Child Welfare
The Detroit Free-Press has advice on child welfare reform for Gov.-elect Rick Snyder: bring in new leadership, and walk the walk on public-private partnerships.
Education/Jobs
Education policy writer Neal McCluskey, who has a history of taking a stand against a big government role in education reform, writes this blog entry about the revised GAO report on for-profit colleges. He accuses the GAO of being part of a smear campaign against the proprietary school sector.
Further examination of the latest California high school dropout figures is found in this Santa Cruz Sentinel editorial, which looks at how these figures are tied to the state’s budget woes.
A new report for the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy shows the majority of youth have favorable impressions of community street outreach workers.
The National Conference on Bullying will be held from Feb. 14-16 in Orlando, Fla. Kevin Jennings, assistant deputy secretary for the Department of Education, is expected to deliver the keynote address at the conference.
Juvenile Justice
Isaac Wolf of Scripps Howard News Service reports that new House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas) plans to hold a hearing to figure out why states are not implementing the Adam Walsh Act. States have until July to comply with the federal law, which requires them to register and monitor certain sex offenders, or lose 10 percent of a block grant from the Department of Justice.
Florida’s juvenile justice director, Frank Peterman, has resigned and may yet face fines for corruption from the state, writes Steve Bousquet of the St. Petersburg Times.
B.J. Lutz and Jeff Goldblatt of NBC Chicago report on the first conviction in the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, a Chicago teen whose death was captured on a cell phone camera and spurred an effort by the city to identify and work with young people who were at risk of becoming victims of violence.
A Justice Department investigation and class-action lawsuit against Ohio’s Washington County Juvenile Center took local juvenile justice leaders by surprise, reports the Marietta Times’ Brad Bauer. Washington County’s juvenile judge believes the court action is unnecessary.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Educational Statistics collaborated on Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2010, which reports on crime in and around schools using data from the 2007, 2008 and 2009 school years. The crime victimization rate at schools dropped from 57 victimizations per 1,000 students to 47 per 1,000. The number of students who reported carrying a weapon on school grounds was 6 percent in 2009, which is half the amount who reported weapons in 1993.
Miscellaneous
The House passed a continuing resolution that will fund the government through September of 2011, reports The Hill’s Erik Wasson, and the Senate will seek to turn that resolution into an omnibus spending bill that includes earmarks.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association named Public/Private Ventures the 2010 SAMHSA Science and Service Award for its work on statewide implementation of the Nurse-Family Partnership program in Pennsylvania.
