A small, preliminary study has found that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are seven times more likely to have food allergies than children in the general population. According to Joseph A. Bellanti, M.D., of the International Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Immunology at Georgetown University Medical Center, lead author of the study, "This recent study shows that food allergy may play a role in the development of ADHD." Bellanti and colleagues tested for food allergies in 17 children diagnosed with ADHD and found 56 percent to be positive, compared for six to eight percent of children in the general population. [Reuters Health]

As an alternative to past uses of standardized testing, Glaser (1990) proposes the following criteria for evaluating how new assessments should be designed and used, says Dr. Darling-Hammond:

1. Access to educational opportunity - Assessments should be designed to survey possibilities for student growth, rather than to designate students as ready or not ready to profit from standard instruction.
2. Consequential validity - Assessments should be interpreted and evaluated on the basis of their instructional effects, i.e., their effectiveness in leading teachers to spend time on classroom activities conducive to valuable learning goals and responsive to individual student learning styles and needs.
3. Transparency and openness - Knowledge and skills should be measured so that the processes and products of learning are openly displayed. The criteria of performance must be transparent rather than secret so that they can motivate and direct learning.
4. Self-assessment - Because assessment and instruction will be integrally related, instructional situations should provide coaching and practice in ways that help students to set incremental standards by which they can judge their own achievement, and develop self-direction for attaining higher performance levels.
5. Socially situated assessment - Assessment situations in which the student participates in group activity should increase. In this context, not only performance, but also the facility with which a student adapts to help and guidance can be assessed.
6. Extended tasks and skills learned in relevant contexts - Assessment should be more representative of meaningful tasks and subject matter goals. Assessment opportunities will themselves provide worthwhile learning experiences that illustrate the relevance and utility of the knowledge and skills that are being acquired.
7. Scope and comprehensiveness - Assessment will attend to a greater range of learning and performance processes, stimulating analysis of students' cognitive and performance skills in relation to each task.

"A broader vision of school improvement demands an important role for school-based, curriculum-embedded assessments as well," says Darling-Hammond. "Ultimately the work of enacting new standards is intensely local and directly tied to the work that teachers and students do together."

A recent study conducted in rural Vermont reveals that adolescents are less likely to smoke cigarettes if their parents strongly disapprove. James D. Sargent, M.D., and Madeline Dalton, Ph.D., both of the Department of Pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School, conduced a three-wave, school-based cohort study of adolescents attending three K-12 schools. Students were asked "How do you think your mother (father) would react if you were smoking cigarettes and she (he) knew about it?" The researchers considered a response of "S/he would tell me to stop and be very upset" to indicate strong parental disapproval.

The study samples for cross-sectional analyses included 622 subjects at baseline, 758 at year two and 730 at year three. The subjects were distributed evenly across grade (4^th to 11^th) and gender. At baseline, 65.9 percent of adolescents perceived both parents as disapproving of smoking, 16.6 percent perceiving one parent as disapproving and 17.5 percent perceiving neither parent as disapproving. Perceived disapproval was inversely related to adolescent smoking as well as grade in school, parental and sibling smoking, friend smoking and ownership of tobacco promotional items. In the longitudinal analysis of the 372 students who had never smoked at baseline, students with strong parental disapproval were less than half as likely to become established smokers.

The researchers also note "In all analyses, the effect of parental disapproval was as stronger and more robust than the effect of parent smoking. In addition, the effect of parental disapproval was as strong for parents who smoked as it was for nonsmoking parents." They conclude, "Interventions that enhance parental self-efficacy in conveying and enforcing no-smoking policies for their children could reduce childhood smoking."

Sargent JD, Dalton M: Does parental disapproval of smoking prevent adolescents from becoming established smokers? Pediatrics2001; 108:1256-1262. Correspondence to: Dr. James D. Sargent, Department of Pediatrics, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756.