuals living with HIV have elevated prevalence of heavy metals compared to non-HIV infected individuals in United States. We used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2010 to compare exposures to heavy metals including cadmium, lead, and total mercury in HIV infected and non-HIV infected subjects. In this cross-sectional study, we found that HIV-infected individuals had higher concentrations of all heavy metals than the non-HIV infected group. In a multivariate linear regression model, HIV status was significantly associated with increased blood cadmium (p=0.03) after adjusting for age, sex, race, education, poverty income ratio, and smoking. However, HIV status was not statistically associated with lead or mercury levels after adjusting for the same covariates. Our findings suggest that HIV-infected patients might be significantly more exposed to cadmium compared to non-HIV infected individuals which could contribute to higher prevalence of chronic diseases among HIV-infected subjects. Further research is warranted to identify sources of exposure and to understand more about specific health outcomes

Urban Partnerships Promoting Academic Excellence

Boston Public Schools (BPS) and the University preparation programs have developed a collaborative partnership that shares a vision for charting bright futures for all students. This program aims that incorporating service learning in curricula will prepare school counseling students to promote educational excellence and equity among urban youth, and Co-creating school counseling interventions between UMass Boston faculty and BPS personnel will foster communication and meet student needs

UMass Boston and Dever School: Supporting At-Risk Youth through Physical Activity

Given the consistently poor academic performances of Latino English Language Learners (ELL) students, coupled with the known academic and behavioral benefits of physical activity, we implemented a culturally sensitive physical activity-based intervention designed to develop responsibility through movement among ELL Latina 5th graders. Two UMass Boston professors and four graduate students partnered with faculty at the Dever School to deliver this strength-based intervention

Implementation of a School-Family-Community Partnership Model to Promote Latina Youth Development: Reflections on the Process and Lessons Learned

School counselors frequently partner with families and community organizations to promote youth development and achievement. However, challenges to implementing school-family-community partnerships often preclude developing and sustaining such relationships. In this article, the authors document the implementation of a school-family-community partnership model, which was applied across two years of collaborative counseling programming for two groups of Latina youth. Semi-structured interviews with participants, parents, and educators were conducted and analyzed using qualitative content analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the partnership and program implementation. The authors describe the outcomes of the partnership work and counseling programming as revealed by the findings, and offer reflections and lessons learned regarding the process, including implications for school counselors

Developing Counselor Self-Efficacy while Supporting At-Risk Youth: Partnership between UMass Boston, TechBoston Academy, and Urban Science Academy

Targeted supervision was used to develop counseling trainees’ self-efficacy when working with urban youth. Interview findings suggested that intentional strategies to develop urban self-efficacy were effective. While inferential statistics identified that urban fieldwork contributed to counselors’ self-efficacy, intentional strategies were not necessarily beneficial. This study yields implications for counselor educators who are incorporating field work into their graduate programs

Increasing Access to Postsecondary Education for Students with Intellectual Disabilities

Students with intellectual disabilities (ID) are increasingly seeking postsecondary education (PSE) opportunities. High school to college transition presents its challenges for all students, and school counselors are uniquely positioned to assist students with ID throughout the PSE process. This article provides a review of the literature on PSE and specifically explores the different types of PSE programming available and strategies high school counselors can employ to effectively assist students with ID in PSE planning

Structural racism and odds for infant mortality among infants born in the United States 2010

Abstract OBJECTIVES: While ecological studies indicate that high levels of structural racism within US states are associated with elevated infant mortality rates, studies using individual-level data are needed. To determine whether indicators of structural racism are associated with the individual odds for infant mortality among white and black infants in the US. METHODS: We used data on 2,163,096 white and 590,081 black infants from the 2010 US Cohort Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Files. Structural racism indicators were ratios of relative proportions of blacks to whites for these domains: electoral (registered to vote and voted; state legislature representation), employment (civilian labor force; employed; in management; with a bachelor\u27s degree), and justice system (sentenced to death; incarcerated). Multilevel logistic regression was used to determine whether structural racism indicators were risk factors of infant mortality. RESULTS: Compared to the lowest tertile ratio of relative proportions of blacks to whites with a bachelor\u27s degree or higher-indicative of low structural racism-black infants, but not whites, in states with moderate (OR = 1.12, 95% CI = 0.94, 1.32) and high tertiles (OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.03, 1.51) had higher odds of infant mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Educational and judicial indicators of structural racism were associated with infant mortality among blacks. Decreasing structural racism could prevent black infant deaths