Immigration reform has been snarled in partisan gridlock for years. But after losing 7 in 10 Hispanic votes in 2012, not all Republicans ? in Congress and on talk radio ? are mounting an all-out war on reform legislation.
By Husna Haq,?Correspondent / May 6, 2013
Immigration advocates gather outside the Senate Judiciary Committee room on Capitol Hill in Washington as they wait to attend a hearing on comprehensive immigration reform legislation on April 22. The Judiciary Committee will take its first votes on the reform bill on May 9.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File
Enlarge
The GOP's Sen. John McCain couldn?t do it in 2005. Spanish-speaking Texan President George W. Bush couldn?t do it in 2007. Spooked, President Obama didn?t even try it in his first term, although he had promised to.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Indeed, Republican opposition has doomed immigration reform nearly every time it has been proposed ? 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010, according to the National Journal.
By all accounts, however, this time will be different.?Even the typically restrained?Associated Press calls it, ?the kind of breathtaking turnaround you rarely see in politics.?
Senate hearings begin this week on the 844-page immigration reform proposal written by a bipartisan group of eight senators, including co-author Florida senator and conservative idol Marco Rubio. Though opposition still looms, for the first time in years partisan outrage appears to be absent ? and this latest immigration reform proposal may have the best chance of passing in a very long while.
Here are three reasons why:
The 2012 election
You haven?t already forgotten, have you? If the 2012 election taught us anything, it is that Hispanic voters matter. Like the youth vote in 2008, Hispanics were the star bloc of the last election, arguably the reason Mr. Obama won and GOP contender Mitt Romney lost.
It?s not just the GOP that recognizes that. Obama won 71 percent of Hispanic voters in 2012, and frankly, he may feel he owes them ? especially since he?s been promising immigration reform since he ran for office in 2008.
And the GOP, well, its ?pathetic job of reaching out to people of color? (as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) told Fox News after his party?s thrashing) cost it the White House last year. And the party knows it?s more or less doomed without Hispanic support in coming years.
?If we don?t do better with Hispanics, we?ll be out of the White House forever,? Republican strategist Ana Navarro said post-election.
Potential political irrelevance? Nothing like it to fuel legislative action.
Marco Rubio
Come on, who?s got more conservative cred? than bill co-author Sen. ?I bleed Republican red? Rubio?
He?s been called the ?crown prince of the Tea Party movement,? a ?conservative hero," a Latino ?rising star,? and the GOP?s natural leader on immigration reform.
By Stephanie Orlando, Member, National Council on Disability (NCD) with the assistance of Robyn Powell, NCD Attorney Advisor
May is recognized as both National Foster Care Awareness Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. What most people do not realize is the overlap that often comes with membership in these populations.
In the United States, there are more than 400,000 children and teens in foster care. ?Research reveals that children and teens in the foster care system have disproportionately high rates of psychiatric disability.
One study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that nearly half (47.9 percent) of youth in foster care were determined to have clinically significant emotional or behavioral problems. Likewise, researchers at the Casey Family Programs estimate that between one-half and three-fourths of children entering foster care exhibit behavioral or social competency problems that warrant mental health services.
Youth who have ?aged out? of foster care also show high rates of psychiatric disability. ?According to a study by the Casey Family Programs and Harvard Medical School, a high number of former foster children have psychiatric disabilities as adults. Over half of foster care alumni had diagnoses compared to 22 percent of the comparison group.
The disproportionate level of diagnoses is perhaps most evident with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). ?Thirty percent of foster alumni are diagnosed with PTSD, which is about twice the rate of U.S. combat veterans.
In 2008, the National Council on Disability (NCD), an independent federal agency that advises the President, Congress, and other federal agencies on disability policy, issued a comprehensive report Youth with Disabilities in the Foster Care System: Barriers to Success and Proposed Policy Solutions.
In that report, NCD found: ?While the federal investment in the multiple systems with which these youth come in contact is significant, the disconnectedness and lack of coordination across programs and agencies call into question the effectiveness of government efforts.?
Five years later, the problems remain. The mental health needs of children and teens in foster care continue to be overlooked and inadequately addressed, often with detrimental consequences.
A significant number of the estimated 20,000 young people who leave foster care each year face inordinately bleak futures. According to researchers, just over half of these young people ? 54 percent ? earn a high-school diploma and a quarter of them become homeless. ?On average youth aging out of the foster care system with psychiatric disabilities fare even worse.
In 2003, researchers at Georgetown University estimated that only 42 percent of students with mental health diagnoses graduate from high school. As such, foster care youth with psychiatric disabilities find themselves at a double disadvantage.
As we acknowledge both National Foster Care Awareness Month and Mental Health Awareness Month, NCD renews its call to action. We urge legislators, policymakers, and service providers to direct significant attention to the needs of children and teens with psychiatric disabilities in the foster care system by making these recommendations:
? ? ? ? Increased flexibility to states and communities so programs and services can be most effectively structured to meet the needs of children and teens with disabilities in foster care; ? ? ? ? More federal support for research and demonstrations to identify effective policies and practices that lead to positive outcomes for children and teens with disabilities in foster care; ? ? ? ? Improvements in the quality, availability, and affordability of mental health services and supports; ? ? ? ? Better training for foster care parents and increased recruitment of individuals willing to foster children and teens with disabilities; ? ? ? ? Greater access to individualized, comprehensive transition services, including mental health care, for children and teens with disabilities aging out of foster care; and increased collaboration among the education, juvenile justice, child welfare, labor, dependency court, health, and mental health systems.
Further, NCD applauds the President?s new budget proposal to fund mental health initiatives. The proposed $205 million to help identify mental health problems, improve access to mental health services, and support safer school environments, if adopted, will fill an important void for many children and teens in foster care with psychiatric disabilities.
The goal for America?s foster youth to live healthy, happy lives and to become self-sufficient, contributing members of society is achievable, but we should not ?and cannot ? forget those young people who face significant barriers to reaching these goals.
Our nation must make a strong commitment to support children and teens with psychiatric disabilities throughout their time in foster care and take the steps necessary to ensure that a safe, healthy and positive transition to adulthood is planned for as the end goal.
This can only happen if we include youth with psychiatric disabilities in the planning process and in our communities going forward. The foundation we, as a society, build for children and teens in foster care during their formative years will likely become the basis for the future they create. Let?s build it on solid ground.
One of the worst kept secrets in show business is actor Tim Allen?s legendary love of cars, an affliction that has almost reached Jay Leno proportions. In fact the Toolman made his car addiction a major part of the storyline for his classic situation comedy ?Home Improvement?.
The role of Tim?s wife on ?Home Improvement? was played by Patricia Richardson and this talented actress was able to make her role as the beleaguered bride of an unrepentant car guy come alive in the show. We hear a great deal about Tim Allen?s real life fondness for cars, but what about the woman who played Jill (Mrs. Toolman) Taylor on ?Home Improvement??
We were fortunate enough to be able to contact Patricia and ask her about her real life philosophy regarding cars. We found that she had some interesting and funny answers to the burning question about whether she is indeed a car girl.
?You know, thinking about it, I don?t think I have met my favorite car still! I guess that would be the equivalent of never meeting the love of my life car wise. I hadn?t realized it until you asked. I didn?t have a car at all for many years while living in New York. Since living in Los Angeles I?ve had many different cars , mostly various Mom cars, and I had a Porsche for awhile which I was never really into. My guy liked it I guess. It?s definitely a guy car. I think I got it because of Tim probably and it had a little back seat that allowed me to get all of the kids into it if need be while allowing me to have a sports car, but it was kind of bumpy, and too low to the ground to be practical, and had soft tires that were always picking up the nails in my neighborhood that always had construction going on. And I?m not really interested in speeding around or going fast and don?t drive a car like a guy.?? ??
Patricia confesses that she may have already met the automobile love of her life, but her sister ended up with the car:
?I have car envy instead for the car my sister has had for some years now which was that little Lexus sports car they don?t make anymore that also had the small back seat and had great mileage and was much less bumpy to drive. Wish I had bought that one instead of the Porsche all those years ago I would probably still have it and THAT would be my favorite car.?
TV?s Mrs. Toolman also notes that she was given pretty straight-forward car purchase advice from Tim Allen during their time together on one of television?s all time most popular comedies; ?Tim wanted me to only buy American cars?.? ?Tim?s advice probably made a lot of sense to Patricia when her import SUV inexplicably caught fire:
?This guy helped me again when my- get this- Mercedes SUV caught fire in the engine for no discernible reason. We were coming home ? my guy, one of my sons and me. Thank God this man had purchased fire extinguishers for all over the house and there was one in the garage?When I got out of the car I noticed little flames and a little smoke through the tire on my side and told him. He started yelling at me to get Joe out of the garage. I?m stupidly standing around saying ?shouldn?t we call the fire department?? He was already spraying all around the sides of the closed hood, the front wheels, etc and now REALLY YELLING AT ME TO GET OUT OF THERE. Which I did.?
Patricia came away from the ?hot-car-for-all-of-the-wrong-reasons experience with this insight:
?What I learned from my boyfriend? Keep your house well supplied with fire extinguishers. He saved our lives and my house that day. Also, never open the hood if you see smoke coming out from your engine! Also, when someone tells you to get away from a fire, GET AWAY FROM THE FIRE!?
Tim Allen may have advised Patricia to buy American cars, but Patricia promised her children that she would purchase hybrid cars and instead bought imports that have this dual energy capability for her daily driver use. So far her hybrids have not caught fire during her time as an owner.
You cannot work with a consummate car guy like Tim Allen for all of those years without learning the most important lesson of all when it comes to cars:??
The best thing I learned from Home Improvement? And this is from a still totally ignorant about cars person? Pay attention to the oil light. LOL.?
?Home Improvement? fans will recall an episode where Jill ignored the low oil warning on her Nomad and cooked the engine. The lesson obviously took with Patricia because she is well aware of the need to pay attention to the oil pressure warning system on her vehicles.
We thoroughly enjoyed our opportunity to talk cars with Patricia Richardson and have concluded that she is probably a car girl in her heart of hearts. She just hasn?t met the perfect car quite yet.
?
For more of J Sutherland?s work go to?mystarcollectorcar.com
A gay teacher who said she was fired by an Ohio Catholic school after her mother's published obituary included the name of her partner is fighting to get her job back.
Carla Hale said she was told she was being let go because her relationship is against teachings of the church.
She plans to file a complaint this week with the city of Columbus, which prohibits firings based on sexual orientation, her attorney said Monday. She already filed a grievance that is now in the hands of a union representing teachers in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus.
Some current and former students have rallied behind the physical education teacher, staging a protest outside the diocese headquarters and starting an online petition that has collected about 100,000 supporters.
Hale, 57, said she was fired during Holy Week in March after an anonymous letter sent to school administrators drew attention to the obituary published in The Columbus Dispatch.
A copy of the letter provided by her attorney was signed "a concerned parent."
"My daughter came home and told me that one of the gym teacher's mother had died," the letter said. "She asked me to pray for her. When we looked in the obituaries, I was shocked by what I saw. It had her teacher's name and that of her 'spouse' listed. It was two females!"
Hale, who is Methodist, was informed about two weeks after her mother's death that the school was investigating, but she never had a chance to discuss it with school leaders, said attorney Thomas Tootle.
Hale, who had spent 19 years teaching at Bishop Watterson High School, said the decision to acknowledge her partner was not immoral.
"It's kind of baffling that someone would take an obituary and use it, to me, in such a mean-spirited manner," Hale said at a news conference last week.
The Diocese of Columbus would not comment directly about the firing, but it said school employees can't go against teachings of the church.
"All Catholic school personnel at the outset of their employment agree that they will abide by the rules, regulations and policies of the Catholic Diocese, including respecting the moral values advanced by the teachings of Christ," the diocese said in a statement.
Hale's attorney said he will file a complaint Tuesday with a Columbus community relations board, arguing that the firing violates the city ordinance on employers discriminating based on sexual orientation. Another option is a wrongful termination lawsuit, Tootle said.
He said some courts have allowed religious groups exemptions to similar discrimination laws but he thinks the case is similar to one in Cincinnati, where a teacher challenged her firing by the archdiocese over her use of artificial insemination to become pregnant. A federal judge has allowed that lawsuit to continue.
Geneticist Emily Bates of Brigham Young University was on a team studying the link between sleep patterns and migraine.
Mark A. Philbrick/Courtesy of Brigham Young University
Geneticist Emily Bates of Brigham Young University was on a team studying the link between sleep patterns and migraine.
Mark A. Philbrick/Courtesy of Brigham Young University
Bates experienced migraines as a child. She made this painting to depict how they felt to her.
Courtesy of Emily Bates
Bates experienced migraines as a child. She made this painting to depict how they felt to her.
Courtesy of Emily Bates
Mutations on a single gene appear to increase the risk for both an unusual sleep disorder and migraines, a team reports in Science Translational Medicine.
The finding could help explain the links between sleep problems and migraines. It also should make it easier to find new drugs to treat migraines, researchers say.
And for one member of the research team, Emily Bates, the discovery represents a personal victory.
Bates remembers getting a lot of migraines in elementary school. They would start with nausea and changes in vision, she says. Then came the pain.
"Loud sounds and light kind of hurt my eyes and my ears and my head," she says. Moving or applying any sort of pressure to her skin also hurt.
The problem was embarrassing and caused her to miss a lot of school, Bates says. It also was frustrating, she says, because back then, in the 1990s, no one could tell her much about what was causing her migraines or how to stop them.
So Bates decided to become a scientist in order to understand "these bizarre, awful migraines." She earned a doctorate in genetics at Harvard in 2005. Then, a couple of years later, while working in a lab at the University of California, San Francisco, she got a remarkable opportunity.
Researchers in Los Angeles had been studying a family with a lot of migraines. The team discovered something really surprising about this family: They were early birds who were usually asleep by 8 p.m. and up by 5 a.m. The scientific name for the condition is "advanced sleep phase."
The researchers were able to trace the family's sleep disorder to a mutation on a gene that helps control circadian rhythms, says Andrew Charles, a neurologist at UCLA. "We then turned our attention to the question of how this gene mutation could be involved in migraine," he says.
The first step was to show that the gene really could cause both sleep problems and migraines. So the team found a second family being studied at UCSF that had a slightly different mutation on the same gene. Sure enough, many members of this family were also early birds who had migraines.
The next step was to study mice carrying the mutated gene. And that's where Emily Bates got a chance to help explain the disorder that had so disrupted her childhood.
Bates' boss at UCSF, Louis Ptacek, had asked her to study the behavior of mice carrying the mutated gene and to find out whether they were experiencing any symptoms of migraines.
There's no sure way to know if a mouse has a headache, Bates says. So she began looking for some of the other migraine symptoms she knew so well ? things like sensitivity to heat and touch ? and she found them.
"All of the things that we looked at basically said these mice are more susceptible to migraine than a normal mouse," she says. The mice also had brain changes similar to those seen in people experiencing a migraine.
The findings should help explain the elusive link between sleep patterns and migraine, Charles says. "Disruptions of sleep are very well known to be a migraine trigger," he says. "And many migraine patients will tell you that their migraine attack will only end if they're able to get to sleep."
The results also serve as a reminder that there is a lot more to a migraine than headache and pain, Charles says. He says the study represents "another step toward bringing migraine forward as a disorder of the brain and a disorder for which there's a genetic basis."
But the ultimate payoff of the new research should be new ways to treat or prevent migraines, says Bates, who is now on the faculty at Brigham Young University.
"I know so well how frustrating and really demoralizing it can be to get a migraine," she says. "But I think once we understand the mechanism we can design better drugs."
Contact: Alisa Z Machalek alisa.machalek@nih.gov NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences
NIH-funded study reveals protein, fatty molecules and cellular energy work together during endocytosis
Cells ingest proteins and engulf bacteria by a gymnastic, shape-shifting process called endocytosis. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health revealed how a key protein, dynamin, drives the action.
Endocytosis lets cells absorb nutrients, import growth factors, prevent infections and accomplish many other vital tasks. Yet, despite decades of research, scientists don't fully understand this membrane remodeling process. New research reveals, on the real-life scale of nanometers, how individual molecules work together during a single act of endocytosis.
"We've discovered new details about a basic process used in all sorts of ways by every cell in the body," said co-author Joshua Zimmerberg, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Program in Physical Biology at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), where the research was conducted. "It's the culmination of a 30-year journey."
The research was led by Vadim Frolov, Ph.D., a former postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Zimmerberg's lab. It appears in a Science paper co-authored by an international team of researchers in the United States, Spain, Russia and India.
In addition to funding Dr. Zimmerberg, NIH also supported the work through a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to co-author Sandra Schmid, Ph.D. at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Dr. Schmid is an expert on dynamin.
Scientists have known for years that dynamin plays the major role in endocytosis. After other molecules known as coat proteins pinch the cell's membrane to form an inward-puckering sac, dynamin wraps, python-like, around the neck of the sac and squeezes it tightly. A jolt of energy from a molecule called GTP severs the neck, releasing a free-floating bubble, called a vesicle, inside the cell, and sealing the cell's outer membrane shut. All the while, neither the cell nor the vesicle leak any of their contents.
Drs. Zimmerberg, Schmid and colleagues discovered how the cell overcomes a seemingly insurmountable energy barrier to accomplish this feat. It's not a matter of brute force, as previously suspected, but something much more zen-likemolecular cooperation.
Neck severing starts when dynamin dips slightly into the pliable cell membrane. Lipids (oily molecules) in the membrane move aside, shifting their tails to accommodate the protein. This molecular crowding stresses the membrane, further constricting the neck of the developing vesicle.
Then GTP finishes the job. But not, as you might expect, with a fatal tug of the dynamin noose. Rather the opposite: Like a yoga instructor, GTP encourages the membrane to relax, despite its extreme stress. In the middle of this state of relaxation, the vesicle suddenly pinches off.
In trying to understand this counterintuitive move, the researchers speculate that GTP melts the inside of dynamin a bit, turning the protein into a flexible scaffold that stabilizes the membrane while the lipids rearrange themselves.
"We see no other way to lower the energy barrier to remodeling without having any leaks," states Dr. Frolov, who formulated the idea.
The researchers also found that, without access to GTP, dynamin will keep growing, twisting three or four times around the neck of the sac. When GTP is present (as is the case in living organisms), it only lets dynamin coil once or twice before it snaps off the vesicle.
All of this information helps scientists better understand a process critical to life.
Genetic defects in endocytosisand the reverse process, exocytosisare linked to a host of human diseases, including muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer's disease, leukemia and many others. In addition, some parasites and other pathogens can hijack endocytosis, commandeering the process to enter and infect human cells.
Dr. Zimmerberg is bringing his basic research findings to the clinic. He is studying changes in muscle cell membranes in people who have an adult-onset form of muscular dystrophy. In the disease, the membrane around muscle cells weakens and tears. Eventually, cells with damaged membranes die, leaking a number of enzymes into the bloodstream. Dr. Zimmerberg hopes to identify changes in blood chemistry that shed light on the disease process and point to possible new treatments. The study soon will begin recruiting patients as volunteers.
###
This research was supported in part by the intramural program of the NICHD and by NIGMS grant GM42455.
About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD):
The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute's website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.
About the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS):
NIGMS supports basic research to increase our understanding of life processes and lay the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention. For more information on the institute's research and training programs, see http://www.nigms.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Alisa Z Machalek alisa.machalek@nih.gov NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences
NIH-funded study reveals protein, fatty molecules and cellular energy work together during endocytosis
Cells ingest proteins and engulf bacteria by a gymnastic, shape-shifting process called endocytosis. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health revealed how a key protein, dynamin, drives the action.
Endocytosis lets cells absorb nutrients, import growth factors, prevent infections and accomplish many other vital tasks. Yet, despite decades of research, scientists don't fully understand this membrane remodeling process. New research reveals, on the real-life scale of nanometers, how individual molecules work together during a single act of endocytosis.
"We've discovered new details about a basic process used in all sorts of ways by every cell in the body," said co-author Joshua Zimmerberg, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Program in Physical Biology at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), where the research was conducted. "It's the culmination of a 30-year journey."
The research was led by Vadim Frolov, Ph.D., a former postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Zimmerberg's lab. It appears in a Science paper co-authored by an international team of researchers in the United States, Spain, Russia and India.
In addition to funding Dr. Zimmerberg, NIH also supported the work through a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to co-author Sandra Schmid, Ph.D. at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Dr. Schmid is an expert on dynamin.
Scientists have known for years that dynamin plays the major role in endocytosis. After other molecules known as coat proteins pinch the cell's membrane to form an inward-puckering sac, dynamin wraps, python-like, around the neck of the sac and squeezes it tightly. A jolt of energy from a molecule called GTP severs the neck, releasing a free-floating bubble, called a vesicle, inside the cell, and sealing the cell's outer membrane shut. All the while, neither the cell nor the vesicle leak any of their contents.
Drs. Zimmerberg, Schmid and colleagues discovered how the cell overcomes a seemingly insurmountable energy barrier to accomplish this feat. It's not a matter of brute force, as previously suspected, but something much more zen-likemolecular cooperation.
Neck severing starts when dynamin dips slightly into the pliable cell membrane. Lipids (oily molecules) in the membrane move aside, shifting their tails to accommodate the protein. This molecular crowding stresses the membrane, further constricting the neck of the developing vesicle.
Then GTP finishes the job. But not, as you might expect, with a fatal tug of the dynamin noose. Rather the opposite: Like a yoga instructor, GTP encourages the membrane to relax, despite its extreme stress. In the middle of this state of relaxation, the vesicle suddenly pinches off.
In trying to understand this counterintuitive move, the researchers speculate that GTP melts the inside of dynamin a bit, turning the protein into a flexible scaffold that stabilizes the membrane while the lipids rearrange themselves.
"We see no other way to lower the energy barrier to remodeling without having any leaks," states Dr. Frolov, who formulated the idea.
The researchers also found that, without access to GTP, dynamin will keep growing, twisting three or four times around the neck of the sac. When GTP is present (as is the case in living organisms), it only lets dynamin coil once or twice before it snaps off the vesicle.
All of this information helps scientists better understand a process critical to life.
Genetic defects in endocytosisand the reverse process, exocytosisare linked to a host of human diseases, including muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer's disease, leukemia and many others. In addition, some parasites and other pathogens can hijack endocytosis, commandeering the process to enter and infect human cells.
Dr. Zimmerberg is bringing his basic research findings to the clinic. He is studying changes in muscle cell membranes in people who have an adult-onset form of muscular dystrophy. In the disease, the membrane around muscle cells weakens and tears. Eventually, cells with damaged membranes die, leaking a number of enzymes into the bloodstream. Dr. Zimmerberg hopes to identify changes in blood chemistry that shed light on the disease process and point to possible new treatments. The study soon will begin recruiting patients as volunteers.
###
This research was supported in part by the intramural program of the NICHD and by NIGMS grant GM42455.
About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD):
The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute's website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.
About the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS):
NIGMS supports basic research to increase our understanding of life processes and lay the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention. For more information on the institute's research and training programs, see http://www.nigms.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday.
The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars.
Those findings ? combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars ? complicate President Barack Obama's effort to expand pre-K programs across the country. While Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continue to promote the president's proposal, researchers say existing programs are inadequate, and until their shortcomings are fixed there is little desire by lawmakers to get behind Obama's call for more preschool.
"The state of preschool was a state of emergency," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which produced the report.
During his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed a federal-state partnership that would dramatically expand options for families with young children. Obama's plan would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income was below twice the federal poverty rate.
If it were in place this year, the plan would allow a family of four with two children to enroll students in a pre-K program if the family earned less than $46,566.
Students from families who earn more could participate in the program, but their parents would have to pay tuition based on their income. Eventually, 3-year-old students would be part of the program, too.
As part of his budget request, Obama proposed spending $75 billion over 10 years to help states get these new programs up and running. During the first years, Washington would pick up the majority of the cost before shifting costs to states.
"It's the most significant opportunity to expand access to pre-K that this nation has ever seen," Barnett said of the president's proposal.
Obama proposed paying for this expansion by almost doubling the federal tax on cigarettes, to $1.95 per pack.
Obama's pre-K plan faces a tough uphill climb, though, with the tobacco industry opposing the tax that would pay for it and lawmakers from tobacco-producing states also skeptical. Conservative lawmakers have balked at starting another government program, as well. Obama's Democratic allies are clamoring to make it a priority.
To help it along, Duncan and Sebelius planned to join the report's researchers on Monday at a news conference to introduce the report, along with administration allies. They planned events later in the week to reiterate their support.
Yet those public events were unlikely to sway lawmakers who are already fighting among themselves over spending cuts that are forcing students to be dropped from existing preschool programs, the levying of higher fees for student loans and deep cuts for aid to military schools.
States spent about $5.1 billion on pre-K programs in 2011-12, the most recent school year, researchers wrote in the report.
Per-student funding for existing programs during that year dropped to an average of $3,841 for each student. It was the first time average spending per student dropped below $4,000 in today's dollars since researchers started tracking it during the 2001-02 academic year.
Adjusted for inflation, per-student funding has been cut by more than $1,000 during the last decade.
Yet nationwide, the amounts were widely varied. The District of Columbia spent almost $14,000 on every child in its program while the states of Colorado, South Carolina and Nebraska spent less than $2,000 per child.
"Whether you get a quality preschool program does depend on what ZIP code you are in," Barnett said.
Among the 40 states that offer state-funded pre-K programs, 27 cut per-student spending last year. In total, that meant $548 million in cuts.
Money, of course, is not a guarantee for students' success. But students from poor schools generally lag students from better-funded counterparts and those students from impoverished families arrive in kindergarten less prepared than others.
In all, only 15 states and the District of Columbia spent enough money to provide quality programs, the researchers concluded. Those programs serve about 20 percent of the 1.3 million enrolled in state-funded prekindergarten programs.
"In far too many states, funding levels have fallen so low as to bring into question the effectiveness of their programs by any reasonable standard," researchers wrote.
Part of the reason for the decreased spending are the lingering effects of the economic downturn in 2008, coupled with the end of federal stimulus dollars to plug state budgets.
"Although the recession is technically over, the recovery in state revenues has lagged the recovery of the general economy and has been slower and weaker than following prior recessions. This does not bode well for digging back out of the hole created by years of cuts," the researchers wrote in their report.
Nationally, 42 percent of students ? or more than a half million students ? were in programs that met fewer than half of the benchmarks researchers identified as important to gauging a program's effectiveness, such as classrooms with fewer than 20 students and teachers with bachelor's degrees.
That, too, suggests problems for Obama's plan to expand pre-K programs, especially if Washington insists its partners meet quality benchmarks to win federal dollars.
The role of Tim?s wife on ?Home Improvement? was played by Patricia Richardson and this talented actress was able to make her role as the beleaguered bride of an unrepentant car guy come alive in the show. We hear a great deal about Tim Allen?s real life fondness for cars, but what about the woman who played Jill (Mrs. Toolman) Taylor on ?Home Improvement??
TV?s Mrs. Toolman also notes that she was given pretty straight-forward car purchase advice from Tim Allen during their time together on one of television?s all time most popular comedies; ?Tim wanted me to only buy American cars?.? ?Tim?s advice probably made a lot of sense to Patricia when her import SUV inexplicably caught fire:![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vAz2lRWVF7HIMsviCHKcaEoRvfHaMvtfQqubPYlB9rvQzaUYhDZJo-7YZh7M6m15m79Sblok3OGRU-uh7E781p02C-j7w4YOyXkHdEsBo=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 30-Apr-2013
Share ]