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evidence-based-activism · 1 month ago

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I keep seeing this claim that schools/the education system today are designed for girls and disadvantage boys and that’s why girls and women are out performing boys and men at basically every level of education. Does this claim actually have any merit or truth to it? Because tbh I have a hard time believing it and I find it interesting that this seems to be the popular explanation for why girls are doing better in school when I somehow doubt a similar explanation would be widely used if girls were doing worse.

Thanks in advance and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day (or afternoon/evening/night)!

I hope you have a lovely day as well! I know this response took a while, so I hope you still see it!

Evidence For and Against a Gender Gap in Education

There's been a lot of reporting about how boys are "falling behind" in education but there is ... much less evidence to support this. (At least for young children, who are generally the focus in this sort of conversation.)

To start with, we can look at the data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is "a congressionally mandated program that is overseen and administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences" [1]. Using their data explorer to examine trends in performance, we see very similar performance between boys and girls in general. However, looking at the most recent year for any particular subject and grade level (grade 4 ~ age 9; grade 8 ~ age 13; grade 12 ~ age 17), we can see some small differences.

Boys have higher scores than girls in:

Mathematics (500 point scale for grade 4 and 8; 300 point scale for grade 12) in grade 4 (-6 points), 8 (-2), and 12 (-3)

Science (300 point scale) in grade 12 (-4); girls and boys show no significant difference in grade 4 or 8

US history (500 point scale) for 8 (-4) and 12 (-4); girls and boys show no significant difference in grade 4

Geography (500 point scale) for grade 4 (-4), 8 (-3), and 12 (-5)

Girls have higher score than boys in:

Reading (500 point scale) for grade 4 (+6), 8 (+8), and 12 (+13)

Writing (300 point scale) for grade 4 (+17), 8 (+19), and 12 (+14)

Civics (300 point scale) for grade 4 (+7) and 8 (+2); girls and boys show no difference in grade 12

So, according to a standardized test measurement in the USA, there is little difference in boys and girls performance. Where there are differences they: tend to be small (mostly single digit differences on 300- and 500-point scales) and varied in direction (i.e., boys score higher in some things and girls in others).

Notably, there are substantially higher racial gaps (20-30+ points) in these subjects, suggesting that there isn't a "boy crisis" there's a "marginalized races crisis". (For both sexes, but, interestingly, more so for boys.)

In addition to that, this examination of longitudinal data [2] reaches essentially the same conclusion (different direction of gap by subject, small effect size, bigger racial difference, etc.) but also concludes that most boys "gain ground" as they age. This Dutch article [3] examines several large-scale national and international datasets and also comes to the same conclusion. (Importantly, however, as this will come up later, they did find substantial gender differences in "non-cognitive domains".)

All in all, this suggests the empirical evidence for a "boy crisis" in grade school education is weak.

That being said, there are a couple measures that do provide support for the idea specifically in older students. First, Brookings analyzed data from the Department of Education [4], and found that there is a sex gap in high school graduation rates such that a lower proportion of boys than girls graduated. Notably, however, this gap is much smaller for Asian Americans and White Americans than for Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, which suggests this is – again – more of racial issue than a gender issue.

In addition that, women are outpacing men in college entrance and graduation in the USA, according to the Pew Research Center [5]. Specifically, 39% of women over age 25 have a Bachelor's degree compared to 37% of men. However, when considering only the most recent cohort (adults aged 25 to 34), 46% of women have a Bachelor's degree compared to 36% of men.

Importantly, however, this difference is not driven by structural inequality. For individuals who did not earn a Bachelor's degree, 44% of women report financial constraints and 38% report family obligations, compared to 39% and 35% of men respectively. In contrast, 34% of men reported they "just didn't want to" and 26% report they didn't need it for their desired job, compared to 25% and 20% of women respectively. This does not support the narrative of an external "boy's crisis".

And, in addition to all of that, men are still the majority in highest paying jobs, the majority in governmental and commercial leadership positions, more likely to be the primary or sole earner in a family, and earn more - on average - that women [6].

I'd propose that any differences in educational achievement – if they existed – would be irrelevant without a similar "real world" impact. That is, what does it matter if girls outperform boys on reading tests (or boys outperform on math tests) if they are not also gaining ground in their adult professional careers?

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Boy's Behavior

Having established that there isn't very strong evidence for a sex gap in educational achievement, I want to note that there is evidence for another type of sex gap: behavior.

This study [7] actually provides evidence that nearly all of the sex differences in grades (i.e., girls receiving higher grades from teachers in primary school) is dependent on the student's behaviors. In other words, once adjusted for "noncognitive skills", differences in grades disappears.

And remember that Dutch study [3] from earlier? They also found that teacher rated young girls "substantially more favourably than boys" for "social behaviour and work attitude". For older students, boys rated themselves less "peaceable" than girls.

The common belief that female teachers (as compared to male teachers) hurt boys performance also appears unfounded, as indicated by this review article [8]. These studies [9, 10] also draw the same conclusion, and additionally suggest that boys behavior/attitudes in school is worse than girls for both female and male teachers.

(Some people may read this and think that this is the result of girls "maturing faster" than boys. So, I'd like to point out that is almost certainly a result of socialization. Someone else has written a blog post about this topic [11], but also see this post about brain sex that also considers the reach and effects of early socialization.)

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Conclusion

All in all, there isn't strong evidence of a "boy's education crisis". While there are gender differences in education performance they vary by subject and grade level, tend to be very small (much smaller than other demographic differences), and don't appear to have a "real world" impact.

There is evidence that boys are less disciplined and less positive in educational environments, a difference that is most likely driven by how boys are socialized in comparison to girls. (For example, boys are encouraged to be more out-going, girls are more likely to be praised for "good behavior", girls are included in chores more often and at younger ages, etc.)

I hope this helps!

References below the cut:

NAEP: National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2024, March 21). About NAEP: A Common Measure of Student Achievement; National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/

Husain, M., & Millimet, D. L. (2009). The mythical ‘boy crisis’? Economics of Education Review, 28(1), 38–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2007.11.002

Driessen, G., & Van Langen, A. (2013). Gender differences in primary and secondary education: Are girls really outperforming boys? International Review of Education, 59(1), 67–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-013-9352-6

Reeves, R. V., Buckner, E., & Smith, E. (2021). The unreported gender gap in high school graduation rates. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-unreported-gender-gap-in-high-school-graduation-rates/

Parker, K. (2021, November 8). What’s behind the growing gap between men and women in college completion? Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/08/whats-behind-the-growing-gap-between-men-and-women-in-college-completion/

Schaeffer, K. (2024, February 27). For Women’s History Month, a look at gender gains – and gaps – in the U.S. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/27/for-womens-history-month-a-look-at-gender-gains-and-gaps-in-the-us/

Cornwell, C., Mustard, D. B., & Van Parys, J. (2013). Noncognitive skills and the gender disparities in test scores and teacher assessments: Evidence from primary school. Journal of Human resources, 48(1), 236-264.

Coenen, J., Cornelisz, I., Groot, W., Maassen van den Brink, H., & Van Klaveren, C. (2018). Teacher characteristics and their effects on student test scores: A systematic review. Journal of economic surveys, 32(3), 848-877.

de Zeeuw, E. L., van Beijsterveldt, C. E., Glasner, T. J., Bartels, M., de Geus, E. J., & Boomsma, D. I. (2014). Do children perform and behave better at school when taught by same-gender teachers?. Learning and Individual Differences, 36, 152-156.

Carrington, B., Tymms, P., & Merrell, C. (2008). Role models, school improvement and the ‘gender gap’—do men bring out the best in boys and women the best in girls?. British Educational Research Journal, 34(3), 315-327.

Graham, R. (2023, September 22). Do girls really mature faster than boys, or do we just force them to? The Noösphere. https://archive.is/2023.09.22-090402/https://medium.com/the-no%C3%B6sphere/do-girls-really-mature-faster-than-boys-or-do-we-just-force-them-to-68e31307abf3

#feminism #patriarchal culture

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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HANAU, Germany—On a fall day in 2022, Serpil Temiz Unvar was sitting in her kitchen when, through the window, she saw an older man and a German shepherd standing outside. Assuming the man was a neighbor, Unvar opened her window to greet him. She was bewildered when he began asking her increasingly strange and aggressive questions: Are you Kurdish? Why did you leave your homeland? How do you have enough money to live here and to go on so many vacations back in Turkey?

The experience left Unvar, 51, deeply unsettled. After the man left, she called several friends who confirmed what she already suspected: The man with the German shepherd wasn’t just a neighbor. He was also the father of her son’s killer.

Unvar’s son Ferhat, then 23, was one of nine people shot and killed in a violent rampage targeting immigrants on Feb. 19, 2020. The shooter, Tobias R., opened fire at a bar in Hanau’s center before driving across town, where he shot a man who had followed him from the first bar by car. Then, Tobias R.—identified by his first name and last initial in keeping with German privacy laws—walked into the Arena Bar & Cafe, showering patrons in a spray of bullets, Ferhat among them. The shooter then drove to his mother’s house, killed her, and turned the gun on himself.

The shootings shook Hanau, a city of just over 100,000 people 15 miles east of Frankfurt. The city is among Germany’s most diverse: Nearly 30 percent of Hanau’s population does not hold a German passport, according to recent city statistics, around twice the national average. German media reported that Tobias R. had posted a manifesto on his website shortly before the attack, which authorities described as demonstrating a “deeply racist attitude.”

The Hanau attack became a symbol of Germany’s struggle to extinguish far-right violence and anti-immigrant ideology. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the attack, warning, “Racism is a poison. Hate is a poison.” But soon, news crews departed. Politicians who had offered solemn condolences moved on to other matters, and the country went into lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.

Unvar felt a growing sense of rage at the government’s lack of response to the Hanau attack, she told me when I sat down with her in March. Later that year, she became an activist: She founded an educational initiative aimed at fighting racism in schools; testified on the Hanau killings in the state parliament of Hesse, where Hanau is located; and worked with the family members of other victims to pressure the government to take action to prevent future racist attacks.

But honoring Ferhat’s memory has made Unvar a target herself. The man’s 2022 visit to her home wasn’t an isolated event; Hans-Gerd R. came back that night and the next day. After Unvar filed a restraining order against him, he started sending her letters. “If you as a migrant hate the land of the German people, then please leave it, and quickly, and please go back to where you came from,” he wrote in one missive. The harassment and stalking are still going on, she told me.

Unvar’s fight against racist ideas about who belongs in Germany has laid bare how deeply ingrained this ideology remains in parts of the country—particularly as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party continues to creep up in the polls. “We want to trust this country, but this country also needs to protect us,” she said. “But how? I don’t know.”

The Hanau murders came on the heels of a string of other deadly racist attacks in Germany. Less than six months earlier, in October 2019, another right-wing extremist showed up at a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on Yom Kippur intent on murdering Jewish worshippers; he ultimately killed two people outside the synagogue. Earlier that year, a local politician in the Hessian town of Kassel, Walter Lübcke, was shot and killed by a right-wing extremist who was unhappy over the politician’s welcoming policy toward refugees.

Hanau commanded particular attention because it was a targeted assault on people with “immigration backgrounds,” the official term Germany’s Federal Statistical Office uses to describe those who were born to at least one parent who was not a German citizen. German authorities also faced intense scrutiny for their handling of the incident.

The killer had been allowed to purchase a gun despite past indications that he had a mental illness, which authorities did not adequately investigate before issuing him a weapons permit. The Hanau police were slow to respond to emergency calls about the shootings because they were chronically understaffed. An investigation by regional authorities also revealed that 13 of the officers who responded to the attack were part of a police unit that was later disbanded due to a scandal over membership in right-wing chat groups.

In the Arena Bar, where Ferhat was killed, an emergency door had been locked to keep patrons from fleeing during regular police raids on the venue to look for illegal drugs. A damning investigation by the U.K.-based group Forensic Architecture featured in an exhibition in Frankfurt two years ago found that all five of those killed in the bar could have survived had the door been unlocked.

Late last year, after years of testimony and hearings, a Hessian parliamentary committee investigating the authorities’ response to the attack issued its final report. In 642 pages, it details the various security failures that contributed to the loss of life that day. But without concrete consequences for those responsible for the security failures in Hanau, victims’ family members say it’s hard to believe anything will meaningfully change in how Germany handles right-wing and racist terrorism.

None of the officers or authorities involved in Hanau’s security failures were disciplined or removed from their posts explicitly due to their handling of the situation. Although the Hessian parliamentary committee’s report outlined areas where German law enforcement had fallen short, those who lost family members that day felt its recommendations—for more stringent checks before issuing weapons permits, to develop anti-racism programs in schools, and to better communicate with families of victims—offered little more than lip service.

Armin Kurtovic, whose son Hamza was killed in the attacks, described the report as a “slap in the face” to the victims’ families. “I was convinced something like this wasn’t possible in this country,” he told German broadcaster Hessenschau late last year. “But the more I get involved and the more I read, the more I see: This is continuity.”

Police officers’ handling of the investigation was infuriating to Serpil Temiz Unvar, but it was hardly surprising to her and others who have tracked the history of far-right attacks in Germany. The authorities’ seeming blind spot for this kind of violence—and a lack of concrete action to prevent it—extends back far beyond Hanau.

The most famous case of recent far-right violence in Germany was that of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terrorist cell that killed 10 people, mostly immigrants, across Germany over the course of 13 years, evading police notice. In their investigations of each murder, the police fell back on racist stereotypes of immigrants, assuming that those slain had been involved in the drug trade or victims of immigrant-on-immigrant crime; the German media dubbed them “kebab murders.”

“A nation that liked to think it had atoned for its racist past [was] forced to admit that violent prejudice was a thing of the present,” American journalist Jacob Kushner wrote in his recently published book on the NSU murders, Look Away, adding that “in an age of unparalleled mass migration, the targets of white terrorism are increasingly immigrants.”

When I arrived at the offices of Unvar’s organization, the Ferhat Unvar Educational Initiative, in March, the first thing I saw was a black-and-white mural of Ferhat. Wearing a cap and looking forward, his face appears next to the words “We are only dead when we are forgotten.” Ferhat had posted the phrase on social media before his death. It has now become his mother’s guiding principle as she builds an organization to honor his memory.

Unvar grew up in a Kurdish city in southern Turkey, near the border with Syria. Her father moved to Paris, and she eventually joined him. She moved to Hanau when she married a Kurdish man there, with whom she had four children, including Ferhat, before later separating.

In the months after her son’s killing, Unvar said she agonized over what she could have done to make his life better while he was still alive. She thought about the discrimination he faced in school as a student with an immigration background and found herself wracked with guilt that she hadn’t fought harder for him: pushing school officials harder to allow him on a more ambitious track of study, for example, or urging them to stop the discrimination he faced from teachers and other students.

Ferhat was gone, but many other children with similar backgrounds faced those same tough odds at school—and there was still a way to help them, Unvar remembered thinking. Nearly nine months after the attack, on Ferhat’s birthday in November 2020, Unvar officially founded her organization, which seeks to combat racism and discrimination in the German education system, giving talks and holding trainings and workshops to empower young people struggling against systemic racism and to educate teachers about the challenges that students from immigrant communities face.

Her first donation was from a group of Ferhat’s friends, who handed her an envelope with 125 euros they had raised together. She was touched and buoyed by the gesture. “I said, OK, I couldn’t help Ferhat, but I can help them through Ferhat,” she said.

The organization has since scaled up significantly. Donations and grants helped Unvar hire staff and spread the word about their anti-discrimination workshops. Some are for school-age children and youth, giving them a safe space to talk about their experiences of discrimination or racism; others are for teachers and educators, training them to root out racism in their classrooms; yet more are for adults in other professions, including airport staff at Frankfurt Airport. Along with Initiative 19 February Hanau, an organization run by the family members of several of the Hanau victims, Unvar’s initiative won the Aachen Peace Prize in 2021.

“I never had it in my head to do something like this,” said Unvar, reflecting on how her life changed after the attack. Sitting on a black couch in one corner of the organization’s big event space, with posters depicting the organization’s logo and events on the walls and brochures for her training programs on tables across the room, Unvar was animated as she described how she and others have built the initiative into what it is today. At the same time, she said, so “many people instrumentalize [the attack], not just politicians but also others. That hurt me deeply.”

Unvar told me that she hopes to create a cross-border support network for families of victims of terrorism. In Greece, she met Magda Fyssa, the mother of Pavlos Fyssas, a young anti-fascist musician murdered by members of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn. She has also traveled to Norway, Spain, and France to meet with other families of terrorist victims and with organizations that combat terrorism. Unvar spoke with local activists and experts about ways to collaborate in their fight against violent extremism and learn from one another’s experiences.

“Regardless of which country I was in, I never felt alone,” she said. “I saw how many other people are also fighting in this direction against terror, for humanity, for human rights—that gave me strength.”

But Unvar admitted that it can be difficult to press forward with her activism while feeling that no matter how hard she works, or how hard others work, her efforts are unlikely to change a country unwilling to address its shortcomings when it comes to welcoming and safeguarding immigrant communities.

In January, the German investigative news outfit Correctiv released a report about a secret meeting between right-wing extremist leaders near Berlin, including members of the far-right AfD. Those present discussed a “remigration” plan to deport millions of people with immigrant backgrounds, including those with German passports.

Unvar said the national outrage over the Correctiv report—and the millions of people who turned out to protest across the country in the weeks that followed—gave her hope that the German population at large finally understood the scale of its problem with right-wing extremism. “It’s good that [the story] came out because then people like us can see how big and important a problem it is,” she said. “The racists—they’re not letting up. We’ve seen the danger is there. … We need to really hold together against the right wing and against terror.”

Still, the AfD continues to gain ground. Riding a wave of support for far-right parties across Europe, the party gained 5 percentage points in June’s European Parliament elections, coming in second—ahead of all three of Germany’s governing parties—with 16 percent of the vote. The AfD then won its first state-level victory in the eastern German state of Thuringia on Sept. 1, taking 32.8 percent of the vote; in neighboring Saxony, it came in a close second to the center-right Christian Democrats, with 30.6 percent of the vote. A third eastern state, Brandenburg, votes on Sept. 22; the AfD is leading the polls there.

The far-right party is also a growing threat in Unvar’s home state: In the years since the attack, Hesse’s political landscape has shifted to the right. The AfD won 18.4 percent to become the second-largest party in last fall’s state elections, an increase of 5.3 percentage points from the previous election in 2018.

In February, around the anniversary of the Hanau attack, Hans-Gerd R. sent Unvar another letter. Another one followed this spring.

Hans-Gerd R. has been cited dozens of times for harassing Unvar and other victims’ family members and for repeatedly violating a restraining order against Unvar. He was taken into custody when he defied the restraining order and showed up outside her house again in 2023. He was also briefly sent to jail that year for failing to pay his fines for the various citations he had received related to that harassment.

But despite the restraining order, the police told Unvar that they can’t do anything about the letters that keep arriving at her house: There are no laws in Germany against sending missives to someone via the postal system, regardless of the intolerance they contain.

Hanau Mayor Claus Kaminsky described Hans-Gerd. R’s harassment of Unvar and other victims’ family members as “subtle, almost diabolical” terrorism in a 2023 interview with the German broadcaster ARD, saying he wished the man would leave Hanau. But he reiterated that there is little the authorities can do beyond the penalties they have already put into place. “Of course, it would be best if the father left the city, if he changed his place of residence,” Kaminsky said. “That might even be better for him. But there is no legal way to force this.”

Toward the end of our time together, I asked Unvar whether she was afraid that Hans-Gerd R. would escalate from letters and leering outside her kitchen window to something worse. Unvar’s youngest son, Mirza, who is 11, had just come into the office and sat down next to her on the black leather sofa. She wrapped her arms around him as he looked up shyly.

“I’m not afraid, no. I really have zero fear—what should I be afraid of? What can happen? I’ve already lost my dearest son,” she said.

Ultimately, as she told me repeatedly throughout the course of our conversation, her fight isn’t about her. The educational initiative, the connections abroad, the advocacy, the long hours of volunteer work—it’s about children like Ferhat who struggle to get ahead in school because of the color of their skin; it’s about Mirza, sitting on the couch next to her, being able to grow up feeling safe.

“The killer’s father is still a danger to my family,” she said. “I don’t fear for myself, but I have children.”

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reasonandempathy · 9 months ago

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A brief summary of how Education fails Boys

I saw people sincerely questioning and minimizing the current struggles boys face in education.

So, I wanted to collect some relevant information, with sources. All of these are from the past couple of years, from 2021 onward.

Girls have more difficulty accessing education and are more likely than boys to be out of school at primary level. However, boys are at greater risk of repeating grades, failing to progress and complete their education, and not learning while in school. Globally, 128 million boys are out of school. That’s more than half of the global out-of-school youth population and more than the 122 million girls who are also out of school. The Leave no child behind: Global report on boys’ disengagement from education shows that boys are increasingly left behind in education. They are at greater risk of repeating grades, failing to progress and complete their education, and not learning while in school. While previously boys’ disengagement and dropout were concerns mainly in high-income countries, several low- and middle-income countries have seen a reversal in gender gaps, with boys now lagging behind girls in enrolment, completion and learning outcomes. Boys are more likely than girls to repeat primary grades in 130 countries, and more likely to not have an upper secondary education in 73 countries. At tertiary level, globally only 88 men are enrolled for every 100 women.

In 1970, women only made up 42 percent of the college population. Today, the roles have essentially reversed. The U.S. Department of Education estimates men to make up 43 percent of enrolled individuals in college. And this crisis impacts minority populations even more: only 36 percent of Black and 40 percent of Hispanic bachelor degree recipients are male.

This is not an issue of colleges neglecting to admit men at an equal rate. Rather, colleges are receiving fewer applications from men than women. In 2010, only 44 percent of college applications were from men and that number has been steadily declining since. The decrease in male applicants is a sign that men are discouraged from pursuing higher education at a disproportionately high rate.

These statistics point to a larger, systemic problem. The American education system perpetuates a series of gender norms that cause significant harm to children; boys are impacted by these expectations in a way that tends to be overlooked. The stereotype that boys have a higher propensity to misbehave has led to the over-punishment of boys in the classroom.

Boys are facing key challenges in school. Inside the effort to support their success

An APA task force is spotlighting the specific issues and recommending evidence-based ways to enact swift change At school, by almost every metric, boys of all ages are doing worse than girls. They are disciplined and diagnosed with learning disabilities at higher rates, their grades and test scores are lower, and they’re less likely to graduate from high school (Owens, J., Sociology of Education, Vol. 89, No. 3, 2016; Voyer, D., & Voyer, S. D., Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 140, No. 4, 2014; “The unreported gender gap in high school graduation rates,” Brookings, 2021). These disparities persist at the university level, where female enrollment now outpaces male enrollment by 16% (Undergraduate Enrollment, National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). “The gap between boys and girls is apparent from very early on,” said developmental psychologist Ioakim Boutakidis, PhD, a professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton. “The disparities not only exist across the board—from kindergarten all the way to college—but they are growing over time.” For boys of color, that gap is even larger. They face suspension and expulsion from school at almost five times the rate of their White male classmates and are even less likely to finish high school or college (“Exploring Boys’ (Mis)Behavior,” Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities, 2022 [PDF, 261KB]). The implications of these disparities are huge. Doing poorly at school is strongly associated with major challenges later in life, including addiction, mental and physical health problems, and involvement with the criminal justice system—problems that also have ripple effects on society at large. In the United States, getting at least a college degree may be the one remaining, relatively stable ticket to a decent life, Boutakidis said.

In a recent New York Times essay, “It’s Become Increasingly Hard for Them to Feel Good About Themselves,” Thomas Edsall reviews a variety of research studies highlighting the plight of young men in the United States. As a front-line educator who has worked in boys’ schools for 30 years and served as the head of a boys’ school for the past 20 years, I’ve been an unhappy witness to this dilemma. Data supports the claim that boys are falling behind, and dramatically so. For example, there is a growing gender gap in high school graduation rates. According to the Brooking Institution, in 2018, about 88% of girls graduated on time, compared with 82% of boys. For college enrollment, the gender gap is even more striking, with men now trailing women in higher education at record levels. Last year, women made up 60% of college students while men accounted for only 40%, according to statistics from the National Student Clearinghouse. College enrollment in the United States has declined by 1.5 million students over the past five years, with men accounting for 71% of that drop.

#education #civics #childhood #politics #original content

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secular-jew · 7 months ago

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What should we learn from Benjamin Achimeir?

Posted on April 13, 2024 by Forest Rain

Yesterday we were told on the news that 14 year old Benjamin Achimeir went missing. He left his home early in the morning to herd sheep. His home is in the Benjamin region, named after the ancient Jewish tribe of Benjamin who lived more or less in the same area during biblical times.

A missing shepherd could be someone who walking on the hills fell and was injured and unable to call for help. Or someone attacked by terrorists.

Today Benjamin’s body was found. He wasn’t taken hostage, he was murdered and thrown nearby. He was stoned, tortured, beaten, stabbed and his skull was crushed by a large rock. A 14 year old boy.

Now the reports are of “settlers” aka Jews who live in the region, “rampaging” in the closest Arab village, the place where one logically assumes the murderer or murderers came from. It is worth noting that the reported “rampaging” includes setting fire to houses and cars, not murdering people.

Those who live in civilized places will respond in horror “Oh, no, one mustn’t take the law into your own hands,” and “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Which is true. I believe those things. The problem is that this isn’t a civilized area and there is a big difference between theory and survival.

Let’s unravel some of the complications here:

“Settler violence”

This term encapsulates multiple lies.

The first is that Jews living in their ancestral homeland somehow are settlers who don’t belong there. The idea that “settlers” are Jews who live in the Benjamin region and not the Jews who live in Tel Aviv is an idea born from elites who don’t listen to what the Arabs say about us. To them, every Jew living in Israel is a “settler”. We saw this on October 7th when Hamas called the people of Be’eri and other kibbutzim in Israel “settlers”.

The next lie is that Jewish violence against Arabs is a common occurrence. This is an absolute lie, supported by warped statistics that include instances of Jews defending themselves from terrorists trying to kill them. For example, terrorists that were injured in these instances were counted as a case of settler violence and if they subsequently died in the hospital, it was counted as a second instance of violence. Another example of these outrageous lies with statistics is that every Jew who ascends the Temple Mount is counted as an instance of “settler violence”

“Taking the law into your hands is wrong”

Israel is a nation of law and murdering people is not allowed. Obviously. The law is supposed to protect all citizens. The problem is that the law isn’t fully enforced to protect Jews, particularly those who live in Judea, Samaria and the Benjamin region – people who stand in between the Arabs of the PA territories who promised to repeat October 7th and the Israelis living in the center of the country. The Arabs of the PA territories have proven their desire as they have committed small scale attacks for years. Their culture and education are identical to that in Gaza. Elections in PA territories have been postponed for over a decade because it is known that the people would elect Hamas. Gaza is Hamas. So is the PA.

Further complicating the situation is the decisions and attitude of the IDF general in charge of the region. The residents living there have been crying out for help, for years. According to them, many of his decisions about how to manage the area are more focused on maintaining Arab rights to freedom of movement than protecting Jewish right to not be murdered. Most recently he was criticized for a military exercise that proposed a scenario where “settlers” kidnapped an Arab child and the army needed to intervene. A scenario that never happened, one that would never happen and is exactly the opposite of what actually happens – as we see in the murder of Benjamin Achimeir. So here we have a terrible situation where Jews are under attack and the State is not defending them. If you were in such a situation, what would you do? Sit and wait for the next attack or make sure your attackers know they cannot attack with impunity?

What will be reported?

Most of the media will focus more on the “settler violence” than on the fact that a 14 year old boy was murdered for the crime of being a Jew in his ancestral homeland.

For Muslims, Jews returned to our ancestral homeland are a problem because it proves their religion wrong. God did not replace Jews with Islam. We were exiled but we were also returned.

For Progressives (in America, Israel and Europe) Jews who are both religious and connected to the Land, Jews who are willing to be a “Nation alone” are the last major threat to the new world they are trying to create. People that still live according to biblical guidelines are in stark and violent contrast to those who say that there is no difference between man and woman, nations, facts and feelings or even right and wrong. THAT is why “settlers” are a red flag to so many.

The murder of a child should make everyone pause. The murder of Benjamin Achimeir should make us all consider what is necessary to enable Jews to live freely in our ancestral homeland.

#israeli #israel #secular-jew #jewish #judaism #jerusalem #diaspora #secular jew #secularjew #islam #judea #Samaria #terrorism #terrorists #murder is murder #murder #Palestinians

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dalekofchaos · 6 months ago

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How is Blackwell even a school?

Blackwell is insanely weird.

It has dorms but also lockers.

A barely functioning staff. We have two teachers, a principal, a custodian and a head of security. There is Mrs Hoida, but we never see her in LIS or BTS. Mr Keaton exists in BTS, but we never hear about him in LIS. There’s a nurse, but we never see her. There’s a coach for the Otters and Bigfoots, but neither Max nor Chloe are athletic, so we never see them. According to Chloe’s report card. There is an Art teacher, Phy Ed teacher, Practical Math and Life Skills Teacher, Social Sciences teacher and Personal Health Teacher. But we never see any of them.

Only two whole classrooms in the whole game.

It’s apparently the only school the town has and also is a super expensive exclusive private school.

It’s a high school that recruits world renowned artists and scientists to teach basic high school level classes.

It’s graduates supposedly go on to become famous successful people yet the school itself resides in a tiny rundown coastal Oregon town.

It costs a fortune to attend and yet it looks like it hasn’t been seriously repaired or renovated since the 1970’s.

Hell it doesn’t even have security cameras on campus.

According to google

"According to a student survey from the National Center for Education Statistics, 86 percent of middle school and high school students have security cameras installed in their schools."

Despite David being an asshole, it's standard procedure to have cameras up in the first place. David is wrong to put cameras in his home to spy on Chloe, but not wrong to have cameras in the school. If there were cameras already placed in Blackwell.

Frank Bowers would never be able to sell on school grounds

Frank never would've been close to Rachel

Nathan never would've gotten away with bringing so many illegal drugs to the Vortex Club

Kate never would've been dosed

Speaking of David. Why is he just a security officer? Why isn't he a cop? Wouldn't it make sense for David to work two jobs since the Prices are in debt? As a cop and as a security officer? The most unrealistic thing about LIS. David was too unstable to be a Arcadia Bay cop. The police have no standards and I'm shocked that David wasn't an instant recruit considering how the police in America wants people with low IQs and doesn’t care for obvious red flags.

Also, School Resource Officers exist.

Then there is the fact that Max…BARELY uses the school of her dreams. We get one or two classes at best. Going to Ms Grant’s class does not count cause Max only went there to help Warren.

Chloe not using Blackwell makes sense. She hates the damn place and would rather learn about Rachel’s anatomy break the rules and chill in the junkyard.

But with Max, shouldn’t she actually be attending classes? I mean if I were attending a big private school at Blackwell, but didn’t attend classes. I think my ass would’ve been suspended within weeks and my tuition set on fire.

What kind of school, a HIGH school lets their students freely roam the halls, leave school grounds or chill in the dorms instead of doing class work?

For that matter. Why the fuck is Blackwell Academy a fucking High School? Why not a college? Art Colleges exists. I'd rather Blackwell be a college and for everyone to be of age, it'd explain a lot of stuff such as the drugs, parties, guns, and just a lot of stuff. Not to mention going through college you are still figuring out stuff, what you want to do with your life, and still figuring out who you are. Would've imo a lot better and explained why half the shit that was happening was.

I get this is an episodic game and there are more pressing concerns, but honestly Blackwell should’ve been like say Bully. We do the day’s worth of classes and then progress to the story. Hell, you could even implement a sort of friendship system. Maybe you pick who you sit next to and that raises Max’s friendship with them. Anything would’ve been better than Max skipping school altogether and just focusing on Chloe. Like we have an entire school, we should not have our focus be on Chloe. There could’ve been ways to work classes into the main story, but no. Blackwell is just background noise and it shows.

But the lack of a full faculty staff or an actual care that anyone actually attends class? What kind of fucking school is this?

#Life Is Strange #Blackwell Academy #Max Caulfield #Chloe Price #Rachel Amber #Kate Marsh #Warren Graham #Victoria Chase #David Madsen #Raymond Wells #Michelle Grant

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rjzimmerman · 2 months ago

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Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

Researchers in Indonesia recently captured a surprising event on video: A wild orangutan named Rakus, with a deep gash on his cheek, harvested liana leaves, chewed them up, and rubbed them on his wound. His cheek healed without infection. As it turns out the plants have anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, and other chemical properties that help heal wounds.

The great ape saw the plant, recognized the plant, and valued the plant because he knew something about a subject that few humans do anymore: botany.

At a time when our net knowledge about plants keeps growing, our individual understanding of plants is in decline. This is unsurprising, because while we still depend on plants for life, few of us need to know much about them in our daily lives — as long as someone else does. We rely on botanists to identify plants, keep them alive, and in so doing help keep us alive as well.

It’s a lot of responsibility for a group of scientists that isn’t getting any bigger. And that has some people in the field worried.

The National Center for Education Statistics triggered the first alarm about the future of botany in 2015. According to data released that year, the number of annual undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees awarded in botany or plant biology in the United States had dropped below 400 for the fifth time since 2007. In 1988 the number of degrees was 545.

The number soon rose again and so far has stayed above 400. In fact it rose to 489 in 2023 — the highest in decades. (By comparison, American universities gave out more than 45,000 marketing degrees last year.)

The definitive downward trend, though, remains in the number of U.S. institutions offering botany or plant biology degrees — from 76 in 2002 to 59 in 2023.

“Botany Ph.D.’s are disappearing,” says Kathryn Parsley, who got her Ph.D. in biology, not botany, even though her dissertation focused on plants. “The number of botanists is declining rapidly and the people filling those spaces are not botanists.” When a biology department has a job vacancy, she says, they tend to hire a professor who has “nothing to do with plants. The department will have all kinds of scientists in it, with only one or maybe two botanists, sometimes only one or two plant scientists at all.” Because she attended one such school, “a botany degree was out of the question,” Parsley says.

While nobody has tracked the average age of botanists in the United States, students of “pure botany” do seem to be waning, according to Kristine Callis-Duehl, the executive director of education research and outreach at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. “Skills are shifting away from old-school botany. A lot of that’s being driven by funding sources,” she says. “More and more, just being a botanist is not enough in academia.”

Experts agree that in recent years, most botany professors aren’t being replaced once they retire. But why?

Money is one reason. The National Science Foundation, for instance, has shifted its funding away from natural history at herbariums and other museums, Callis-Duehl says. “It’s harder to convince Congress that that work — pure botany — contributes to the economy. They prefer basic science that can lead into more applied science, where they can make a case that it fuels the U.S. economy.”

Applied plant science has more NSF options than botany. For example, agriculture is more likely to be funded by USDA, Callis-Duehl says.

#botany #botanists

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lilithism1848 · 1 year ago

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Atrocities US committed against PRISONERS

The US currently operates a system of slave labor camps, including at least 54 prison farms involved in agricultural slave labor. Outside of agricultural slavery, Federal Prison Industries operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories , where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies.

Ramping up since the 1980s, the term prison–industrial complex is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. Such groups include corporations that contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, companies that operate prison food services and medical facilities, private probation companies, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activist groups such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) have argued that the prison-industrial complex is perpetuating a flawed belief that imprisonment is an effective solution to social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy.

The War On Drugs, a policy of arrest and imprisonment targeting minorities, first initiated by Nixon, has over the years created a monstrous system of mass incarceration, resulting in the imprisonment of 1.5 million people each year, with the US having the most prisoners per capita of any nation. One in five black Americans will spend time behind bars due to drug laws. The war has created a permanent underclass of impoverished people who have few educational or job opportunities as a result of being punished for drug offenses, in a vicious cycle of oppression.

In the present day, ICE (U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement), the police tasked with immigration enforcement, operates over 200 prison camps, housing over 31,000 undocumented people deemed “aliens”, 20,000 of which have no criminal convictions, in the US system of immigration detention. The camps include forced labor (often with contracts from private companies), poor conditions, lack of rights (since the undocumented aren’t considered citizens), and forced deportations, often splitting up families. Detainees are often held for a year without trial, with antiquated court procedures pushing back court dates for months, encouraging many to accept immediate deportation in the hopes of being able to return faster than the court can reach a decision, but forfeiting legal status, in a cruel system of coercion.

Over 90% of criminal trials in the US are settled not by a judge or jury, but with plea bargaining, a system where the defendant agrees to plead guilty in return for a concession from the prosecutor. It has been statistically shown to benefit prosecutors, who “throw the book” at defendants by presenting a slew of charges, manipulating their fear, who in turn accept a lesser charge, regardless of their innocence, in order to avoid a worst outcome. The number of potentially innocent prisoners coerced into accepting a guilty plea is impossible to calculate. Plea bargaining can present a dilemma to defense attorneys, in that they must choose between vigorously seeking a good deal for their present client, or maintaining a good relationship with the prosecutor for the sake of helping future clients.

European countries. John Langbein has equated plea bargaining to medieval torture: “There is, of course, a difference between having your limbs crushed if you refuse to confess, or suffering some extra years of imprisonment if you refuse to confess, but the difference is of degree, not kind. Plea bargaining, like torture, is coercive. Like the medieval Europeans, the Americans are now operating a procedural system that engages in condemnation without adjudication.”

A grand jury is a special legal proceeding in which a prosecutor may hold a trial before the real one, where ~20 jurors listen to evidence and decide whether criminal charges should be brought. Grand juries are rarely made up of a jury of the defendant’s peers, and defendants do not have the right to an attorney, making them essentially show-trials for the prosecution, who often find ways of using grand jury testimony to intimidate the accused, such as leaking stories about grand jury testimony to the media to defame the accused. In the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, all of whom were unarmed and killed by police in 2014, grand juries decided in all 3 cases not to pursue criminal trials against the officers. The US and Liberia are the only countries where grand juries are still legal.

The US system of bail (the practice of releasing suspects before their hearing for money paid to the court) has been criticized as monetizing justice, favoring rich, white collar suspects, over poorer people unable to pay for their release.

On Jan 26th, In Mississippi state penitentiary, an inmate was found hanging in his cell, in a string of deaths in the prison. This is the 12th death within a single month.

A photo surfaced of a November 2019 training class for prison guards in west virginia, showing 34 trainees doing a nazi salute. Only 3 people have been fired. A large number of prison workers, and populations in prison towns, are white supremacists.

A black-site interrogation warehouse in Chicago called Homan Square is notorious for the sexual abuse, torture, and disappearances of its prisoners. The main interrogator, Richard Zuley, applied torture techniques he learned at Guantanamo Bay at Homan Square.

On Oct 25, 2014, a mentally ill inmate, Michael Anthony Kerr, at the Alexander Correctional Institution in Taylorsville, NC, died of thirst after being denied water during a 35-day solitary confinement. Prison officials have said since Kerr’s death six months ago that they would investigate the events that led to his death, but no report has been issued and officials have not said when one would be.

On May 23rd, 2014, a mentally ill inmate at a Dade County correctional facility near Miami FL was tortured to death by prison guards. Darren Rainey was serving a two-year sentence for cocaine possession when he was forced into a locked shower by prison guards as punishment for defecating in his cell, says one inmate. Once Rainey was inside the shower, guards blasted him with scalding hot water as he begged for his life. Investigators determined that there was not enough evidence to charge the guards.

The Crime Bill of 1994, signed into law by Bill Clinton, increased the size of the US prison industry and dealt with the problem of crime by emphasizing punishment, not prevention. It extended the death penalty to a whole range of criminal offenses, and provided $30 billion for the building of new prisons, to crack down on “super predators”, a term used by Hillary Clinton to refer to remorseless juvenile criminals.

In the 1978 case, Houchins v. KQED, Inc. the Supreme Court ruled that the news media do not have guaranteed rights of access to jails and prisons. It ruled also that prison authorities could forbid inmates to speak to one another, assemble, or spread literature about the formation of a prisoners’ union.

In September 1971, prison guards killed George Jackson, a black Marxist and member of the Black Panthers in San Quentin prison (who had served 10 years of an indeterminate prison sentence for a $70 robbery), after he attempted to free himself and other inmates. Outrage over this, terrible prison conditions, and mistreatment by white prison guards, caused the Attica Prison Riot, in which 33 inmates and 10 prison guards were killed, and sparked dozens of prison riots across the country. In Attica, 100 percent of the guards were white, prisoners spent fourteen to sixteen hours a day in their cells, their mail was read, their reading material restricted, their visits from families were conducted through a mesh screen, their medical care disgraceful, 75% were there as a result of plea bargaining, and their parole system inequitable.

Many companies in the 1800s were guilty of using prison laborers, such as the Tennesee Coal Iron and Railroad Company. In 1891, the prison workers struck and overpowered the guards, and other neighboring unions came to their aid.

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rabbitcruiser · 7 months ago

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National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

Advocating for justice, honor, and remembrance, ensuring visibility and action to address the safety and rights of indigenous women and girls.

A serious problem has been going on for many years surrounding the high statistics of indigenous women and girls who go missing or are murdered each year in Canada, the United States and other countries. Indigenous or native women and girls have a much higher vulnerability to violence, particularly in relation to crimes such as sex trafficking, abuse and more.

From 2001 to 2015, the homicide rate for indigenous women in Canada was almost six times higher than for other women. In the United States, native women are at least two times as likely to experience violence than women from any other demographic. It is also estimated that the murder rates for native women are ten times higher than the national average.

In recent years, many activists, journalists, law enforcement officers, charitable organizations and others have been calling for more attention to be paid to these inconsistencies. The desire is to increase public awareness about the issues while improving access to the urgent support that these women and girls so desperately need.

History of National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

An important impetus for the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls came through a Canadian artist named Jaime Black. In the early 2000s, Black used her influence to start the REDress project as an art installation to call attention to the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada and the US. This artistic expression led to hundreds of red dresses being donated for use in future installations and also was the start of REDress Day being celebrated on May 5. Each year, many different important spaces house REDress installations, including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. in 2019.

The official campaign for the United States to declare this as an awareness day was started in 2017 by two senators from Montana. In 2018, the US declared this same day that had started as REDress Day, but the name was adjusted to the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls.

How to Observe National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

Get involved with this important day of awareness by participating in some of the following activities:

Learn More About Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

One of the most important ways to participate in this national day of awareness is to commit to getting more educated and informed, and then sharing this with others in your sphere of influence. Learn more about the statistics and needs by visiting the website of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, the US Department of Indian Affairs or other important resources.

Read the Apology to Native Peoples

In 2009, the United States Congress issued an acknowledgment and apology to the Native peoples for the way the US government has treated them with depredations and policies that were to the disadvantage of native and indigenous peoples. Access this apology online and read through it in observance of the National Day of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Source

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harmonyhealinghub · 1 year ago

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The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: An Ongoing Tragedy

Shaina Tranquilino

October 4, 2023

The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is a devastating tragedy that has plagued Indigenous communities for decades. Despite being deeply rooted in the history of colonization, it remains an ongoing crisis that demands immediate attention. This blog post aims to shed light on this heartbreaking reality and urges society to acknowledge, address, and support initiatives aimed at ending the violence.

A Historical Context:

To truly understand the gravity of the situation, we must recognize the historical context in which this epidemic has unfolded. Since European colonization began in North America, Indigenous women have faced systemic discrimination, marginalization, and violence. These injustices persist today as a direct result of centuries-long oppression and the erosion of Indigenous cultures.

Disturbing Statistics:

The statistics surrounding missing and murdered Indigenous women are both shocking and disheartening. According to a 2016 report by the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), there were over 5,700 cases of missing or murdered Indigenous American women recorded in the United States alone. Alarmingly, many believe these numbers may be underestimated due to underreporting or misclassification by law enforcement agencies.

Root Causes:

Numerous factors contribute to this crisis. Poverty, limited access to education and healthcare services, high rates of domestic violence within communities, institutional racism, inadequate law enforcement response, and human trafficking all play significant roles in perpetuating this cycle of violence against Indigenous women.

The Need for Awareness & Advocacy:

Raising awareness about this issue is crucial towards mobilizing action to end it. It requires educating ourselves and others about the plight faced by Indigenous women who continue to disappear or be victimized every day. Social media campaigns like #MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) have played a pivotal role in bringing attention to their stories while demanding justice.

Government Action & Accountability:

Addressing this crisis necessitates a multi-faceted approach. Governments at all levels must take concrete steps to address the root causes of violence against Indigenous women, including improving collaboration between law enforcement agencies, enhancing victim services, and implementing culturally sensitive policies. Additionally, funding programs that empower Indigenous communities and strengthen support systems are essential for long-term change.

Community Empowerment:

Indigenous communities have been fighting tirelessly to protect their women and girls. Supporting grassroots organizations led by Indigenous people who understand the unique challenges faced by their community is crucial in eradicating this issue. By amplifying voices from within these communities, we can ensure that culturally appropriate solutions are implemented while fostering healing and resilience.

The missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis demands urgent attention from society as a whole. Recognizing the historical context, understanding the systemic issues involved, advocating for awareness, holding governments accountable, and empowering affected communities are all integral components of bringing an end to this deeply entrenched tragedy.

To honour the lives lost and prevent future victimization, it is our collective responsibility to stand in solidarity with Indigenous communities and work towards creating a world where every woman feels safe, valued, and protected. Only through unity can we hope to achieve justice for the missing and murdered Indigenous women who deserve nothing less than our unwavering commitment to ending this heartbreaking reality once and for all.

#MMIW #MMIWG #Indigenous women #missing and murdered indigenous women #justice for our sisters #protect our women #no more stolen sisters #support Indigenous communities #stop the violence #raise awareness #honouring our ancestors #remember their names #break the silence #stand with Indigenous women

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mariacallous · 1 month ago

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Colleges and universities in the U.S. are facing some strong headwinds on enrollment figures, forcing some tough conversations. Inside Higher Ed recently published an article under the headline “Report Finds Higher Ed Sector Shrank by 2 Percent” along with the accompanying subhead “Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that nearly 100 institutions closed between the 2022–23 and 2023–24 academic years.” The term “enrollment cliff” gets thrown around a lot in higher education circles lately, and this article seems to offer some confirmation of those anxieties. But does the news call for panic?

After reading up and doing some of my own analysis, I’m going to argue that the closures we’ve seen to date are relatively small for the traditional higher ed sector as a whole, although of course they are very tough for those personally involved. But I’m also going to argue that there are underlying trends which may be very disruptive in the coming decade.

In the end, I will suggest that worry about college closures is largely misplaced. Worry about uneven enrollment trends and the accompanying elimination of programs at some schools is where the concern should lie.

In this discussion, I mostly concentrate on four-year private, nonprofit, and public institutions, as that’s what I know best. (For those who may be curious, according to the Digest of Education Statistics, 2020 enrollments in four-year, for-profit colleges were down by about half from their 2010 peak. Enrollment in two-year colleges was down about 40% from its 2010 peak.)

Recent closures are surging, again

Let’s start with a picture of college closures over the last three decades. This appears in Figure 1. The yellow line traces the number of all higher ed institutions, and the two other lines trace the same numbers among two major sector categories, for-profit (dark blue line) and not-for-profit (light blue line) institutions.

The first thing to notice in the figure is that the most recent year has indeed shown a large uptick in college closures relative to during the pandemic, but fewer closures than those observed during the late 2010s (when many for-profits closed in anticipation of losing Pell-grant eligibility due to “gainful employment” regulations). Also, notice that the increase in closures is mostly driven by the closure of for-profit schools. About half the for-profit closures were vocational schools that operated below the associate degree level. In some part, the recent spate of for-profit closures took place in programs that were very similar to the profile of those involved in the pre-pandemic closure spike and might also have failed gainful employment metrics. This serves as a reminder that school closings are not always bad—vocational programs in which graduates don’t find jobs don’t help anyone very much.

The not-for-profit line in Figure 1 shows closures of four-year schools, combining both private nonprofit and public. (About an equal number of two-year schools, mostly public, closed this year, but are not presented separately in the figure.) While the number of closures of four-year schools has increased, so far we are talking about relatively few institutions. It’s also worth pointing out that sometimes when colleges “close,” they actually merge into another, surviving, institution. Depending on the nature of the merger, the damage to students and employees may—or may not—be substantially mitigated. (Harvard seems to have survived its 1999 merger with Radcliffe College.) Among the four-year schools I look at, the two public universities that closed were merged into another institution, while almost all the nonprofit privates closed without a merger. Robert Kelchen documents that “closures” among community colleges are sometimes just administrative consolidations with no campus closures.

Using Department of Education data, I have identified 17 four-year schools that either shut down completely in the last year or merged into another college. Is the closure of 17 schools a very bad thing or even a disaster? Well, it surely is if you’re a student who can’t complete your degree (some closing schools arrange teach-out programs with another college, but the research from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association is not reassuring). It’s also a tough lot if you’re a long-time faculty member or staff who’s lost your job. Not much fun if you’re an alumnus either.

Figure 2 shows the history of average enrollments for the schools that closed this year.

Two facts are striking. First, the schools that closed last year suffered from declining enrollments for years and were never large. Second, the closed schools were very small—in 2023, average enrollment at these schools had fallen to about 120 students. Nationwide, “only” a few thousand students were affected. Since there are something like 11 million four-year college students, we’re talking about closures affecting fewer than one in a thousand students.

Going forward: Where is the significant risk?

The closures we’ve seen so far just aren’t a big deal—unless you’re unlucky enough to be at one of the places that closed. However, I am less sanguine about the future. The key issue here is enrollment variability. Some institutions are at risk from enrollment pressures, while most aren’t. My institution, for example, receives over 110,000 applications. It’s not at any risk from enrollment declines, nor are other highly selective colleges.

Yet, there are many, many colleges that are quite small and not very selective and therefore at real risk from enrollment drops. The typical college in the United States is neither a football power nor a research factory. Half the colleges in the U.S. enroll fewer than 2,200 students. In fact, nearly a third of U.S. colleges enroll under 1,000 students. Some of these places are vulnerable.

Most private colleges survive financially on tuition. Public colleges also receive substantial state support of course, although sometimes the level of support also depends on enrollment. Despite public impressions, endowments really only provide major support at a few schools. If you look at all the college endowments in the country, six percent is at one school, 20% is held by the eight Ivy League schools, and half the national total is held at just 24 schools. For the vast majority of colleges, endowments provide a margin of excellence—but endowments don’t support the school.

But for the one-third of four-year schools with enrollments under 1,000 students, most have no endowment to tide them over any tough times. This means that going forward, there are a large number of schools vulnerable to small swings in enrollment.

This is particularly concerning since forecasts project a decline in the total number of high school graduates in the coming years. Nationwide, the Department of Education projects about a five percent drop in the number of new high school graduates by 2031. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education forecasts a 12% drop by 2037. High school graduates are a leading indicator of subsequent college enrollment trends; though college-going rates have risen a little in recent years, it is not enough to counter the growing decline in high school graduates. So it’s very likely that there will be a modest drop nationwide in candidates to start college.

However, there is enormous geographic variation in these demographic trends. Consider the four states with the largest populations. The Department of Education forecasts about a 10% increase in the number of new high school graduates in Florida and Texas through 2031. If Florida and Texas ever face college enrollment difficulties, it won’t be because of a lack of potential entrants. As contrasting examples, deep drops in high school graduates—on the order of 15%—are forecast for California and New York. Similar drops are forecast for several other states. Even if the national drops are not of great concern, there are clearly some states where some advanced planning is called for.

What’s being missed: Program closures are the real risk

Most colleges are at no risk of closing, though some small schools and schools in some states may well be at risk. I suspect the real issue is going to be program eliminations and accompanying reductions-in-force as some schools downsize or rightsize even as others are growing. As an example, Inside Higher Education has a good story on program cuts in 10 universities in August alone and a story in September documenting cuts at another nine schools.

Even some of the nation’s most successful universities have undergone recent program closures. The Pennsylvania State University reduced employment by 10% at its regional campuses this spring as enrollment fell about 20%, even while enrollment at the flagship Penn State campus grew. Last year, West Virginia University, the state’s flagship school, announced cuts of 28 programs and elimination of 147 faculty positions. WVU’s enrollment has been more or less flat for the last five years, but is down about 16% over the last decade. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is closing its College of General Studies and removing 32 tenured faculty, having also seen about a 16% enrollment drop over the last decade. Most recently, St. Louis University has announced the need for large budget cuts in the face of a massive drop in international enrollment, which disproportionately contributes to tuition revenues.

There’s no single narrative or overall trend that perfectly describes the future of college enrollment. Colleges vary in their size, selectivity, and institutional resources and face different levels of threat from demographic shifts across the country. While college closures are hard for the students and employees of those institutions, it’s probably program eliminations within colleges that are likely to be the bigger story in the years to come. That’s something we don’t know a lot about yet.

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 4 months ago

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Floods in Rio Grande do Sul reveal flaws in Brazil’s disaster risk management policy

Since 2012, Brazil has had a national public policy for disaster risk management, the National Policy for Civil Protection and Defense (PNPDEC), which provides for the intergovernmental development of a set of actions for prevention, mitigation, emergency preparedness, response, and recovery after socio-environmental disasters, such as floods.

Despite representing legal advances, the operationalization of this policy faces numerous challenges, which contributes to slower, uncoordinated, and less effective responses to tragedies such as the one that occurred in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (southern region of the country), as well as not helping in the design of good planning to support preventive actions.

This is pointed out in an article published in the journal Agenda Política by Catarina Ianni Segatto and Fernanda Lima-Silva, researchers at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM) – a FAPESP Research, Innovation, and Dissemination Center (RIDC) based at the University of São Paulo’s Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH-USP) and the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP).

The text, also signed by André Luis Nogueira da Silva of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), discusses the different patterns of state coordination in the implementation of public policies. The study examines three cases: coordination in education policy in the state of Ceará, health policy in the state of São Paulo, and civil protection and defense policy in the state of Acre. These are policies with different degrees of federal coordination and state coordination patterns.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #environmental justice #rio grande do sul floods 2024 #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

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mfrance-writes · 12 days ago

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Things I Haven't Stopped Thinking About Since November 6th.

Knowing the things Donald Trump has promised to do this term, here are the things I've been thinking about pretty much non-stop since November 6th:

According to Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, homicide AKA murder is the leading cause of death for pregnant women (See Source A).

According to The Trevor Project, it is estimated that 1 LGBTQIA+ person attempts suicide EVERY 45 SECONDS (See Source B).

According to National Institute of Health, homicide AKA murder is the leading cause of death for black men ages 10 to 24 (See Source C).

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2022-2023, around 15% of students (or around 7.5 million students) received some kind of special services help at school in the form of IEP plans, 504 plans, and other specialized services for learning disabilities and physical disabilities (See Source D).

Why have I been thinking about these facts?

Because Donald Trump has directly stated some policy change that will affect the people related to the above-listed facts. He has promised to set a NATIONAL abortion ban with NO EXCEPTIONS. He has promised to ban gender-affirming care. He has also promised to overturn Obergefell v Hodges, which would overturn the federal protection for same-sex marriage and allow states to choose to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples again. He also said he would like to overturn Loving v Virginia, which federally protects the right to interracial marriage and would allow states to decide whether or not to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples. He has also said he wants to dissolve the Department of Education.

Women are already dying in red states because of abortion bans. When Trump sets up the national abortion ban, what do they think will happen? The answer is that more women are going to be killed by their partners because of an unwanted pregnancy. More women are also going to die because they can no longer travel to another state to receive care during a miscarriage. More women are going to die PREVENTABLE deaths from pregnancy complications if the NO EXCEPTIONS part makes it into law.

LGBTQIA+ individuals already have a much higher suicide rate than other youths and young adults. What's going to happen to trans people when they can no longer receive gender-affirming care? What's going to happen to same-sex couples when they can no longer marry someone they love just because they live in a red state? What about when the ones that are already married are suddenly told that their marriage license is no longer valid because it was issued in a red state only under the protection of Obergefell? The answer is that more LGBTQIA+ people will commit suicide as a result of the backslide in recognition of their human rights. And if Obergefell falls, what do you want to bet, some states will try to pass other anti-LGBTQIA+ laws?

Black men are already dying at a higher rate compared to any other ethnic group due to violence. When the protections for interracial marriage from Loving v Virginia are no longer there and states can decide individually if they'll allow interracial marriage, what do you think is going to happen to black people, especially black men, if racist white men, already emboldened by a racist president, feel like black men are stealing/tainting/"harassing" the white women they think belong to them? The answer: more black men are going to be murdered, especially in the Southern US.

Children with disabilities already have a harder time than their non-disabled peers at school. IEPs, 504 plans, special education classes, specialized teachers' aid's all help these students succeed in school so they can graduate. All these things are provided by the Department of Education, (as is federal student aid like FAFSA and the Pell Grant, which I received as a low-income student). What happens when the Department of Education no longer exists to provide these things? The students that relied on them may be forced to be homeschooled or left to fend for themselves in regular classes, where they may not be able to keep up academically or physically, which could cause PREVENTABLE mental health struggles as well as PREVENTABLE physical injuries, depending on the type of disability each student is living with. And college for the kids that come from low-income families? They likely won't get to attend college unless they can get enough state scholarships or loans to cover it.

We all had the chance to vote for someone who genuinely cared about America and wanted to help EVERYONE. Instead over half of America chose to vote for hatred, blatant racism, blatant misogyny, blatant transphobia and homophobia, and greed. Your vote to put this man back in power will literally be the reason someone dies. Your vote to put this man in power will literally be the reason some bright, ambitious children lose the futures they always dreamed of because you took their college funding away or had them deported. And for what? For the money he's promised will go in your pocket from a tax cut most of you won't even qualify for? For the ability to "own the libs?" For a laugh?

Let me be perfectly clear when I say this: You knew exactly what you were voting for when you voted that man back into power. You will have the blood of everyone we lose because of your vote on your hands. I hope you personally get every single thing you voted for. And when you do, don't you dare come to those of us you hurt with your vote to complain and say that you didn't know what he was going to do.

Sources:

A. Homicide leading cause of death for pregnant women in U.S. | News | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

B. Facts About Suicide Among LGBTQ+ Young People

C. Unequal Burdens of Loss: Examining the Frequency and Timing of Homicide Deaths Experienced by Young Black Men Across the Life Course - PMC

D. COE - Students With Disabilities

#not sorry #election 2024 #us elections #kamala harris #donald trump

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year ago

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By: Lee Cowan

Published: Nov 12, 2023

At the University of Vermont not long ago, it was move-in day for the class of 2027. About a thousand incoming freshman were meeting their roommates, finding their dorm rooms, and getting settled on campus. At first glance one might have thought this was an all-women's college – 62% of this year's class are women, a gender gap that has earned Burlington, Vt., a nickname: Girlington.

"You see six or seven women for every three or four men," said UVM's vice provost for enrollment Jay Jacobs. His job is all about student diversity, and these days the male/female divide is now part of that equation. "Sure, I thought about racial and ethnic diversity," Jacobs said. "Sure, at a public flagship in the state of Vermont, I've thought about geographic diversity. Never gender diversity like that. That's where we are."

UVM is hardly an outlier. Nationwide, women make up almost 60% of college undergraduates.

In 1972, when Title IX was passed to help improve gender equality on campus, men were 13% more likely to get an undergraduate degree than women; today, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, it's women who are 15% more likely to get a degree than men.

"We have a bigger gender gap today than we did when we passed laws to help women and girls; it's just flipped," said Richard Reeves, a former Brookings Institution senior fellow. He says, no one really has been able to explain why so many men are so absent in higher education. What is known is the gender disparity starts as early as kindergarten, where girls are just generally the stronger sex in academics.

Reeves said, "If you look at high school GPA, and those who are getting the best grades in high school, two-thirds of them are girls. Those with the lowest grades, two-thirds of them are boys."

It's been theorized girls and women today are just fulfilling their destiny – that once the limitations on their achievements were lifted, they soared. Reeves, who's just launched the American Institute for Boys and Men, fears that things have changed so quickly, it's left many boys and men struggling to catch up, not just in the classroom, but at work and at home, too.

"What does it mean to be a successful man today? That was a question that was pretty easy to answer a generation or two ago," said Reeves. "But actually, what is the answer today? A lot of these guys just don't know."

In short, he says millions of boys and men don't understand how or where they fit anymore, and their reaction is to generally disconnect. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, men's participation in the labor market has dropped more than 7% in the last 50 years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21% of men report binge drinking (almost double the rate of women), and men account for nearly 80% of suicide deaths (four times the rate for women).

Reeves said, "The two most commonly-used words by suicidal men to describe themselves were useless and worthless."

But even to suggest there's some kind of male crisis is perilous these days, said Reeves: "Merely raising it will cause people to eye roll, and say, 'Really? Ten thousand years of patriarchy, and now you're worried?'"

After all, women still earn only about 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man (according to Pew Research Center). Only a fraction (10.4%) of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. And women make up just a quarter (28%) of the members in Congress, and (so far) zero U.S. presidents.

Those numbers leave UVM students Sarah Wood and Maxine Flordeliza pretty skeptical that men are barely treading water. "I think it's very interesting that there is kind of a big fuss about – not a fuss, but it's a conversation that people are having," said Wood. "But I don't think it's necessarily a problem?"

"I think that just the fact that the playing field has been a bit more evened out, shouldn't be the reason as to why men don't really know where they fit," Flordeliza said.

"Sure, do we need to do more to encourage more women into politics and into board rooms? Yes," Reeves said. "But meanwhile, can I not see that one group is struggling here, and another group is struggling there? And if I can't do that, we're in really deep trouble."

And those in the most trouble, he says, are working class and African American boys and men.

Von Washington Jr., executive director of community relations with The Kalamazoo Promise in Michigan, said, "Before it used to be, you graduated high school, 'Goodbye, you're on your own.' A lot of people said, 'Hey, you're outta my house.' Or 'It's time for you to go.' But we're understanding now those supports need to continue."

The Kalamazoo Promise program offers high school graduates in Kalamazoo scholarships covering up to the entire cost of in-state college tuition. The impact? The number of Kalamazoo women getting a college degree has increased by about 45%. But the number of Kalamazoo men getting college degrees didn't budge.

"We're working with them, we're talking with them," said Washington. "We're trying to find out what is it that, even with this opportunity, you have some of the same challenges as someone in another community that doesn't have this opportunity."

One solution that seems to be working is making sure those men who are struggling have a place to freely admit they're struggling. Staffers with The Promise are tracking down those men still eligible for the scholarship, finding out why they never used it, and helping them get what they need to finally do it – like Daniel Jaffari. "I just started wandering around in life and doing random jobs, getting tired of doing random jobs," said Jaffari. "And now I'm here!"

He joined with dozens of other men at what the Promise was calling their Males of Promise event. Another participant was Denis Martin, who graduated high school six years ago. He said, had the Promise not tracked him down, he might not have realized he was ready for something more. "I feel like now I have the discipline to be in a five-year program or a four-year program," he said. "As a kid I feel like I was still bouncing off the walls, and my mind didn't know what exactly was out there."

Back at UVM, administrators have changed their marketing and communication strategies to reach out to men, especially those who might not think they want to go to college at all. The college is also hiring a diversity coordinator to focus specifically on helping men.

Jacobs said to Cowan, "The world is built for people like you and me to succeed, so why do we need to help men succeed here on our campus even more? But I think once people start to understand the nuances and challenges that we're talking about here today, people understand that all students need support."

UVM junior Lucas Roemer doesn't see it as a sort of affirmative action – putting the finger on the scale for men. He sees it as a way to help anyone who's been hanging on and feeling left out. "I think there's ways to promote both femininity and masculinity on campus equally well," he said. "I think there's definitely a path forward that could be beneficial to everybody."

The coordinator of the Men and Masculinities Program will be housed in the Women & Gender Equities Center – ironic to some. But it's also a recognition that men's problems can co-exist with those of women. "You lift the edges up, the center will be lifted up as well," said Jacobs. "And here, the edges include men."

It's the kind of reaction to the very real problems of boys and men that Richard Reeves says needs to be the rule, and not the exception: "This is not a made-up crisis of masculinity. This is an actual hard fact. There is real suffering here, and if we don't address real suffering, then what are we here for?"

Let's address a couple of throat-clearing, hand-wringing statements the author inserted - or perhaps, was obliged to insert - to apologize for the rest of the article:

After all, women still earn only about 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man (according to Pew Research Center).

The key word is "earn." No serious economist takes the gap seriously, as it's accounted for by hours worked, maternity leave, choice in occupation, changes to occupation, length of tenure, tendency for overwork, and dozens of other variables. Not the "goddidit" of "tEh PaTrIaRcHy." The Equal Pay Act was introduced 60 years ago in the US, and any legit complaints of unfair pay are actionable.

Only a fraction (10.4%) of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. And women make up just a quarter (28%) of the members in Congress, and (so far) zero U.S. presidents.

This is called the Apex Fallacy, or more formally, the Ecological Fallacy.

Ecological Fallacy (also known as: ecological inference fallacy) Description: The interpretation of statistical data where inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inference for the group to which those individuals belong.

For starters, male variability is greater than female variability in a number of ways. You'll find far more men at both the higher and lower ends - 80% of homeless are men, 80% of suicides are men, majority of unemployed are men - than for women. If you want to talk about the president, be prepared to also talk about the homeless, unemployed and suicides.

And secondly only 45 people have ever been the US President. This includes no atheists, no Muslims, no Hindus, no openly gay, no Asians, no Hispanics, no trans. No electricians, no plumbers, no mobile app developers, no chefs, no janitors have ever been the president. And only one nominally black (half and half) president. It omits that 51% of voters are women. If women wanted a president based on her being a woman, they would easily vote one in. They have not. So perhaps ask women how they decide who to vote for. If that feels like a stupid question to ask them, then it's a stupid argument to make.

As well as the fact the 2016 runner-up and the current second-in-line to an 80 year old president are both women, both beating out men and women for those positions. Being unsuccessful is also a part of equality, and something hundreds of unsuccessful male candidates have had to accept.

And those in the most trouble, he says, are working class and African American boys and men.

It's disturbing that people can't care about half of the population without framing it as, well, if you help men and boys out, then you'll help black men and boys. Which is like saying "you have to take the good with the bad." You should want to help people who need help because they need help.

This topic really causes the sociopaths to come out of the woodwork and into the light.

#Lee Cowan #Richard Reeves #Richard V. Reeves #humanism #gender equality #education gap #gender disparities #gender inequality #education disparity #religion is a mental illness

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dnaamericaapp · 6 months ago

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‘A Different World’ Cast Reunites As HBCUs See A New Peak In Admissions

Interest in historically Black colleges and universities is surging.

For example, Howard University, among the nation’s top HBCUs, received a record 37,000 applications for its upcoming freshman class.

But this isn’t the first time Black colleges have seen a spike in interest. Though HBCU enrollment increased more than 25% between 1976 and 1994, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a big leap in admissions coincided with the run of the college-set sitcom “A Different World.”

Premiering on NBC in 1987, the “Cosby Show” spinoff was set on the fictional Hillman College campus and ran for six seasons. Its majority-Black cast provided a bold injection of cultural flavor and a counter to many of the stereotypical depictions of young African Americans in the 1980s and early ‘90s.

Now, as the world of higher education continues to shift, the cast is coming back together to celebrate the show’s lasting legacy, 35 years after its premiere, with a tour of HBCUs across the country.

This explosion of interest is happening as racial strife continues to affect students’ lived experiences, alongside the undoing of affirmative action in college admissions; an attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and student uprisings over America’s foreign policy. -(source: nbc news)

DNA America

“It’s what we know, not what you want us to believe.”

#dna #dnaamerica #news #politics

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gullethead · 2 years ago

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Sorry if this is being too nosy but do you have a career in medical billing and coding? Do you have any advice if you do? I work in the insurance department at a dentist office for and was very interested in this as a new opportunity.

I do! I just started my job at the beginning of March - technically I don't have my certification yet, I'm taking the exam next week. But I have gotten familiar with a lot of aspects of it from my class and job as well as personal research, so I can help you out at least a bit. I'm also going to make this fairly general to help anyone who wants to learn about it, but I'll say everything I'm talking about only applies to America; I have no idea what this field looks like in other countries.

I'll start with the very basics of how it works. So, "medical coding and billing" is a fairly broad and pretty overlooked field, especially the coding side. They're technically two separate jobs with very different roles, but they have a lot of overlap, you can't really do one without doing at least a little of the other. They deal with taking doctors' reports, making sure the information is listed correctly, turning them into properly-formatted insurance claims, and sending them out to insurances.

Both fields work with code sets published by various organizations. If you work in a dental office, you're probably at least vaguely aware of CDT, the Current Dental Terminology code set published and maintained by the ADA for dental treatment procedures, and also possibly the ICD-10, a set of diagnoses codes published by the WHO and edited for use in America by the CMS and the National Center for Health Statistics (under the name ICD-10-CM). CDT is the dental equivalent (because dentists are such special widdle boys) to the AMA's CPT code set. Two others commonly used are HCPCS (standards published by Medicare, mostly related to medical equipment and substances) and ICD-10-PCS (a third separate procedure set, mostly used in hospitals). Any given claim will use at least two of these code sets; an ICD-10-CM code to describe the patient's issues or other reasons for visiting, and procedural codes to describe what was done during the visit.

The differences are mostly in what side of insurance you fall on. Medical coders are the buffer zone between providers and insurance. We take a doctor's report, and then break it down into all of the relevant codes (following both the standards set by the coding guidelines and for specific insurances); we list out what they did with procedural codes, and why they did it with diagnostic codes. We also act as the first line of defense against insurance mistakes, checking for patient eligibility and for any errors in documentation. The claims are then sent to the insurances by billing, who track claims made by the provider and ensure that they're paid in full, and that improperly rejected claims are corrected and resent if possible.

Certifications are a very important aspect of coding and billing as a career. The American Association of Professional Coders (AAPC) (https://www.aapc.com/) is by far the biggest source of coding/billing certificates, especially the core CPC and CPB certs, like the one I'm getting. Dental coding, unfortunately, seems to be a lot more opaque, especially to me as someone with no experience in it. It looks like the ADA itself has a course (https://ebusiness.ada.org/Education/viewcourse.aspx?id=412), but there's also a group called the American Dental Coders Association (https://www.adcaonline.org/) which seems to be an AAPC equivalent group for dentistry, but I've seen some mixed things online and I have no idea how accredited they are. I'd say, if you have the opportunity, ask some coworkers who are in coding what they did to get started in the field. Otherwise, if you'd like to go into general medical coding, the AAPC is your best bet.

As for actually getting /into/ the course, you could certainly just… pay for the course on your own and take it through AAPC/ADCA, but there's likely a need for more coders in your office, and having coding knowledge is useful for someone in insurance anyways. I would do research to figure out which course is the best, and then see if you can get your office to cover your tuition. It's a win-win; you get a coding certification, and they get a new coder. For people besides anon, there's some other possibilities too. Community or medical colleges in your area will likely have some certification course open; in my case, I went through a state-sponsored job assistance program which got me into one of those. Look for things like that in your community that can help you out.

I hope this was helpful! It's a very interesting field, and I'm glad it interests you enough to ask. Don't hesitate to send any more questions my way if you need to, and good luck!

#medical coding #medical billing

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