Parental opt-outs mean no state reward
money
SACRAMENTO “”mdash; If too many of a school’s parents
refuse to let their children take the statewide test, the school
won’t be eligible for state reward money, the state Board of
Education decided Thursday.
The board voted unanimously for a new rule affecting the
state’s $677 million rewards program for improvements in
school rankings based on test scores.
Schools where 15 percent or more of the students did not take
the test because of parental waivers will not be eligible for
rewards, according to the new policy.
Schools that met their goal of increasing their Academic
Performance Index at least 5 percent between 1999 and 2000 were
eligible for several kinds of rewards. The money goes to schools,
teachers and other school workers.
The 2000 APIs, which are based entirely on results from a
standardized test, were released in October. The state Department
of Education found that 134 schools had 10 percent or more of their
students, some as many as half, not taking the test because of
their parents’ requests.
Parents are allowed to sign a waiver to keep their children from
taking a test. Parents likely to request such waivers include those
whose children do not speak English or attend charter schools with
home-schooling.
The department asked districts to “certify whether or not
the APIs for these schools are representatives of the student
population at these schools.” Almost all the districts said
they were. The rewards are scheduled to be distributed starting
next month.
Adults with depression may fail to get care
In one of the first national studies to evaluate the quality of
mental health care, new findings by UCLA researchers show that
millions of U.S. adults who suffer from depression or anxiety
disorders each year fail to receive proper care through their
physicians.
The study, published in the January edition of the Archives of
General Psychiatry, reported that 83 percent of adults with a
probable depressive or anxiety disorder during a one-year period
saw a health-care provider, but only 30 percent received
appropriate treatment.
Ninety percent of those who visited a mental health specialist
received proper care, compared with just 19 percent of those who
visited a primary care provider only, the researchers reported.
“While the chances of appropriate care are much higher for
individuals who visit a mental health specialist, (they) may be
more accepting of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment to begin
with,” said the study’s primary investigator Dr.
Alexander Young, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the
Neuropsychiatric Institute. “We found that people not
receiving appropriate care were much less likely to think they
needed treatment for an emotional problem.”
Solar farm begins Gamma Ray astronomy
University of California researchers Tümay Tümer, Gora
Mohanty, Jeff Zweerink, Harry Tom and Umar Mohideen of the
Riverside campus and Mani Tripathi of the Davis campus reported
preliminary work carried out at Solar Two Gamma Ray Observatory
today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San
Diego.
Constructed in Barstow by Southern California Edison and the
U.S. Department of Energy, the plant generated solar power until
1998. Dr. Tümer recognized the potential to add a gamma-ray
camera to the existing infrastructure.
Solar Two consists of an array of 1,800 mirrors, each with an
area of more than 400 sq. ft. It is the largest such farm built in
the world, and the only one capable of containing the entire
Cherenkov light pool.
Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports.