Recent Articles
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Backlash begins after union victories for teachers
Michelle R. Matisons EducationRecently, Los Angeles teachers went on strike for smaller class sizes, higher salaries, and more nurses, librarians, counselors, and community schools. And guess what? It worked. For now. On Jan. 22, the six-day strike that closed schools for 34,000 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) students ended. This was a victory for the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), which ratified the new contract with 81 percent of the vote. But after a solid year of effective actions by teachers' unions across the country, a backlash is brewing.
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Are hospitals compliant with patient access to medical records?
Christina Thielst Healthcare AdministrationAre U.S. hospitals compliant with federal and state regulations in their medical records processes? That is the central question in a cross-sectional study of 83 hospitals featured in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospital Rankings for 2016-2017. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act establishes the patient’s right for access of their protected health information within 30 days and in the format they prefer. In the study, researchers attempted to conduct scripted interviews (simulating a patient experience) with each medical records department, but three were deemed nonresponsive.
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Active shooter training for officers will be a key focus in 2019
Bambi Majumdar Law Enforcement, Defense & SecurityLaw enforcement officers across the country are undergoing intensive active shooter training sessions. With the unfortunate increase in violence in schools and public places, it is no surprise that these sessions will be a key focus for all law enforcement agencies in 2019. Recent active shooter incidents and their tragic consequences have been sobering learning experiences, but experts are using those experiences to create preventive programs. They have extracted and analyzed data from after-action reports and officers involved in the cases. The analytical reports are used to develop improved, faster and better ways for first responders to respond to an active shooter scene.
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3 steps to editing church website content
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityPeople want to discover the information they’re looking for, when they need it, and in the easiest format preference possible. That’s why we’ve all grown attached to websites. We want some information and then quickly pickup our phones to find it online. But there’s nothing worse than getting to a webpage that has too much information when we only want a quick answer. In fact, most people only want a simple answer! Does your church website deliver more than the facts? Here are three steps to making your website content the size and structure that most people will enjoy.
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Partial federal government shutdown ends but political impasse remains
Seth Sandronsky Civil & GovernmentLast Friday, President Trump signed a bill in effect through Feb. 15 that ends the 35-day partial federal government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. What is likely to or could happen over the next three weeks as border security talks between the president, GOP and Democrats proceed? What are the prospects for a resumed shutdown if both sides fail to reach a compromise? We turn to Frank Knapp, head of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce. "The (4.8 million) contract federal workers will not get any back pay," he said in an email to MultiBriefs.
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Create — don’t deny — access to complex text
Savanna Flakes EducationLiteracy unlocks the door to opportunity. Among the top five skills for tomorrow’s jobs, as listed by RBC Economics Research, is reading comprehension. Every student should have opportunities to engage meaningfully with rich, authentic, complex text. Complex text is text that is worthy of repeated readings over multiple instructional periods, allowing the reader to re-read, investigate, and deeply analyze a text for language and meaning, ultimately making connections to the author and the world.
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The increasing load of the small-town school leader
Brian Stack EducationEvery year for the past several years, I have been asked to justify to the elected officials in my New Hampshire school community why with a declining enrollment I am not recommending a reduction in school administrator positions at my high school. It is hard to explain to someone not in the field that the amount of responsibility and workload of a school principal does not correlate directly with the size of a student population. Some aspects of the job do — such as managing student discipline and evaluation of staff. Yet, other aspects of the job do not.
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8 great national parks for a winter visit
Dave G. Houser Recreation & LeisureSummer may seem the ideal time for visiting America’s vast network of national parks, but winter offers a surprising variety of park getaways — with activities ranging from skiing to scuba diving. Here are eight national parks scattered across the country that provide a smorgasbord of winter adventures.
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Is Instagram limiting the reach of your brand’s photos?
Emma Fitzpatrick MarketingYou’ve likely seen the latest rumor floating around Instagram. Users have been sharing photos that say something like this: "This is a test. Instagram has been limiting our posts, so only 7 percent of our followers see our posts. If you see this post, comment yes. This will improve our ranking." After all the funky changes to Facebook’s algorithm, do you need to worry about your Instagram content falling into a dark hole, too? Nope! You can exhale and let go of that anxiety.
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Travel2020: Uber’s futuristic air taxi lands at CES
Lark Gould Transportation Technology & AutomotiveWhile Las Vegas is currently one of two cities in the U.S. allowing for consumer testing of driverless cars, the city got another driverless boost recently from CES2019: the driverless heli-taxi. Even though the annual Consumer Electronics Show brought a life-size prototype of the new aerial hybrid vehicle currently in development, it also brought a lot of debate about the future of urban transportation — the good, the bad and the seemingly impossible. The vision is this: sometime in the not too distant future, a traveler, a commuter, or a person in a hurry may be able to choose on a whim to hail an air taxi from a nearby rooftop and take that taxi to another rooftop stop, the airport or even some port on a high-rise rooftop of another nearby city.