The Impact of Standards-Based Reform on Special Education: An Exploration of Westvale Elementary School

A critical, interpretivist, qualitative study, this project examines how standards-based reform impacts special education at an urban school, called Westvale Elementary School. The school was labeled a Persistently Low Achieving school under the No Child Left Behind Act and was thus required to undergo a transformation process. The demographics of the school at the time of the study were: over 95% free and reduced lunch, 40% Limited English Proficiency, and over 20% students with disabilities. The racial makeup of the school is: 50% Hispanic or Latino, 35% Black or African American, and 10% white. My methodological approach drew primarily upon 19 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with teachers, administrators, and policy makers. All participants were either associated with, working at, or overseeing Westvale Elementary School. I also conducted observations at over 15 public events relevant to the study. Interview and observation data were contextualized through an examination of public documents, such as policy statements or media reports. Findings indicate that the transformation process that Westvale was required to undertake was both a dramatic and sanction-laden one. For instance, prior to the transformation process, Westvale operated fully inclusive classrooms and afterwards the school shifted to a variety of self-contained, tracked, and pull-out programs. Thus, a key finding of this study was that standards-based reform impacted the physical inclusion of students with disabilities, even if they were accessing, at least to some degree, regular education content. Findings also showed how standards-based reform policies, including the implementation of the Common Core standards, testing, teacher and leader evaluations, and accountability systems significantly impacted special education, particularly in this failing school. Financial incentives, the media, and research all played distinct roles in disseminating standards-based reform ideology, which forced failing urban schools to adopt standards-based reform policy, even if local educators and administrators believed that the policies negatively impacted students. Unfortunately, the study also documents how special education is often an after-thought during local, district, state, and national policy-making, which resulted in policies ill-suited for the needs of students with disabilities. Finally, I illustrate how standards-based reform relies on discourse that blames teachers for the failures of urban schools, essentially removing the need to remedy the inequities existent in our educational system. I conclude this study with a series of recommendations directed to teachers, administrators, and policy-makers

Teaching and Care: Cripping Fieldwork in Teacher Education

Providing teacher candidates early and ongoing opportunities to learn their profession by participating in school settings is often posed as a way to improve their preparedness for becoming teachers. Two problems of “fieldwork,” however, are the limited access to settings in which inclusive education is practiced and the milieu of special education in the US that emphasizes ableist assertions of independence, support, and conventional notions of care, especially for youth characterized as intellectually disabled. We present an overview of the establishment of a “cripped” fieldwork experience for early program teacher candidates enrolled in a required undergraduate course. By engaging in qualitative narrative analysis of candidates’ journals, we report preliminary findings on evolving notions of care related to disability and education in self-reported field-based learning

A Disability Studies in Education Analysis of the EdTPA through Teacher Candidate Perspectives

This analysis of the Special Education edTPA is written by two professors who co-taught a student teaching seminar at one institution and supported the first groups of teacher candidates required to submit the edTPA for certification in New York State. Data were gathered over three semesters and included open-ended student surveys, student journals, and public documents. Findings describe (a) how the edTPA requirements impacted teacher candidate learning, (b) the emphasis on one focus learner in the exam, (c) the discourse and language demands in the edTPA, and (d) how the edTPA and videotaping impacted fieldwork. We describe these findings and discuss their implications for inclusive and Special Education as understood through a disability studies in education perspective

“Friends Give Meaning to Life:” Reframing Friendship for Individuals with Autism that Type to Communicate

We, two able-bodied authors and two authors with autism, use a disability studies framework to understand our experiences of friendship. Taken from a series of recorded conversations over the course of a year, this project describes the development, maintenance, and complications related to our experiences with friendship, including: reframing of friendships, respect for communication, facilitator roles and support, interdependence and reciprocity, and permanency in relationships

Stellar Collisions and the Interior Structure of Blue Stragglers

Collisions of main sequence stars occur frequently in dense star clusters. In open and globular clusters, these collisions produce merger remnants that may be observed as blue stragglers. Detailed theoretical models of this process require lengthy hydrodynamic computations in three dimensions. However, a less computationally expensive approach, which we present here, is to approximate the merger process (including shock heating, hydrodynamic mixing, mass ejection, and angular momentum transfer) with simple algorithms based on conservation laws and a basic qualitative understanding of the hydrodynamics. These algorithms have been fine tuned through comparisons with the results of our previous hydrodynamic simulations. We find that the thermodynamic and chemical composition profiles of our simple models agree very well with those from recent SPH (smoothed particle hydrodynamics) calculations of stellar collisions, and the subsequent stellar evolution of our simple models also matches closely that of the more accurate hydrodynamic models. Our algorithms have been implemented in an easy to use software package, which we are making publicly available (see http://vassun.vassar.edu/~lombardi/mmas/). This software could be used in combination with realistic dynamical simulations of star clusters that must take into account stellar collisions.Comment: This revised version has 37 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables; submitted to ApJ; for associated software package, see http://vassun.vassar.edu/~lombardi/mmas/ This revised version presents additional comparisons with SPH results and slightly improved merger recipe

Using climate extension to assist coastal decision-makers with climate adaptation

Coastal managers need accessible, trusted, tailored resources to help them interpret climate information, identify vulnerabilities, and apply climate information to decisions about adaptation on regional and local levels. For decades, climate scientists have studied the impacts that short term natural climate variability and long term climate change will have on coastal systems. For example, recent estimates based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warming scenarios suggest that global sea levels may rise 0.5 to 1.4 meters above 1990 levels by 2100 (Rahmstorf 2007; Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva 2009). Many low-lying coastal ecosystems and communities will experience more frequent salt water intrusion events, more frequent coastal flooding, and accelerated erosion rates before they experience significant inundation. These changes will affect the ways coastal managers make decisions, such as timing surface and groundwater withdrawals, replacing infrastructure, and planning for changing land use on local and regional levels. Despite the advantages, managers’ use of scientific information about climate variability and change remains limited in environmental decision-making (Dow and Carbone 2007). Traditional methods scientists use to disseminate climate information, like peer-reviewed journal articles and presentations at conferences, are inappropriate to fill decision-makers’ needs for applying accessible, relevant climate information to decision-making. General guides that help managers scope out vulnerabilities and risks are becoming more common; for example, Snover et al. (2007) outlines a basic process for local and state governments to assess climate change vulnerability and preparedness. However, there are few tools available to support more specific decision-making needs. A recent survey of coastal managers in California suggests that boundary institutions can help to fill the gaps between climate science and coastal decision-making community (Tribbia and Moser 2008). The National Sea Grant College Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) university-based program for supporting research and outreach on coastal resource use and conservation, is one such institution working to bridge these gaps through outreach. Over 80% of Sea Grant’s 32 programs are addressing climate issues, and over 60% of programs increased their climate outreach programming between 2006 and 2008 (National Sea Grant Office 2008). One way that Sea Grant is working to assist coastal decision-makers with using climate information is by developing effective methods for coastal climate extension. The purpose of this paper is to discuss climate extension methodologies on regional scales, using the Carolinas Coastal Climate Outreach Initiative (CCCOI) as an example of Sea Grant’s growing capacities for climate outreach and extension. (PDF contains 3 pages

On the origin of seismic anisotropy in the shallow crust of the Northern Volcanic Zone, Iceland

Title: Authors: Conor Andrew Bacon, Jessica Helen Johnson, Robert Stephen White, Nicholas Rawlinson Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth Plain Language Summary Iceland is well known for its earthquakes and volcanoes, which have helped to produce an awe-inspiring primordial landscape over the last 20 million years or so. The emergence of Iceland in the North Atlantic Ocean can be attributed to the interaction of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where new oceanic crust forms by rifting between the North American and Eurasian plates, and a rising conduit of hot mantle from deep in the Earth, known as a mantle plume. The confluence of these two phenomena has produced excessive melting of mantle rocks, with the resultant melt accreted and cooled to form the Icelandic crust. We investigate how extensional stresses related to the divergence of the two tectonic plates have influenced the upper 3–4 km of the crust around Askja volcano, in the deep interior of Iceland. To do so, we exploit information contained in recordings of earthquakes from the neighborhood of Askja, which suggests that cracks formed parallel to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which permeate the upper crust, gradually close with depth. This relationship between the regional stress field associated with rifting and brittle deformation in the uppermost crust breaks down around Askja itself, where magmatic processes likely cause local changes in the stress field. Abstract The Icelandic crust is a product of its unique tectonic setting, where the interaction of an ascending mantle plume and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge has caused elevated mantle melting, with the melt accreted and cooled in the crust to form an oceanic plateau. We investigate the strength and orientation of seismic anisotropy in the upper crust of the Northern Volcanic Zone using local earthquake shear-wave splitting, with a view to understanding how the contemporary stress field may influence sub-wavelength structure and processes. This is achieved using a data set comprising urn:x-wiley:21699313:media:jgrb55395:jgrb55395-math-000150,000 earthquakes located in the top 10 km of the crust, recorded by up to 70 stations over a 9 year period. We find that anisotropy is largely confined to the top 3–4 km of the crust, with an average delay time of 0.10 ± 0.05 s, and an average orientation of the fast axis of anisotropy of N014°E ± 27°, which is perpendicular to the spreading direction of the Eurasian and North American plates (N106°E). These results are consistent with the presence of rift-parallel cracks that gradually close with depth, the preferential opening of which is controlled by the regional stress field. Lateral variations in the strength of shear wave anisotropy (SWA) reveal that regions with the highest concentrations of earthquakes have the highest SWA values (∼10%), which reflects the presence of significant brittle deformation. Disruption of the orientation of the fast axis of anisotropy around Askja volcano can be related to local stress changes caused by underlying magmatic processes

Trends in weight gain recorded in English primary care before and during the Coronavirus-19 pandemic: An observational cohort study using the OpenSAFELY platform

Background: Obesity and rapid weight gain are established risk factors for noncommunicable diseases and have emerged as independent risk factors for severe disease following Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. Restrictions imposed to reduce COVID-19 transmission resulted in profound societal changes that impacted many health behaviours, including physical activity and nutrition, associated with rate of weight gain. We investigated which clinical and sociodemographic characteristics were associated with rapid weight gain and the greatest acceleration in rate of weight gain during the pandemic among adults registered with an English National Health Service (NHS) general practitioner (GP) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods and findings: With the approval of NHS England, we used the OpenSAFELY platform inside TPP to conduct an observational cohort study of routinely collected electronic healthcare records. We investigated changes in body mass index (BMI) values recorded in English primary care between March 2015 and March 2022. We extracted data on 17,742,365 adults aged 18 to 90 years old (50.1% female, 76.1% white British) registered with an English primary care practice. We estimated individual rates of weight gain before (δ-prepandemic) and during (δ-pandemic) the pandemic and identified individuals with rapid weight gain (>0.5 kg/m2/year) in each period. We also estimated the change in rate of weight gain between the prepandemic and pandemic period (δ-change = δ-pandemic—δ-prepandemic) and defined extreme accelerators as the 10% of individuals with the greatest increase in their rate of weight gain (δ-change ≥1.84 kg/m2/year) between these periods. We estimated associations with these outcomes using multivariable logistic regression adjusted for age, sex, index of multiple deprivation (IMD), and ethnicity. P-values were generated in regression models. The median BMI of our study population was 27.8 kg/m2, interquartile range (IQR) [24.3, 32.1] in 2019 (March 2019 to February 2020) and 28.0 kg/m2, IQR [24.4, 32.6] in 2021. Rapid pandemic weight gain was associated with sex, age, and IMD. Male sex (male versus female: adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 0.76, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) [0.76, 0.76], p < 0.001), older age (e.g., 50 to 59 years versus 18 to 29 years: aOR 0.60, 95% CI [0.60, 0.61], p < 0.001]); and living in less deprived areas (least-deprived-IMD-quintile versus most-deprived: aOR 0.77, 95% CI [0.77, 0.78] p < 0.001) reduced the odds of rapid weight gain. Compared to white British individuals, all other ethnicities had lower odds of rapid pandemic weight gain (e.g., Indian versus white British: aOR 0.69, 95% CI [0.68, 0.70], p < 0.001). Long-term conditions (LTCs) increased the odds, with mental health conditions having the greatest effect (e.g., depression (aOR 1.18, 95% CI [1.17, 1.18], p < 0.001)). Similar characteristics increased odds of extreme acceleration in the rate of weight gain between the prepandemic and pandemic periods. However, changes in healthcare activity during the pandemic may have introduced new bias to the data. Conclusions: We found female sex, younger age, deprivation, white British ethnicity, and mental health conditions were associated with rapid pandemic weight gain and extreme acceleration in rate of weight gain between the prepandemic and pandemic periods. Our findings highlight the need to incorporate sociodemographic, physical, and mental health characteristics when formulating research, policies, and interventions targeting BMI in the period of post pandemic service restoration and in future pandemic planning

Comparative effectiveness of BNT162b2 versus mRNA-1273 covid-19 vaccine boosting in England: matched cohort study in OpenSAFELY-TPP

Objective To compare the effectiveness of the BNT162b2 mRNA (Pfizer-BioNTech) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna) covid-19 vaccines during the booster programme in England. Design Matched cohort study, emulating a comparative effectiveness trial. Setting Linked primary care, hospital, and covid-19 surveillance records available within the OpenSAFELY-TPP research platform, covering a period when the SARS-CoV-2 delta and omicron variants were dominant. Participants 3 237 918 adults who received a booster dose of either vaccine between 29 October 2021 and 25 February 2022 as part of the national booster programme in England and who received a primary course of BNT162b2 or ChAdOx1. Intervention Vaccination with either BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 as a booster vaccine dose. Main outcome measures Recorded SARS-CoV-2 positive test, covid-19 related hospital admission, covid-19 related death, and non-covid-19 related death at 20 weeks after receipt of the booster dose. Results 1 618 959 people were matched in each vaccine group, contributing a total 64 546 391 person weeks of follow-up. The 20 week risks per 1000 for a positive SARS-CoV-2 test were 164.2 (95% confidence interval 163.3 to 165.1) for BNT162b2 and 159.9 (159.0 to 160.8) for mRNA-1273; the hazard ratio comparing mRNA-1273 with BNT162b2 was 0.95 (95% confidence interval 0.95 to 0.96). The 20 week risks per 1000 for hospital admission with covid-19 were 0.75 (0.71 to 0.79) for BNT162b2 and 0.65 (0.61 to 0.69) for mRNA-1273; the hazard ratio was 0.89 (0.82 to 0.95). Covid-19 related deaths were rare: the 20 week risks per 1000 were 0.028 (0.021 to 0.037) for BNT162b2 and 0.024 (0.018 to 0.033) for mRNA-1273; hazard ratio 0.83 (0.58 to 1.19). Comparative effectiveness was generally similar within subgroups defined by the primary course vaccine brand, age, previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, and clinical vulnerability. Relative benefit was similar when vaccines were compared separately in the delta and omicron variant eras. Conclusions This matched observational study of adults estimated a modest benefit of booster vaccination with mRNA-1273 compared with BNT162b2 in preventing positive SARS-CoV-2 tests and hospital admission with covid-19 20 weeks after vaccination, during a period of delta followed by omicron variant dominance

Identifying Patterns of Clinical Interest in Clinicians' Treatment Preferences: Hypothesis-free Data Science Approach to Prioritizing Prescribing Outliers for Clinical Review.

BACKGROUND: Data analysis is used to identify signals suggestive of variation in treatment choice or clinical outcome. Analyses to date have generally focused on a hypothesis-driven approach. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop a hypothesis-free approach to identify unusual prescribing behavior in primary care data. We aimed to apply this methodology to a national data set in a cross-sectional study to identify chemicals with significant variation in use across Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) for further clinical review, thereby demonstrating proof of concept for prioritization approaches. METHODS: Here we report a new data-driven approach to identify unusual prescribing behaviour in primary care data. This approach first applies a set of filtering steps to identify chemicals with prescribing rate distributions likely to contain outliers, then applies two ranking approaches to identify the most extreme outliers amongst those candidates. This methodology has been applied to three months of national prescribing data (June-August 2017). RESULTS: Our methodology provides rankings for all chemicals by administrative region. We provide illustrative results for 2 antipsychotic drugs of particular clinical interest: promazine hydrochloride and pericyazine, which rank highly by outlier metrics. Specifically, our method identifies that, while promazine hydrochloride and pericyazine are barely used by most clinicians (with national prescribing rates of 11.1 and 6.2 per 1000 antipsychotic prescriptions, respectively), they make up a substantial proportion of antipsychotic prescribing in 2 small geographic regions in England during the study period (with maximum regional prescribing rates of 298.7 and 241.1 per 1000 antipsychotic prescriptions, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Our hypothesis-free approach is able to identify candidates for audit and review in clinical practice. To illustrate this, we provide 2 examples of 2 very unusual antipsychotics used disproportionately in 2 small geographic areas of England