Promoting Emotional and Behavioral Health in Preteens: Benchmarks of Success and Challenges Among Programs in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties

P/PV conducted a two-year study for The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health to assess the effectiveness of the foundation's youth development grantmaking program and to offer lessons for future grantmaking endeavors. The resulting report describes benchmarks of quality programs for youth and strategies for addressing common program challenges

Launching Literacy in After-School Programs: Early Lessons from the CORAL Initiative

The James Irvine Foundation launched the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) initiative in 1999 with the goal of improving the academic achievement of children in the lowest-performing schools in five California cities. In 2004, CORAL adopted a more targeted approach toward reaching this goal by integrating a regular schedule of literacy instruction into its after-school programs. This interim report, based on research conducted between Fall 2004 and Summer 2005, documents CORALs progress toward implementing high-quality and consistent literacy programming. The report presents early results in terms of youths positive reading gains and describes the program components that appear to have contributed to these gains. It also identifies challenges CORAL sites faced and successful strategies for addressing those challenges

We Are of This Place, Not Just From It The Culture that Sustains a Rural Charter School in Northern Minnesota

The focus of this research was in the area of organization development and culture within the context of a rural, Minnesota, charter school. The methodology best suited for this work was ethnography; through observation and interviews, the levels of culture were defined including the outermost layer of tangible artifacts, the deeper layer of espoused beliefs and values, and the deepest, most tacit layer of basic underlying assumptions. The analysis of these layers utilized Schein’s culture model and another lens of Adizes corporate lifecycles model. Such a study is important in order to expand the limited body of ethnographic research within charter schools and continue the conversation about culture in education. The findings from this research were intended to give a comprehensive look at the culture of North Shore Community School and how the groups of adults in the building made meaning of it. The school has been successful in nurturing its students and upholding its mission as a small, rural school that served its surrounding community. As the school has grown and drawn students and staff from a broader area, the changes have been aligned with their espoused beliefs and values, but challenge the tacit, basic assumptions of their culture. Change presents the excitement and hope for continuing their innovation and conversely raises concerns that the history and tradition that distinguishes them may change beyond recognition

Putting It All Together: Guiding Principles for Quality After-School Programs Serving Preteens

Successfully navigating early adolescence depends, in large part, on the availability of safe and engaging activities and supportive relationships with adults, yet many preteens have limited access to positive supports and opportunities -- such as high-quality after-school programs -- that could put them on a path to success. Funders, policymakers and practitioners share the common goal of supporting strategies that will have the most long-lasting positive effects on young people.Recognizing this, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health commissioned P/PV to identify the characteristics of quality after-school programs that are linked to positive outcomes for preteens. Based on the latest research and experience in the field, P/PV developed the publication, Putting It All Together: Guiding Principles for Quality After-School Programs Serving Preteens, along with a companion Resource Guide (http://www.lpfch.org/afterschool/resourceguide.html) that includes links to research and tools to strengthen programs.Putting It All Together focuses on six after-school program components associated with positive outcomes for preteens:Focused and Intentional Strategy: Programs have a clear set of goals, target specific skills, and deliberately plan all aspects of the program with a youth development framework in mind.Exposure: Programs are designed to: a) provide preteens with a sufficient number of hours per week over an extended period of time, that matches program outcome goals; and b) allow preteens to attend a variety of activities.Supportive Relationships: Programs emphasize positive adult-youth relationships regardless of the curriculum.Family Engagement: Programs strive to include families through various strategies, such as clear communication and a welcoming environment.Cultural Competence: Programs have diverse staff whose backgrounds are reflective of participants and who create practices and policies that: a) make services available to and inclusive of a variety of populations; and b) help participants understand and value a broad range of cultures.Continuous Program Improvement: Programs strengthen quality through an ongoing and integrated process of targeted staff training, coaching and monitoring, and data collection and analysis.While a host of factors, including organizational capacity, the needs of the youth served and the resources available, all play a role in determining a program's ability to achieve its goals, research suggests that these guiding principles are essential for program quality. That quality, in turn, is the foundation for positive results for youth.NOTE: This version of Putting It All Together contains a full list of endnotes and references, which we chose to omit from hard copies of the report, in the interest of brevity

White paper : addressing complexity in writing intensive course assignments

"A central tenet of the WI courses at our university is the inclusion of “at least one writing assignment addressing a question for which there is more than one acceptable interpretation, explanation, analysis, or evaluation.” To interrogate how this element emerges in writing assignments, we designed a research study based on data from 300+ WI course proposals. As we worked through our analysis, we asked the following question: How do WI assignments engage students in the complexity of their disciplines?"--IntroductionJulie Birt, PhD (Coordinator, Campus Writing Program), Christy Goldsmith, PhD (Associate Director, Campus Writing Program, Assistant Teaching Professor, Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum)Includes bibliographical references

Gaining Ground: Supporting English Learners Through After-School Literacy Programming

This brief presents findings that demonstrate a relationship between key approaches in CORAL, an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative of The James Irvine Foundation, and the academic progress of English learners. In addition to presenting findings, the brief suggests important considerations for any policymaker and funder interested in the success of English learners as a growing student population

Advancing Achievement: Findings from an Independent Evaluation of a Major After-School Initiative

This report presents outcomes from Public/Private Ventures research on CORAL, an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative of The James Irvine Foundation. Findings described in the report demonstrate the relationship between high-quality literacy programming and academic gains and underscore the potential role that quality programs may play in the ongoing drive to improve academic achievement. The report includes a 12-page executive summary

Point-of-care versus central testing of hemoglobin during large volume blood transfusion.

BACKGROUND: Point-of-care (POC) hemoglobin testing has the potential to revolutionize massive transfusion strategies. No prior studies have compared POC and central laboratory testing of hemoglobin in patients undergoing massive transfusions. METHODS: We retrospectively compared the results of our point-of-care hemoglobin test (EPOC®) to our core laboratory complete blood count (CBC) hemoglobin test (Sysmex XE-5000™) in patients undergoing massive transfusion protocols (MTP) for hemorrhage. One hundred seventy paired samples from 90 patients for whom MTP was activated were collected at a single, tertiary care hospital between 10/2011 and 10/2017. Patients had both an EPOC® and CBC hemoglobin performed within 30 min of each other during the MTP. We assessed the accuracy of EPOC® hemoglobin testing using two variables: interchangeability and clinically significant differences from the CBC. The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) proficiency testing criteria defined interchangeability for measurements. Clinically significant differences between the tests were defined by an expert panel. We examined whether these relationships changed as a function of the hemoglobin measured by the EPOC® and specific patient characteristics. RESULTS: Fifty one percent (86 of 170) of paired samples\u27 hemoglobin results had an absolute difference of ≤7 and 73% (124 of 170) fell within ±1 g/dL of each other. The mean difference between EPOC® and CBC hemoglobin had a bias of - 0.268 g/dL (p = 0.002). When the EPOC® hemoglobin was \u3c 7 g/dL, 30% of the hemoglobin values were within ±7, and 57% were within ±1 g/dL. When the measured EPOC® hemoglobin was ≥7 g/dL, 55% of the EPOC® and CBC hemoglobin values were within ±7, and 76% were within ±1 g/dL. EPOC® and CBC hemoglobin values that were within ±1 g/dL varied by patient population: 77% for cardiac surgery, 58% for general surgery, and 72% for non-surgical patients. CONCLUSIONS: The EPOC® device had minor negative bias, was not interchangeable with the CBC hemoglobin, and was less reliable when the EPOC® value was \u3c 7 g/dL. Clinicians must consider speed versus accuracy, and should check a CBC within 30 min as confirmation when the EPOC® hemoglobin is \u3c 7 g/dL until further prospective trials are performed in this population