Study: school buses safe enough without seat belts
Washington Post (via Associated Press) – Oct. 26
School buses are safe enough without seat belts and students in many cases ignore a requirement to wear them, according to a study in Alabama released Monday that found the straps would save the life of about one child every eight years. The study was ordered by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley after four students were killed in 2006 when a school bus without seat belts nose-dived from an overpass in Huntsville…The three-year study showed putting belts on most buses is expensive – about $11,000 to $15,000 per bus, and requires larger seats, reducing the number of students who can sit on the bus. In many cases, the study found that students don’t put on the belts and drivers complained they couldn’t see the children. “It’s six to eight times safer than riding to school with their momma in a car,” said Dan Turner, a retired University of Alabama professor who led the study. “That’s hard to tell someone who has their precious baby in the car.” Turner said the study was expected to guide school transportation officials around the country…Researchers said it would be more cost-effective to spend money making the process of loading students on and off the buses safer. Turner said most deaths occur when children are getting off the bus, crossing roads or crowding around the bus to board it. “If the money is available, it would be much better spent training drivers, teachers and students,” Turner said.
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 26
Dothan Eagle – Oct. 26
NBC13.com (Birmingham) – Oct. 25
Huntsville Times – Oct. 26
FOX10.com (Mobile) – Oct. 25
WHNT.com (Huntsville) – Oct. 25
Florence Times-Daily – Oct. 26
The New Community College Tuition Hike
Inside Higher Ed – Oct. 26
As funding for higher education continues to shrink in some states, more community colleges are considering charging differential tuition rates for their costly career and technology programs…Researchers are unsure how common differential tuition is at community colleges. The University of Alabama’s Education Policy Center, however, conducted a survey of state community college directors last year revealing that local boards determine tuition for community colleges in 21 states. This method makes differential tuition more likely. In these states, researchers indicate that more community colleges may consider it in the near future, if state funding does not rebound. “I fear that the uncertain funding environment is forcing open access institutions toward a private benefits model, where individuals pay more for benefits they and not the society receive,” wrote Steve Katsinas, professor and director of Alabama’s Education Policy Center, in an e-mail. “Higher fees associated with more expensive, specialized curricula including auto [computer-aided design], engineering technology and allied health are not new. But we may be at a ‘tipping point,’ given the deep cutbacks over the past three decades in state funding. As state funding declines, the challenge of spreading the higher costs of these more expensive lower enrollment programs across the total enrollments is much more challenging. The unprecedented fiscal pressures are forcing institutions to squeeze every dollar that they can possibly find, shifting more costs on the backs of students and their families.”…
Monster Makeover: Children’s art reinterpreted
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 26
It’s not unusual that children at different ages, even just a year or a few months apart, might have very different views of and reactions to monsters, depending on their developmental levels, said Joy J. Burnham, an associate professor of education at the University of Alabama who has done years of study on childhood fears. “Fears are very developmental; usually they change qualitatively with age,” she said. Early in life, children can’t distinguish imaginary from real fears. They could be just as frightened by a scene in a movie as by a loud noise outside the bedroom. “Over time, kids mature, they grow, they can distinguish the real from the make-believe.” In her studies, Burnham also found smaller children, exposed to real horrors in the media, cannot understand their temporary nature. With Sept. 11, 2001, or Hurricane Katrina, where images replayed constantly for months or even years, “a very young child might think that was happening over and over again, whereas an older child will realize it’s repetition of a single or singular event.”…But without having been in on the little art experiment, Burnham made the educated guess that the kids absolutely enjoyed drawing monsters. “Typically I think it’s quite harmless for kids to do this,” she said. “Some of these kids — I’m not saying all — are burdened by societal issues, exposed to very heavy, problematic things. “My view is that Halloween is play, compared to some of the very real things that we deal with.”