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Published: Dec. 9, 2012 at 10:32 PM
KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Middle school students in the best physical shape do better than their less fit classmates on standardized tests and report cards, U.S. researchers say.
Lead researcher Dawn Coe, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville who conducted the research as a doctoral student in Michigan State University's kinesiology department, said the study was among the first to examine how academic performance relates to all aspects of physical fitness -- including body fat, muscular strength, flexibility and endurance.
"We looked at the full range of what's called health-related fitness," Coe said in a statement. "Kids aren't really fit if they're doing well in just one of those categories."
Coe and colleagues gathered data from 312 students in sixth through eighth grade at a West Michigan school by gauging the kids' fitness with an established program of push-ups, shuttle runs and other exercises.
They compared the fitness scores to students' letter grades throughout the school year in four core classes and their performance on a standardized test.
The study, published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, found the fittest students got the highest test scores and the best grades, regardless of gender or whether they'd yet gone through puberty.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/12/09/Fittest-students-get-higher-grades/UPI-27161355110372/#ixzz2EqjHbbic
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According to the charity Pittsburgh Cares, there are over two thousand homeless people in the Pittsburgh region. Seventy-eight percent of them are adults and twenty-eight percent are children. Of the adult homeless population, seventeen percent are veterans. Over one hundred homeless people have died on the city’s streets since 1989. What can be done to help alleviate this problem? According to award-winning libertarian author and social commentator Dr Mary Ruwart, the situation would not be anywhere near as bad as it is today if libertarians were running the country as opposed to the current leaders, who are stifling American society with far too many rules and regulations.
Stop the Government from MeddlingRuwart highlights the fact that towards the end of the 1990s, Mother Theresa’s church order the Missionaries of Charity purchased two abandoned buildings in New York City for a dollar each and managed to raise the sum of five hundred thousand dollars to fund the repair work that was necessary in order for them to be usable as homeless shelters. City officials initially stated that they were fine with the order’s plans to create shelters for the homeless but after work had begun, inspectors broke the news that a hundred-thousand-dollar elevator needed to be installed so that disabled people would have easy access to the accommodation. The nuns responded that the religious vows that they had taken meant that they weren’t allowed to routinely utilise modern conveniences. They suggested that they could carry disabled residents into the shelters manually and applied for a waiver from the regulations governing handicapped access, stating religious reasons. However they had their application rejected and as a result of this, the project was cancelled and the homeless people remained without a place to live. In a libertarian society, the regulations and restrictions that forced these individuals to carry on sleeping on the streets would not exist.
License to Sleep RoughThe USA is becoming a nation where the people are left desperately struggling to remain afloat within a sea of rules that dictate every element of their lives. The problem is that the authorities don’t know when to stop sticking their noses in to matters that don’t concern them. Over the course of the last few years, they have been inflicting unnecessary regulations upon the credit industry, encroaching more and more upon the constitutional rights of the public and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Officials in Nevada City, California, are even pushing for a law that will prohibit individuals from being homeless until they are given a license. Only a small number of these licenses would be handed out, effectively making it a criminal offence to have nowhere to go. What would become of the city’s homeless people if this law came into effect? They would be constantly on the lookout for policemen looking to arrest them simply for being homeless, which would push them even further into the margins of society.
Ruwart’s Solution
Ruwart states that by removing some of the regulations that the government places upon the US, the economy would improve and less people would lack a fixed abode. There would also be no laws in place that persecute the homeless. She is however realistic and admits that some people would still have nowhere to live. The difference is that more Americans would be wealthy so the homeless would receive more donations.
She claims that seventy-five percent of every tax dollar goes towards administration costs rather than those who really need it. This means that the main form of help that homeless people receive is from volunteers working in soup kitchens, kindhearted health workers who provide medical care free of charge and people dishing out spare change. In a society where people were wealthier, they would be in a better position to help other people, meaning that the best way to aid the homeless would be to adopt libertarian principles, which would also be extremely beneficial to society as a whole. Perhaps once those without a place to live were financially better off than they are at the moment, they could finally begin to address the issues that had led them to become homeless in the first place and get their lives back on track.
From: Scott Hollander [mailto:shollander@kidsvoice.org]
JUSTICE FOR ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN AS SCHOOL SEGREGATION CASE SETTLED
Resolution of Lawsuit will Improve Educational Opportunities
for Abused, Neglected and At-Risk YouthOn the same day that the Governor's Task Force on Child Protection released its recommendations in response to the Sandusky scandal, abused and neglected children right here in Allegheny County benefitted from the settlement of a lawsuit ending educational discrimination against children living in one of our county's largest group homes. Yesterday the remaining details were finalized by the McKeesport School District in settling a class action lawsuit brought by KidsVoice to enforce the educational rights of our clients and other abused, neglected and at-risk children living in the Auberle group home in McKeesport.
KidsVoice filed the lawsuit jointly with the Education Law Center because children from Auberle were not allowed to attend the McKeesport Area Schools. Instead they were segregated in a separate building where 7th- 12th grade children from Auberle were educated together in the same classrooms, despite various ages and grade levels, and were not afforded the same opportunities, resources and extracurricular activities as other McKeesport students. The Auberle children did not receive textbooks, only worksheets, had almost no computer access, and were not provided access to the library, AP courses or science labs.
Within 60 days of filing the lawsuit, the District agreed to discontinue segregating the children and worked to develop new policies and procedures to guarantee the educational rights and meet the needs of the Auberle students.
Scott Hollander, KidsVoice Executive Director, pointed to the progress that children residing at Auberle already are making because of the District's changes. "McKeesport deserves credit for closing the separate classrooms and implementing procedures and policies which are a model for other school districts to follow for how to successfully enroll, support and educate children in foster and group homes. One of the greatest outcomes of this case is that once the Auberle students attended the regular classrooms, more than 30% of the students residing at Auberle made the honor roll, which is higher than the overall district percentage."
One of our clients, Jeffrey,* was an honor student at Pine-Richland High School until his father passed away and his mother struggled with addiction. When he enrolled in the McKeesport School District, he no longer had access to the types of course work and teaching he previously had and instead had to bide his time in a segregated classroom without advancing his education or being challenged academically. As he said, the biggest difference was that in his old school, "the students wanted to learn and the teachers wanted to teach."
Some of the Auberle children were deprived of their education for more than two years. While they cannot get that back, the settlement approved by Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick provides for compensatory educational services and funding for tutoring, educational software, post-secondary education and job training, and compensatory educational services for children with disabilities.
Sadly, this continues to be a problem in other districts where children in foster and group homes are discriminated against in violation of federal and state law. KidsVoice, along with K&L Gates and the Education Law Center is in the midst of negotiating what hopefully will resolve similar issues in one of those other districts.
Your support helps to make outcomes like this possible for Jeffrey and other children. Every year, KidsVoice advocates in court and in the community to ensure a safe and permanent home for 3,000 of our most vulnerable citizens-abused and neglected children. Please consider supporting KidsVoice in your year-end giving to help us end these practices in the several remaining school districts where they continue. Abused and neglected children deserve to have the opportunity to heal and to succeed in school -- not be further abused and stigmatized by those who should be helping them. You can donate through our website, www.kidsvoice.org, or through United Way Contributor Choice #78.
Also, if you know of or are someone who resided at Auberle, please know that Class members include all children and youth who resided at the Auberle Group Home at any time from October 14, 2008 to the present and were educated in classrooms designed exclusively or predominantly for students who resided in the Auberle Group Home, known as transition rooms or Auberle-student classrooms. If you believe you may be a Class Member please contact Jennifer Fox Rabold, Settlement Administrator at (800) 543-8921 or email MASDFund@fedex.com. Notice of the class action settlement is available here .
View the recommendations of the Governor's Task Force on Child Protection here.
*The child's name has been changed to protect his identity and maintain client confidentiality. KidsVoice does not disclose the names of clients.
The Eagle
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Posted: 27 Nov 2012 04:56 PM PST
The registration is complete, the names are in, the seats are set, and it's time to celebrate! Celebrate what, you ask? Well, the number of students who are have chosen to take tests for the IB Diploma or Certificate, that is.
This year had such a great turnout that we just had to sit down with Mr. Ehman to get his view on things. We asked him why we [as a school] take this test so seriously. He went on to explain how it "is the highest level of high school" and that "it will be interesting to see where we stack up against the world." Naturally, because there's always more to Mr. Ehman, we had to ask at least one more question. How did he feel about the huge turnout of testers this year? Of course he, like any other person would have said, that "It's amazing how they [the numbers] have grown over the years, and it will be even more amazing to see the benefit that the students will this eventually gain from this experience." As this year goes further and further along, you learn many things that will better you in the long run. So, why not take a test that can help you truly reach that goal of yours down the road. Just wait and keep an eye out because next year could be your testing year.
The International Baccalaureate Candidates
Of 2013
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| November 17, 2012 The Swarthmore men's swim team suffered its first loss of the season on Saturday, falling in non-Conference action to Rowan University by a 145-108 score. |
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