Boston School Research Articles

Spiritual Development in Public and Religious Schools: A Case Study

This article addresses teachers' understanding of spiritual development in public and religious schools in Boston and Chicago. It examines how teachers define spiritual development in different educational contexts and looks at the way they relate spirituality to a number of factors including community, identity, and character. The data from the research indicates that teachers understood spiritual development within the specific environment of their school but that they all located the need for spirituality within education as part of the reaction against the perceived negative side effects of modern society.

Aging of the Ovary Linked to PTEN Pathway

DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY When a woman is born, her ovaries already contain a full supply of the immature eggs she will need in her reproductive lifetime. Normally, these eggs begin ripening at about age 13 and are gradually released, usually at the rate of one per month, until she is about 50 years old. But in a small minority of women, perhaps 1 in 100, the ovaries stop releasing eggs much earlier in life, thus causing infertility and premature aging. Exactly why that happens isn't understood, but new results may help provide an explanation. On page [611][1], a team led by Kui Liu of Umea University in Sweden, reports that a gene called Pten , which is best known as a suppressor of tumor growth, is needed to keep egg development in check. In its absence, the researchers found, the egg-containing follicles of mice were activated rapidly at an early age, thus causing depletion of the animals' eggs much sooner than is normal—a situation similar to that of premature ovarian failure (POF) in humans. “It is a very nice piece of work that shows the importance of the PTEN pathway” in controlling follicle maturation in mice, says reproductive geneticist Aleksandar Rajkovic of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. If PTEN also controls human egg maturation, the finding may aid the design of improved infertility treatments. Liu and his colleagues came to their conclusion by genetically engineering a mouse strain in which Pten expression was inactivated specifically in the animals' oocytes. The results showed that a functional Pten in oocytes is needed to keep egg follicles from maturing. Without it, Liu says, “all the primordial follicles were activated prematurely.” Once a follicle is activated, there's no going back. Its egg either matures and is released for fertilization or dies. As a result, the animals had one litter but were infertile by about 3 months of age, which is early adulthood for mice. By that same age, their ovaries had lost essentially all their follicles. The result is consistent with previous findings from Diego Castrillon, Ronald DePinho, and their colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston. About 5 years ago, they showed that knocking out the gene for the Foxo3a protein produced essentially identical effects ( Science , 11 July 2003, p. [215][2]). As it happens, Pten negatively regulates two other enzymes, PI3 kinase and Akt, which suppress Foxo3a. So with Pten gone, Foxo3a can't function. Castrillon's team, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, reported in the January issue of Human Reproduction that Foxo3a mutations are not a common cause of POF in humans. Still to be determined is whether mutations in PTEN or in other proteins that cooperate with PTEN in producing its cellular effects are involved with human ovarian problems. Even with that uncertainty, researchers think that the PTEN pathway is a good target for potential fertility treatments. Foxo3a and a number of other proteins shown to affect egg development in animals are transcription factors that regulate gene expression. But PTEN is an enzyme, and developing compounds that inhibit it, thus promoting egg development and maturation, should be easier. An enzyme “has the advantage of being easily manipulated,” says Aaron Hsueh, an ovarian physiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. ![Figure][3] Running out. Mouse ovarian tissue in which Pten was inactivated in oocytes ( left ) shows many activated follicles just 8 days after birth. But by 12 weeks ( right ), the mouse ovaries are depleted of follicles. CREDIT: P. REDDY ET AL. , SCIENCE He notes that although most women with POF are diagnosed after all their eggs are depleted, some still have follicles in their ovaries. It's impossible to tell when they will mature and release an egg, but treatment with a PTEN inhibitor could allow physicians to control that and perhaps help a woman become pregnant. Another possibility is to use a PTEN pathway inhibitor to aid follicle maturation in ovarian tissue in lab dishes, as may be needed for women who have had their ovaries removed prior to chemotherapy that would render them sterile. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1152257 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1086336 [3]: pending:yes

Auger processes in the 21st century

Purpose: The extreme radiotoxicity of Auger electrons and their exquisite capacity to irradiate specific molecular sites has prompted scientists to extensively investigate their radiobiological effects. Their efforts have been punctuated by quadrennial international symposia that have focused on biophysical aspects of Auger processes. The latest meeting, the 6th International Symposium on Physical, Molecular, Cellular, and Medical Aspects of Auger Processes, was held 5–6 July 2007 at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. This article provides a review of the research in this field that was published during the years 2004–2007, the period that has elapsed since the previous meeting.Conclusion: The field has advanced considerably. A glimpse of the potential of this unique form of ionizing radiation to contribute to future progress in a variety of fields of study is proffered.

New hope for urban high schools: cultural reform, moral leadership, and community partnership

The last sixty years have seen tremendous strides in high school education. More young people of all races and backgrounds are graduating from high school, with more credits in tougher courses, than ever before. However, our dropout rate is still too high and far too many graduates are not prepared for college. High school reform for city schools has been particularly challenging where poverty and racism have undermined the high school experience. Educators have relied upon two reform strategies: the curricular strategy focuses on the academic content that is delivered in the classroom, content reformers have adjusted. They also have restructured the high school itself to maximize the impact of the classroom. This book offers an additional strategy, one essential for real change: the cultural reform strategy. Cultural change-a fundamental change in the beliefs, attitudes and expectations of the stakeholders-is difficult to achieve. Yet, without a change in the culture of the high school, curricular and structural reforms will have limited impact on raising student engagement. The authors illustrate the history of high school reform, and develop a case for the necessity of cultural reform, by taking an intimate look at one very typical urban high school-Dorchester High School in Boston. Dorchester High faced trends, policies, and challenges similar to those of high schools all over the country, so that the lessons learned there should be instructive for urban high schools across America. Gonsalves and Leonard also examine Dorchester High in the context of community partnerships and relationships.

Manx Law: A Contribution from the Isle of Man*

This article provides a rare insight into the legal system and jurisprudence of the Isle of Man by the island's Second Deemster. * This paper was originally delivered at Harvard Law School in Boston on 3rd October 2007. Reprinted with permission of the author. ** Deemster David Doyle was sworn in as Her Majesty's Second Deemster in the Isle of Man on 21 March 2003. Deemster Doyle presides over criminal trials in the Court of General Gaol Delivery and civil trials in the High Court on the Island. He also sits in the Appeal Division of the High Court. Deemster Doyle was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1982 and admitted to the Manx Bar as a Manx advocate in 1984. He has an active interest in the constitution of the Isle of Man and in Manx law, past, present and future. He also has an active interest in the role the Island has in the wider international community. The author describes, inter alia, the judicial structure, sentencing and impact of international jurisprudence on the work of the judiciary of the Isle of Man, before outlining the island's constitutional position with the United Kingdom and with England and Wales. The author argues against intellectual and judicial insularity: ‘Laws should be developed and problems solved by reaching out for knowledge and solutions that may be provided by approaches from jurisdictions beyond our local frontiers’. However, in reaching out to foreign jurisdictions, it is emphasised that account must be taken of local history, traditions, laws and needs.

A Decade of urban school reform: persistence and progress in the Boston public schools

A Decade of Urban School Reform looks at this critical era in the Boston schools and distills valuable insights and lessons for school leaders and reformers everywhere. In the last decade, the Boston Public Schools has undergone critical reforms that have been of intense interest to school leaders and policymakers throughout the country. Under the leadership of superintendent Thomas Payzant, the Boston schools implemented extensive reform strategies that yielded notable results. Fittingly, at the end of Payzant s superintendency in September 2006, the Boston Public Schools received the Broad Prize for Urban Education for being the most improved urban school district in the country. With chapters that explore questions pertaining to governance, human resources, instruction, data collection, disabilities, community engagement, and other topics, the book offers a detailed, comprehensive portrait of a school system managing the complex and daunting tasks of system-wide The result is a timely, in-depth contribution to the small group of indispensable writings on urban school reform.

What is Personalization?

IN THE long history of formal education, schooling has rarely been personalized. It would be easy to compile a long list of famous individuals from the past who have been expelled from schools for their purported inability to learn. It is interesting to speculate whether such notably creative people as Charles Darwin, Patrick Henry, James Russell Lowell, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Sir Walter Scott, and Daniel Webster were actually advantaged by being pushed out of the schools of their time. In more recent years, Madame Curie, Orville Wright, Albert Einstein, and Marlon Brando shared their fate. But a truly personalized school would be able to recognize such budding genius. Indeed, it would be able to diagnose and support the whole range of human talents. A personalized school is one in which each individual person, whether student or teacher, matters a great deal and has a program that is good for him or her. It was probably excusable for educators of Horace Mann's time to structure their schools on the assumption that all students learn in the same way and need precisely the same content. However, we are now faced with the enormous task of educating for a post-technological age. Today's schools must increasingly produce adaptable individuals who are lifelong learners and able to keep pace with the era of rapid change in which we will continue to live. The task of creating, maintaining, and improving the conditions for learning is thus the most basic challenge facing educators today. The outmoded structures that have encumbered schools for over a century must be replaced with more personalized ways of educating students and categorizing subject matter. Human knowledge is expanding at an alarming rate. Technology and computerization have drastically altered the ways in which we earn a living. Social, political, and economic problems of unprecedented complexity face everyone on the planet. Schools can no longer be satisfied with organizing themselves primarily for administrative convenience. They must become schools for learning rather than schools for teaching and testing. The conventional age-graded school system is a product of another century and initially of another culture. It was devised by the Prussians to prepare young people for a militaristic society, one in which authoritarianism was the dominant style. The system was imported into the U.S. at the Quincy Grammar School in Boston in 1848 and grew as population increases necessitated accommodating larger numbers of students. It has endured principally because it is easy to administer and neatly categorizes students and curriculum by age and subject. We are faced with an equally large transition today from arbitrary grouping patterns to personalized learning alternatives. Unfortunately, we are also currently blessed with policy makers who believe they can solve all educational problems by testing. What we require are new models for a new kind of schooling. And we need to avoid the pitfalls of earlier decades when we successively concentrated on new curricula utilizing old teaching techniques or old content using new structures. THE PERSONALIZATION PREMISE Contemporary schools must acknowledge the validity of the personalization premise. They must accept the biological truth that no two organisms are alike, and that includes learners. Every learner has a unique experiential background and a unique set of innate talents and personal interests. No two learners exhibit the same behavioral patterns or possess the same goals or levels of aspiration. No two learners solve problems in the same way or are motivated by the same incentives. No two learners are ready to learn at the same time or to the same degree. Learning for each individual is, at least to some extent, unique. The personalization of teaching and learning refers to any effort on the part of a school to suit its program to its student body. …

Dietary Guidelines Spark Flap Over Fish Consumption

NUTRITION Recommendations from a nonprofit group urging pregnant women to boost their fish consumption—contrary to U.S. guidelines—sparked widespread criticism earlier this month, in part because the review was funded by the fisheries industry. The advisory from the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies (HMHB) Coalition has been dismissed by health advocates and government officials alike. Yet some researchers not involved in the furor say that industry sponsorship should not obscure the fact that fish consumption has plummeted because of federal guidelines—and that standards should be reconsidered. In a statement issued on 4 October, HMHB and 14 researchers who reviewed the literature advised pregnant women to eat at least 12 ounces of fish each week to provide the developing fetus with brain-building omega-3 fatty acids. That contrasts with the position of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which in 2004 recommended that pregnant women consume no more than 12 ounces a week to limit their intake of mercury. ![Figure][1] Caveat consumptor. A diet of fish during pregnancy can both help and harm a fetus's developing brain. CREDIT: DPA/LANDOV Government agencies reacted swiftly to HMHB's pronouncement. Three of HMHB's members—the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration—rejected the advice in a letter in The Washington Post. FDA and EPA announced that their guidelines wouldn't be changing. Critics fault HMHB for accepting $60,000 from the National Fisheries Institute, an industry group, to disseminate the recommendations, along with honoraria of $1000 to $1500 per researcher. HMHB Executive Director Judy Meehan says the group gave no thought to how the industry funding would be perceived. “People seem to have strong opinions” about fish consumption, but the science is “open to lots of interpretation,” says Gary Myers, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Rochester in New York who has helped lead a major study of fish consumption in pregnancy, in the Seychelles northeast of Madagascar. He and others say it's difficult to identify the tipping point at which the risks of mercury in fish outweigh the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids. The topic also pits scientific disciplines against each other. “Environmental health people see the effects of mercury on the brain and get scared; nutrition people says there's this great nutrient and people aren't getting enough,” says Emily Oken, a nutrition researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston who focuses on women's health. In her own study of 135 babies and their mothers, Oken found that higher fish consumption boosts cognition at 6 months of age, whereas mercury levels, measured in a mother's hair, decrease it. But on balance, she wrote in a 2005 paper in Environmental Health Perspectives , more fish in the diet was still associated with better cognition. In general, scientists note that both the benefits and drawbacks of fish are small for individuals, although they can be significant across a population. Exposure is usually measured as mercury in maternal hair. Some studies show that an increase in this index is linked to very subtle cognitive changes, including reduced word recall and a 1-point loss in IQ. HMHB's guidance gave little weight to the risks of mercury and did not recommend that pregnant women avoid high-mercury fish. Even some who worry that pregnant women consume too little fish say that HMHB's guidelines focus too much on the benefits of fish, just as the federal recommendations are faulted for overemphasizing the risks. In response, Patricia Nolan, a public health physician at Brown University who helped craft the HMHB recommendations, said in an e-mail that “we emphasized the positive because women are decreasing or eliminating already low fish consumption.” But what's really needed, says David Bellinger, a neuropsychologist at Harvard Medical School, is a more nuanced review that would give pregnant women a fuller picture of how specific types and quantities of fish in the diet could affect their baby-to-be. [1]: pending:yes

GIS analysis of urban schoolyard landcover in three U.S. cities

Although there has been considerable interest in the rejuvenation and greening of inner-city schoolyards for several decades, recent studies on the behavioral and environmental impacts of greenspace, particularly tree cover, suggest that greenspace on schools may be more important than previously understood. However, little is known about the conditions and landcover of urban schoolyards. To understand the structure of the landcover on city schoolyards, this study used Geographic Information System software to classify and compare landcover on 258 U.S. public elementary and middle schools in Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, and Detroit, MI. For all three cities, schoolyard was found to cover, on average, more than 68% of the school property, which was an average of 1.0–2.5 ha in size. Boston’s schoolyards (circa 1995) were notably smaller from those in Baltimore and Detroit, and they had far more impervious surface. On average, schoolyards were dominated by turf grass and impervious surface, while tree canopy occupied the smallest fraction of schoolyard landcover (approximately 10%). In light of these findings, we conclude by discussing how greening might be achieved on these and other yards.

Challenges to Teacher Education

Today, American education faces a crisis. It is not too extreme to say that public education hangs in balance. Anyone who has read history of American education knows that there have always been critics. But they did not want public education dismantled. They wanted it to be better. Today, however, there are critics who believe that public education itself is obsolete. The latest manifestation of this view can be seen in a report released in December 2006 called Tough Choices or Tough Times (National Center on Education and Economy, 2006). It came from a group called New Commission on Skills of American Workforce. Some of best known names in American education signed report, including former Secretaries of Education Rod Paige and Richard Riley; Tom Payzant, recently retired Superintendent of Schools in Boston; and Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City public schools. The commission says that our public school system is obsolete. We must start all over. Statistic after statistic is tossed out to show that other countries are overtaking us and we are losing global competition because of our public schools. Engineering jobs are being outsourced to India, commission says, where corporations can hire an engineer for only $7,500 a year, whereas in United States, same engineer would earn at least 5 to 6 times as much. Logic suggests that corporations are going where they can get educated labor at salaries that are unthinkable in United States, but Tough Choices commission insists that public schools are to blame, not wage differential. The commission says that our teachers are not coming from right strata of society. They say that we must recruit the best and brightest to teach in our schools. And how will we do this? We must raise starting salaries to $45,000 and top salaries to $110,000. This may be expensive, commission says, but we can pay for it by cutting retirement benefits of teachers--reducing their pensions and health benefits, so that they are commensurate with what is available to workers in private sector. To say least, this is not a realistic proposition. Teaching is and always has been a mass profession; it will never be staffed exclusively by graduates from Ivy League colleges and universities. Set aside for a minute implicit snobbery and condescension behind this pursuit of the best and brightest. If commissioners really expect to recruit large numbers of Ivy League graduates, they should propose tripling pay scale for teachers. Until they do, I expect that teachers will not relinquish their retirement benefits. The commission proposes an elaborate new examination system--assuming that our students are not tested enough! They would have all students take a super-high-stakes test at end of 10th grade. Those who score really well would be allowed to finish 2 more years of high school and then take another high-stakes exam to see if they are fit to go to college. Those who score well enough would then be funneled to community colleges. What would happen to those who did not pass any of these exams? The commission says, not to worry, kids can take exams again and again and eventually everyone will pass. Apparently, this group of eminent leaders feels that we have not done a good enough job of sorting kids into winners and losers and preventing less prepared from going to good colleges. The most outrageous proposal of commission is that in future, all public schools should be turned over to private managers. The role of school boards would be to approve performance contracts with these managers and monitor their performance. In effect, commission recommends complete privatization of American public education. Who would these private managers be? The commission does not say, though it suggests that they might be corporations owned and run by teachers. …

How Ya Like Me Now (review)

Reviewed by: How Ya Like Me Now Karen Coats Halpin, Brendan How Ya Like Me Now. Farrar, 2007201p ISBN 978-0-374-33495-6$16.00 R Gr. 7-10 Eddie has become the supreme enabler since his mom disappeared into a bottle of OxyContin following the death of his father. After a year of holding everything together, Eddie has mixed feelings about living with his artsy aunt and uncle and his cousin Alex while his mother goes into rehab; he wants to enjoy being a kid again, but he's not sure if he can make it work in the funky experimental school in downtown Boston where Alex has already established a firm place as a lovable screwup. Halpin ably captures the complex emotions of a boy trying to find his way through traumatic circumstances, particularly the guilt he feels about hating the mother who refused to share his grief, loved getting high more than she loved him, and still uses him as a motivator for getting her life back together. The new school environment is also a place of confusion for Eddie; it is a place where the scholarly diligence he uses as a hedge against emotional chaos is acknowledged and even rewarded by his fellow students, but it is also the first time he has had to deal with an urban racial mix where he is the minority. Alex emerges as a fully imagined character in his own right—despite the fact that he leads with his hormones and has some academic deficits, he resents not being taken seriously for the gifts he does have. The boys' slowly developing friendship is delicately and credibly handled as they forge an understanding of each other's needs outside of well-meaning adult interventions. Everything comes together with a solid click here: readers will find the setting of an alternative school modeled on a corporation intriguing, the secondary characters recognizable without being stereotyped, and the plotting creative and well balanced. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Participatory action research: Collective reflections on gender, culture, and language

The focus of this article is the experiences of three undergraduate students who engaged in a participatory action research (PAR) project with a group of preadolescent Latina girls attending a public school in Boston, MA, USA. The aim of the 2-year project was to explore how the girls constructed knowledge about girlhood and other gender-related issues. In this article, I (Alice) briefly describe the PAR project. The remaining sections focus on the research team's reflections. Julieta, a native of Romania, discusses how her life experiences growing up in Romania during the Communist regime helped her to identify with some of the girls’ life experiences. Anastasia, who was born and raised in Greece, describes how dialogue, a basic tenet of PAR, assisted her in developing collaborative relationships of trust with the research participants. In the third section, Nikos, who is also a native of Greece, describes how participating in a collaborative process with a group of girls from a dramatically different background than his own challenged him to reflect on his maleness, his ethnic beliefs, and his assumptions about public education in the US. The last section states the importance of teacher educators pursuing PAR-type experiences with college-aged students. The team's reflections offer insights into how engaging in participatory experiences with school-aged students can provide rich, informative, and effective opportunities for non-United Statesian students to gain a better understanding of the many issues related to public education in the US.

Student reflections on learning cross-cultural skills through a ‘cultural competence’ OSCE

Background: Medical schools use OSCEs (objective structured clinical examinations) to assess students’ clinical knowledge and skills, but the use of OSCEs in the teaching and assessment of cross-cultural care has not been well described.Objectives: To examine medical students’ reflections on a cultural competence OSCE station as an educational experience.Design and Setting: Students at Harvard Medical School in Boston completed a ‘cultural competence’ OSCE station (about a patient with uncontrolled hypertension and medication non-adherence). Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of twenty-two second year medical students, which were recorded, transcribed, and analysed.Measurements and Results: Students’ reflections on what they learned as the essence of the case encompassed three categories: (1) eliciting the patient's perspective on their illness; (2) examining how and why patients take their medications and inquiring about alternative therapies; and (3) exploring the range of social and cultural factors associated with medication non-adherence.Conclusions: A cultural competence OSCE station that focuses on eliciting patients’ perspectives and exploring medication non-adherence can serve as a unique and valuable teaching tool. The cultural competence OSCE station may be one pedagogic method for incorporating cross-cultural care into medical school curricula.

Musing on Professionalism

Are you a professional? This might seem like an easy question to respond to at first, but we really don't know unless we ask ourselves. This is exactly what the American Physical Therapy Association would like us to do by taking the self assessment available on their Web site.1 Training, education level, skill, and behavior are all key elements of professionalism. It is more than simply being an authority in your field. It is possible to be a highly motivated, hardworking individual who is an authority in the field, yet lacks professionalism. To be a true professional requires much more. The road to professionalization started in 1881 when the Sargent School in Boston instituted a formalized training program.2 However, it would take more than 30 years before the first physical therapist would become licensed as it was widely believed in the medical community that physical rehabilitation provided little or no benefit to those with physical disabilities.2 It wasn't until after World War I and the return of injured and disabled soldiers that the influence and success demonstrated by the Allies in rehabilitative practices was recognized, and American doctors couldn't help but take note of the value of the field. Further advancement was realized through the efforts of the United States Medical Corps, a small group of orthopedists and 1,200 reconstructive aides, who committed themselves to helping the disabled.2 For the first time in the history of the profession, physical therapy began to gain positive recognition. We acquired momentum in the quest for professionalism with the founding of our first professional organization, later to be known as the American Physical Therapy Association, on January 15, 1921.2 Following that was the printing of the first Code of Ethics and Discipline in the Physiotherapy Review in 1935.2 These events represented important strides in the professionalization process and helped bring our field to its present-day standards. Most of us can appreciate professionalism when we see it, but we can't always identify what makes it such.3 I wonder though, how we are viewed by society now as opposed to physical therapists in the past? Our perception of ourselves and how others envision us may be entirely different. Whether speaking, writing, or through subtle interactions with body language, we are constantly being analyzed by someone. Bezner4 asserts, Decision making as an adult and as a professional is often guided by our adopted values. Consider Carson coming to physical therapy for the first time following a shoulder injury. He is 10 minutes early for his appointment, but Rhonda, the physical therapist student who will be evaluating him, is 20 minutes late. She is flustered, does not have his chart, and has not looked it over beforehand. As she leads him to a treatment booth they pass her clinical instructor (CI), Susan. Rhonda apologizes for her tardiness, but Susan waves her away. Inside the treatment booth Rhonda asks Bob what treatment he has received so far. Bob, puzzled, states that he hasn't had any. That is what he is there for now. Rhonda leaves the booth to search for his chart while Susan stands outside of the open door to the room talking on the phone to a physician. Rhonda finally locates Bob's chart and sees that an evaluation has been ordered. After completing a 20-minute evaluation, she tells Bob that he needs to come back 3 times a week for 12 weeks. Bob has to ask what the treatment will be because Rhonda doesn't offer that information. He is told they will work on range of motion. Bob then asks if he will be healed and able to do his job as an electrician. Rhonda stammers that she doesn't know. She is only a student on her last affiliation. Bob, shocked, says he thought she was his therapist. Meanwhile, Susan finally finishes her phone conversations and enters the treatment booth at the end of the evaluation. As he leaves that day, Bob wonders if he should seek another means of treatment for his shoulder. …

Crohn’s Disease: Advise and Consent

Dr Bruce E Sands is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is the Medical Co-Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Crohn’s and Colitis Center, and the Director of Clinical Research in the Gastrointestinal Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston).

High Standards for Leadership

THE conditions surrounding teaching in this country are beginning to resemble the worst aspects of a welfare state. The issue, however, is not teachers' pay. It is the surreptitious way that state and local education officials must go about doing what they need to do to survive, while federal policy makers pretend that rules and regulations will solve all problems. Thankfully, there are exceptions to this dreadful state of affairs. No one can honestly tell the federal regulators that schools have met the mandate to provide a qualified for every classroom. School districts were scrambling at the beginning of the school year to find warm bodies, just as they did when the baby boomers reached school age nearly two generations ago. Today, public school enrollments are at an all-time high, fueled in part by the baby boom echo and, in many places, by immigration that has turned classrooms into mini-United Nations and placed even greater strain on schools serving poor and minority children. Census figures had been predicting such diversity to materialize a decade from now. Instead, it is a reality this school year. If the states have been setting minimal definitions of highly qualified, doesn't that mean that they are at least trying to be realistic? With enrollments exploding in some areas of the country, teacher recruiters have even gone to Europe and the Philippines in search of teachers. Some have turned to such organizations as the Visiting International Faculty Program, based in North Carolina, to find teachers. As of September, this program had placed about 1,600 teachers in schools. Meanwhile, our federal policy makers and some of the watchdogs who follow the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) contend that noncompliance with its mandates is at the heart of the problems with the law. If states and districts only did what the law requires with regard to teacher quality, choice, supplemental services, and other provisions, student achievement would be moving ahead nicely. Instead, the number of schools not making adequate yearly progress rose considerably this fall in most states, just as the testing experts had been predicting. While others seemed to be losing their heads over noncompliance with NCLB, the leaders of two of the nation's largest school systems kept theirs. Their story is one of deciding what was most important to accomplish for the children in their care and then sticking to their guns. Worrying about compliance with a federal law appeared way down on their list of priorities. Both Tom Payzant, who retired this past summer from his post as superintendent of schools in Boston, and Roy Romer, outgoing superintendent of schools in Los Angeles, wrestled early on with some of the reforms that became federal policy. While superintendent in San Diego, Payzant was a leader in the National Alliance for Restructuring Education, which introduced a new reform vocabulary to a coalition of schools nationwide. Curriculum standards, alignment with assessments, units of study, systemic change--these were among the big ideas the alliance brought to school leaders long before these concepts became embedded in federal policy. As governor of Colorado, Romer followed through on the ideas generated by the first education summit, convened by then-Gov. Bill Clinton and the first President Bush. Romer chaired a commission that recommended higher standards and better assessments, the wellspring of the standards movement. Payzant and Romer, two superintendents on opposite sides of the country and with very different styles of leadership, steadfastly crafted the same kinds of changes in their districts. …

Conferences to Get Less Perky

BEIJING— Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering enjoy privileges including easy grant money, housing subsidies, and personal drivers. But organizers of the Xiangshan Science Conferences have decided to bar academy members from using their titles when registering for conferences or in proceedings publications. Held every 2 weeks throughout the year on topics as diverse as neurobiology and robotics, the meetings influence the government's research priorities. The new rules send a message that “every conferee is equal,” says Xiangshan staffer Liu Yuchen. The change “emphasizes that equality among scientists … determines the development of science,” says Zhu Pengcheng, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston who attended a recent Xiangshan meeting in Beijing.

KATRINA'S MENTAL FALLOUT

The incidence of serious mental illnesses among Hurricane Katrina survivors doubled within 5 to 8 months after the storm, according to a telephone survey by epidemiologists at Harvard Medical School in Boston. But the study found a surprising absence of suicidal tendencies among the survivors.

International Standards Proposed for Stem Cell Work

STEM CELL RESEARCH TORONTO— Scientists who work on stem cells have proposed draft guidelines to set ethical standards for researchers around the world. The guidelines, which are the work of an international committee, lay out ground rules for work with embryos and the cells derived from them. The document also recommends ethical standards for obtaining sperm, eggs, embryos, or other cells from human donors. The guidelines are consistent with those set out by the U.S. National Academies last year ( Science , 29 April 2005, [p. 611][1]), but “we extend and refine those principles” for the international community, George Daley of Harvard Medical School in Boston said at a meeting[*][2] here last week. Daley, who headed the drafting committee with 30 members from 14 countries, says the document should ease collaborations between scientists who live in regions of the world with different laws and local regulations regarding use of embryos or informed consent of tissue donors. The guidelines recommend that certain types of research, such as derivation of new embryonic stem cell lines or generation of chimeric animals, be subject to special review by an independent panel. In some cases, the panel may be at the investigator's institution; others might be governed by a regional or national review. The guidelines also set standards for sharing research materials including reagents, animal strains, and cell lines and urge scientists to deposit new cell lines at national or international cell banks. Committee members said their most intense debates concerned how to fairly compensate women who donate oocytes for research. People who donate bone marrow for research, for example, are usually paid for their time, discomfort, and inconvenience, but several committee members felt strongly that oocyte donors should not be offered any compensation beyond reimbursement for their expenses. In the end, the committee agreed that local review boards should ensure that compensation does not “constitute an undue inducement” but otherwise left the final decision up to local laws and practices. The committee plans to draw up template documents for material transfer agreements and informed consent for the donation of cells or embryos. Daley says such templates would have made the work dramatically easier as he and his colleagues prepared to begin human nuclear transfer experiments this spring. ISSCR members have 60 days to comment on the draft, which has been posted on the society's Web site. The committee hopes to issue a final document by the end of the year. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.308.5722.611 [2]: #fn-1

Bristol-Myers Ends No-Strings Grants

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH Scientists are mourning the cancellation of a long-running research grants program funded by a major drug company. The Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) Freedom to Discover program, begun in 1977, only supports about 50 biomedical scientists at a time. But the grants, about $6 million a year recently, come with no strings attached. That feature, which allows for high-risk research, is particularly welcome at a time when U.S. funding for biomedical research is tightening. Some scientists are troubled that the company is pulling the plug in part because of the growing global debate over the ethics of corporate payments to academic physicians. “I think they've gone overboard and are tanking a wonderful program,” says grantee Carl June, a cancer researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. BMS says that Freedom to Discover is the largest corporate-funded, unrestricted research grants program in the world. Scientists can't just bid for the grants, however. Instead, BMS scientists identify potential recipients doing work of interest to the company in six biomedical fields and invite them to compete. The winners, chosen largely based on their track records, receive $100,000 a year for 5 years. The grantees also meet annually to choose a distinguished scientist to receive a $50,000 lifetime achievement award considered to be among the most prestigious in their fields. The resulting flexibility to follow one's hunches is extremely rare, says Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist Michela Gallagher. She says her search for neurobiological markers that explain why some rats remain mentally sharp into old age might be seen as a “fishing expedition” by a U.S. National Institutes of Health study section. Others have used the company's money to support postdocs until they get their first grant or to collect chimp fecal samples in Africa for an HIV study. BMS makes no claim to any of the findings. “There's lots of payola within the pharmaceutical industry, but this is one of the few programs that is really squeaky clean,” says immunologist W. Allan Walker of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who is also a recipient. ![Figure][1] Fishing license. Michela Gallagher says a BMS grant lets her explore promising ideas. CREDIT: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Earlier this year, the company began telling grantees, many of whom are not physicians, that it was changing some rules to avoid the perception of any conflict of interest. Spouses could no longer attend the awards selection meeting for free, for example, and grantees were asked to sign an agreement saying they were consultants to BMS. BMS spokesperson Rebecca Taylor says the program was killed in order to expand efforts such as a $150 million, multi-year program that funds pediatric AIDS clinics in Africa. But “an increase in compliance regulations affecting the global pharmaceutical industry” is a contributing factor, she adds. Some recipients say they were told that BMS lawyers felt the company could run afoul of new, restrictive regulations in Europe on corporate gifts to physicians. [1]: pending:yes