I don't often agree with Richard Whitmire*, but I do enjoy reading his new-ish blog, "Why Boys Fail?" Richard is smarter, more honest, and more data-driven than most other proponents of the current "boy crisis" storyline, and to the extent that the boy crisis has a kernel of truth to it--and it does, particularly for poor and minority boys--he's one of the more thoughtful people investigating that.

But this post he recently ran, by University of Alaska-Fairbanks Professor (and noted boy crisis hysteric) Judith Kleinfeld, makes no sense whatsoever. Like many "boy crisis" promoters, Kleinfeld believes many boys are not developmentally ready to enter school or begin learning to read at age five, and that this is one reason boys tend to lag girls in reading achievement. Kleinfeld has proposed delaying boys' entry into kindergarten as one potential strategy to address the literacy gap. She notes that the practice, known as "kindergarten redshirting," is common among affluent, white parents, and suggests that poor and minority boys, whose parents are much less likely to redshirt, would do better if they were held back from kindergarten too.

Then she does something really wierd.

Assessing the latest round of talks with Iran, it's clear that the old strategy of "surrender first, then we negotiate," has failed. In ASP's latest video op-ed, Senior Fellow Flynt Leverett says now it is up to Undersecretary William Burns to see if "pre-negotiations" or talks about talks, can sketch out a viable, durable and comprehensive platform for a new U.S.-Iran relationship.

It is a sad reality that many colleges do not treat their athletes as students, but rather as semi-professionals, for four years before dropping them into the real world without a meaningful degree or workforce-ready skills. Particularly at Division I basketball and football schools, colleges use their athletes to win championships and gain national prominence but too often leave them woefully unprepared for life away from the gridiron and hoops.

As I argued last week, the commercialization of college sports has gone too far. In this post, I will lay out the steps that I believe the NCAA and Congress should take to make sure that colleges aren’t allowed to lose touch with what really matters in higher education: graduating students with meaningful degrees.The first step toward reforming college sports is requiring greater transparency about the academic outcomes of athletes. Without better information, neither the NCAA nor Congress will be able to isolate and target academic abuses. The NCAA must also step up to the plate and fix flaws with its current academic monitoring and penalty system, as well as with its eligibility rules.

You hear a lot of talk in policy circles about disease management of chronic conditions, and we're all for new models of effective, coordinated care. But even if we figured out the perfect way to treat chronic diseases, it won't do much for uninsured people who can't get this wonderful new care. As a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows, there are a lot of people who fall into that category. The number of working age adults with major chronic conditions grew by 25 percent during the ten years from 1997 through 2006.

The study by Catherine Hoffman and Karyn Schwartz, on the Health Affairs website, found that this group experienced access problems both based on their insurance status, and because of cost.

Last week, we reported that both the House and Senate committee versions of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill cut all funding for Reading First, a program that supports research-based literacy programs in kindergarten through third grade. Both committees said they based this decision on a recent study, which found no evidence that the program improved reading comprehension scores of students in participating schools. A closer look at the bills, however, reveals that the committees did not apply the same standard to other programs: They continue to fund, and even provide increases for, programs with equally scant evidence of effectiveness.

Indie rocker Feist appears in Sesame Street's first episode this season, performing an altered version of her hit song, "1234" to teach preschoolers (and monsters!) how to count to four.

Nurses on medical-surgical units in hospitals spend less than a third of their time providing direct patient care. But before you get all indignant and leap to the conclusion that they are spending 70 percent of their time chatting on cellphones, doing their nails, or watching American Idol, think again. Nurses work hard. Very hard. But, through no fault of their own, they are not always working at maximum efficiency actually taking care of patients.

"A picture emerges of the professional nurse who is constantly moving from patient room to patient room, nurse station to supply closet and back to patient room, spending a minority of time on patient care activities," according to the interesting time and motion study called "How Do Medical-Surgical Nurses Spend Their Time?" published recently in the Permanente Journal, brought to our attention by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

On 6/26/08, the House Ways & Means Committee held a hearing on Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) due to concern over underutilization and reasons why many small businesses did not offer some type of IRA plan for workers. The GAO report on the topic was highlighted. Subsequent to this hearing, a few other committees held hearing on retirement savings and a report was released by Ernst & Young on people not having enough to live on in retirement.

There are some troubling data and realities about IRA participation and inadequate retirement savings. For example:

Dept. of Ed Requests Emergency Survey on Credit Transfers

Few Colleges Join TEACH program

New Repayment Program for Borrowers May Not Help All Who Need it, Report Says

Its hot. Its sticky. And in the southern United States this summer, more than 30% of adults are considered to be obese—with Mississippi topping the leader board. This according to CDC estimates reported yesterday by the Associated Press. The study—a random phone survey conducted last year—was published in the CDC's weekly Morbidity and Mortality report. According to CDC experts, the South has higher obesity rates than the rest of the country in part due to high levels of poverty, specific demographic groups that call the South home, and traditional southern eating habits.

Mississippi has had the highest obesity rates in the country since 2004, as well as having rates above the national average for heart disease and stroke—two conditions thought to be closely linked to obesity. These conditions also see higher rates among rural residents and black women, two demographic groups which the South has high concentrations of, and two groups which are more likely to be living in poverty.