Afterword

2017 ◽  
pp. 185-208
Author(s):  
Terry Williams

I sing sometimes for the war that I fight, ’cause every tool is a weapon, if you hold it right. —Ani DiFranco, “My IQ” American kids are losing ground, showing all the symptoms of social, parental, and personal neglect. Many are left to fend for themselves, and barely manage. Teenage suicides continue and grown-ups do not seem to be getting the point. Our collective failure to confront the rate at which our teens are self-destructing is one of the reasons I have written this book. Although school shootings have opened the nation’s eyes to youth violence and have inspired a full-scale examination, teen suicide is still shrouded in denial, though it would be difficult to find an adult in America who does not know at least one seriously troubled or disturbed teenager—either within their own family or among the families of friends or relatives. And most would probably admit that they have no idea how to understand a problem that threatens to tear the American family apart....

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-372
Author(s):  
Glenn W. Muschert

This afterword considers the cultural effect of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. I bring together the aspects of a traditional academic review with my personal reflections as a scholar who spent the past two decades researching its cultural and policy ramifications. Columbine is a noted milestone in the American cultural lexicon, and one that has become an important reference point for discussions of school violence and other social problems concerning youth. Columbine often serves as an inaccurate exemplar of the broader problem of youth violence, and this so-called “Columbine Effect” means that extreme cases exert a disproportionately strong influence on public discourse about the problem. Over the past 20 years, the net effect has been the acceleration of punitive anti-violence school policies that include policing, surveillance, and zero-tolerance policies. I consider my experience as a researcher in this area and conclude with modest suggestions for guiding policy development to mitigate the problem of violence in schools.


2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
MaryAnn Tapper Strawhacker

School violence is a growing area of concern for school nurses across the nation. Recent national data and a compilation of risk factors for youth violence and school shootings are presented as a general guide to identifying students who may be in need of assistance. The nurse’s role in multidisciplinary planning and developing violence prevention strategies in the school and the community are examined.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis M. Hsu ◽  
Judy Hayman ◽  
Judith Koch ◽  
Debbie Mandell

Summary: In the United States' normative population for the WAIS-R, differences (Ds) between persons' verbal and performance IQs (VIQs and PIQs) tend to increase with an increase in full scale IQs (FSIQs). This suggests that norm-referenced interpretations of Ds should take FSIQs into account. Two new graphs are presented to facilitate this type of interpretation. One of these graphs estimates the mean of absolute values of D (called typical D) at each FSIQ level of the US normative population. The other graph estimates the absolute value of D that is exceeded only 5% of the time (called abnormal D) at each FSIQ level of this population. A graph for the identification of conventional “statistically significant Ds” (also called “reliable Ds”) is also presented. A reliable D is defined in the context of classical true score theory as an absolute D that is unlikely (p < .05) to be exceeded by a person whose true VIQ and PIQ are equal. As conventionally defined reliable Ds do not depend on the FSIQ. The graphs of typical and abnormal Ds are based on quadratic models of the relation of sizes of Ds to FSIQs. These models are generalizations of models described in Hsu (1996) . The new graphical method of identifying Abnormal Ds is compared to the conventional Payne-Jones method of identifying these Ds. Implications of the three juxtaposed graphs for the interpretation of VIQ-PIQ differences are discussed.


1996 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis M. Hsu

The difference (D) between a person's Verbal IQ (VIQ) and Performance IQ (PIQ) has for some time been considered clinically meaningful ( Kaufman, 1976 , 1979 ; Matarazzo, 1990 , 1991 ; Matarazzo & Herman, 1985 ; Sattler, 1982 ; Wechsler, 1984 ). Particularly useful is information about the degree to which a difference (D) between scores is “abnormal” (i.e., deviant in a standardization group) as opposed to simply “reliable” (i.e., indicative of a true score difference) ( Mittenberg, Thompson, & Schwartz, 1991 ; Silverstein, 1981 ; Payne & Jones, 1957 ). Payne and Jones (1957) proposed a formula to identify “abnormal” differences, which has been used extensively in the literature, and which has generally yielded good approximations to empirically determined “abnormal” differences ( Silverstein, 1985 ; Matarazzo & Herman, 1985 ). However applications of this formula have not taken into account the dependence (demonstrated by Kaufman, 1976 , 1979 , and Matarazzo & Herman, 1985 ) of Ds on Full Scale IQs (FSIQs). This has led to overestimation of “abnormality” of Ds of high FSIQ children, and underestimation of “abnormality” of Ds of low FSIQ children. This article presents a formula for identification of abnormal WISC-R Ds, which overcomes these problems, by explicitly taking into account the dependence of Ds on FSIQs.


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