Academic Achievement and School Resources in Nevada

For several decades there has been a growing concern in the United States over the student achievement in our public schools. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a report, A Nation at Risk, http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html, that called for educational reform. As student achievement scores declined, even with increased investment in education, the business community, policy makers, and educators rallied to address a vital issue for our future: how to improve student achievement and ensure that the 21st century workforce has the knowledge and skills to compete in a global economy

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a devastating disorder and is predicted more common than once thought. Recent research shows that the prevalence of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is between 1% and %5 of the population, making it possibly more common than autism, and certainly more common than Down Syndrome, yet it does not get the same attention or resources of either. Current research is used to demonstrate the prevalence, the debilitation, and the social burden of this completely preventable disorder. Current research on the suspected pathophysiology of FASD is discussed, as well as future goals. It is important for the advanced practice nurse to be knowledgeable regarding FASD, as one will encounter this disorder in practice. Furthermore, it is vital for the advanced practice nurse to take the time and effort to properly educate female clients of child-bearing ages regarding the detrimental effects of alcohol on the embryo and fetus. There is no known safe level or time for alcohol exposure during pregnancy

No-Show Rates in Community Mental Health Clinics

Now Show Rates in Community Mental Health Clinics No-show rates in community mental health clinics are typically higher than in other areas of healthcare. No show rates have a negative impact upon patients, clinics, and communities. Mental illness has reached an all-time high in the U.S. In his first State of the Union address, President Joe Biden stated that our country faces an “unprecedented mental health crisis among people of all ages.” Evidence well supports his statement. To extinguish this crisis, all barriers to mental health care must be evaluated and attacked from all possible angles. Increasing access to mental health care must be a priority considering the magnitude of this problem. One factor affecting mental health care is appointment non-adherence. Even when mental health care is accessible, and even when the initial appointment is scheduled, as many 60% of all clients may not show for their initial appointment. One cannot receive treatment if they do not show up for their appointment. What interventions can be implemented to assist a person with a mental illness to show up for their initial appointment? This project aims to explore and understand some of the possible barriers to accessing mental health care in the United States. Although the barriers may seem numerous, even insurmountable, nursing professionals have a responsibility to analyze and evaluate healthcare policy and clinical practice in order to advocate for social justice and equity of healthcare for all, especially for those individuals who may not have the means to advocate on their own behalf. The project then turns the focus to the question, in a rural Midwest community mental health clinic that serves primarily underserved populations, how does a patient-centered, caring approach, such as a personal engagement intervention, impact patient no-show rates over 90 days? Through the development of a quality improvement project, clients were contacted weekly while waiting for their intake appointment. The results of this project conclude that a weekly personal engagement does not reduce no-show rates over a 90-day trial. Incidentally, this project reinforces that longer wait times for initial appointment increases the likelihood of a no-show. The author encourages other professionals of community mental health practices to implement and evaluate quality improvement interventions that may impact no-show rates in community mental health clinics and disseminate the findings so that appointment non-adherence can be decreased, allowing mental health treatment to be maximized for underserved populations

Cuerpo politico del deseo: literatura, genero e imaginario geocultural en Cuba y Puerto Rico (1863-2000)

Our study starts with an analysis of two nineteenth century "foundational novels" from Puerto Rico (La Peregrinación de Bayoán, 1863) and Cuba (Amistad Funesta, 1885), and continues with an analysis of the literary work produced by twentieth Century Cuban and Puerto Rican female authors (Luisa Capetillo, Mariblanca Sabas Alomá, Nancy Morejón, Ana Lydia Vega, Achy Obejas, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, and Mayra Santos-Febres). Through a comparative approach focused on the diverse representations of gender, sexuality, Caribbeanness, and nation, we have studied the similarities and differences among these female writers' literary projects, as well as the continuities/discontinuities of their own projects in regards to the geo-cultural and biopolitical imaginaries developed by their literary predecessors, Eugenio María de Hostos and José Martí, respectively. This comparative and critical analysis addresses three specific questions and concerns:•to study how the geo-cultural and political imaginaries represented in these two novels have been designed under the image of a single and unified fraternal and virile political body which excludes women from the social, and/or those bodies or sexualities which threaten to fragment the ideal construction of a unified and homogeneous civil society, and which obstruct the literary representation of the ideal virile subject, leader of the national emancipatory cause.•to examine how the above-mentioned female writers have challenged such politico-patriarchal configurations, which have in turn, established the hegemonic cultural landscape for each country and for the Caribbean region in relation to the discourses of sexual preference and economy (the heterosexual family), race (racial mixing/"mestizaje" or whitening/"blanqueamiento"), and geography (insularism, Caribbeanness/ "Antillanismo", or Americanness/ "Nuestroamericanismo").•to analyze how the challenge to these modernizing norms (heterosexist, phallocentric and pro-transculturation) opens the way towards new alliances amongst the peoples of the Caribbean islands and their Diasporas, based on a spirit of solidarity and an affective search for the Other. These critical projects allow us to imagine the Caribbean as a culturally flexible region, and as a more equal, just, and open society, founded upon a new "minoritarian ethics" capable of resisting and deconstructing the effects of coloniality of power, already present in anticolonial XIXth century literature

Rural Research Brief: Rural Schools Under Scrutiny

Historically, rural schools have been geographically and politically isolated to the extent that some might say that they have been the victims of, or beneficiaries from, an unstated government policy of benign neglect. Recently, conditions and relationships have changed with the enactment of state and federal accountability legislation and legal challenges to the constitutionality of state funding systems for schools. Federal concerns about the quality of teachers and the progress of students are accompanied by state standards, proficiency tests for high school graduation, and school report cards. Most of these requirements are unfunded or under-funded mandates. However, rural schools likely will benefit from the recent shift in school finance litigation from a single emphasis on equity to a dual interest in equity and adequacy. If education is a state responsibility, then in an era of state-mandated standards and assessments, the state has an inherent responsibility to ensure that students have access to the human and material resources required for them to meet standards and pass state proficiency examinations

The Fiscal Impact of the Shift from Equity to Adequacy in School Finance Litigation

The focus of this study is a comparison of the changes in a set of state-level funding variables in state school finance programs for five groups of states with regard to high court decisions rendered during the 1970-1987 period and the 1988-2004 period

Bigger Isn’t Always Better: An Analysis of Court Efficiency Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling

One important measure of trial court efficiency is overall case length—that is, the elapsed time from a case’s initial filing to its final disposition. Using a large, recent dataset from nearly 7000 federal civil cases, we find that two variables are particularly useful in predicting overall case length: the total number of attorneys filing an appearance in the case, and the number of authorized judgeships for a given district court. Further, we find a significant and surprising interaction between these two variables, indicating that smaller courts are more efficient than larger courts at processing civil cases when more than three attorneys appear in a case, but that the opposite holds true when three attorneys or fewer appear in a case