Early stage

•May notice patient is more anxious, forgets friends’ names and telephone numbers, places everyday items in the wrong storage locations, leaves projects (laundry, meals) unfinished, has trouble making change and balancing a checkbook.

•If patient’s work life is suffering, caregiver also may need to take on more financial responsibility.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK TO USA TODAY:  How Alzheimer’s disease alters lives, stage by stage – USATODAY.com.

Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the analysis said the methods and conclusions seem sound.

“The health care system has got to be aware that breast-feeding makes a profound difference,” said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics‘ breast-feeding section.

The findings suggest that there are hundreds of deaths and many more costly illnesses each year from health problems that breast-feeding may help prevent. These include stomach viruses, ear infections, asthma, juvenile diabetes, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and even childhood leukemia.

The magnitude of health benefits linked to breast-feeding is vastly underappreciated, said lead author Dr. Melissa Bartick, an internist and instructor at Harvard Medical School. Breast-feeding is sometimes considered a lifestyle choice, but Bartick calls it a public health issue.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR YAHOO! NEWS: Study: Breast-feeding would save lives, money – Yahoo! News.

For those of us who aren’t independently wealthy, that puts unrelenting pressure on the family pocketbook. The financial demands of raising a child require that money you otherwise might use to prepare for retirement, or to save for a nicer house, a sportier car or a swankier vacation, must, out of necessity, be earmarked for Lego sets and pediatrician visits and school uniforms and Christmas toys and a college savings account and a minivan and a trip to Disneyland … and lots of, well, chicken nuggets.

I’m not saying this to disparage kids. I have two of my own, and money is nothing in comparison to the happiness they bring me and my wife. Yet happiness does not negate the fact that the moment a child arrives — and, actually, months before the arrival — your role as an adult changes in dramatic, profound ways.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The 15 Money Rules Kids Should Learn – WSJ.com.

Both domestic priorities came in one bill, pushed through by Democrats in the House and Senate and signed into law by a beaming president.

The new law makes a series of changes to the massive health insurance reform bill that he signed into law with even greater fanfare last week. Those fixes included removing some specials deals that had angered the public and providing more money for poorer and middle-income individuals and families to help them buy health insurance.

But during an appearance at a community college in suburban Virginia, he emphasized the overshadowed part of the bill: education.

In this final piece of health reform, Democrats added in a restructuring of the way the government handles loans affecting millions of students.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK TO THE HUFFINGTON POST:  Obama Signing Student Loan Reform In Virginia.

“We’ll see how that goes,” laughs Melissa Gregory, director of financial aid at Montgomery College in suburban Maryland. More than 22,000 students at her two-year college rely on government-backed loans. Gregory isn’t sure the Education Department can handle the jump in student loan applications, with private lenders out of the picture beginning July 1.

“Can they handle the service component? Calls from students, explaining things to students — that will be a real challenge for the Department of Education,” she says, “and it’s one they say they’re ready to handle.”

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR NPR.

Can Education Dept. Handle Student Loans Solo? : NPR.

But reading performance has climbed in D.C. elementary schools, a significant counterpoint to the national trend, even though the city’s scores remain far below average.

The report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that fourth-grade reading scores stalled after the law took effect in 2002, rose modestly in 2007, then stalled again in 2009. Eighth-grade scores showed a slight uptick since 2007 — 1 point on a scale of 500 — but no gain over the seven-year span when President George W. Bush’s program for school reform was in high gear.

But reading performance has climbed in D.C. elementary schools, a significant counterpoint to the national trend, even though the city’s scores remain far below average.

The report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that fourth-grade reading scores stalled after the law took effect in 2002, rose modestly in 2007, then stalled again in 2009. Eighth-grade scores showed a slight uptick since 2007 — 1 point on a scale of 500 — but no gain over the seven-year span when President George W. Bush’s program for school reform was in high gear.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR THE WASHINGTON POST:

NAEP reading scores stalled despite ‘No Child Left Behind,’ report finds – washingtonpost.com.

Tying the student-loan and health-care legislation “has always been part of the plan,” Ms. Pelosi (D., Calif.) said.

House Democrats are readying a two-part strategy to pass the legislation. First, the House is expected to vote on a Senate-passed version of health-care legislation. Later, it will vote on a package of changes to the bill, which will be considered under a fast-track legislative process known as budget reconciliation.

The House Budget Committee announced that it would meet Monday at 3 p.m. to initiate the reconciliation process.

The White House announced Friday that President Barack Obama will delay a trip to Asia so that he can concentrate on the health-care bill. Mr. Obama was originally scheduled to leave Washington March 18, but will now depart March 21.

Ms. Pelosi said she is “delighted that the president will be there for the passage of the bill.” A Pelosi spokesman said lawmakers want to vote on the measure before next weekend, setting up a possible vote on the measure next Friday.

Ms. Pelosi also said that she expected the total cost of the measure would be equal to, or less than, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s most recent estimate of the Senate bill, which projected an $875 billion price tag over 10 years and overall deficit reduction of $118 billion.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

Health-Care, Student-Loan Bills to Be Paired – WSJ.com.

What can you do about such costs? Let’s look under the hood . . .

Aim for the right number of campus visits. High school students should begin their college search halfway through their junior year in high school – that leaves plenty of time to file the financial aid forms, hunt for scholarships and visit attractive college campuses. When you embark on the latter, keep the number of school visits manageable – aim for 10 or 12 at the most. Better yet, keep those colleges as local as possible. If you live near Boston and are planning in visiting U.C.L.A, get ready to shell out big bucks for air travel, car rentals and potential hotel costs. If you do want to travel long distances for a campus visit, see if you can get a family friend with a high school student interested in the same school – then split the costs for the trip. Also, contact the school beforehand to see if you can stay in a campus dorm overnight, or at least get a hotel discount (many colleges will give you some deals or point you in the right direction).

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR MAINSTREET:

via How to Cut College Costs Before Freshman Year | Students/Gen Y | Career | Mainstreet.

Lemov himself pushed for data-driven programs that would diagnose individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. But as he went from school to school that winter, he was getting the sinking feeling that there was something deeper he wasn’t reaching. On that particular day, he made a depressing visit to a school in Syracuse, N.Y., that was like so many he’d seen before: “a dispiriting exercise in good people failing,” as he described it to me recently. Sometimes Lemov could diagnose problems as soon as he walked in the door. But not here. Student test scores had dipped so low that administrators worried the state might close down the school. But the teachers seemed to care about their students. They sat down with them on the floor to read and picked activities that should have engaged them. The classes were small. The school had rigorous academic standards and state-of-the-art curriculums and used a software program to analyze test results for each student, pinpointing which skills she still needed to work on.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Building a Better Teacher – NYTimes.com.

Of parents ages 22 to 50, 19.6 percent of males and 20.4 percent of females had bachelor’s degrees, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau. (To view these or other tables of education data, visit the Current Population Survey Table Creator.) College degrees pay off in the long run: On average, adults with a bachelor’s degree make $26,000 more annually than those with just a high school diploma, according to 2008 Census Bureau data. With tough economic times, more people are going back to school online to continue their education. More than 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2008 term, a 17 percent increase from 2007, according to a Sloan Survey of Online Learning report, “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States in 2009.”

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT: Online Education Scholarships Help Parents Return to School – US News and World Report.