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Educators consider chronic absenteeism a red alert — a blaring sign that a student might be academically at risk. But schools and parents now have a new tool to investigate the problem, in the form of open-source data collected by UC Davis and research partners Attendance Works and Children Now. Together, they produced “ Seize the Data Opportunity in California: Using Chronic Absence to Improve Educational Outcomes .” The report uses an interactive map to pinpoint the type of schools that...

Sen. Res. 346 , the companion bill to the already passed House resolution, was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate on May 22. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was the sponsor of the resolution that attracted bipartisan co-sponsorship prior to the vote. The House version was sponsored by Rep. Mike Gallagher and Rep. Danny Davis who made statements on the bill as reported earlier on ACEs Connection.

Check out this exciting opportunity to support babies and strengthen families! Please join hundreds of other organizations in signing on to this letter urging our state leaders to fund critical home visiting supports for babies and families living in poverty. Children’s earliest brain development is the foundation for their lifelong health and success. Yet too often families, especially those who are struggling to make ends meet, don’t have the support they need during the stressful time of...

Depression-Related Feelings Among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Youth, 2013-2015 An alarming 61% of youth who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual have felt depressed in the previous year in contrast to 29% of their peers who identify as straight. These students, who are in grades 7th, 9th, or 11th grade or are in non-traditional programs, felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more that they stopped doing their usual activities. Disparities among youth who experience...

I also hear from others that people don’t want to talk about their story because it is too painful. Well, what I find “too painful” is knowing that a young man just shot people in his school because he wanted someone to “know his story.”

“Casserian engeri?” (“And how are the children?”) — Traditional Masai greeting The most serious, non-infectious disease in childhood, and the most common, is poverty. Despite economic gains in the last few years, children remain the poorest age group in America with nearly one in five living in poverty. That’s 13.2 million children. A recent study by the Children’s Defense Fund illustrated an even bleaker picture, with three million children living in families surviving on $2 a day per...

The woman used a thick extension cord on her foster children. Welts rose. Bruises formed. Fear became the norm inside the Watts neighborhood home in Los Angeles where LaToya Cooper and six other children were sent to live. But no one believed the then-fifth grader. Not Cooper’s teachers. Not the police. [For more on this story by Susan Abram, go to https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-2/california-considers-a-bat-signal-for-foster-youth-in-distress/30903 ]

CityLab’s series on metro Atlanta’s cityhood movement follows how new cities have been forming across that region, mostly from unincorporated areas—land that falls under county governance, but doesn’t belong to any particular city. In most other regions of the U.S., unincorporated domains are usually found in rural or exurban areas. But in metro Atlanta, these unincorporated parts are often heavily urbanized communities that barely differ from the cities they neighbor. One of the newest and...

I watched a few of the intro webinars to this course and it looks like a great training from the Center for Adolescent Studies. https://centerforadolescentstudies.com/bars/ 4-Weeks: May 29th - June 26th, 2018 (and a 2-week grace period to finish all lessons to get your certificate of completion) Online: Completely online; login whenever you want each week to access the course material (mostly video presentations, approx. 2 hours per week) Learn: Critical skills for building relationships...

ACEs studies usually focus on the bigger, more tangible adverse experiences in a child’s life. However, there are a number of minor stressors that may not be really traumatic for kids not going through significant ACEs, are nevertheless devastating to a child already going through trauma. 

In most district attorney elections, the campaign playbook is clear: Win over the local cops and talk tough on crime. But in California this year, the strategy is being turned on its head. Wealthy donors are spending millions of dollars to back would-be prosecutors who want to reduce incarceration, crack down on police misconduct and revamp a bail system they contend unfairly imprisons poor people before trial. [For more on this story by PAIGE ST. JOHN and ABBIE VANSICKLE, go to...

Many Democrats believed that a years-long bipartisan push to overhaul the federal criminal-justice system died with the election of Donald Trump. The president had proudly anointed himself the “law-and-order candidate” in 2016 and appointed as his attorney general Jeff Sessions, the Senate’s leading conservative critic of reducing mandatory-minimum sentences, improving federal prison conditions, and easing the transition back into society for those incarcerated. But Trump is now backing a...