Culturally Relevant Educational Systems: Their Relationship to Native American Student Achievement

The purpose of this study was twofold. The first purpose was to analyze the level of culturally responsive practices of South Dakota elementary schools with significant populations of Native American students. A survey was given to 34 elementary school counselors, each of whom served public elementary schools in South Dakota with a significant number of Native American students, to cD\u27ermine the cultural responsiveness of each participating school. Scores weie determined in each of five domains to show the level of cultural responsiveness in each domain. Weighted risk ratios were calculated from demographic da to determine the participafion rate of Native American students in special education pi \u27gran.., in each of the participating schools. The second purpose of this study was to determine how these culturally responsive practices relate to Native American student achievement and representation in special education services. The scores for each domain taken from the survey were compared with the achievement scores in math and reading and the attendance rates for Native American students in each of the participating schools. This was done to see how culturally responsive educational systems impact student achievement and participation in special education programs. Based on the data collected, the researcher found that culturally responsive educational systems do not improve Native American student achievement in math and reading nor do they improve student attendance rales. The demographic data indicated that Native American students are still over-represented in special education programs in South Dakota public schools

Macroepidemiological aspects of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus detection by major United States veterinary diagnostic laboratories over time, age group, and specimen

This project investigates the macroepidemiological aspects of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) RNA detection by veterinary diagnostic laboratories (VDLs) for the period 2007 through 2018. Standardized submission data and PRRSV real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) test results from porcine samples were retrieved from four VDLs representing 95% of all swine samples tested in NAHLN laboratories in the US. Anonymized data were retrieved and organized at the case level using SAS (SAS® Version 9.4, SAS® Institute, Inc., Cary, NC) with the use of PROC DATA, PROC MERGE, and PROC SQL scripts. The final aggregated and anonymized dataset comprised of 547,873 unique cases was uploaded to Power Business Intelligence—Power BI® (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington) to construct dynamic charts. The number of cases tested for PRRSV doubled from 2010 to 2018, with that increase mainly driven by samples typically used for monitoring purposes rather than diagnosis of disease. Apparent seasonal trends for the frequency of PRRSV detection were consistently observed with a higher percentage of positive cases occurring during fall or winter months and lower during summer months, perhaps due to increased testing associated with well-known seasonal occurrence of swine respiratory disease. PRRSV type 2, also known as North American genotype, accounted for 94.76% of all positive cases and was distributed across the US. PRRSV type 1, also known as European genotype, was geographically restricted and accounted for 2.15% of all positive cases. Co-detection of both strains accounted for 3.09% of the positive cases. Both oral fluid and processing fluid samples, had a rapid increase in the number of submissions soon after they were described in 2008 and 2017, respectively, suggesting rapid adoption of these specimens by the US swine industry for PRRSV monitoring in swine populations. As part of this project, a bio-informatics tool defined as Swine Disease Reporting System (SDRS) was developed. This tool has real-time capability to inform the US swine industry on the macroepidemiological aspects of PRRSV detection, and is easily adaptable for other analytes relevant to the swine industry