Chock Full of Data: How School Districts are Building Leader Tracking Systems to Support Pipelines

At one time, finding an assistant principal for a public school in Denver entailed a search through "a gajillion résumés," in the words of one local school district administrator. Even then, some ideal candidates likely fell through the cracks. Those days are over, owing to the development by Denver Public Schools of a "leader tracking system," a database of information about the training, qualifications and performance of principals and aspiring principals.This Story From the Field examines how Denver and five other school districts have constructed and are using these systems as they seek to better train, hire and support school principals. All six districts are taking part in the Principal Pipeline Initiative, a Wallace Foundation-funded effort to help the school systems develop a large corps of strong school principals and generate lessons for the field.In addition to aiding district officials in identifying strong principal and assistant principal candidates and matching them to the right schools, the leader tracking systems are helping in efforts to forecast job vacancies, pinpoint principal training topics and spot potential principal mentors. The districts are also beginning to use the systems to share aggregate information about the performance of principals with the preparation programs from which the principals graduated.The publication makes clear that developing a leader tracking system takes time and effort. It describes, for example, how determining what information to collect, and then finding it, proved to be a key but time-consuming task, not least because essential data could be housed in different niches of the school bureaucracies

The Role of Snail Homolog 1 in Embryonic Stem Cell Differentiation

During gastrulation, epiblast cells undergo an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition: EMT) as they ingress through the primitive streak and form mesoderm. To better understand the molecular pathways of EMT during this developmental transition, we developed a model system utilizing mouse embryonic stem: ES) cells. We show that EMT occurs during ES cell differentiation and is dependent on the Wnt signaling pathway. We further show that the Wnt-dependent transcription factor Snail homolog 1: Snail) is expressed and capable of inducing EMT in differentiating ES cells. In addition to EMT, Snail accelerates differentiation, promotes mesoderm commitment, and restricts markers of primitive ectoderm and epiblast. Snail\u27s impact on differentiation can be partly explained through its repression of ES cell-associated microRNAs, including the miR-200 family. The miR-200 family is down-regulated in a Wnt-dependent manner during ES cell differentiation. We find that maintenance of miR-200 expression prevents EMT and stalls differentiating ES cells at an epiblast-like stem cell: EpiSC) stage. Consistent with a role for Activin in EpiSC maintenance, we show that miR-200 requires Activin to efficiently maintain cells at the epiblast stage. Together, these findings demonstrate that Snail and miR-200 act in opposition to regulate EMT and exit from the EpiSC stage towards induction of germ layer fates. By modulating expression levels of Snail, Activin, and miR-200, we are able to control the timing of EMT and transition out of the EpiSC state. Beyond a role in gastrulation, Snail has also been demonstrated to be important in vasculogenesis. Snail-deficient mice display early vascular defects while Snail overexpressing tumors are associated with increased angiogenesis. We utilized our ES cell model as a means to better understand Snail\u27s relationship with vasculogenesis. We find that unlike other types of mesoderm, Snail\u27s induction of Flk1+ endothelial cells is cell-intrinsic and independent of Wnt, BMP, and Activin signaling pathways. Based on the transcriptional profile of Flk+ sorted cells, we hypothesize that Snail selectively induces endothelium in a subset of ES cells that resemble primitive endoderm. We further demonstrate that Snail\u27s induction of endothelium requires the down-regulation of the miR-200 family, which directly target the 3\u27UTRs of Flk1 and Ets1

Descriptors and accounts of alcohol consumption:methodological issues piloted with female undergraduate drinkers in Scotland

Excessive drinking among young women continues to attract adverse media attention and is the target of UK government-led initiatives. Reliable research on alcohol consumption is needed to inform/evaluate public health interventions. This pilot study, investigating descriptors of alcohol drinking in female Scottish undergraduate students, comprised: (i) self-completed questionnaire survey (n=95); (ii) interview plus test pouring of a ‘drink’ (n=19). Self-reports by 70% of drinkers (n=90) indicated alcohol consumption for the ‘week past’ meriting classification as ‘binge’ drinking, and 83% of this group reported drinking in this fashion at least fortnightly. However, binge-drinking may be under-estimated, since poured drinks were measured to be on average double the alcohol content for a standard drink, drinking often occurred outwith licensed premises, and respondents preferred to quantify consumption in (fractions of) bottles, rather than glasses. Qualitative analysis showed that interviewees oriented to drinking as an accountable practice but were unaware of the clinical definition of binge drinking. They defined it in terms of the effect of alcohol consumed on individual behaviour, not in absolute quantities. Given the unreliability of self-reported consumption, future health surveys and initiatives should consider ‘quantifying’ alcohol in a way more meaningful to the population of interest, in terms of effect

Information Warfare: Lessons in Inoculation to Disinformation

While propaganda and disinformation have been used to destabilize opposing forces throughout history, the US military remains unprepared for the way these methods have been adapted to the Internet era. This article explores the modern history of disinformation campaigns and the current state of US military readiness in the face of campaigns from near-peer competitors and proposes education as the best way to prepare US servicemembers to defend against such campaigns

General practice views of managing childhood obesity in primary care: a qualitative analysis:managing childhood obesity in primary care

Objective: To explore general practice staff views of managing childhood obesity in primary care. Design: A qualitative study to elicit the views of clinical and non-clinical general practice staff on managing childhood obesity. Setting: Interviews were conducted at 30 general practices across England. These practices were interviewed as part of the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) Pilot Study. Participants: A total of 52 staff from 30 practices took part in a semi structured interview. Main outcome measures: Key themes were identified through thematic analysis of transcripts using an inductive approach. Results: Three themes were identified: lack of contact with well children, sensitivity of the issue, and the potential impact of general practice. Identifying overweight children was challenging because well children rarely attended the practice. Interviewees felt ill equipped to solve the issue because they lacked influence over the environmental, economic and lifestyle factors underpinning obesity. They described little evidence to support general 4 practice intervention and seemed unaware of other services. Raising the issue was described as sensitive. Conclusion: General practice staff were unconvinced they could have a significant role in managing childhood obesity on a large scale. Participants believed schools have more contact with children and should coordinate the identification and management of overweight children. Future policy could recommend a minor role for general practice involving opportunistically identifying overweight children and signposting to obesity services

Foxes, voles and waders: drivers of predator activity in wet grassland landscapes

Impacts of generalist predators on declining prey populations are a major conservation issue, but management of this situation is constrained by limited knowledge of the factors influencing predator distribution and activity. In many declining populations of ground-nesting waders, high levels of nest and chick predation are preventing population recovery. Red foxes, Vulpes vulpes, are the main predator but their primary prey is small mammals. On wet grasslands managed for breeding waders, small mammals are concentrated in tall vegetation outside of fields, and nests closer to these patches are less likely to be predated. To assess whether these patterns result from fox attraction to small mammals, and thus the potential for management of tall vegetation to influence nest predation rates, we quantify seasonal and spatial variation in fox and small mammal activity in relation to tall vegetation patches. Across wet grassland sites, tall vegetation patches of any size (> 0.05 ha) supported small mammals and small mammal activity increased throughout the wader breeding season, while the use of fox track plots within fields declined seasonally. Although within field fox track plot use did not vary with distance to tall vegetation, over the 1064 nights of trail camera recording, foxes were seen in areas with tall vegetation on 13 nights compared with short vegetation on only two nights. These findings suggest that lower predation rates of lapwing nests close to tall vegetation could reflect fox attraction to areas with small mammal activity, but any such effects would primarily operate later in the breeding season, and may therefore primarily influence late nests and chicks