Philadelphia Cross City Campaign for School Reform announced candidate survey and forum

On Thursday afternoon, February 15th, students, parents, and community leaders filled a large conference room at the United Way Building to demand that the next mayor of Philadelphia take leadership in improving the city’s public schools. Sponsored by the advocacy and organizing groups of the Philadelphia Cross City Campaign for School Reform, the purpose of this press conference was to let the city and the mayoral candidates know that citizens care about the challenges facing their schools and to show them that citizens will hold the next mayor accountable for addressing these challenges.

The conference was led by parents and concerned citizens from community groups like ACORN and the Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project as well as high school students already dedicating themselves to school reform through organizations like Youth United for Change and the Philadelphia Student Union. The students represented schools from across the city, such as Sayre, West Philadelphia High, Mastbaum, Olney, Strawberry Mansion, Edison, and Kensington, and they all showed solidarity in delivering their message to the next mayor.

Student and adult members of these groups spoke about what the mayor can do to address key issues like school funding and equitable distribution of resources, teacher quality, school climate and safety, and small schools and the resources they need to be successful.

Most importantly, they called on the mayoral candidates to take a stand on these issues by announcing a candidates’ survey on educational issues and an upcoming candidates’ forum where they will have a chance to engage with citizens about these concerns.

The forum will take place the evening of April 12th at Rodeph Shalom (615 North Broad Street).
List of Speakers:

Overview: Debbie Russell-Brown (ACORN member)

Small Schools: William Elkins-Crosby (YUC member and 12th grader at Kensington CAPA High)Ricardo Bracero (YUC member and 11th grader at Kensington Business High)

School Funding: Carmen Lebron (EPOP member)

Teacher Quality: Debbie Russell-Brown (ACORN member)

School Climate: Kenyon McGriff (PSU member and 12th grader at Sayre High)

Online Clinical Reseach Training

Overview

The web-based Clinical Research Training course addresses one of the essential standards (Training and Education) approved by the NIH for performing clinical research in the Intramural Research Program. All NIH intramural clinical principal investigators are required to take the course and successfully complete a final exam.

The course may be taken at any time and requires approximately 4-5 hours to complete. In order to successfully complete the course, a score of 75% or higher must be attained on the final exam. An e-mail confirmation containing exam results will be automatically generated upon completion of the course.

Former participants of the "Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Clinical Research" and "Ethical and Regulatory Aspects of Human Subjects Research" who have passed both courses, as exhibited by successful completion of a final exam, are not required to take the course in order to fulfill the Training and Education standard for principal investigators.

To access the web-based offering of this course, click here: http://www.nihtraining.com/cc/crt/indexvideo.html

Topics

Topics covered in the course are:

• Ethical Issues in Human Subjects Research
• Roles and Responsibilities of the Investigator
• Roles and Responsibilities of the Institution
• Regulatory Issues
• Clinical Investigators and the Mass Media

Objectives

Objectives of the course are:

• To be aware of the ethical issues involved in human subjects research;
• To become familiar with the roles and responsibilities of the principal investigator and the institution when conducting clinical research in the NIH intramural research program;
• To have an understanding of FDA oversight of clinical research; and
• To become familiar with how developments in science and health are reported by the media and how to work effectively with reporters.

For more information

Please direct administrative questions about the course to: cc-od-ocrtme@mail.nih.gov (cc-od-ocrtme@mail.nih.gov)

Drawing of Louis Pasteur, colleague, and patient, courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine.