scholarly journals Teachers and Tests— Changes in the New York State Testing Program

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. G. Grant

How do teachers change their pedagogical practices? While many current initiatives seek to raise educational standards and improve student academic performance, there is a curious gap in national and state reforms. Considerable attention is given to defining higher expectations for what students will know and be able to do, yet little attention is given to how teachers should learn new pedagogical ideas and practices. This exploratory study uses focus group interview data collected over two years to examine how cross-subject matter groups of elementary and secondary New York State teachers respond to one way of learning to change their classroom practices: state-level testing. Analysis of the data highlights three issues: the nature and substance of the tests, the professional development opportunities available to teachers, and the rationales for and consequences of the state exams.

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-531

IN KEEPING with the recently adopted policy of reviewing in this column state and local, as well as national, events and trends dealing with the health and welfare of children, it is timely to call attention to action resulting from the Academy's Study in New York State. The following is quoted from an article by Dr. George M. Wheatley under the title of "Study of Child Health Services . . . a challenge to action": "With the completion of the New York State Study, we now have for the first time information for our State as a whole on the total amount, distribution, and character of all health services presently available to children as well as knowledge of the professional training of those who render these services. Now that we have this report with its wealth of significant data, how can we best make use of it? It will serve its primary purpose if it is used at the state level by medical, dental, public health, and welfare authorities for the development of long-range plans as well as for immediate action. Community groups throughout the State can make use of the report to study and compare, and, where indicated, work to improve their own health resources for children. For individual physicians, the study presents a responsibility and a challenge. Many practitioners will recognize similar conditions in their own counties. In private practice, in hospital and clinic affiliations, and because of important position in the community, the physician has the opportunity and the means of making a tremendous contribution to the health of children.


Author(s):  
Nathan Mann ◽  
James Nonnemaker ◽  
Kevin Davis ◽  
LeTonya Chapman ◽  
Jesse Thompson ◽  
...  

Receiving smoking cessation services from telephone quitlines significantly increases quit success compared with no intervention or other quitting methods. To affect population-level smoking, quitlines must provide a sufficient proportion of smokers with effective interventions. Nationally, quitlines reach around 1% of adult smokers annually. From 2011 through 2016, the average annual reach of the New York State Smokers’ Quitline (NYSSQL) was 2.9%. We used data on the reach and cessation outcomes of NYSSQL to estimate its current impact on population-level smoking prevalence and to estimate how much reach would have to increase to achieve population-level smoking prevalence reductions. We estimate NYSSQL is associated with a 0.02 to 0.04 percentage point reduction in smoking prevalence in New York annually. If NYSSQL achieved the recommended annual reach of 8% (CDC Best Practices) and 16% (NAQC), state-level prevalence would decrease by an estimated 0.07–0.12 and 0.13–0.24 percentage points per year, respectively. To achieve those recommended levels of reach, NYSSQL would need to provide services to approximately 3.5 to 6.9 times more smokers annually. Given their reach, quitlines are limited in their ability to affect population-level smoking. Increasing quitline reach may not be feasible and would likely be cost-prohibitive. It may be necessary to re-think the role of quitlines in tobacco control efforts. In New York, the quitline is being integrated into larger efforts to promote cessation through health systems change.


1986 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-65
Author(s):  
Eddy L. LaDue ◽  
Kenneth C. Carraro

Commercial bank loans to New York farmers are significantly overestimated in the reported USDA statistics due to out-of-state lending and reporting of some agribusiness loans as agricultural loans by New York State banks. Correcting for this distortion lowers the 1978–84 average New York agricultural credit market share held by banks from 36 to 24 percent. As deregulation allows more interstate banking activity, the overestimate of agricultural loan volume in states with money center banks and the corresponding underestimate of loan levels and market shares in nonmoney center states could cause increased distortion of state level farm debt statistics.


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