SREB Middle Grades Report 2011 cover image

Southern States Must Address Middle Grades Education Immediately, Report Warns

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Only about a quarter of rising ninth graders in the Southeastern United States will graduate high school on time, according to a new report from the Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB). “The middle grades are the make-or-break point of our K-12 public school system,” SREB President Dave Spence said in a press release. “If states are serious about raising graduation rates and preparing more students for postsecondary study, work has to begin now on the middle grades.”

The SREB is a non-profit, non-partisan organization established by regional governors and legislators to improve the public education system. The organization covers 16 states in the South and Southeast, working directly with state leaders, schools and educators to improve learning and student achievement from Pre-K to higher education. The 16 states covered by the SREB have made “good” progress in early grades achievement in recent years according to the report, but a number still lag behind national standards.

Violent Videogames May Alter Players’ Brains Over Time, Research Shows

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In the continuing debate over the dangers of violent videogames, new research shows the brain function of gamers is actually altered in as little as one week of play. Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine found a direct relationship between playing videogames and subsequent changes to portions of the brain associated with cognitive function and emotional control, according to Science Daily. The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. Researchers randomly assigned 28 young men aged 18 to 29 into two groups of 14. The young men had little previous exposure to violent video games.

New Report Looks at the State of Health Care in the Juvenile Justice System

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Youth in the juvenile justice system are at high-risk for physical, mental and developmental health issues according to a new policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Adolescence. Despite this, many youths don’t receive the level of health care they need, either in the system or when they get out. The report represents the first update in 10 years to the Health Care for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System. Nationwide 2.11 million* juveniles were arrested in 2008, according to the report. And while not all arrested youth are placed in some form of detention (either short- or long-term) the median stay in custody in 2006 was 65 days.

Apollo 13 Project Aims to Ease Transition for Former Inmates

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The United States incarcerates more adults than any other nation. But, how successful are we at ensuring those former inmates don’t return to prison after release? According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 60 percent of former inmates were rearrested within three years of release. Twenty-five percent of those returned to prison. A new initiative is working to reduce those numbers by finding ways to help former inmates successfully reenter society.

vodka soaked tampon | JJIE.org stock photo | Clay Duda/JJIE Staff

Catching a Buzz From the Wrong End? What Parents Don’t Know about the Alcohol-Soaked Tampon for Girls and Boys

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"I was at this party when I was 17," he said. "We were all telling stories and one of my friends said something about tampons soaked in vodka."

Alden, who declined to give his last name, said he immediately got a tampon from a girl at the party, soaked it in Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum and inserted it into his anus.

"It burned a little," said Alden, "but other than that, it didn't cause any pain."

Penn State Support Wall for child abuse prevention. Photo credit: pennstatelive/Flickr

Reporting Child Abuse, in Pennsylvania and Around the Nation

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With former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky facing allegations of sexual abuse against eight children spanning a 15-year period, many in the American public are left wondering how such a chronic narrative of seduction and abuse could go on so long. At least one parent brought allegations of sex abuse to the police as early as 1998. Since then, at least two university employees say they witnessed Sandusky in the commission of a sexual act with young boys, yet according to records from local law enforcement the complaints never reached police. In 2000, a Penn State janitor says he witnessed what he described as Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy in a university shower, according to a Pennsylvania state grand jury. He never reported the incident, fearing he would lose his job, according the grand jury.

Across the U.S. Increasing Numbers of Kids Are Taken From Deported Parents and Put Into Foster Care

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If you deport the parents, let them take their kids with them. This may sound like common sense — and research shows that kids do better with their families than in foster care — but increasingly more children from across the United States are being separated from their families because their parents have been deported. National research, conducted by the Applied Research Center between August 2010 and August 2011, and published on Colorlines.com (which is run by the Research Center) in November 2011 shows, for the first time, that the problem is happening widely. At least 5,100 children whose parents are detained or deported are currently in foster care around the United States. And, in at least 22 states, children in foster care face boundaries to reunification with their detained or deported mothers and fathers.

How Safe Are Georgia’s Youth Detention Facilities?

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The beating death this week of 19-year-old inmate Jade Holder at an Augusta, Ga., Youth Development Campus (YDC) is the latest in a series of incidents that have renewed focus on safety levels within Georgia youth detention facilities. Last week, for the second time in six months, county police were called on to quell a riot at the DeKalb County Regional Youth Detention Center (RYDC). In May, a murder suspect escaped from the DeKalb RYDC, only to be found and returned a few days later. And in July, the Eastman YDC was the scene of a fight that led to an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). These incidents have all come after an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice over implementing changes at the facilities, something that was supposed to improve and stabilize the system.

Photo Credit: Wesley Fryer/Flickr

Spanking at Home and in the Classroom, What’s Right and Wrong?

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A recent YouTube video of a Texas judge beating his then 16-year-old daughter with a leather belt has reignited the debate over the effectiveness and morality of corporal punishment in the home. Judge William Adams, 51, contended he did nothing wrong and was simply punishing his daughter for stealing after the teen was caught downloading illegally distributed music from the internet. Local police in Aransas, Texas have launched an investigation into the judges actions, but under state law -- provided the actions were administered in the interest of “reasonable punishment” – prosecutors may not have a statute to stand on. Corporal punishment in the home had long been permissible under Texas law, and in 2005 state legislators took steps to strengthen those rights. House Bill 383 effectively set the standard for parental discipline as “reasonable punishment” and placed the burden of proof for abuse cases in the hands of the prosecutors.

Two-week old Julia Walsh receives her social security card. Photo credit: Kurt Wagner/Flickr

Children at Higher Risk for Identity Theft than Adults, Study Says

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Children, even toddlers and infants, are at risk of identity theft. In fact, kids under the age of 18 are 51 times more likely to become victims of identity theft than their parents, according to a recent report by Carnegie Mellon CyLab. Out of a representative sample of more than 40,000 juveniles, 10.2 percent, or 4,311 kids, fell prey to some sort of identity theft or fraud, compared to just 0.2 percent of adults in 2009 and 2010. According to CyLab, the main reason minors' identities are so valuable -- specifically their Social Security numbers -- is that there’s no process in place to double check what name and birth date are officially attached to each number. Thus, “as long as the identity thief has a Social Security number with a clean history, the thief can attach any name and date of birth to it.”

Minors also make a tempting target because the theft may go undetected for years, according to the credit-reporting agency TransUnion.