Securing a College Prep Curriculum for All Students

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Los Angeles' Community Coalition: how its intergenerational campaign for college preparatory classes shaped leadership development, district policy, school capacity, and student outcomes

Keeping Parents and Student Voices at the Forefront of Reform

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project and Youth United for Change: how developing leadership, relationships, and research shaped district policy, school capacity, and student outcomes

Rethinking the Teacher Pipeline for an Urban Public School System

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Chicago ACORN: how its coalition of community groups, training programs, teacher unions, and others shaped leadership development, district policy, school capacity, and student outcomes

Building Partnerships to Reinvent School Culture

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Austin Interfaith: how its "alliance schools" network and parent and community engagement shaped leadership development, district-level policy, school-level capacity, and student outcomes

Improving Schools Through Youth Leadership and Community Action

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and Sistas and Brothas United: how their campaigns shaped leadership development, district policy, school capacity, and student outcomes

Building a Campaign for Reading Reform in Miami

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Miami's People Acting for Community Together: how its campaign for a new literacy program shaped leadership development, district-level policy, school-level capacity, and student outcomes

Building a Districtwide Small Schools Movement

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Oakland Community Organizations: how parent and community engagement in a campaign for small schools shaped leadership development, district policy, school capacity, and student outcomes

Does Research with Children Violate the Best Interests Standard? An Empirical and Conceptual Analysis

Even as research with children has increasingly been recognized as urgently needed for generating effective treatments for childhood diseases, drug formulations for infants and young children, and dosages appropriate for children, it has remained controversial. Scholars have engaged in heated debates over whether non-beneficial research with children is morally and legally justified. On one point, however, there has been agreement: Whether they support or criticize pediatric research, commentators generally assume that pediatric research should be justified under the “best interests of the child” legal standard. This assumption not only threatens important research and public health interventions, but it is also incorrect. This Article challenges conventional wisdom by arguing that research does not have to be in a child’s best interests to be legally permissible. The best interests standard is generally understood as the governing principle for legal decisions about children, particularly in the medical context. Nevertheless, the best interests standard operates in two different ways that have very different implications—treating a child’s best interests as paramount versus as a primary consideration. Both versions of the standard fail to account adequately for the interests of others. Yet, the history of best interests standard reveals that the child’s best interests were rarely considered in isolation of other the interests. In a variety of contexts, moreover, legal scholars have criticized the best interests standard for failing to take account of the interests of people other than the child. This concern applies with special urgency to certain medical and public health decisions. An empirical analysis reveals that the history and criticisms have not been effective in changing how courts oversee medical decision making involving children. Insofar as it places the interests of the child above all other interests, the best interests standard is a legal fiction that should not be applied to public health decisions in general and pediatric research in particular. Attempts to fix the current standard are unlikely to work, largely because of the confusion already engendered by the different versions of the standard. Instead, legislators should adopt a new legal standard, the “secure child standard,” for public health decision making: Parents should be given discretion to make decisions for children unless their decisions are likely to cause unjustified harm to the child. The secure child standard will lead to more transparency and prevent poor decision making in the contexts of public health and biomedical research, and is also a legal standard that may have broad applicability to decisions and policies involving children

Loss Of Rap1gap: A Driver In The Progression From Dcis Of The Breast To Idc

The purpose of this study is to determine the role of Rap1Gap in the progression of DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) to IDC (invasive ductal cancer). We employed an in-vitro three-dimensional (3D) overlay model that provides a physiologically relevant microenvironment to study mechanisms of malignant progression. Previous studies from this laboratory aimed to determine specific gene expression changes common to three models of DCIS- MCF10.DCIS, SUM 102 and SUM 225 in comparison to MCF10A cells, a model of non-transformed human mammary epithelium. The expression of 295 genes was found to be significantly altered, with 63 being increased in expression in all three DCIS cell lines. The mRNA-Seq results were further mined by Genomatix analysis to gain an insight into common frameworks in promoter regions of these 63 up-regulated genes. 244 promoter loci were found to be associated with these 63 up-regulated genes. Enrichment analysis showed that the common framework RXRF-ZF02-ZF02-PLAG-HDBP is highly enriched [336-fold], being present in the promoters of RAP1GAP, SPRY4 and PDGFB genes. Rap1Gap is a GTPase-activating protein (i.e., an inactivator) for the small GTPase, Rap1. It is known to be involved in regulation of cell adhesion and has been previously studied in pancreatic and thyroid cancers, where a decrease in its expression has been associated with malignant progression. Immunoblotting results show that in cells grown in 3D, Rap1Gap levels in MCF10.CA1d cells are reduced compared to those in MCF10.DCIS cells. Lentiviral shRNA silencing of Rap1Gap in DCIS induced an increase in Rap1 and MAPK activity, as determined by Rap1 activity assay and immunblotting for phosphorylated ERK1/2. Confocal immunofluorescence (staining of F-actin) of 3D structures and invasion assays reveal appearance of multicellular outgrowths, extensive cytoskeletal organization and increase in invasion. Concomitantly, increase in collagen IV degradation was observed. Lentiviral silencing of Rap1Gap also resulted in an increase in proliferation. Re-expression of Rap1Gap in DCIS-Rap1GapshRNA cells reduced Rap1 activity and suppressed the development of invasive outgrowths in 3D structures. Additionally, adherens junctions and E-cadherin levels were partially restored. Thus, we conclude that reduction of Rap1Gap in DCIS acts as a switch to progression to an invasive phenotype via deregulated Rap1 and MAPK activation