Child Welfare
University of Massachusetts student Melissa Peterkin, writing an op-ed for the Boston Globe, reports on a state law that intended to alleviate the burden of college costs for foster children but instead caused them to incur more debt.
The number of children put into foster care in Hawaii has dropped by more than 50 percent because of a new approach being used by social workers, reports The Maui News.
Nebraska has put the head of its mental health hospitals in charge of the child welfare system for the time being, reports the Omaha World-Herald. Scot Adams steps in for Todd Reckling, the embattled former director who resigned last month.
Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services misrepresented the percent of children in out-of-home custody who were maltreated or abused, reports Randy Ellis, Nolan Clay and Robby Trammell of The Oklahoman. DHS officials said the misrepresentation was an honest mistake.
Education/Jobs
Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews reports on the erratic state of community college placement systems in the United States, where one college might give enrolling students credits for work that another school might make them augment with remedial education.
The fact that children of same-sex couples cannot accurately portray family finances on federal forms can sometimes challenge their ability to get the right amount of financial aid, reports Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times.
It’s rough going out there for Connecticut’s young adults trying to find a job, reports Daniel Atkinson of Patch-Meriden. The situation is even worse for young Hispanic and black workers, who posted 17.8 percent and 15.6 percent unemployment, respectively.
In California, a county attempts to get all of its school districts on the same page when it comes to bullying policies and anti-bullying tactics, reports Neil Gonzales of the San Mateo County Times.
Chris Kirkham of the Huffington Post files this fascinating in-depth look at the changes to Education Management Corp. after Goldman Sachs became a major investor five years ago. A chilling account of the new recruiting strategy after the buyout, from one former admissions employee who spoke with Kirkham:
“You’d probe to find a weakness,” said Brian Klein, a former admissions employee who worked for three years at Argosy University Online, one of four major colleges operated by EDMC. “You basically take all that failure and all those bad decisions, and you spin it around and put it right back in their face as guilt, to go to this shitty university and run up all of this debt.”
Juvenile Justice
In Richland County, Ohio, a strange thing has happened with a state law aimed at curbing teenage dating violence, reports Jessie Balmert and Mark Caudill of the Mansfield News-Journal. Of the nine requests for civil protection orders, eight were for girls seeking protection from other girls.
