Monday, February 25, 2013
Play Streets Program NYC
While awaiting the completion of New York City’s next batch of parks and playgrounds, the Departments of Health & Mental Hygiene, Transportation, and Parks have created Play Streets to help combat the childhood obesity epidemic in our cities. Play Streets allows communities to open up their streets to pedestrians for play on a recurrent basis. It is a quick and low-cost way to create active play space and is a health measure that directly targets our city’s most important at–risk population—children.
http://www.nycgovparks.org/programs/playstreets
http://www.nycgovparks.org/programs/playstreets
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Promoting Social Mobility
While we celebrate equality of opportunity, we live in a society in which birth is becoming fate.
First, life success depends on more than cognitive skills. Non-cognitive characteristics—including physical and mental health, as well as perseverance, attentiveness, motivation, self-confidence, and other socio-emotional qualities—are also essential. While public attention tends to focus on cognitive skills—as measured by IQ tests, achievement tests, and tests administered by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)—non-cognitive characteristics also contribute to social success and in fact help to determine scores on the tests that we use to evaluate cognitive achievement.
Second, both cognitive and socio-emotional skills develop in early childhood, and their development depends on the family environment. But family environments in the United States have deteriorated over the past 40 years. A growing fraction of our children are being born into disadvantaged families, where disadvantage is most basically a matter of the quality of family life and only secondarily measured by the number of parents, their income, and their education levels. And that disadvantage tends to accumulate across generations.
Third, public policy focused on early interventions can improve these troubling results. Contrary to the views of genetic determinists, experimental evidence shows that intervening early can produce positive and lasting effects on children in disadvantaged families. This evidence is consistent with a large body of non-experimental evidence showing that the absence of supportive family environments harms childhood and adult outcomes. Early interventions can improve cognitive as well as socio-emotional skills. They promote schooling, reduce crime, foster workforce productivity, and reduce teenage pregnancy. And they have much greater economic and social impact than the later interventions that are the focus of conventional public policy debate: reducing pupil-teacher ratios; providing public job training, convict rehabilitation programs, adult literacy programs, and tuition subsidies; and spending on police. In fact, the benefits of later interventions are greatly enhanced by earlier interventions: skill begets skill; motivation begets motivation.
In short, to foster individual success, greater equality of opportunity, a more dynamic economy, and a healthier society, we need a major shift in social policy toward early intervention, with later interventions designed to reinforce those early efforts.
Early adverse experiences correlate with poor adult health, high medical care costs, increased depression and suicide rates, alcoholism, drug use, poor job performance and social function, disability, and impaired performance of subsequent generations.
Lack of a certain kind of input during early childhood results in abnormal development in brain systems that sense, perceive, process, interpret, and act on information related to that input. Studies of Romanian infants show the importance of the early years. A perverse natural experiment placed many Romanian children in state-run orphanages at birth. Conditions in the orphanages were atrocious. The children, who received minimal social and intellectual stimulation, demonstrated cognitive delays, serious impairments in social behavior, and abnormal sensitivity to stress. The later the orphans were adopted, the poorer their recovery on average, although there are important variations among the children, reflecting the quality of orphanages and adoptive home environments as well as the length of the stay in orphanages. The Romanian studies fit with what we understand from other settings: severely neglected young children often have persisting cognitive, socio-emotional, and health problems.
Absent these sensory experiences, abnormal development results. This is vividly illustrated in the smaller head size, enlarged ventricles, and cortical atrophy of neglected three-year-olds as compared to children who receive normal amounts of early attention.
There is much commentary on the benefits of two-parent families, but the presence of a father can be a net negative factor if he shows antisocial tendencies or if marital conflict is substantial.
A large body of evidence suggests that a major determinant of child disadvantage is the quality of the nurturing environment rather than just the financial resources available or the presence or absence of parents.
Social policy should, then, be directed toward the malleable early years. And it should be guided by the goal of promoting the quality of parenting and the early life environments of disadvantaged children, while also respecting the primacy of the family, showing cultural sensitivity, and recognizing America’s social diversity. And that means that effective strategies need to provide a menu of high quality programs from which parents can choose.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.5/ndf_james_heckman_social_mobility.php
First, life success depends on more than cognitive skills. Non-cognitive characteristics—including physical and mental health, as well as perseverance, attentiveness, motivation, self-confidence, and other socio-emotional qualities—are also essential. While public attention tends to focus on cognitive skills—as measured by IQ tests, achievement tests, and tests administered by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)—non-cognitive characteristics also contribute to social success and in fact help to determine scores on the tests that we use to evaluate cognitive achievement.
Second, both cognitive and socio-emotional skills develop in early childhood, and their development depends on the family environment. But family environments in the United States have deteriorated over the past 40 years. A growing fraction of our children are being born into disadvantaged families, where disadvantage is most basically a matter of the quality of family life and only secondarily measured by the number of parents, their income, and their education levels. And that disadvantage tends to accumulate across generations.
Third, public policy focused on early interventions can improve these troubling results. Contrary to the views of genetic determinists, experimental evidence shows that intervening early can produce positive and lasting effects on children in disadvantaged families. This evidence is consistent with a large body of non-experimental evidence showing that the absence of supportive family environments harms childhood and adult outcomes. Early interventions can improve cognitive as well as socio-emotional skills. They promote schooling, reduce crime, foster workforce productivity, and reduce teenage pregnancy. And they have much greater economic and social impact than the later interventions that are the focus of conventional public policy debate: reducing pupil-teacher ratios; providing public job training, convict rehabilitation programs, adult literacy programs, and tuition subsidies; and spending on police. In fact, the benefits of later interventions are greatly enhanced by earlier interventions: skill begets skill; motivation begets motivation.
In short, to foster individual success, greater equality of opportunity, a more dynamic economy, and a healthier society, we need a major shift in social policy toward early intervention, with later interventions designed to reinforce those early efforts.
Early adverse experiences correlate with poor adult health, high medical care costs, increased depression and suicide rates, alcoholism, drug use, poor job performance and social function, disability, and impaired performance of subsequent generations.
Lack of a certain kind of input during early childhood results in abnormal development in brain systems that sense, perceive, process, interpret, and act on information related to that input. Studies of Romanian infants show the importance of the early years. A perverse natural experiment placed many Romanian children in state-run orphanages at birth. Conditions in the orphanages were atrocious. The children, who received minimal social and intellectual stimulation, demonstrated cognitive delays, serious impairments in social behavior, and abnormal sensitivity to stress. The later the orphans were adopted, the poorer their recovery on average, although there are important variations among the children, reflecting the quality of orphanages and adoptive home environments as well as the length of the stay in orphanages. The Romanian studies fit with what we understand from other settings: severely neglected young children often have persisting cognitive, socio-emotional, and health problems.
Absent these sensory experiences, abnormal development results. This is vividly illustrated in the smaller head size, enlarged ventricles, and cortical atrophy of neglected three-year-olds as compared to children who receive normal amounts of early attention.
There is much commentary on the benefits of two-parent families, but the presence of a father can be a net negative factor if he shows antisocial tendencies or if marital conflict is substantial.
A large body of evidence suggests that a major determinant of child disadvantage is the quality of the nurturing environment rather than just the financial resources available or the presence or absence of parents.
Social policy should, then, be directed toward the malleable early years. And it should be guided by the goal of promoting the quality of parenting and the early life environments of disadvantaged children, while also respecting the primacy of the family, showing cultural sensitivity, and recognizing America’s social diversity. And that means that effective strategies need to provide a menu of high quality programs from which parents can choose.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.5/ndf_james_heckman_social_mobility.php
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Cars and Robust Cities Are Fundamentally Incompatible
Parking disrupts the urban fabric in places
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/02/cars-and-robust-cities-are-fundamentally-incompatible/4651/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/02/cars-and-robust-cities-are-fundamentally-incompatible/4651/
An App That Tells You How Walkable a Street Really Is
Wow, so cool!
I like this, "I feel cool just being here!"
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/02/app-tells-you-how-walkable-street-really/4759/
I like this, "I feel cool just being here!"
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/02/app-tells-you-how-walkable-street-really/4759/
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Voluntary and involuntary minorities. The distinction made between different kinds of minorities by John Ogbu. See his article, “Variability in Minority School Performance: A Problem in Search of an Explanation.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 18, no. 4 (December 1987): 312–334. Involuntary (or castelike) minorities refers to those groups incorporated into a society against their will. In the United States, this term generally refers to American Indians, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans, all of whose ancestors were either conquered or enslaved. Voluntary (or immigrant) minorities refers to those who have chosen freely to emigrate to the United States.
Resistance theory. As applied to schools, this term refers to the ways in which students actively or passively resist learning. Reasons for this resistance may be varied, from cultural or linguistic differences to perceptions that the knowledge taught is meaningless and imposed. Resistance can take a variety of forms, from acting out, to refusing to complete schoolwork or other assignments, to dropping out of school altogether. Although resistance is rarely intentional on the part of a student, it can be extremely effective either in disrupting or preventing learning or in developing alternative ways of coping within schools.
Racism. According to Meyer Weinberg, racism is a system of privilege and penalty based on one’s race. It consists of two facets: (1) a belief in the inherent superiority of some people and inherent inferiority of others and (2) the acceptance of the way goods and services are distributed in accordance with these judgments. See “Introduction.” In Racism in the United States: A Comprehensive Classified Bibliography (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).
Where the Poorest Americans Live
Many metropolitan areas never recovered from the decade’s first downturn, in 2000. Midwestern and Northeastern Rust Belt metro areas, and several in the South, experienced the steepest increases in concentrated poverty as they shed manufacturing jobs and income throughout the decade. Chicago and Detroit chalked up among the largest declines in the 1990s but yielded back much of that progress in the 2000s.
This research merely confirms what we've suspected for some time: extremely poor neighborhoods and their residents are last to benefit from growth when times are good, and first to feel it when tough times arrive. Progress against concentrated poverty is possible when growth is strong and sustained, and buttressed by housing, education and transportation policies that guard against segregating poor families. With projections of high unemployment for years to come, the outlook for this indicator is grim.
But that's no excuse to throw up our hands in the fight against concentrated poverty. If anything, we need to redouble our efforts at growing not just any old jobs, but better-paying jobs, and jobs that are accessible to workers living in these disadvantaged communities. Now that we’re finally paying attention to rising inequality in America, it's a good time to focus on helping the places that bear the most severe burdens of an increasingly unequal society.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/11/where-the-poorest-americans-live/419/
This research merely confirms what we've suspected for some time: extremely poor neighborhoods and their residents are last to benefit from growth when times are good, and first to feel it when tough times arrive. Progress against concentrated poverty is possible when growth is strong and sustained, and buttressed by housing, education and transportation policies that guard against segregating poor families. With projections of high unemployment for years to come, the outlook for this indicator is grim.
But that's no excuse to throw up our hands in the fight against concentrated poverty. If anything, we need to redouble our efforts at growing not just any old jobs, but better-paying jobs, and jobs that are accessible to workers living in these disadvantaged communities. Now that we’re finally paying attention to rising inequality in America, it's a good time to focus on helping the places that bear the most severe burdens of an increasingly unequal society.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/11/where-the-poorest-americans-live/419/
Study of the Day: Bad Street Design Disproportionately Hurts the Poor
The poor disproportionately feel the impacts of bad road design, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Researchers charted the injury rates for pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists in Montreal over five years. They found that "there were significantly more injured pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicle occupants at intersections in the poorest than in the richest areas." Pedestrians in low-income neighborhoods were six times more likely to be injured, even after controlling for traffic and pedestrian volume. Drivers were 4.3 times more likely to be injured; a cyclist's risk was 3.9 times higher.
The study's authors attributed this to the fact that poor neighborhoods have a higher traffic volume (thanks in part to the fact that these neighborhoods are more likely to contain major arteries and four-way intersections). Low-income residents are also more likely to rely on walking to get around.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/study-day-bad-street-design-disproportionately-hurts-poor/1845/
Researchers charted the injury rates for pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists in Montreal over five years. They found that "there were significantly more injured pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicle occupants at intersections in the poorest than in the richest areas." Pedestrians in low-income neighborhoods were six times more likely to be injured, even after controlling for traffic and pedestrian volume. Drivers were 4.3 times more likely to be injured; a cyclist's risk was 3.9 times higher.
The study's authors attributed this to the fact that poor neighborhoods have a higher traffic volume (thanks in part to the fact that these neighborhoods are more likely to contain major arteries and four-way intersections). Low-income residents are also more likely to rely on walking to get around.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/study-day-bad-street-design-disproportionately-hurts-poor/1845/
The Happiest Cities in America, According to 10 Million Tweets
They also found that the Bible belt stretching across the American south and into Texas was less happy than the west or New England. The saddest town of the 373 urban areas studied was Beaumont in east Texas. The happiest was Napa, California, home of many drunk people wine makers. The only town among the 15 saddest that was not in the south or Rust Belt was Waterbury, Connecticut. (Although Waterbury has appeared on several "worst places to live" lists, which seems like mean lists to make.)
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/02/happiest-cities-america-according-10-million-tweets/4737/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/02/happiest-cities-america-according-10-million-tweets/4737/
The End of the Neighborhood School
Kids being uprooted from neighborhood schools are often the ones that can least handle the sudden change. "A lot of the children who are affected by this trend are already at risk because of poverty, drug abuse, violence, family upheaval, lack of healthcare," says Julianne Robertson King, a mother of four who lives in D.C.'s Ward 5, which is set to see four schools close this year. "These are people who have not been able to capitalize on the promise of America. When you remove one thing that they can count on... ."
According to researchers from the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute, if these students are sent to a similarly under-performing school, test scores will remain low. Moreover, students are more likely to jump around between schools after their first school is shuttered, and may stop attending school altogether.
Five large school districts saw charter school enrollment increases averaging 17 percent over the 2011-12 school year: Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
According to a report commissioned last year by D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, despite geographic disparities, two-thirds of all students attend schools within or adjacent to their neighborhood cluster. (For traditional public schools, 74 percent of students stayed within their neighborhood cluster; in charter schools, it was 57 percent.)
"One of the biggest things is the community aspect of it," explains Garrison PTA President Ann McLeod. "You really meet more of your neighbors that way. It helps you enjoy your neighborhood more, you are more rooted in your neighborhood, you've got resources for your kids to have more friends who live around them."
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/02/end-neighborhood-school/4687/
According to researchers from the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute, if these students are sent to a similarly under-performing school, test scores will remain low. Moreover, students are more likely to jump around between schools after their first school is shuttered, and may stop attending school altogether.
Five large school districts saw charter school enrollment increases averaging 17 percent over the 2011-12 school year: Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
According to a report commissioned last year by D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, despite geographic disparities, two-thirds of all students attend schools within or adjacent to their neighborhood cluster. (For traditional public schools, 74 percent of students stayed within their neighborhood cluster; in charter schools, it was 57 percent.)
"One of the biggest things is the community aspect of it," explains Garrison PTA President Ann McLeod. "You really meet more of your neighbors that way. It helps you enjoy your neighborhood more, you are more rooted in your neighborhood, you've got resources for your kids to have more friends who live around them."
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/02/end-neighborhood-school/4687/
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Saturday, February 9, 2013
While 3,100 American soldiers have died in the war in Iraq, 1,518 Detroiters have been murdered during roughly the same four-year stretch from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2006, says Cox.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1596454,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1596454,00.html
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) was born in Trinidad and immigrated to New York in 1952. At Howard University, Carmichael's involvement in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Nonviolent Action Group afforded him the opportunity to travel around the country as a freedom rider. In 1964 he helped to establish in Alabama the Lowndes County Freedom Organization—an organization that used an illustration of the black panther as a symbol of defiance prior to the Black Panther Party's use of the image—and in 1966 he became chairman of the SNCC. In June 1966 Carmichael introduced the term "Black Power" during a speech. The phrase later evolved to represent a movement that embraced self-determination, the right to bear arms, and racial pride.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard
New York, NY 10037-1801
(212) 491-2200
515 Malcolm X Boulevard
New York, NY 10037-1801
(212) 491-2200
They discuss nurture as unconditional
love; thriving and growing; and learning to love oneself and others, to say
"I love you; you are lovable" (10). Because unconditional love is not enough, the
authors note that limits, skills, and standards-structure-help children learn
healthy habits; develop a sense ofwho they are and who others are; learn values
and ethics; and stay safe. "Children need parents to convey the message, 'You
can do this; I will teach you how; you are capable" (10). Nurture and structure
work together like soft tissuelmuscle and skinlbones: nurture makes the body
move gracefully and structure provides an upright container. Parents learn
nurturing and structuring skills horn their own parents, from others, and by
observing their children.
The authors are hopeful that parents who have learned negative behaviours
can become loving parents. This book may help some parents achieve that goal,
although the positive sections of the book are too brief. The authors suggest,
for example, that it is possible to "redo" particular stages of our lives, to acquire
new attitudes about who we are.
P. 187-188
Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves,
Parenting Our Children. Second ed.
Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson
Minnesota: Hazeldon, 1998
Reviewed by Farah M. Shroff
love; thriving and growing; and learning to love oneself and others, to say
"I love you; you are lovable" (10). Because unconditional love is not enough, the
authors note that limits, skills, and standards-structure-help children learn
healthy habits; develop a sense ofwho they are and who others are; learn values
and ethics; and stay safe. "Children need parents to convey the message, 'You
can do this; I will teach you how; you are capable" (10). Nurture and structure
work together like soft tissuelmuscle and skinlbones: nurture makes the body
move gracefully and structure provides an upright container. Parents learn
nurturing and structuring skills horn their own parents, from others, and by
observing their children.
The authors are hopeful that parents who have learned negative behaviours
can become loving parents. This book may help some parents achieve that goal,
although the positive sections of the book are too brief. The authors suggest,
for example, that it is possible to "redo" particular stages of our lives, to acquire
new attitudes about who we are.
P. 187-188
Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves,
Parenting Our Children. Second ed.
Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson
Minnesota: Hazeldon, 1998
Reviewed by Farah M. Shroff
Friday, February 8, 2013
Unite for a School Boycott
#1954712 View Printable Image
Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense used an assortment of methods, including boycotts, in pursuit of equality and access. This poster was created by Harlem-based BPP members, demanding that public schools "teach [the] HERITAGE and HISTORY" of people of African descent. If these demands were not met, members of the BPP threatened to boycott these institutions.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
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