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Schools struggle to accurately assess nonnative speakers of English using accountability systems that somehow do not capture the complexity of the issues at hand. This article discusses topics surrounding the assessment of English language learners and how these issues have been oversimplified by such processes as the No Child Left Behind legislation. The case is made that English language learning is a complex system, holistic, nonlinear, and constantly evolving; however, current assessment practices do not address this complexity.

Previous studies with adult human participants revealed that motor activities can influence mental rotation of body parts and abstract shapes. In this study, we investigated the influence of a rotational hand movement on mental rotation performance from a developmental perspective. Children at the age of 5, 8, and 11 years and adults performed a mental rotation task while simultaneously rotating their hand (guided by a handle). The direction of the manual rotation was either compatible or incompatible with the direction of the mental rotation. Response times increased with increasing stimulus orientation angles, indicating that participants of all age groups used mental rotation to perform the task. A differential effect of the compatibility of manual rotation and mental rotation was found for 5-year-olds and 8-year-olds, but not for 11-year-olds and adults. The results of this study suggest that the ability to dissociate motor from visual cognitive processes increases with age. (Contains 5 figures and 3 tables.)

No Child Left Behind has increased data collection and reporting, the development of data systems, and interest in using data for decision-making in schools and classrooms. Ends-driven decision making has become common educational practice, where the ends justify the means at all costs, and short-term results trump longer-term outcomes and the bigger educational picture. From narrowing the curriculum, to the "bubble kids" phenomenon of teachers focusing on students who are near the cut-off for passing state achievement tests, to students getting paid for passing scores, ends-driven decision making has become part of schooling and exemplifies a current form of data-based decision making. However, if people chose to apply a systems approach to data-based decision making in schools, an approach that can help leaders view schools as complex living systems, they can increase the positive potential of data-based decision making to help educators make reasonable decisions about "means". The purpose of this article is to describe, using Toyota Motor Corporation as an example, how applying a systems approach to data-based decision making in schools can support school leaders and educators in making decisions about means--the internal operations of the school or classroom--and promote student and school success.

Charter Theatre is a small professional theatre in Washington, DC. Its mission is to develop and produce new plays. Like other organizations, Charter Theatre wants to be accountable. Its members saw early the need for evaluation--a repeatable process to assure the quality of their work, and have infused their development process with evaluation. Their evaluation approach most closely resembles developmental evaluation. This article presents a documentation of Charter Theatre's development and evaluation process based on interviews and written communication with Charter Theatre's Artistic Director, and written notes from observations of the process. The process includes Level 1 Reading, Level 2 Reading, and Rehearsal.

• Safety planning is an empirically supported suicide prevention intervention. • Aspects of safety planning are inconsistent with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) • Guidance for a theoretically consistent integration of safety planning into ACT. • ACT and safety planning can be used synergistically. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a contextual behavioral psychotherapy that helps clients build meaningful lives in the service of their own chosen values, rather than specifically focusing on symptom reduction or prevention of destructive behaviors. However, empowering ACT clients to navigate suicidal crises effectively is vital to ensuring the opportunity to build a life they will choose to live. Suicide safety planning is a widely used empirically supported approach to prepare clients to survive suicidal crises, and can be effectively incorporated into ACT. In this paper, we offer a contextual behavioral conceptualization of suicide as an extreme attempt to solve the problem of painful thoughts, emotions, and sensations, and provide an example of how this conceptualization and the necessity of safety planning can be introduced to clients. Use of chain analysis of suicidal behavior is introduced as a tool to inform the suicide safety plan. We describe how ACT processes can enhance safety plans and, in turn, create safety plans that will serve as means to develop skills associated with efficacious/effective ACT interventions. Finally, we discuss the ongoing evaluation and revision of the safety plan from an ACT framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portable air purifiers are popular consumer items, especially in areas with poor air quality. Unfortunately, most users of these air purifiers have minimal understanding of the factors affecting their efficiency in typical indoor settings. Emission of the air pollutant ozone (O[subscript 3]) by certain air purifiers is of particular concern. In an effort to better educate the public, we created a laboratory protocol aimed at characterizing the performance of air purifiers designed for rooms, refrigerators, cars, and personal use. The laboratory protocol relies on standard aerosol particle counting techniques to measure the clean air delivery rate (CADR) and UV photometry to quantify the ozone emission rate for air purifiers. The students analyze their measurements and discuss the implications for indoor air quality and ozone chemistry. The laboratory is suitable for students with a wide range of education and laboratory experience. (Contains 2 figures.)

Little is known of the way in which stakeholders in surgical education perceive trainee workload. A web-based survey examining the perception of current resident workload (as a percentage of daytime activities) was distributed to the faculty and residents in a Canadian general surgery residency program. The analysis compared the trainee and faculty responses against a 660-hour resident workload observation dataset. A total of 17 residents and 16 faculty completed the survey (74%, 67% participation). The resident estimations of workload were accurate for task categories (r = 0.91) and individual tasks (r = 0.92). The faculty estimations were accurate for task category (r = 0.90) but less so for individual tasks (r = 0.78). The residents perceived that significantly less time was allocated toward educational activities than faculty. Both of the groups underestimated the amount of time spent on indirect patient care (IPC). The faculty overestimate educational tasks as a proportion of workload. Both of the groups underestimated IPC tasks. This information can guide resident training program design and be used to bridge gaps between resident and faculty perceptions of resident workload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]