Check your mailbox, mark your calendar, bring a friend

The Spring Meeting flyer is on its way to a mailbox near you. I am both astounded and humbled by the response we've gotten from all of you! This day is all about sharing what it is we all do so well and so many different ways on campuses around the northeast.

We are looking forward to a healthy turnout, but we need your help ( yes, you.. and you back there, and you with those earrings, and you, and you and you, over there, in the white shirt) to spread the word at your schools. This program has something for everyone from classroom teachers to department heads, to admissions staff, and school counselors.

Click the Spring Meeting link for the complete list of programs, directions, and lodging information.

See you May 8th!

Important issue for discussion in the Members' Forum

Dear Colleagues,
Aside from the snow we had yesterday, I'm happy to see the spring finally apprears to be upon us. Your friends on the NEALS Executive Board have been busy putting the finishing touches on the Spring Meeting at Fay School (see the Spring Meeting link for up-to-date information).

An excerpt from a letter we received recently from Priscilla Wolf at Indian Mountain School is pasted below. I have given it time on the "Main Page" because I feel that her letter warrants some serious thought and discussion. Full text of the letter as well as a space to leave your own thoughts, or jump into the discussion is on the Members' Forum page. I hope you will take a moment to read what Priscilla has to say.

"...More and more I get questioned as to why kids have to be tested BEFORE they get tutoring support. In reality we don't have to do anything that the public schools have to do, but I think t's important to know that these changes in philosophy are out there and the questions for us and our policy may increase. We have the testing stipulation in place for several reasons: it enables us to say No to the family who just wants to push a kid who is getting the grades which are appropriate for his/her ability (and there is no learning difference), and hopefully it gives us a greater understanding of what works best for the student. The problem is we aren't always consistent , and I have had to say No (and Yes) to some families whose kids should be in tutoring but don't have the testing. Some families simply do not have the funds for the private testing and our school districts to date require failure before they will do the testing for free. .."

I look forward to seeing you on May 8th.
be well,
Kara Ashley

Research shows why a teen brain incapable of reasoning like an adult's

Teens driven to distraction
By Ronald Kotulak, Chicago Tribune science reporter
Published March 24, 2006
By the time puberty is over in the middle to late teens, when adult height and full reproductive capacity have been achieved, the body is at its peak--the strongest, swiftest and healthiest it will ever be. But the brain lags behind, laboring to adapt to the most complex society that has existed. This mismatch--between a fully grown body and an immature brain that is trying to cope with emotions, sexual urges, poor judgment, thrill seeking and risk taking--is a key factor making motor vehicle accidents the No. 1 cause of death among adolescents and young adults, followed by murder and suicide.

Using powerful new imaging technology to look inside the brain, scientists are beginning to unravel the biology behind this critical period of development. They are finding that an adolescent's brain undergoes a previously unsuspected biological makeover--a massive growth of synaptic connections between brain cells.This spectacular surge kicks off an extensive renovation of the brain that is not complete until the mid-20s. Scientists say the resulting learning curve, when teens struggle to shed childish thoughts for adult ones, is why adolescence is such a prolonged and perilous journey for so many.It helps explain not only why teens are more prone to crash a car than at any other time of life, but why they are more likely to engage in risky sex, drug abuse or delinquency. Although teens often can think as logically as an adult, the process can be easily derailed by flaring emotions or other distractions."The reason that kids take chances when they drive is not because they're ignorant," said Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg. "It's because other things undermine their better judgment."

The synaptic growth spurt that occurs in puberty is similar to the ones that occur after birth, when the brain first begins to learn. The early exposure to the outside world enables the brain to connect to the body, developing its capacity for processing sound, sight, smell, touch and taste, and to make sense of them.Learning occurs only after excess synapses not stimulated by experience are eliminated, much like the pieces of marble that have to be chipped away to create a work of art.

Now scientists have found that a second wave of growth and pruning occurs in adolescence. Synapses that are not incorporated into neural networks for memory, decision-making and emotional control are eliminated to make way for a leaner, more efficient brain.This late blossoming of synapses, it is thought, provides the brain with a new capacity for learning and allows the brain to make the transition from childhood to adulthood.

read full text of article by clicking this link

Scans Show Different Growth for Intelligent Brains

March 30, 2006
New York Times
By NICHOLAS WADE
The brains of highly intelligent children develop in a different pattern from those with more average abilities, researchers have found after analyzing a series of imaging scans collected over 17 years.
The discovery, some experts expect, will help scientists understand intelligence in terms of the genes that foster it and the childhood experiences that can promote it.
"This is the first time that anyone has shown that the brain grows differently in extremely intelligent children," said Paul M. Thompson, a brain-imaging expert at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The finding is based on 307 children in Bethesda, Md., an affluent suburb of Washington. Starting in 1989, they were given regular brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging, a project initiated by Dr. Judith Rapoport of the National Institute of Mental Health.
This set of scans has been analyzed by Philip Shaw, Dr. Jay Giedd and others at the institute and at McGill University in Montreal. They looked at changes in the thickness of the cerebral cortex, the thin sheet of neurons that clads the outer surface of the brain and is the seat of many higher mental processes.
The general pattern of maturation, they report in Nature today, is that the cortex grows thicker as the child ages and then thins out. The cause of the changes is unknown, because the imaging process cannot see down to the level of individual neurons.
But basically the brain seems to be rewiring itself as it matures, with the thinning of the cortex reflecting a pruning of redundant connections.
The analysis was started to check out a finding by Dr. Thompson: that parts of the frontal lobe of the cortex are larger in people with high I.Q.'s. Looking at highly intelligent 7-year-olds, the researchers said they were surprised to find that the cortex was thinner than in a comparison group of children of average intelligence.
It was only in following the scans as the children grew older that the dynamism of the developing brain became evident. The researchers found that average children (I.Q. scores 83 to 108) reached a peak of cortical thickness at age 7 or 8. Highly intelligent children (121 to 149 in I.Q.) reached a peak thickness much later, at 13, followed by a more dynamic pruning process.
One interpretation, Dr. Rapoport said, is that the brains of highly intelligent children are more plastic or changeable, swinging through a higher trajectory of cortical thickening and thinning than occurs in average children. The scans show the "sculpturing or fine tuning of parts of the cortex which support higher level thought, and maybe this is happening more efficiently in the most intelligent children," Dr. Shaw said.
complete text of article is available here.

Most teens lacking enough shut-eye

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
The Associated Press

Related
National Sleep Foundation
National Center on Sleep Disorders Research
Archive Book Review: A sleepy kid is a cranky kid
WASHINGTON — America is raising a nation of sleep-deprived kids, with only 20 percent getting the recommended nine hours of shut-eye on school nights and more than one in four reporting dozing off in class.
Many are arriving late to school because of oversleeping and others are driving drowsy, according to a poll released today by the National Sleep Foundation.
"In the competition between the natural tendency to stay up late and early school start times, a teen's sleep is what loses out," said Jodi Mindell, associate director of the Sleep Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Nearly all the youngsters — 97 percent — had at least one electronic device in their bedroom. These include televisions, computers, phones or music devices. Adolescents with four or more such devices in their bedrooms are much more likely than their peers to get insufficient sleep, the foundation reported.
"Those with four or more electronic devices in their bedroom were twice as likely to fall asleep in school," Mindell said.
"Sending students to school without enough sleep is like sending them to school without breakfast. Sleep serves not only a restorative function for adolescents' bodies and brains, but it is also a key time when they process what they've learned during the day," she said.
full text of this article is available here

More universities are going SAT-optional

Updated 4/4/2006 9:47 PM
By John Bell, Daily Record via AP
By Laura Bruno, USA TODAY

..."Whether they get 1300 or 1250 doesn't really tell you anything about them as a person or a student," says Ken Himmelman, Bennington dean of admissions. All the attention to numbers "becomes so crazy it's almost a distraction." The addition of these schools represents a growth spurt in the test-optional movement; now, 24 of the top 100 liberal arts colleges, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, are SAT- and ACT-optional. In total, 730 U.S. colleges don't require SAT or ACT scores, but many are technical or religious schools or those with open admissions policies. For some colleges changing policies, the turning point came when the College Board introduced the new 3-hour, 45-minute SAT with an added essay section. The colleges were troubled by the hysteria among students and also by aggressive marketing of test-prep companies capitalizing on the students' worries about the essay."What this represents is a dissatisfaction or worse with the changes in the SAT," says Robert Schaeffer, spokesman for FairTest, a non-profit organization that says tests are overused. It may be too early to know whether the recent string of scoring errors on the SAT, which affected more than 4,400 students, will lead to more schools opting out, but Schaeffer says he is "getting lots of calls from colleges" that want more information on how such a change might affect enrollments.
full text of this article can be accessed here


TESTING THE WATERS
Liberal arts colleges that have made the SAT and ACT optional include 12 that rank among the top 50 as rated by U.S. News & World Report:
Rank
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine 6

Middlebury (Vt.) College 8

Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y. 15

Bates College, Lewiston, Maine 21

Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass. 23

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass. 32

Connecticut College, New London, Conn. 36
(tie)
Union College, Schenectady, N.Y.

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. 39
(tie)
Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa.

Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. 45

Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, N.Y. 49

Source: FairTest