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Suspensions cost America an enormous amount — almost $36 billion for the graduating class of 2004, according to a new analysis from researchers at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California–Los Angeles. In recent years, many teachers and principals have tried to suspend kids less often. They’re turning instead to other fixes , such as peer juries and community service assignments, when middle and high schoolers egregiously break school rules. The new study highlights why those...

Charlotte. Baton Rouge. Tulsa. Minneapolis. Los Angeles. Ferguson. The violence explodes on your television set. You seethe. “This is 2016 — not 1968. Does the U.S. now stand for ‘Under Siege?”’ you fume. Your anger is righteous. Racism is prevalent in the United States. And, yes, there are racially tinged police officers infecting American police forces. But is your anger misplaced? Amidst the over-the-top headlines and screaming protests, a fundamental question remains: What can be done to...

On any given day, pediatrician Lindsay Irvin estimates a quarter of her patients need psychiatric help. She sees teens who say they are suicidal, and elementary school children who suffer chest pains stemming from bullying anxiety. Though she does her best, she doesn’t consider herself qualified to treat them at the level they need at her practice in San Antonio. She doesn’t have the training, she said, to figure which medications are best suited to treat their various mental health...

Parents and teachers are worried. They believe that today's kids are growing up in an unkind world and that learning to be kind is even more important than getting good grades. But, when it comes to defining "kind," parents and teachers don't always agree. That's according to a new survey of some 2,000 parents and 500 teachers from the educational nonprofit behind Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop. Kindness is well-trod territory for Sesame. Here's actor Mark Ruffalo trying to teach a Muppet...

When Jolie Ritzo was looking for day care for her son Cannon in Falmouth, Maine, she checked out as many centers as she could. She was looking for a place with the right feel. "Most importantly, the people who are providing the care are loving and kind, nurturing and interested in developing these little beings," she says. There was one center in town that had a great reputation, but it was so pricey, Ritzo says, "It would break the bank." She enrolled Cannon in a family child care based in...

When Steven Mankouche first saw the house at 3347 Burnside Street in Detroit, in 2013, it was buckling and scarred with burn marks. An artist named Andy Malone, who lived nearby, had just purchased the lot for $500 and was hoping to find some way to bring it back to life. Mankouche, an architect, and his partner, Abigail Murray, a ceramicist, floated a proposal to do just that, by commandeering the house’s foundation and repurposing it as a sort of plant nursery. The following year, a team...

Extensive research shows that even when controlling for factors like education, skill, and experience, women routinely earn less than men employed in the same professions. Often, this argument is accompanied by the now-famous statistic that women earn about 79 cents for every dollar men make at work . This is an important data point, but focusing on that figure alone masks the role race can play in perpetuating these disparities. For instance, it is important to ask: Which women? The...

Sitting across a Baker's Square table from my birth-brother, sipping coffee and eating pie grateful slowly turned to guilt. I first met my birth brother, 5 years younger than me, 20 years ago. We met when the State agreed to open my closed adoption record to help me learn more about my medical history. I met him, my birth sister, and birth mom at a restaurant outside of Chicago- a middle point for us to meet as we lived in different states. When I walked into the restaurant I almost ran into...

Young, living in the country illegally and alone, Hector Estrada was initially unsure about trauma therapy after immigrating to the United States from Mexico following the death of his brother. But after taking advantage of the services provided by the Berkeley-based nonprofit Partnerships for Trauma Recovery, or PTR, Estrada was able to open up. “(Refugees) want a feeling that somebody cares about them,” he said. “You feel safe, you know, they helped me so much with the trauma, with feeling...

In America, health outcomes are far too often dictated by the color of your skin. There is an almost 40% gap between the quality of care received by whites and African-Americans in the United States, and the disparity persists even when insurance status, education levels, and income are taken into account. That accounts for much of the U.S. life expectancy gap of 3.4 years between whites and blacks. 40% The gap between the quality of health care received by whites and African-Americans in...

Now it’s a scientific fact that foster kids have a hard-knock life. Children in the U.S. foster care system suffer significantly higher risks of emotional and physical health problems, the journal Pediatrics reported Monday, such as depression, asthma and obesity. University of California, Irvine sociologists surveyed more than 900,000 children. They found those in foster care were seven times more likely to be depressed, five times more likely to be anxious, and six times more prone to...

Scott Web, an ACEsConnection member who works at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, sends out this list of links every couple of weeks. Most of the links are from posts on ACEsConnection, and, as you can see, they're organized by category. Some of you have asked if the summaries and links we post can be put into categories. Thanks so much, Scott, for sharing this with the ACEsConnection community! ACEs, Adversity's Impact How childhood trauma can cause premature aging Why parents...