Category: Children and Families
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Government Actors Try to Deflect, Deny and “Move On” from Failures During COVID
by James C. Sherlock The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is in full self-defense mode. CDC and the left backed, indeed insisted, upon social isolation during the pandemic. Now they deflect and deny agency in the consequences. They continue to try to insulate themselves from the catastrophic educational and mental health effects on…
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Bias and Risk in Behavioral Polls and Studies – A Cautionary Tale for Public Policy
by James C. Sherlock Here at BR, both the authors and commenters spend a great deal of time discussing the outcomes of behavioral polls and studies. Taxes, mandates, and bans are behaviorally informed. As are most public policies. But behavioral science adds levels of risk and bias much more prevalent than in the hard sciences.…
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Petersburg Seeks State Funding for Projects Linked to Public Health and the Appomattox River
by James C. Sherlock While all of the attention in the state press has been on Petersburg’s proposed casino, the estimable Bill Atkinson of the Petersburg Progress-Index provided insight into other Petersburg requests to the General Assembly for budget amendments. Badly needed infrastructure projects and a tourism initiative are each tied to the health of…
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No Better Time to Instill Financial Literacy in Black and Brown Virginian Youth
by Sherifah Munis Racial systemic inequalities have recently been brought to the forefront of our national conscience, shedding light on the centuries of policies that have disadvantaged Black and Brown Americans’ ability to build, maintain, and pass on wealth. A striking 2019 statistic shows that the median family wealth (the difference between gross assets and…
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – The Epidemic of Risky Behaviors and Experiences in Adolescents
by James C. Sherlock The 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011–2021 , was released by the CDC on Monday, provides the most recent surveillance data, as well as 10-year trends, on health behaviors and experiences related to adolescent health and well-being among high school students in the United States. The survey was completed…
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Dangerous Children’s Services Act Changes Proposed
by James C. Sherlock One of the key elements of state and local efforts to support children with behavioral health, educational disabilities, and other challenges is the Children’s Services Act (CSA) (the Act). In education, its primary role has been paying for placement of children and youth with educational disabilities into private special education schools (PSES).…
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Big Complications and Major Changes
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by James C. Sherlock Rebecca Aman, a member of the Newport News School Board, is frustrated. She told me in an interview that: Without sufficient discipline and access to clinical mental health services, behavioral intervention does not work to make schools safer and healthier. She believes that Newport News schools need to improve both discipline…
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Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Part 1 – Progressives, School Closures and Child Mental Health
By James C. Sherlock We have arrived today at a situation in which huge percentages of Virginia children and adolescents exhibit mental health problems. Both sides of the political divide acknowledge the problem. It’s existence is not up for debate. Both blame the soaring pediatric mental health issues, a problem before COVID, on COVID school…
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School Discipline – Part 5 – How and When Democrats Broke Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock We read earlier today that the eminent developmental theorist Urie Bronfenbrenner has written: The more we study human development, the more it becomes clear the family is the most powerful, most humane and, by far, the most economical way of making human beings human. That truth, however, does not account for…
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How Parents Can Take a Proactive Role in Their Child’s Education
by Timothy Rarick In Dr. Seuss’ classic book Horton Hatches the Egg, we are introduced to Mayzie, a lazy bird who is also an expectant mother. She loathes the work and responsibility that come with taking care of her developing baby within the egg. She eventually convinces Horton the elephant to take care of her…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 2 – Positive Options Trumped by a Race Card
by James C. Sherlock I have found both surprise and confusion among some readers when I use the term “valid studies” in discussing the avalanche of doctoral theses and studies produced annually by schools of education. The federal Institute for Educational Sciences established What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) in 2002 to sort the wheat from the…
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Virginia Dems Refuse To Support Female Athletes
by Kerry Dougherty I’m old. Old enough to remember when there were sane members of Virginia’s Democrat Party. They’ve apparently died or left the building and the party is under the complete control of woke loons. Like Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the former Speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, who recently pretended not to understand why…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 1 – PBIS
by James C. Sherlock Updated Feb 1 at 8:13:25 with a correction to IES assessment of PBIS. Newport News Schools first implemented Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports (VTSS) and its discipline component, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), in the 2017-18 school year. That year Newport News Schools was in Cohort 3 of VDOE’s VTSS…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Part 2 – Stop Trying to Provide Mental Health Services in School
by James C. Sherlock In Part 1 of this series I described the current Virginia Community School Framework (the Framework) and found it not only lacking, but counter-productive. Its basic flaw is that it assumes all services to school children will be provided in the schools by school employees, including mental health services. When you…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Hubs for Government and Not-for-Profit Services in Inner Cities – Part 1 – the Current Framework
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in Attendance, Charity, Philanthropy, Nonprofits, Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and Disorder, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Health Care, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Mental illness and substance abuse, Political Influence, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Social Services and Entitlements, Threat Assessmentby James C. Sherlock I believe a major approach to address both education and health care in Virginia’s inner cities is available if we will define it right and use it right. Community schools. One issue. Virginia’s official version of community schools, the Virginia Community School Framework, (the Framework) is fatally flawed. The approach successful elsewhere…