Model School Wellness Policies: Opportunities for Improvement

Schools that participate in the US Child Nutrition program are required to have a wellness policy. Many state agencies provide model wellness policies to aid schools in writing wellness policies. However, use of model wellness policies has not been associated with higher quality policies. PURPOSE: Assess the strength and comprehensiveness of model wellness policies and to determine if federal regulations are more likely to be included in model wellness policies than evidence-based, best-practices that are not required per federal regulation. METHODS: Model wellness policies available online through state agency websites in January 2019 were analyzed for comprehensiveness and strength using the Wellness School Assessment Tool 3.0 (WellSAT 3.0). The percentage of model policies that included each WellSAT 3.0 item was calculated and item status as a federal regulation or best-practice was assigned. Linear regression was used to determine if federal regulation status was associated with inclusion in model wellness policies. RESULTS: Thirty-four states had model wellness polices available online. The total comprehensiveness and strength of model wellness policies was 59.3 ± 17.5 and 21.4 ± 17.6, respectively, out of 100 possible points. Among policy sections, comprehensiveness was highest within Nutrition Education (NE) (73.2 ± 31.6) and lowest in Wellness Promotion and Marketing (49.8 ± 27.2). The NE section had the highest strength (30.9 ± 31.4) and the Physical Education and Physical Activity section had the lowest strength (14.7 ± 13.8). Of the 67 WellSAT 3.0 items, 20 were included in ≥75% of model policies. Ten items were included in ≤25% of model policies. On average, WellSAT 3.0 items that were federal regulations (n=18) were covered in 71% of model policies, while best-practices (n=49) were only covered in 54% of model policies (p=.008). CONCLUSION: There is a need to improve the comprehensiveness and strength of model wellness policies provided to schools by state agencies. The development of a uniform model policy may be warranted to provide schools with a comprehensive list of federal regulations and best-practices, written with strong language, for inclusion within their school wellness policy

Copywrong: Intellectual Property as a Weapon Against Black Musicians and The Efforts Made to Combat it Through Community Education

Western traditions, specifically in America, have adopted ownership and turned it into a major life practice.Intellectual property brings in new possibilities and challenges for how we imagine ownership. It allows us to claim ownership over more than just tangible items. For someone entering the music world as a creative musician, the challenge is to retain control over their own work, both so that they can ensure an adequate financial return and so that they can exercise agency over their creation. Yet, IP has been used against Black artists because of the white supremacist institutions that designed our legal system. I argue that through education and community building we can empower Black up and coming artists and help them not fall for predatory contracts imposed by major music conglomerates

A Comparison Between First-Year Alternative Certified Teachers and First-Year Traditional Certified Teachers Based on Students\u27 Academic achievement: The Case of a High-Need Urban Southeast District in Virginia

Debate about teacher supply and demand has been renewed in recent years by an increased concern about the reduced numbers of students entering teacher education programs and the resulting teacher shortages. Thus, American schools are experiencing teacher shortages, especially in low-income urban areas, because of increased school enrollment, teacher retirement, reduction of class size, teacher attrition, and turnover related to low salaries, job dissatisfaction, lack of administrative support and influence over decision-making. Recently, the increased interest in teacher quality has been the topic of debate for educational policy makers, and many researchers have focused on teacher certification. The purpose of this study is to determine if the Transition to Teaching (T2T) program in Virginia is a viable way to ease the teacher shortages in a midsize high-need urban school system, and at the same time, to evaluate its impact on students\u27 academic achievement. The results of this study provide evidence that the students taught by first year T2T teachers achieve as well as or better than their peers taught by traditionally licensed first year teachers according to the mathematics Algebra I test scores

The US Decentred: From Black Social Death to Cultural Transformation

A review of Frank B. Wilderson III, Red, Black and White: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms (Duke, 2010) and Patricia de Santan Pinho, Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia (Duke, 2010)

Why Are Women Less Democratic Than Men? Evidence from Sub-Saharan African Countries

A substantial literature has examined the determinants of support for democracy and although existing work has found a gender gap in democratic attitudes, there have been no attempts to explain it. In this paper we try to understand why females are less supportive of democracy than males in a number of countries. Using data for 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, we test whether the gap is due to individual differences in policy priorities or to country-wide characteristics. We find that controlling for individual policy priorities does not offset the gender gap, but those women who are interested in politics are more democratic than men. Furthermore, our results indicate that the gap disappears in countries with high levels of human development and political rights

AfCFTA: Does it fast-track structural transformation in Senegal?

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) has recently entered into force and it appears as a possibility of economic growth and structural transformation for most African countries. Senegal is among the 54 countries that had signed and the 28 countries that had ratified the agreements.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of intra-Africa tariff reduction/elimination in the AfCFTA framework for Senegal industrial transformation through trade and labour market impact. Four scenarios of the AfCFTA have been simulated, from full to partial liberalization, with a Senegal multi-sector static CGE model based on the STAGE CGE model. The economic transformation is assessed in terms of both international trade composition (intra-African versus trade with the rest of the world), domestic output, consumption pattern in rural and urban regions of the country and main macroeconomic indicators. Results suggest some trade diversion effects. Assuming the elimination of Senegal tariffs on all African products, main increase on imports come from sectors such as forestry, tobacco, grain milling, leather and footwear, and food crops. In addition, production increases mainly for manufacturing sectors including manufactured food , chemicals, cash crops , processed tobacco, hotels, fertilizers and machines . In contrast, production decreases for mining products, glass and pottery , food crops and forestry whose production is substituted by imports. Members can experience changes in production and consumption structures, by improving value chains integration through trade. Finally, macroeconomic impacts show that the elimination of trade barriers has the potential to boost trade and transform the production structure of Senegalese economy. However, the choice of sensitive products to be excluded is critical and have several implications.Fil: Maty Sall, Leysa. International Food Policy Research Institute; Estados UnidosFil: Ramos, Maria Priscila. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Departamento de Economía; Argentina24th Annual Conference on Global Economic AnalysisWashingtonEstados UnidosGlobal Trade Analysis ProjectColorado State Universit

Political versus Economic Institutions in the Growth Process

After a decade of research on the relationship between institutions and growth, scholars in this field seem to be divided. Economic institutions perform well in growth regressions and a body of literature argues that this supports the key importance of institutions for development. Other authors maintain that the type of constraints that the recent theoretical literature describes are the more stable political institutions, and these have been found to play no role in empirical growth analyses. In this paper we re-examine the role that institutions play in the growth process using cross-section and panel data for both developed and developing economies over the period 1970-2000. Our results indicate that the data is best described by an econometric model with two growth regimes. Political institutions are the key determinant of which growth regime an economy belongs to, while economic institutions have a direct impact on growth rates within each regime. These findings support the hierarchy of institutions hypothesis, whereby political institutions set the stage in which economic institutions and policies operate

Structural Reforms and Labor Productivity Growth in Developing Countries:Intra or Inter-Reallocation Channel?

This paper employs sectoral data to draw conclusions on how structural reforms implemented during the period 1975 2005 affected differences in cross-country aggregate labor productivity growth in developing countries.Most important, it explores how the effects of reforms on productivity growth are distributed between the intrasectoral and intersectoral components of labor productivity growth. The findings indicate that most of the trade, product market, and financial sector reforms have increased productivity growth. Looking at the subcomponents of labor productivity growth, the results show that structural reforms work mainly through the intra-Allocative efficiency channel but not through the interallocative efficiency channel. The intrasectoral component is the main driver of the impacts of reforms on productivity growth,with a contribution that ranges from 76 percent to 96 percent depending on the reform measure considered. The paper also examines the role of labor market regulations and finds that labor market rigidity/flexibility matters for how specific reforms induce reallocation of resources within and across sectors.</p