Countries that score highest on an international measure of student achievement tend to have these three things in common when it comes to professional development for teachers.

For communities with significant numbers of Latino and immigrant residents, the barriers to an accurate 2020 Census count are high—and so are the stakes for their schools, which could lose hundreds of millions of dollars if counts are inaccurate.

Test-based accountability has not generated the significant gains in student achievement that proponents intended, Helen F. Ladd contends.

David Figlio and Eduwonkette discuss if today's testing and accountability policies accurately depict student performance and the size of the achievement

The Education Week Research Center looks at student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 2003 to 2015, a period overlapping with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The U.S. Education Department says the states need more evidence to use the popular admissions test to measure high school achievement.

Helen Janc Malone introduces this week's blog theme, "accountability and assessment systems." She writes that at the heart of the current accountability debate is a fundamental question, What is the purpose of all the collected assessment data? Are they an end game or a starting point to educational

If we continue to focus on student growth and improvement as learners, keep track of that progress, and watch its impact on standard test results, will we be able to know if what we are doing is helping students develop as learners and thinkers.

Ebola Virus (EBOV) is among the most devastating pathogens causing fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans. The 2013–2016 epidemics resulted in over 11000 deaths, while another outbreak is currently ongoing. Since there is no FDA-approved drug so far to fight EBOV infection, there is an urgent need to focus on drug discovery. Considering the tight correlation between the high EBOV virulence and its ability to suppress the type-I Interferon (IFN-I) system, identifying molecules targeting viral protein VP24, one of the main virulence determinants blocking IFN response, is a promising novel anti-EBOV therapy approach. Hence, in the effort of finding novel EBOV inhibitors, a screening of a small set of flavonoids was performed, showing that Quercetin and Wogonin can suppress the VP24 effect on IFN-I signaling inhibition. The mechanism of action of the most active compound, Quercetin, showing an IC₅₀ value of 7.4 μM, was characterized to significantly restore the IFN-I signaling cascade, blocked by VP24, by directly interfering with the VP24 binding to karyopherin-α and thus restoring P-STAT1 nuclear transport and IFN genes transcription. Quercetin significantly blocked viral infection, specifically targeting EBOV VP24 anti-IFN-I function. Overall, Quercetin is the first identified inhibitor of the EBOV VP24 anti-IFN function, representing a molecule interacting with a viral binding site that is very promising for further drug development aiming to block EBOV infection at the early steps.

A new plan from Democratic presidential candidate and former special educator Elizabeth Warren touches on some glaring issues in special education: graduation disparities, hard-to-access school buildings, and discipline practices that disproportionately affect black, Latino, and Native American stud

Even if speaking up and fighting against vouchers is your calling ( and we need voices doing that) , it is still worth looking inward.

The Epson WorkForce ES-500WR delivers fast and accurate scans paired with a robust software package that will appeal to data-crunching offices.

States have made significant progress in providing the public-accountability report cards that the federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires, but many still have a long way to go to make them easily findable and understandable by parents, according to the latest analysis by the Data Quality Campai

States are taking advantage of the added flexibility given them under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act to adopt a wider range of indicators for measuring schools' educational progress, according to a report from the Learning Policy Institute.

New data from the National Center for Education Statistics find that principals at private schools tend to have more experience, 9.7 years on average leading schools versus 6.8 years for public school principals.

Teachers need coaching from proactive and intentional leaders who see everything in their buildings as their responsibility, writes guest blogger Michael Sonbert. Until then, teachers will bear the brunt of our national criticism.

Denver Newsroom, Apr 21, 2020 / 03:15 pm (CNA).- An Argentine archbishop has proposed 13 measures that would aim to allow churches to reopen churches during the coronavirus pandemic while reducing the risk of contagion.

The proposal is an effort to balance safety and the need for Catholics to receive the Eucharist, Archbishop Víctor Fernández of La Plata said this week.

In response to the pandemic, Argentina has been under lockdown since March 20. According to John Hopkins University, there are 3,031 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 145 deaths in the country.

Fernández said that although the Church is providing material sustenance to those hardest hit by the pandemic “when we think about sustaining the interior life of the faithful and encouraging its growth, we find ourselves in the serious difficulty of seeing them deprived of the Eucharist for a long time, and we can also foresee that this situation could last for several months.”

In a letter dated April 19 and addressed to the conference’s executive committee, the bishop said the Second Vatican Council teaches that “no Christian community is built up if it is not rooted and centered on the celebration of the Holy Eucharist,” and that Saint John Paul II emphasized that the Mass “rather than an obligation, should be felt as a requisite deeply inscribed in Christian existence.”

Fernández said the letter he sent puts together the suggestions of several bishops and that it is understandable “that many of the faithful are calling on us to find some way to make the Eucharist accessible again.”

“We tell them that they can experience other forms of prayer, and they do, but as Saint John Chrysostom has said “’You can also pray in your home, however, you cannot pray the same way you do in church where the brethren are gathered together.’”

Fernández noted that Pope Francis “teaches that God ‘in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter.’ It’s good that our faithful have learned that and so it’s not the same thing for them,” he said, adding that Catholics are eager “the food of the love that is the source of supernatural life.”

“It won’t be easy to prove that this situation is lasting too long, nor can we simply wait till the pandemic is completely over,” the prelate noted.

“We know that exposing yourself to infection is irresponsible especially because it involves exposing others to infection and indirectly could lead to a public health crisis that we don’t want to see in our country,” he said.

Aiming to send “a clear message to our People of God to show that we’re truly concerned and that we intend to take some steps that would allow us to resolve this situation as soon as possible,” without neglecting “the health concerns of the authorities” Fernández proposed a series of obligatory measures to celebrate the Eucharist publicly:
1) Keep a distance of two meters between people to the side, front and back. This will require removing or closing off half the pews in the church.
2) No more than two people per pew.
3) Once the pews are occupied in that manner, no more people are to be allowed to enter the church.
4) In the churches where there is usually a lot of people in attendance, the number of Masses should be increased so the faithful can spread themselves out over Saturday and Sunday at different times. Given the prevalence and closeness of churches this will not involve using transportation.
5) Mass should not be celebrated publicly at the most frequently visited shrines due to the difficulty of establishing appropriate controls.
6) There should be no line for communion, instead the Eucharistic ministers should go to the people positioned at the ends of the pews and place the Eucharist in the hand.
7) Every Eucharistic minister should wash his hands with soap before and after and apply alcohol gel.
8) The sign of peace and any physical contact should be omitted.
9) Mass should last no more than 40 minutes.
10) People should leave the church progressively, not all at once, and avoid greeting each other.
11) No intentions should be taken at Mass time, only those previously received by phone, mail or messages.
12) Those people who because of their age are prevented from attending may receive Communion at home.
13) The dispensation from the Sunday obligation should be temporarily maintained so that people who prefer to exercise extreme caution don’t feel obliged to attend.

The archbishop also pointed out in his letter that “if the economic impact has to be foreseen, it’s also appropriate to place a value on those things that provide consolation and strength to people during hard times.”

 

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

A rising Penn State senior has submitted a video to a national contest promoting the 2020 Census, which includes several other Penn State students and University President Eric Barron.

People find it convenient to use Facebook or other social media accounts to sign up for most new apps and services, but they prefer to use their e-mail address or open a new account if they feel the information in the app is too sensitive, according to a team of researchers.

Cecelia Minnick, who will graduate this Saturday with a 3.98 GPA in accounting and minors in information systems management and legal environment of business, has been selected as Smeal’s spring 2020 accounting student marshal.

The injunction means all major online retailers—including Amazon and eBay—can no longer sell Cisco-branded products offered by four Chinese companies.

In this first extract from the new UEFA EURO 2016 technical report, the expert panel reflect on the decreasing proportion of goals scored from counterattacks.

Source: www.businessinsider.com - Friday, May 08, 2020
Los Angeles' food truck population of over 800 trucks faces a downturn in profits during the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens the livelihood of dozens of vendors. Trucks, many of which are family-owned, are losing up to 60% to 70% of their business. The disintegration of Los Angeles' food truck scene is creating ripple effects as truck owners, employees, and commissaries take financial hits. California recently allowed food trucks to obtain a permit to sell at rest stops, giving vendors the chance to sell to truckers outside the LA proper. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . Los Angeles' food truck scene of over 800 operational trucks is facing a difficult time as business essentially grinds to a halt during the coronavirus pandemic. Food trucks, which are often run as small family businesses, cost on average $29,000 to run in LA, according to a report by the US Chambers of Commerce . But as the lifeblood of food trucks — foot traffic, social gathering, and events — disappears in the wake of the coronavirus, families and small businesses are suffering. "Food trucks rely on people to gather. That model went away pretty quickly," Ross Resnick, founder of food-truck-booking company Roaming Hunger, told the Orange County Register in March. "Pre-corona, it's events, it's workplaces, it's nighttime gatherings in markets. When you close your eyes and imagine a food truck, you imagine a group of people." There are

051 - Decision on 13 final tournament hosts to be taken in September 2014

From a Ronaldo hat-trick and two Raúl González doubles to strikes from George Best and Sir Bobby Charlton – goals are almost guaranteed when Real Madrid and United meet.

The Center on Education Policy has two new reports pinpointing trouble spots in implementation of waiver plans under the No Child Left Behind Act.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

Ahead of the Black Friday sale, Fin24 presenter Moeshfieka Botha talks to Vincent Hoogduijn, the CEO of e-commerce at Media 24, about discounts, spending your money wisely and Black Friday FOMO.

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

Beneath the soil of every continent lie buried the ruins of fallen civilizations. The Sumerians, Akkadians, Mayans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Minoans, Romans: all of them, faded memories of past grandeur and glory. History records the collapse of at least thirty-two major civilizations that once thrived and prospered before our time. 

No great civilization is built in a day. No great civilization disappears in a single instant. Historians try to explain how these civilizations once so great have slowly vanished into the dustbin of history. Weather, economics, population decline, wars, politics are some of the reasons that they offer. But, ultimately, a civilization disappears when it loses its identity, forfeits its unity and jettisons its commitment to the common good.

Today’s relentless front-page news reports of scandal and sin (many times, stale news served up as current), the incessant discord of our politicians, the unending string of acrimonious tweets, and the rage of angry voices make one wonder whether or not we are facing the decline of our own civilization. Has our unity as a nation become so fragmented that it cannot be repaired?

The TV sitcoms, the talk shows, the din of warring cable news channels do little to promote serious discourse. Rather, they seem at times to make us despair of receiving unbiased reporting. They hardly inspire us to respond to the gospel’s clarion call for truth, justice, compassion and charity. Have we lost our commitment to the common good? Are we in the midst of an unstoppable decline of our nation? 

Some say this is the age of tolerance. As a result, good and evil, right and wrong, vice and virtue, truth and error are accepted as equally valid. But, this is not the age of tolerance. Those who are pro-life are marginalized. Those who cherish and protect the life of the child waiting-to-be-born, the elderly and the terminally ill are branded as bigots, unwilling to show compassion to those suffering. Those who accept the sanctity of marriage and human sexuality as designed by the Creator are vilified. We live at a time when some are not only intolerant to our basic Christian values, but are actively engaged to silence Christians, target the Church and reduce her to ruins. 

In an age of relativism, has it become almost impossible to dialogue rationally on the major issues that face us, such as poverty, migration, and the sanctity of life itself ? “Relativism is the order of the day. Good and evil, right and wrong, innocence and guilt – all these binaries are deliberately confused as antipodal extremes are brought into artificial congruence. Moral clarity is muddled and logical cogency diluted. All inherent preference is suspended out of a misguided attempt to achieve balance where there is none” (Brandon Marlon, “The Decline and Fall of Modern Civilization: 8 Simple Steps to Squandering It All,” The Algemeiner, January 22, 2015).

From the Church, we receive a rich heritage of truth, morality and charity. We have solid and clear moral principles given to us by Jesus. These are the solid building blocks with which to construct a just and peaceful society. Could it be that we ourselves are slowly abandoning these principles? How is it possible that those trained in the Catholic faith assume leadership roles in government and then jettison their Catholic morals? How is it that any one of us can remain complacent to the slow moral deterioration of our country? 

Our country will not collapse if we refuse to hand over our future to those who deny the existence of God and live as if this world is all that there is. Our society will not collapse if we are courageous enough to draw on our moral and spiritual heritage to solve the issues that divide us. Our nation will not collapse if we remain true to our identity given to us by our Founding Fathers as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Our courage as moral individuals to stand for justice, truth and compassion is the antidote to the collapse of our country.
 

Now that COVID-19 is spreading in the US, I thought it might be helpful to view the data at a more granular level. Follow along as I plot the county data on a map and discuss how the color-binning can influence people's perception of the data. Maps like this can [...]

The post Tracking Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the US at the state/county level appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

The Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) has been honored by the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada for outstanding financial reporting. DSHA’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report earned a Certificate of Achievement for the twentieth consecutive year.

A broker-dealer operating in Delaware, Horace Mann Investors, Inc., has agreed to provide settlement payments to numerous customers with IRA accounts opened by one of its registered representatives, Dieter Hofmann.

A Sussex County Judge has found a Millsboro man guilty of murder. On November 17, 2016, a passerby discovered Darrin Gibbs of Millsboro lying face down on Monroe Street with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. Witness testimony, ballistics evidence, and video surveillance ultimately identified one of Gibbs’ associates, A.J. McMullen, as […]

Dover, DE  – Dr. Jean Vertus Laine, 42, formerly of Peoples Wellness Center, 556 South DuPont Highway, Milford Delaware, was indicted on Monday, July 8th, 2019 by a Sussex County Grand Jury, following an investigation by the DOI Fraud Prevention Unit. The indictment alleges that between August and October of 2017,  Doctor Jean Laine fraudulently […]

Dover, DE—Janet Lane, 59, formerly of Ocean View, Delaware was indicted on Monday September 9th, 2019 by a Sussex County Grand Jury for two counts of insurance fraud and one count of identity theft following an investigation by the Delaware Department of Insurance Fraud Prevention Unit. Ms. Lane had been a passenger in a car […]

Wilmington, DE – Global Delaware is expanding its Strategic Export Program to Colombia, Ireland, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, and has hired new international trade representatives in each country to help support export efforts by Delaware companies. The new reps will be on hand to present an overview of export opportunities in their respective countries and […]

Accreditation is the highest recognition afforded to museums in the United States.

This Census Day, April 1, marked the start of the countdown to the 2020 U.S. Census. The Census is the once-a-decade population and housing count, and an accurate census count is critically important to Delaware in multiple ways.

The Job I love how dynamic the smartphone industry is and that there's something new to learn every single day - be it with respect to business or product innovation or the waves of changes in retail and e-commerce. It always keeps you on your toes. I am definitely a bit of a geek at […]

Harman Kardon International, an audio company that operates JBL in India, has awarded the integrated communication mandate to Havas Creative India for its recently launched brand Infinity. The agency’s Delhi office will handle creative strategy and execution for the brand.

Kobe and Gianna Bryant were among nine people who died in the January 26 helicopter crash in the mountains west of Los Angeles.

Sachin Tendulkar revealed that his stint with Yorkshire helped him gain exposure and gave him a better understanding of English conditions.

The picture also features Alia Bhatt, Abhishek Bachchan, Neetu Kapoor and others

Spain's daily death count from the coronavirus fell to 179 on Saturday, down from 229 on the previous day, the health ministry reported.

The picture also features Alia Bhatt, Abhishek Bachchan, Neetu Kapoor and others

A company whose owners fled the country with over Rs 400 crore in unpaid loans borrowed from the State Bank of India (SBI) and other banks has emerged as the latest example of a mega defaulter...