Kentucky School Research Articles

Technology has found its way into our schools … Now what?

Kentucky has done an outstanding job equipping its schools with computers and with access to the Internet. The job now lies in the hands of the teachers and administrators within each district to integrate this technology into its curriculum. Training sessions need to be offered at several different times in convenient locations (preferably within each school). In addition to training for hardware and software use, training for integration into the classroom must also be made available. This training should be conducted by content-specific teachers within the district who have worked on and been rewarded for developing quality units and lessons that successfully utilize technology. To make much of this happen, funding must be sought and then used as incentive for teachers. The money could be used to pay the teacher who devotes time and energy toward the development of lessons and who takes the time to share those lessons with others within the district. The money could also be used to pay for substitute teachers, thus allowing time to attend technology training for those who are having trouble finding the necessary time. Overall, the integration of technology into Kentucky schools’ curriculums is a very real and attainable feat. It simply requires the enthusiasm for technology (from both teachers and administrators) to get it started, and the leadership to see it through and make it happen.

Sleep and respiratory neurobiology

Department of Pulmonary Medicine, University of Kentucky School of Medicine, Lexington, Kentucky, USA. Correspondence to Barbara Phillips, MD, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, University of Kentucky School of Medicine, 800 Rose Street, Lexington, KY 40536, USA; e-mail: [email protected]

Children's perceptions of parental drinking: the eye of the beholder.

Children learn about alcohol and about how to drink through modeling experience, in part. Modeling is typically studied by asking parents to describe their drinking behavior. However, children's perception of parents' drinking may differ from the way parents describe it. This study examined the degree to which children's perceptions and parents' reports agreed. A sample of 177 grade-school children and their parents was drawn from a public school in Kentucky. Children completed questionnaires inquiring about their perceptions of the quantity, frequency and the positive and negative consequences of their parents' drinking. Their parents completed similar questionnaires describing their own drinking and its consequences. As hypothesized, first and second grade children's perceptions of parents' drinking were unrelated to parents' self-reports: Most of these children perceived their parents as nondrinkers even though parents reported drinking. Also as hypothesized, children's perceptions and parents' reports were significantly correlated for third through sixth grade students. However, there was a great deal of reliable, but unshared variance between these older children's perceptions and parents' reports. Children's perceptions and parents' reports were consistently quite different, even when both child and parent described the parent as a drinker. Studies of modeling influences on children regarding drinking should assess children's perceptions of their parents' behavior rather than parents' self-reports.

Standards and Testing: Another View

A scholar opposed to standards in education is difficult to imagine. Favoring standards in education, however, is not synonymous with advocating compulsory, centralized national testing. The case for reforming U.S. precollege education based on test scores is not as compelling as advocates such as John Bishop (1998) want us to believe. Bishop does not address the cost of developing, administering, and scoring tests. As the Educational Testing Service learned with its Advanced Placement exams, moving beyond multiple-choice or fixed-response questions, which are machine scored, to free or essay response questions greatly increases the cost of marking; yet, the latter is advocated by Bishop. He mentions the wonderful experience Alberta teachers report when brought to centralized locations to grade the extended-answer portions of the exams(p. 174). He never mentions the cost or the validity and reliability of the process by which teachers doing the reading and marking of written answers came to agree on what constituted an excellent, good, adequate, poor, or failing response to essay questions(p. 174). Given the added recognition and prospects for additional pay for the participating teachers, it is not surprising that they report a positive experience. It is like asking the latest lottery winners if their methods of picking numbers are worthwhile. To appreciate the problems in wide-scale administration of exams, one need only look at Rene Sanchez's (1997) report on the organized criminal activity of test takers who, in addition to other means of cheating, have repeatedly exploited time-zone differences in the administration of the nation's most important college admission exams. Even at the state level, centralized testing is difficult to control. After the Kentucky Supreme Court in 1989 declared inequities in school district spending, legislators passed a sweeping school reform agenda that includes an annual test heavy on essay questions. Steve Stecklow (1997) cites Doug Terry, a legislative analyst at Kentucky's Office of Education Accountability, as saying that many schools have engaged in unethical behavior while overseeing student writing on test material, including teachers' typing and editing student work. Since 1993, over 60 Kentucky schools have been investigated for allegations of cheating by teachers and administrators. The notion that universal standards and compulsory exams developed at the national level will not fall to the lowest common denominator is wishful thinking. In the case of the voluntary standards developed by the National Council on Economic Education, the ink was no more than dry before economist Karen Pen-

Appalachian Winter

Appalachian Winter Pam Shingler Ask most any Appalachian what season sets the heart's sap to running, what time of year in these tight-knit hills brings a lilt to the twang, and he'll probably shuffle his feet a little, fold his arms in a self-hug, and wax mushy over one of three. If he chooses spring, he'll talk about the myriad of greens that vie for attention on the hills, the new leaves and all of the possibilities between yellow and blue, dappled with purple redbud and white sarvis. Ifanother mountaineer opts for fall, she might rave over the violence of the red spectrum, flush against a blinding blue sky. From lemon to gold, from cerise to orange, the palette is passionate and portentous. Those who prefer summer cite the season's sensual bombardment: the scent of honeysuckle and wild rose, the sound of doves and bluebirds , the taste of tomatoes and blackberries, the sight of daylilies and daisies, the touch of bare feet on soft grass, the feeling of rightness. Hardly anyone, whether born or brought on, likes winter in the hills. On gray days, there is an absence of color. Snow and ice cripple movement . Roadside ditches and creek banks double as wastebaskets for vending machines and fast food restaurants. The kaleidoscope muddies, the passion wanes, the touch bristles. Perhaps I am the exception. Winter to me is the most sublime season in Appalachia. Of course, I relish the beauties of the other seasons. I'm a sucker for spring's enticements. I warm up to summer's opulence. I marvel at autumn's vibrance. But still I savor the openness, the truth, yes, even the duplicity of winter. I have always liked looking at old photos of mountain ancestors. Appalachian Gothic—Great-Grandpa with one hand on his shotgun and the other on big-bellied Mammaw's shoulder. The winter hills are akin to those sepia-toned photos. The colors are not what we think of when we say color. The sky, often as not, is off-white. The trees wear the sameness of brown. The crags are dark gray or dull army green. It's the black and white that is neither black nor white, but rather gradations of gray, which, Fm inclined to argue, is the true essence of life. A native ofPaintsville, Kentucky, Pam Shingler now serves as developmental director for the David School in Floyd County, Kentucky, and lives at Williamsport in rural Johnson County. 12 It is in this picture that I see the hills as they really are. Not the erose, blanketed outline that tree foliage lends, but the stark reality. The hills reveal themselves like a shaved head, where you see all the bumps and rolls, the highs and lows, the dips and protrusions. The trees, then, are hairy stubble, erratically grown. Or better, consider the hills as a rock wall, the stones settled to unevenness with the passage of time, ancient, perhaps noble. The trees standing on the wall are sentries, guarding within and without. Or perhaps they're Indian warriors, some ancestors, some enemies, some both. They encircle the wagons, their arms upstretched and full of arrows, sharing a few months of strength and glory before the masks of leaves go on. Nude like this, the hills show us what they're made of. It is in winter that the true face of the hills is displayed. We can see the rock formations , sometimes large like natural Stonehenges, shoved up by a mysterious undertow or set to teeter by a meticulous Creator. Sometimes they appear to have been carefully stacked by a band of ancient builders. Other times they jut out ofthe side ofthe hill, forming cliffs and shallow caves to shelter bobcats, painters (as the old folks say), and, once again as before, lone, roving bears. The old hills, barren of color, give up their illusions and reveal their shapes, like snowflakes no two alike. Colored by spring, summer, and fall, they appear to merge into a single wavy line on the horizon, a neverending , cushioned roller coaster. The clarity of separateness is apparent in wintertime. The circle, it turns out, includes not...

Risk and Reward: Perspectives on the Implementation of Kentucky's School-Based Performance Award Program

This study provides a qualitative analysis of the Kentucky school-based performance award program. The study suggests that teachers were motivated by the program to modify teaching approaches to enhance student performance. The program also appears to have created relatively high levels of stress among teachers. Teachers and principals at six award-winning Kentucky schools reported attitudes and behaviors consistent with expectancy theory, goal-setting theory, and contingency theory.

Speech-Language Paraprofessionals Working in Kentucky Schools

This article describes factors that interacted to promote the recent state-wide introduction of speech-language paraprofessionals called speech-language pathology assistants (SLPAs)in Kentucky's public schools. It provides a brief historical overview of events that led to Kentucky's current model of licensure for SLPAs; the requirements for SLPA licensure and the scope of practice associated with it. It also describes and discusses the results of a survey designed to monitor the affects of this new level of speech-language personnel on service delivery in education settings. Recommendations for other states considering a similar level of personnel certification are made.

Firearms and Fatalities

To the Editor. —The work of Dr Hargarten and colleagues 1 points to the significance of firearm availability as a critical public health concern. The availability of firearms and the corresponding implications for homicide and suicide become of even greater consequence when noting the prevalence of firearms in the general population, the manner in which guns are stored, and attitudes toward guns, particularly by youth. In a statewide survey with 1301 adult (aged >18 years) respondents we conducted in 1993 in Kentucky, 63% of homes contained firearms. 2 As high as this prevalence is, more concerning is the 75% household prevalence of firearms we found in surveys in 1993 and 1994 of 1014 students in an urban, a suburban, and a rural high school in Kentucky. 2 These numbers can be compared with the 65% household firearm prevalence among suicide cases and 41% among control subjects reported in the study

Competition, expenditures and student performance: Reply to Borland and Howsen

We welcome Borland and Howsen's (1996) comment on our 1993 paper (Couch, Shughart, and Williams, 1993). Because they have essentially reproduced our empirical results on another data set using a richer regression specification, this reply is both briefer and less inflammatory than our earlier rejoinder (Couch and Shughart, 1995) to Newmark (1995). Using data on student performance in mathematics across 173 Kentucky school districts in 1990,1 Borland and Howsen report a negative and "marginally significant" (p < .08) relationship between academic achievement and a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) measuring the number and size distribution of public and private schools within each district. The HHI, which takes on the value of one if a district contains a single school and approaches its theoretical lower bound of zero the greater the number and the smaller the average size of the district's schools,2 is, at least in principle, a broader measure of school choice than the private school enrollment figures used by

Chapter X: Assessment and Accountability in Kentucky's School Reform

Chapter X: Assessment and Accountability in Kentucky's School Reform

Performance of the vascular physical examination by residents and medical students: Eric D. Endean, MD, David A. Sloan, MD, Henry C. Veldenz, MD, and Michael B. Donnely, PhD, University of Kentucky School of Medicine, Lexington, Ky.

Performance of the vascular physical examination by residents and medical students: Eric D. Endean, MD, David A. Sloan, MD, Henry C. Veldenz, MD, and Michael B. Donnely, PhD, University of Kentucky School of Medicine, Lexington, Ky.

The Dilemmas of Change

In a post hoc analysrs of a school improvement effort that provided individually tailored reports to 93 Kentucky schools, the authors describe the research project from which these reports were derived, their purpose and format, and the dilemmas encountered in encouraging schools to use their results. Established patterns of school organization and practitioners' attitudes toward educational research influenced the effects of these reports. The implications of the analysis are also considered in the context of the educational knowledge utilization process in general.

Prerequisite training.

From the Division of Plastic Surgery at the University of Kentucky School of Medicine. Received for publication March 2, 1989.

Blood pressure trends associated with changes in height and weight from early adolescence to young adulthood

In children, blood pressure is more closely related to height and indices of maturation than to age. This study extends observations on the relationship between height, weight, maturation and blood pressure during early adolescence into young adulthood. Standardized measurements of blood pressure, height, and weight were initially obtained in all 14–15 year old adolescents ( N = 304) in a rural Kentucky school system. Measurements were repeated 5 and 8 years later. Adolescents with relatively high blood pressures continued to have higher blood pressures as young adults. Increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure over time were related to increases of relative weight in both sexes ( p < 0.0001 and p < 0.005, respectively), and in males increases of systolic blood pressure were related to increases of height ( p < 0.005). However, males who attained their full height at younger ages had higher blood pressures both during adolescence and subsequently, as young adults. Thus blood pressure of young adults is related to blood pressure in adolescence, relative weight and change in relative weight since adolescence, and in males to age of maturation as determined by the age at which adult height is attained.

Performance of children with severe to profound auditory impairment in instrumentally guided reduction of nasal resonance.

Twelve students at the Kentucky School for the Deaf were studied using a bioelectronic instrument to provide visual feedback of the degree of nasal resonance, thereby guiding them toward reduction of excessively nasal voice quality. The subjects were given a maximum of fourteen 20-min sessions of training. The results indicated that the feedback information was used very effectively by five subjects and somewhat effectively by four others. The remaining three subjects did not demonstrate a consistent relationship between periods of training and reduction in nasal resonance. Pre- and post-training testing using stimuli not included in the training material demonstrated significant generalization of the nasalance control gained in the training sessions.

Charismatic Authority in the Rational Organization

A rationale for the antithesis of Weber's theory of the routinization of charisma is presented. The hypothesis that charismatic authority is a function of the superintendent's tenure in office was tested using a ran dom sample of Kentucky school superintendents, stratified by tenure in office. Superintendents' charismatic authority was evaluated by their administrative staffs using the Charismatic Authority Scale. Superin tendents in the high tenure group were perceived as possessing greater charismatic authority than superintendents in the low and medium tenure groups. District size and superintendent's age were not significantly related to charismatic authority.

Charismatic Authority in the Rational Organization

A rationale for the antithesis of Weber's theory of the routinization of charisma is presented. The hypothesis that charismatic authority is a function of the superintendent's tenure in office was tested using a ran dom sample of Kentucky school superintendents, stratified by tenure in office. Superintendents' charismatic authority was evaluated by their administrative staffs using the Charismatic Authority Scale. Superin tendents in the high tenure group were perceived as possessing greater charismatic authority than superintendents in the low and medium tenure groups. District size and superintendent's age were not significantly related to charismatic authority.

The absorption of the keto acid analogues of the branched chain amino acids from rat shall intestine

THE ABSORPTION OF THE KETO ACID ANALOGLIES OF THE BRANCHED CHAIN AMINO ACIDS FROM RAT SMALL INTESTINE, F. L. Weber, Jr., and S. Desk*, V.A. Hospital and the University of Kentucky School of Medicine, Lexington, Kentucky. The keto acid analogues (KAA's) of essential amino acids, given orally, are promising agents in the treatment of uremia, portal systemic encephslopathy, and urea cycle enzyme deficiencies. They provide a source of essential amino acids which contain no nitrogen. But, little is known about the mechanism of KAA intestinal absorption. The mechanism of absorption of the KM of valine (K-val) was compared to the corresponding amino acid valine (val) by perfusing rat jejunum and ileum in viva. Keto acids -were determined spectrophotometrically or by gas-liquid chromatography. In both ileum and jejunum K-val was absorbed at rates only moderately below those of the amino acid valwhen perfused at l-50 mM. In the jejunum, absorption rates for K-val relative to val ranged from 7339% at perfusate concentrations of 1 and 25 mM respective1Y. Similar results were obtained in the ileum. There was a plateauing in K-val absorption rates at higher perfusate concentrations suggesting saturable transport. In further studies, 3 ml+! K-vsl was perfused into jejunal segments. Twenty-five mM of the KAA's of isoleucine and phenylslanine (structural analogues of K-val), inhibited K-val absorption by 43 and 50% respectively while 3 mM of the KAA of isoleucine did not. Sixty-seven mu val and 56 mM glucose significantly increased K-val absorption by 30 and 57% respectively, while there were corresponding kfold and f&fold increments in water transport. The KAA's of leucine and isoleucine were absorbed at the ssme rates as K-val when perfused at 3 and 25 mM. Arterial and mesenteric venous blood was sampled after perfusing 25 mM of the branched chain KAA's. There was a significant release of the corresponding amino acids into mesenteric venous blood compared to controls suggesting partial transamination during absorption. The data indicate: (1) K-val absorption is in part mediated through a saturable mechanism, distinct from the val carrier. (2) K-val absorption is influenced by solvent drag. (3) Partial transsmination occurs during KAA absorption.

John Adam Fleming Award to Carl E. McIlwain

Carl E. Mcllwain was born in Houston, Texas, in 1931 and attended elementary and high schools in Texas, Georgia, and Kentucky. In 1949 he auditioned for and won the Phi‐Mu‐Alpha Symphonia Award of a full tuition scholarship at North Texas State College, Denton, Texas, which at the time made him decide that music might offer a more interesting career than science. He studied flute for several years and in 1953 received the degree of B.Mus.Ed. In 1954 he entered graduate school at the State University of Iowa with the hope of studying the physics of music, but as he could not find a suitable advisor, he decided to concentrate on physics. We must be thankful that physics and music were not well integrated at the University of Iowa in 1954, as otherwise we might have had to do without the services of one of our most outstanding experimental space physicists.

From Log Cabin School in Kentucky's Feud Country to the Sorbonne . . . and Beyond

From Log Cabin School in Kentucky's Feud Country to the Sorbonne . . . and Beyond