As AP Expands, Studies Disagree on Its Value

Some Parents and Teens, Feeling Pressure to Choose Difficult Courses, Look for Middle Ground
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Angie Palma, a student at West Potomac High School, was stunned to discover last spring that the honors U.S. history course she hoped to take her junior year would no longer be offered.
For many years, honors courses have been an attractive compromise for American high-schoolers. They have sampled the choices like Goldilocks: Regular courses? Too easy. Advanced Placement courses? Too hard. But honors courses were just right.

Of course, that was before Advanced Placement and the smaller-but-similar college-level International Baccalaureate began a period of rapid growth that changed school curriculums across the country. More than a million high school students took AP tests in May, double the number who took them 10 years ago. And the Bush administration has proposed funds for training 70,000 new AP science and math teachers.

Now, a series of competing, sometimes contradictory studies have begun to look at the effectiveness of AP and IB in meeting their central purpose -- preparing students such as Palma for college. Some parents and students are questioning whether the college-level courses are placing too much strain on children and supplanting useful honors courses. And the College Board, which sponsors the AP program, has begun to ask schools to examine the content of their AP courses to make sure they meet the program's standards.
Palma is taking AP psychology but decided on the regular history course, calling the AP class "beyond my capabilities." Choices such as hers are part of a debate over AP that shows no signs of abating as the program undergoes growing pains
continue reading here.

Too Inconvenient And Too CostlyPrivate schools have been complaining about the growing influence of Advanced Placement and its effect on their programs. Joan Goodman, a school administrator and AP coordinator at The New School of Northern Virginia, was asked to give her opinion on the new AP course audit

Millions have misused ADHD stimulant drugs, study says

By Shankar Vedantam
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — More than 7 million Americans are estimated to have misused stimulant drugs meant to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and substantial numbers of teen-agers and young adults appear to show signs of addiction, according to a comprehensive national analysis tracking such abuse.
The statistics are striking because many young people recreationally using these drugs are seeking to boost academic and professional performance, doctors say.
Although the drugs may allow people to stay awake longer and finish work faster, scientists who published a new study concluded that about 1.6 million teen-agers and young adults had misused these stimulants during a 12-month period and that 75,000 showed signs of addiction.
The study published online this month in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence culled data from a 2002 national survey of about 67,000 households.
The data paint a concrete and sobering picture of what many experts have worried about for years, and present ethical and medical challenges for a country where mental performance is highly valued and where the number of prescriptions for these drugs has doubled every five years, said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"We live in a highly competitive society, and you want to get the top grades and you know your colleagues are taking stimulants and you feel pressured," she said. "Yes, you are going to study better in the middle of the night if you take one of these medications. The problem is a certain percentage of people become addicted to them, and some have toxic effects."
Volkow said it was impossible to disentangle the skyrocketing prescriptions of drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder from the risks of diversion and abuse.
"As a child, you have multiple friends who are being treated with stimulant medications," she said. "You get the sense that these are good."
Studies have shown that the drugs are highly effective, especially among children, and also that they reduce the risk of substance abuse among those correctly diagnosed with the psychiatric disorder, which is characterized by inattention and unruly behavior. Untreated ADHD has also been associated with conduct and academic problems.
At the same time, there have been growing concerns that the drugs are over-prescribed. A Food and Drug Administration panel earlier this month warned that the medications carried risks of rare, but serious, cardiovascular problems, and it recommended that the agency place serious "black box" warnings on the drugs, as a way to restrain spiraling prescriptions.
Lawrence Diller, a pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., who prescribes the drugs but is worried about their overuse, said that the new study showed the real health concerns are with diversion and abuse, not with rare side effects. "Seventy-five thousand addicts to prescription stimulants is much more troublesome than the 100 to 200 adults who have strokes," he said. "Houston, we have got a problem because we are just in the middle of this epidemic."
The study found that men and women were equally likely to be misusing the drugs, but that women seemed to be at greater risk of dependence — characterized by a lack of control, physical need and growing tolerance for the drug — while men seemed to be at greater risk of abuse, in which the medication was used in dangerous situations, said lead author Larry Kroutil, who studies health behavior and education at RTI International, a nonprofit research group.
To obtain their findings, Kroutil and a team of researchers culled data from a 2002 national survey conducted by the federal government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). H. Westley Clark, director of SAMHSA's Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, said the 2002 data were obtained through face-to-face interviews. RTI has not yet culled data from subsequent years regarding the misuse of ADHD drugs.
Since then, prescription rates and the popularity of various drugs have changed, and Kroutil said continuing research is needed to track the phenomenon. Clark noted that data from 2003 suggested that the problem of stimulant misuse was greater among young adults 18 to 25 years old than among teen-agers.
The RTI study was paid for by Eli Lilly and Co., which makes the non-stimulant ADHD drug Strattera. Although non-stimulant treatments such as Strattera were an option for ADHD patients, they were often not as potent as stimulant drugs, Volkow said.
Both Volkow and Scott Kollins, who heads Duke University's ADHD program, said the full range of ADHD drugs is a valuable tool. But Kollins said the study brought home what he has seen anecdotally: A colleague who visited his college-age son's fraternity was mobbed by requests for Adderall prescriptions by youngsters seeking to boost academic performance.
"If I took Ritalin, I would probably stay up longer and write my grants faster," Kollins said. But besides the fact that he did not think this is right, Kollins said the rare side effects highlighted by the FDA panel meant people using the drugs for nonmedical purposes were placing themselves at risk for those adverse events.
Volkow was more blunt: "You are playing roulette," she said. "If you get addicted, you will not only not get into Harvard, you will not finish high school."
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

Parkinson's profile suggested: hard workers, straight arrows

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff February 25, 2006
They tend not to smoke, drink, or seek thrills. They work hard. They show up on time, keep their homes neat, and follow complex medical instructions to the letter.
Doctors have noticed for decades that their Parkinson's disease patients often seem to share certain personality traits.
Now, a growing body of research, including surveys of Parkinson's patients and laboratory studies in mice, suggests that the disease, which afflicts more than a half-million Americans and has no cure, really does tend to strike straight arrows.
The apparent link between Parkinson's and a certain personality raises the question of whether the disease begins years or even decades before the onset of symptoms such as tremors, slowness of movement, and rigidity. That possibility, a topic under discussion at this week's World Parkinson Congress in Washington, has gained currency, raising the prospect that if the disease can be detected earlier, perhaps someday it can be prevented.
If there is a Parkinson's type, it also implies that people with a shortfall of the brain chemical dopamine early in life may have certain personality characteristics, such as risk aversion. Those same people, as they age, may develop Parkinson's. So, complex traits that seem like integral parts of a person's identity might actually stem from the early effects of their disease.
''To my mind, this is the best example of a personality trait that has been associated with changes in a specific brain chemical," said Dr. Matthew Menza, a leading specialist on Parkinson's and personality. It is also, he said, ''the classic case of 'when bad things happen to good people.' "
Though no one has followed people for decades to see whether those with a ''Parkinson's personality" are more likely to develop Parkinson's, Menza says the ''weight of the evidence" supports the idea of a link. His list of traits associated with the disease include industriousness, punctuality, orderliness, inflexibility, cautiousness, and lack of novelty-seeking." Other doctors mention drive, ambition, altruism, cleanliness, and a tendency toward obsession with details.
read the complete article here.

Did we strike a nerve?

You may have noticed that the amount of "fresh" content on this site has increased. We plan to post several articles of interest to our profession on the site per week and hope you will check the site often. If you read an article that compels you to speak, share, or rant, we have given you all a place to do this.

A few of you have wondered why we chose this format for our website. It's in blog format, after all. It doesn't seem like a natural choice for a professional organization... or does it?

The reason I like this format so much is that it enables everyone to comment on what's been posted- that's why we call this our "online community." There is a "comment" link under every post on the site.

Posting a comment is easy. Once you've clicked on the comment link at the bottom of a post, window will pop up. In the window, there is a space to "leave your comment" you can write whatever you'd like in the comment box (comments will be screened) . Under "choose an identity", click "other", enter your name, and you're good to go. The word verification box is there to secure our comments and prevent spam. Don't let it discourage you.

If you read a post that has a comments, it will say so under the post. Please click the comment link to see what others have had to say and join the discussion.

Looking forward to reading your comments,
Kara Ashley

Brain Researchers Discover The Evolutionary Traces Of Grammar

Source: Max Planck Society
Posted: February 17, 2006
The bases of the human language faculty are now being investigated by means of highly specialised measurement techniques and with increasing success. Why can we understand complex sentences, while our nearest cousins - apes - only understand individual words?
A comparison of the activation and structural connections of brain areas during the processing of simple or complex linguistic rules. A: The frontal operculum engages in the processing of both rule types (upper image).By contrast, Broca's area becomes active for complex rules only (lower image). B: The frontal operculum is linked to the anterior portion of the temporal lobe via the fasciculus uncinatus. Right: Broca's Area is connected with the posterior portion of the temporal lobe via the fasciculus longitudialis superior. (Image: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences)
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig have discovered that two areas in the human brain are responsible for different types of language processing requirements. They found that simple language structures are processed in an area that is phylogenetically older, and which apes also possess. Complicated structures, by contrast, activate processes in a comparatively younger area which only exists in a more highly evolved species: humans. These results are fundamental to furthering our understanding of the human language faculty. (PNAS, February 6, 2006)
full text available here.

Check out our new Professional Development Page

Our new PD page is up and running! If you are hosting, attending, or know of a professional development opportunity that may be of interest to your NEALS colleagues, please send the information to kashley@fayschool.org.

Watchdog of Test Industry Faces Economic Extinction

New York Times
February 22, 2006
By MICHAEL WINERIP

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — For more than 20 years, FairTest, a small nonprofit group headquartered on the second floor of an old house here, has been the No. 1 critic of America's big testing companies and their standardized tests.
In 1987, when FairTest began publishing its list of colleges that did not require applicants to submit SAT's, there were 51; today there are 730, including Holy Cross, Bowdoin, Bates, Mount Holyoke and Muhlenberg.
"The FairTest list provides an enormously valuable service for students looking at colleges who have proved themselves to everyone but the test agencies," said William Hiss, a Bates vice president.
A generation of education journalists, like Thomas Toch, who reported for Education Week and U.S. News & World Report, were schooled on the complexities and limitations of standardized testing by FairTest.
"They've helped me a lot," said Mr. Toch, who is now a director of Education Sector, a nonpartisan Washington policy research group.
On a slow day, like last Friday, Robert Schaeffer of FairTest handled calls from The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Lakeland Ledger, Associated Press and Hartford Courant and Bloomberg News.
On busy days, like July 13, 2004, reporters call by the dozens. That was the day FairTest helped reveal that scoring mistakes by the Educational Testing Service on its teacher licensing test had caused 4,100 men and women in 18 states to fail when they had actually passed the exam.
A few years ago, California officials were considering ending their support of the National Merit Scholarship program because it relied exclusively on a single score on the College Board's PSAT test to pick semifinalists.
"We contacted the College Board about validity and fairness studies of the PSAT, but they didn't give us information that addressed our concerns," said Michael Brown, chairman of a state committee that makes recommendations on admissions policy for California's public colleges. "So I asked FairTest, which got back with significant information on the limited reliability of a single PSAT score."
Last year, the University of California system ended its financial support of the National Merit program.
But for all FairTest's impact, its days may be numbered.
read the rest of the article here.

Howard Gardner at Watkinson School

The National Center for Independent School Renewal is holding its 'Northeast Cluster" spring meeting at the Watkinson School in Hartford, Connecticut on Monday, April 24th. Howard Gardner will deliver the keynote presentation "The Disciplined Mind." They are now seeking proposals for sessions. Visit the NCISR home page for more information.

How the brain reacts to social stress

Bullied mice experience genetic changes in the brain, study finds
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:58 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2006
WASHINGTON - Any bully’s victim knows the experience can cause lingering fear. Now scientists watching big mice intimidate small ones have discovered the stress spurs genetic changes in the brain — a finding that may help research into depression and other mental illnesses.
The experiment suggests a part of the brain linked to addiction also plays a previously unsuspected role in illnesses characterized by chronic anxiety and social withdrawal, Texas researchers report Thursday in the journal Science.
In fact, a substance produced in the brain, called BDNF, seems to be the culprit, controlling whether the bullied mice turned into fearful hermits or not.
“This is a fascinating observation,” said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the work.
Neuroscientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center wanted to test the role of the brain’s “reward pathway” in depression-like behavior. This brain circuitry is involved in emotional learning, and recognizing pleasure, and thus has a role in addiction. But people with major depression become almost numb, unable to experience pleasure, suggesting another role for the reward pathway.
Enter the mice, normally sociable creatures who quickly determine their pecking order, steering clear of aggressors in favor of friendlier company.
The Texas researchers subjected some small brown mice to intimidation more intense than they’d face in the wild: Each was placed for five minutes in the cage of a particularly aggressive, large white mouse, who battled the little one into a corner. Then, researchers divided the cage with a perforated, plexiglass divider for 24 hours — so the little mouse was in no physical danger, but saw and smelled the aggressor. For 10 days, each little mouse met a new bully.
The bullied mice emerged drastically cowed. Four weeks later, they still fearfully withdrew from even presumably friendly little mice.
What was happening in their brains?
to read the full text of this article, please go to the Resources for Learning Specialists page

Welcome to the NEALS Online Community!

If this is your first time visiting, we hope you'll take a minute to look around (check the "NEALS Links" to your right) . If you are interested in contributing to the site, please contact Kara Ashley (kashley@fayschool.org). If you'd like to comment about any of the articles posted here, please click the "Comment" link below each post. This is a great way to leave instant feedback or start a conversation with the group! We hope you will visit us often!

FDA Panel Calls for Strongest Warning on ADHD Drugs

In close vote, committee recommends 'black box' label for methylphenidates such as Ritalin
HealthDayThursday, February 9, 2006
THURSDAY, Feb. 9 (HealthDay News) -- A U.S. advisory panel recommended on Thursday the strongest possible label warning for Ritalin and other stimulants used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder because of potential cardiac risks.
The Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted 8-7, with one abstention, to add a "black box" warning to the drugs, which include methylphenidates such as Ritalin, Concerta, Methylin and Metadate. Amphetamines, including Adderall, are also commonly used for the disorder. In August 2004, the FDA added a warning to Adderall, telling patients with heart conditions not to use the drug.
The recommendation came after reports of the deaths of 25 people, 19 of them children, among people using both types of medications.
read the complete story on the National Institutes of Health website by clicking here.

Tools of the Trade, Vol. II

Tools of the Trade, Volume 2
Online Resources for Learning Specialists
Compiled by Kara Ashley

LD Resources: Designed byRichard and Anne Wanderman, longtime friends of NEALS....

for the full text, visit the Resources for Learning Specialists page.