9 states, DC get $3.4B in ‘Race to the Top’ grants, By Dorie Turner (AP), August 24, 2010, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “More than 13 million students and 1 million educators will share $3.4 billion from the second round of the federal ‘Race to the Top’ grant competition, the U.S. Education Department said Tuesday. The department chose nine states – Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island – and the District of Columbia for the grants. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said 25,000 schools will get money to raise student learning and close the achievement gap. The ‘Race to the Top’ program, part of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, rewards states for taking up ambitious changes to improve struggling schools. The competition instigated a wave of reforms across the country, as states passed new teacher accountability policies and lifted caps on charter schools to boost their chances of winning…”
Day: August 24, 2010
Children’s Mental Health Post-Hurricane Katrina
Children of Katrina still are suffering, By Janet McConnaughey and Lindsey Tanner (AP), August 24, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “A startling number of children displaced by Hurricane Katrina still have serious emotional or behavioral problems five years later, a new study found. More than one in three children studied — those forced to flee their homes because of the August 2005 storm — have been diagnosed since then with mental health problems. These are children who moved to trailer parks and other emergency housing. Nearly half of the families studied still report household instability, researchers said. ‘If children are bellwethers of recovery, then the social systems supporting affected gulf coast populations are still far from having recovered from Hurricane Katrina,’ the researchers said. The study was published online Monday in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. Lead author David Abramson of Columbia University in New York said researchers were astonished by the level of distress…”
General Assistance Medical Care – Minnesota
GAMC health plan hits new snag, By Warren Wolfe, August 23, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “State officials said Monday they might retool the payment formula for hospitals participating in an experimental new health plan for some of the state’s poorest residents — a further sign that the revised General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) program launched last spring is not working out the way authorities had hoped. The discussions began because Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis has had a smaller percentage of potential patients enroll than the other three participating hospitals and, as a result, is getting paid more than twice the amount per patient…”