"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Federal Update: U.S. Department of Education Receives Requests for NCLB Waivers from Seven More States; Receives…

Recently researchers have begun to explore the extent to which children's cognitive development is influenced by experiences in the family environment. Assessing mother-child dyads exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV), a population at risk for emotional and neurocognitive problems, we examined relationships between maternal emotional…

"Open access" is a core mission component of the community college. Through this mission, public two-year colleges provide postsecondary opportunities to nearly all individuals desiring further education. However, access is not necessarily synonymous with success. Many students, including black males, have concerning levels of success, or the lack…

This study examined the effects of two social skills interventions, Sociodramatic Affective Relational Intervention (SDARI) and Skillstreaming, to compare their treatment mechanisms, social performance- and knowledge-training. A total of 13 youth with autism spectrum disorders were randomly assigned to 4 weeks of 1-day/week SDARI or…

Numerous stereotypes exist regarding race and gender, and while all are difficult to eradicate, one still regnant throughout society is the notion that females are not as capable as males within the fields of math and science. In order to expose this belief as faulty, an in depth literature review was initiated, with special attention being placed…

Explanations for married men's wage premium often emphasize greater market productivity due to a gendered division of household labor, though this "specialization thesis" has been insufficiently interrogated. Using data from Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 972), this paper examines the relationship between wages and…

The field of applied behavior analysis has utilized the ability to capture and contrive establishing operations in treating aberrant behavior in individuals with developmental disabilities. However, research on the use of establishing operations in the teaching of appropriate behavior is not as systematic. This study examined the effects of…

Many adults are afraid of boys' play today, believing that the aggression that is so common in boys' fantasies is dangerous and might make them become violent men. This personal reflection describes the importance of multiage play in showing little boys how to become big boys while encouraging empathy and emotional growth in older boys. The author…

Periventricular nodular heterotopia and Miller-Dieker syndrome are two different disorders of brain development. Miller-Dieker syndrome exhibits classical lissencephaly and is related to defects in the lissencephaly gene ("LIS1"). Periventricular nodular heterotopia is characterized by aggregates of grey matter adjacent to the lateral ventricle…

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of physical practice with PETTLEP-based (Physical, Environment, Task, Timing, Learning, Emotion and Perspective; Holmes & Collins, 2001) imagery and PETTLEP + physical practice interventions on golf bunker shot performance. Thirty-two male county- or international-level golfers were assigned to one…

Background: The oligophrenin 1 gene ("OPHN1") is an Rho-GTPase-activating protein involved in the regulation of the G-protein cycle required for dendritic spine morphogenesis. Mutations in this gene are implicated in X-linked mental retardation (XLMR). Methods: We report a deletion spanning exons 21 and 22 of the "OPHN1" gene identified by a…

The most common approach to treating male perpetrators of domestic violence has been batterer intervention programs (BIPs) (Aldarondo & Mederos, 2002). In particular, the use of group treatment modalities is due to theoretically-based assumptions that the group treatment context is best for male resocialization, and the most cost effective (Dutton…

X-linked intellectual disability (XLID) accounts for approximately 16% of males with intellectual disability (ID). This is, in part, related to the fact that males have a single X chromosome. Progress in the clinical and molecular characterization of XLID has outpaced progress in the delineation of ID due to genes on the other 22 chromosomes.…

This paper is founded upon the premise that "common sense" understandings about boys persist within schools and, given this continuing circulation of such understandings, advocates the need to critique such conceptualising. It does so on the grounds that such understandings, and the essentialist discursive knowledges informing these, fail to take…

The present study determined if the ideal man has changed over the years and who and what the ideal woman is. We asked students at Cameron University to rate the importance of character traits that define the ideal man and woman. Subjects also provided examples of famous people exemplifying the ideal, good, average, and inferior man and woman. We…