Annual Report Card Research Articles

Epilepsy in Children: Cognitive Development and Academic Performance

Abstract Context: Majority of epilepsy begins in childhood and may adversely affect cognitive development making children with epilepsy (CWE) vulnerable to educational problems. Paucity of studies from India evaluating the cognitive development and academic performance of school-going CWE emphasizes the need for this study. Aims: The aim of this article is to assess the cognitive development and academic performance of school-going CWE, between 6 and 12 years of age. Settings and Design: This cross-sectional study was carried out in the Pediatric Neurology Clinic in a tertiary level teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: Forty CWE aged 6–12 years, attending regular school, and taking anti-epileptic drugs were assessed for their cognitive development (IQ) using Malin’s Intelligence Scale for Indian Children and their academic performance using the school annual report card. Statistical Analysis: Tests of significance such as χ2, one-way analysis of variance, and Kruskal–Wallis test were used, P < 0.05 taken as statistically significant. Results: The mean IQ of CWE was 85.6. Sixteen children (42.1%) had an IQ of 90 and above, 15 (39.5%) had an IQ of 70–89, and 7 (18.42%) had Intellectual Disability (IQ<70). Eighty-five percent of CWE scored above 50% in their previous academic year. The category with a higher academic performance had a higher mean IQ (P = 0.001). The category with a lower academic performance had a higher mean number of seizures (P = 0.048). Conclusion: The majority of school-going CWE on treatment (81.58%) did not have intellectual disability with average-to-good performance in school. Seizure control affected academic performance positively.

Incorporating a fish recruitment indicator into a health report card: A case study from Gladstone Harbour, Australia

Abstract The Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership (GHHP) was established in May 2012 to assess the health of Gladstone Harbour following public concern about a range of fish health issues that emerged in 2011. The GHHP is responsible for producing an annual report card on the health of the harbour that includes social, cultural, economic and environmental health indicators. Fish recruitment and fish health were identified as important measures to inform the fish and crab indicator group. The objective of this study was to determine suitable species and develop a fish recruitment indicator for incorporation into the health grading for Gladstone Harbour. Following a trial survey in 2014–15, Yellowfin Bream (Acanthopagrus australis) and Pikey Bream (Acanthopagrus berda) were selected for the development of a fish recruitment indicator. A total of 26 sites in 13 zones were selected as survey sites. Surveys were undertaken using a standardised castnet method that had previously been used for recruitment surveys. Surveys were undertaken in 2015–16 and 2016–17. Historic data from surveys from 2011 to 12 to 2013–14 at a number of sites were also assessed to provide historic gradings. A modelling strategy using a negative binomial distribution was used to determine the total juvenile Bream catch per visit to a site. Bream productivity was initially assessed as Year × Zone in 2015–16 and Year × Site in 2016–17 and then averaged to provide a zone and a whole of harbour score on a 0–1 scale. This was then converted to an A-E grading to ensure consistence with the other indicators. Based on the grading score Bream recruitment was assessed for the whole harbour as D (poor) in 2015–16 and B (good) in 2016–17. The results from the 2 years of surveys, the trial survey and the historic surveys confirmed that Bream recruits provide a suitable fish recruitment indicator for the Gladstone Harbour report card.

Preterm Birth: Two Startling Trends, One Call to Action.

In July 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data for 2018 that indicated a rise in preterm births (birth at <37 weeks' gestation). This increase marks the fourth consecutive year that the United States has seen an increase in infants born too soon or too small. March of Dimes examined these data for its annual report card, giving the nation a "C" letter grade for this dismal outcome. This rise coincides with an ongoing increase in pregnancy-related death, the rate of which has more than doubled over the last 25 years in the United States. Racial and ethnic minorities suffer inequitably. Women of color are up to 50% more likely to give birth prematurely. Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native women are 2 to 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. A new approach is needed to address these crises. That approach must consider a range of population-based systems-level solutions.

Preconception health in England: a proposal for annual reporting with core metrics

There is growing interest in preconception health as a crucial period for influencing not only pregnancy outcomes, but also future maternal and child health, and prevention of long-term medical conditions. Successive national and international policy documents emphasise the need to improve preconception health, but resources and action have not followed through with these goals. We argue for a dual intervention strategy at both the public health level (eg, by improving the food environment) and at the individual level (eg, by better identification of those planning a pregnancy who would benefit from support to optimise health before conception) in order to raise awareness of preconception health and to normalise the notion of planning and preparing for pregnancy. Existing strategies that target common risks factors, such as obesity and smoking, should recognise the preconception period as one that offers special opportunity for intervention, based on evidence from life-course epidemiology, developmental (embryo) programming around the time of conception, and maternal motivation. To describe and monitor preconception health in England, we propose an annual report card using metrics from multiple routine data sources. Such a report card should serve to hold governments and other relevant agencies to account for delivering interventions to improve preconception health.

Designing report cards for aquatic health with a whole-of-system approach: Gladstone Harbour in the Great Barrier Reef

Ecosystem health report cards are an increasingly popular means of summarizing the results of environmental monitoring programs for broad, non-scientific audiences. This paper describes a whole-of-system report card initiative developed to monitor the condition of a multi-use port in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Queensland, Australia. Concerns over the impacts of major industrial expansion, fish health incidents, safety of recreational harbour users and habitat loss prompted stakeholders in the Gladstone region to unite and establish the Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership. The objective was to monitor and report on the health of the harbour via an annual report card (http://rc.ghhp.org.au/). We illustrate one approach to designing a report card against ten core considerations; 1) strong links to all stakeholders at all stages, 2) rigorous science, 3) effective communication, 4) setting clear goals and 5) realistic expectations, 6) flexibility in implementation, 7) transparency, open access and accountability, 8) results linked to actionable management recommendations, 9) regular evaluation, and 10) long term commitment. Innovative aspects of this report card include the combination of four components of harbour health: environmental, social, cultural and economic; underpinned by a sophisticated monitoring, modelling and reporting program. A review of the report card content and methodology, conducted in 2017, determined that the design meets the original vision and objectives set by Gladstone stakeholders. However, stakeholder perceptions of the effectiveness of the report card have not been comprehensively assessed to date. This paper provides a guide to others designing report card programs and environmental metrics, with advice on maximizing transparency and data sharing, coordinating otherwise disparate monitoring efforts, and linking with management through the provision of scenario analysis tools with which to interpret and respond to annual report card results.

Academic Performance, Self Esteem and Happiness among Adolescents in Kerala

An average adolescent in Kerala is expected to concentrate on his/her academics and all other key aspects of healthy development like spiritual, psychological and social wellbeing are given scant attention. Middle class parents and teachers often disregard unacceptable behaviors of academically high performing children. Nevertheless as the young person completes education, the world demands competencies not taught in schools and when the critical time of acquisition of these core competencies are long past. In consequence young adults face serious interpersonal difficulties in both personal and professional life. The present study is an attempt to find out whether better academic performance contributes to happiness and increased self esteem among adolescents. A sample of 150 students (75 girls and 75 boys) between 13 to 18 years of age was selected for the study. Self Esteem Rating Scale (SERS), Depression – Happiness Scale (DHS) and recent annual report cards were used to collect quantitative data. The results indicate that there is no significant difference between academically high performing and low performing students in happiness or self esteem i.e. better academic performance does not ensure happiness or positive self esteem. There is positive correlation (r=0.54**) between self esteem and happiness. Happier children have better self esteem (t=5.27**) than depressed children. The results of this study reveal that happiness and self esteem are independent of academic performance and parents and educators must focus on holistic development not just on scoring well in exams.

Promise and Peril: Implementing a Regulatory Budget

Current regulatory reform approaches, such as requiring cost benefit analysis, will not tame the regulatory state so long as: (a) Agencies themselves get to calculate costs and benefits; (b) there are no legislative constraints on regulatory costs, and; (c) there are no Constitutional limits on the scope of regulation as such. At bottom, today's rulemaking process is plagued by the fact that agency bureaucrats are not accountable to voters. And Congress though responsible for the underlying statutes that usually propel those unanswerable agencies nevertheless can conveniently blame agencies for regulatory excesses. Indeed, Americans live under a regime of Regulation Without Representation. A regulatory budget could promote greater accountability by limiting the amount of regulatory costs agencies could impose on the private sector. Congress could either specify a limit on compliance costs for each newly enacted law or reauthorization of existing law, or Congress could enact a more ambitious full scale budget paralleling the fiscal budget, a riskier approach. A comprehensive budget would require Congress to divide a total budget among agencies roughly in proportion to potential lives saved (or some other measure of success). Agencies' responsibility would be to rank hazards serially, from most to least severe, and address them within their budget constraint. In either version of a regulatory budget, any agency desiring to exceed its budget would need to seek congressional approval. costs imposed on the private sector by federal agencies can never be precisely measured, and a budget cannot achieve and should not seek absolute precision. Nonetheless, a regulatory budget is a valuable tool. The real innovation of regulatory budgeting is simply its potential to impose the consequences for the quality of regulatory decisionmaking on agencies rather than on the regulated parties alone. Agencies that today rarely admit a rule provides negligible benefit would be forced to compete for the right to regulate. While agencies would be free to regulate as unwisely as they do now, the consequences could be transfer of the squandered budgetary allocation to a rival agency that saves more lives.Budgeting could fundamentally change incentives. Today's conflict between agency political rewards and admission that a rule has no benefits would change. Under a budget, adopting a costly, but marginally beneficial, regulation will suddenly be irrational. Congress would weigh an agencies' claimed benefits against alternative means of protecting public health and safety, giving agencies incentives to compete and expose one another's bogus benefits. Budgeting could encourage greater recognition of the fact that some risks are far more remote than those we undertake daily. In the long run, a regulatory budget would force agencies to compete with one another on the most important bottom line of all: that their least effective rules save more lives per dollar spent (or correct some alleged market imperfection better) than those of other agencies. The (unachieveable) perfect regulatory budget would be allocated such that further reshuffling of regulatory caps among agencies could save no more lives and would actually cause harm. There are clear benefits to regulatory budgeting, but there are also pitfalls. For instance, enforcement of a budget will never be easy. Under a budget, agencies have incentives to underestimate compliance costs while regulated parties have the opposite incentive. Self correcting techniques that may force opposing cost calculations to converge are only at the thought experiment stage. Limitations on the delegation of regulatory power and enhancing congressional accountability can help, however. Despite pitfalls, certain princples and antecedents can help ensure that a regulatory budgeting effort succeeds. For instance, explicitly recognizing that an agency's basic impulse is to overstate the benefits of its activities, a budget would relieve agencies of benefit calculation responsibilities altogether. Agencies would concentrate on properly assessing only the costs of their initiatives. Since an agency must try to maximize benefits within its congressionally specified budget constraint or risk losing its budget allocation, it would be rational for agencies to monitor benefits, but Congress need not require it.Other ways to promote the success of a budget are to: establish an incremental rather than total budget; collect and summarize annual report card data on the numbers of regulations in each agency; establish a regulatory cost freeze and implement a Regulatory Reduction Commission; employ separate budgets for economic versus environmental/social regulation; control indirect costs by limiting the regulatory methods that most often generate them. A regulatory budget is not a magic device alone capable of reducing the current $647 billion regulatory burden. Yet so long as Congress is fully accountable for the results of a budget, a cautious one deserves consideration. Having good information is an aid in grappling with the regulatory state just as compiling the federal fiscal budget deficit or not is indispensable to any effort to plan and control government spending. Under any size government, keeping track of spending and regulation will remain vital.

Web‐based benchmarking of drinking water utilities in the United States

The American Society of Civil Engineers' annual report card shows a declining trend in the condition of the US drinking water infrastructure during the past 20 years. Maintenance and improvement of the nation's drinking water infrastructure and utilities are required, but this can only be accomplished after the current performance is evaluated and may only be possible when performance metrics are evaluated and benchmarked against those of other utilities. Some initiatives exist in this arena but are hindered by subjectivity, limited scope, the ability to gather utility personnel in one place, and being completed only once. This article documents the results of quantitative, comprehensive, and web‐based performance benchmarking of 10 drinking water utilities in seven key areas. The major contribution of this research is the creation of a database and the web‐based data collection and resulting display platform that is part of the Water Infrastructure Database project.

Integration of science and monitoring of river ecosystem health to guide investments in catchment protection and rehabilitation

Summary1. Stream ecosystem health monitoring and reporting need to be developed in the context of an adaptive process that is clearly linked to identified values and objectives, is informed by rigorous science, guides management actions and is responsive to changing perceptions and values of stakeholders. To be effective, monitoring programmes also need to be underpinned by an understanding of the probable causal factors that influence the condition or health of important environmental assets and values. This is often difficult in stream and river ecosystems where multiple stressors, acting at different spatial and temporal scales, interact to affect water quality, biodiversity and ecosystem processes.2. In this article, we describe the development of a freshwater monitoring programme in South East Queensland, Australia, and how this has been used to report on ecosystem health at a regional scale and to guide investments in catchment protection and rehabilitation. We also discuss some of the emerging science needs to identify the appropriate scale and spatial arrangement of rehabilitation to maximise river ecosystem health outcomes and, at the same time, derive other benefits downstream.3. An objective process was used to identify potential indicators of stream ecosystem health and then test these across a known catchment land‐use disturbance gradient. From the 75 indicators initially tested, 22 from five indicator groups (water quality, ecosystem metabolism, nutrient cycling, invertebrates and fish) responded strongly to the disturbance gradient, and 16 were subsequently recommended for inclusion in the monitoring programme. The freshwater monitoring programme was implemented in 2002, funded by local and State government authorities, and currently involves the assessment of over 120 sites, twice per year. This information, together with data from a similar programme on the region’s estuarine and coastal marine waters, forms the basis of an annual report card that is presented in a public ceremony to local politicians and the broader community.4. Several key lessons from the SEQ Healthy Waterways Programme are likely to be transferable to other regional programmes aimed at improving aquatic ecosystem health, including the importance of a shared common vision, the involvement of committed individuals, a cooperative approach, the need for defensible science and effective communication.5. Thematic implications: this study highlights the use of conceptual models and objective testing of potential indicators against a known disturbance gradient to develop a freshwater ecosystem health monitoring programme that can diagnose the probable causes of degradation from multiple stressors and identify the appropriate spatial scale for rehabilitation or protection. This approach can lead to more targeted management investments in catchment protection and rehabilitation, greater public confidence that limited funds are being well spent and better outcomes for stream and river ecosystem health.

Communications' annual report card

No abstract available.

Charter Ranking Roulette: An Analysis of Reports That Grade States’ Charter School Laws

Since 1996, the Center for Education Reform has released an annual report card, grading each state’s charter school legislation and labeling as the “strongest” those laws placing the fewest and slightest restrictions on charter schools. While the Center for Education Reform rankings have undoubtedly been the most influential, at least four other systems have been developed. In this article, we analyze the different ranking systems, including a new approach we have developed in order to illustrate the arbitrariness of any given ranking system and to highlight some key charter school issues. We then investigate the general, popular phenomenon of rankings in the field of education, exploring the benefits, drawbacks, and appeal of such rankings.

The Perils of Transparency in Bureaucracies

Many countries have recently enacted or proposed reforms aimed at increasing citizens’ information on the quality of some public sector services. Disclosure of schools’and teachers’ quality is the case that has generated the biggest public debate. In the US, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires learning progress to be measured for every child and results from students’tests be made available in annual report cards, so that parents can evaluate schools’ performances. Similar reforms have also been proposed for many other public services. In the UK, legislation introduced in the year 2000 now requires that the performance of each Local Government is reviewed and made public with regards to provision of services such as …re, police, housing, social services and education, but also like the condition of roads, the

News @ a glance

Fitness failure: Canada's children got a “D” for the second year running on the annual report card on physical activity from Active Health Kids Canada. The charitable advocacy group is calling for more information about the importance of: unstructured physical activity and play time; cutting

Fixing Perceived Problems

PLENTY OF state policies have been noteworthy in 2004, but one that had major impact went into effect in Illinois, where the governance of education was significantly restructured. S.B. 3000 (the Education Reform and Accountability Act of 2004) gives the governor greater influence over education through his or her control of the state board of education. Previously, the Illinois state board was appointed by the governor, but, because of the way in which the terms were staggered, an incoming governor could inherit another governor's appointees. And because the state board appoints the chief state school officer, the person in that position might not reflect a governor's goals for education. The terms of seven of the nine members of the state board ended with the effective date of this bill -- 14 September 2004. Gov. Rod Blagojevich then nominated replacements for those seven. In the future, whenever any governor takes office in January, that executive will nominate all members whose terms begin after that date -- for the duration of the governor's time in office. S.B. 3000 also limits the size of the board to eight members plus a chairperson, reducing the total board size by one. Board member appointments continue to be made with advice and consent of the state senate, though the new law does reduce the length of terms of appointees from six years to four. Of the four members (except the chairperson) whose terms will expire in January 2007 (the year a new governor will take office or Gov. Blagojevich will begin a second term), one must be an at-large member, and no more than two of the four nominees can be from one political party. Of those four whose terms end in January 2009, the same applies. (Party membership is defined as having voted in the primary of the party in the last primary before appointment.) The governor will indirectly affect the selection of the state superintendent, because the new board -- appointed by the governor -- appoints the superintendent at the beginning of each term of a governor. The superintendent's contracts are limited to four years, although they may be extended or renewed if the board chooses. The governor can remove any member of the state board for incompetence, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. S.B. 3000 also grants the state board the authority to provide certain regional services, either through a regional administrative technology center or otherwise. A regional center has the authority to issue annual report cards for the regional offices, grading the impact of technical assistance and program support by evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of districts served, the regional delivery of services, the level of district satisfaction, and the delivery of services that enhance student performance. Regional centers will assist low-performing schools, work to help close the achievement gap, and help with the pooling of district administrative services. The state department of education must have at least the following divisions: teaching and learning for all children, school support services for all schools, fiscal support services, special education services, an internal auditor, and a human resources department. The board may add others. The state board must maintain a five-year strategic plan that addresses 15 issues clearly specified by the law, including an interesting provision regarding recommendations for streamlining the school code to eliminate laws that interfere with local control. Another provision addresses streamlining certification of teachers and administrators to provide high-quality personnel and ongoing professional development. In addition, the strategic plan must address educational research and development, as well as access to and training in the use of a centralized student achievement data system. To access the complete text of the law, go to www.legis.state.il.us/legislation/publicacts/fulltext. …

Measuring Quality in Health Care Reform

President Clinton's American Health Security Act of 1993 is based on six principles: security, savings, simplicity, quality, choice, and responsibility. All six relate to maintaining or enhancing the quality of care. Recognizing the importance of the clinical maxim of first doing no harm, the Administration seeks to safeguard quality by ensuring accessibility to care, improving knowledge, fostering the synthesis of information into clinical practice guidelines, and seeking information on the performance of health plans. Annual report cards will help providers and plans monitor and improve the quality of their care, while enabling consumers to make informed decisions about enrolling in plans.