END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR. Late on this sunny, late-spring morning we were driving through the middle of All-American Wheaton, Illinois, and were startled by a horde of elementary-school students running excitedly up the street, yelling. We surmised that, rather than lunchtime, the excitement stemmed from the last day of school. As we parked in the downtown, packs of middle-schoolers roamed the sidewalks, similarly freed. The experience reminds us to wish the parents and educators among our northern-hemisphere readership a fruitful summer vacation. (Too bad the adults can't take the summer off while the kids work.)
DOCTORS VERSUS EDUCATORS. Whose assessment of a child with Asperger's or some other exceptionality is to be acted upon when medical professionals and school professionals differ on the cause and treatment of a child's behavior at school? The Arizona Republic describes a family in Gilbert, Arizona, whose son has high-functioning autism but whom the school deemed simply had "skills delays." The family struggled all year, although by the end of the year the child was doing well. Read about the conflict.
RTI IN EARLY CHILDHOOD. Should RTI be extended "downward" so that pre-schoolers with potential issues can be identified early? Three groups concerned with early childhood and education are developing a position statement for applying RTI in the context of early childhood. Find out more.
ADOLESCENT RISK. It's the mesolimbic dopamine system that drives risky behaviors in teens, says a University of Texas researcher. As it turns out, the system causes large "reward prediction error" -- the difference between an expected outcome and the actual outcome." Read more about the study.
NON-INTUITIVE RESEARCH RESULTS OF THE DAY -- and nothing to do with giftedness or twice-exceptionality, but interesting none the less. Researchers now claim that caffeine consumption is unrelated to alertness. Their thesis: that coffee merely reverses "the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal." See what you think, coffee drinkers.
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