Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Hit ©ametotk USC professor adds input to First Steps program by Shawn Miller The Gamecock Children unprepared for first ^rade have a tough time catching ip, research shows. Such students ire at a tremendous disadvantage n the classroom and struggle nightily, but with limited success. Dften the developmental hurdle iroves insurmountable, making all subsequent education difficult and fustrating. In South Carolina, as many as me in four children test “not eady” for first grade. Many S.C. shildren lack the tools necessary to succeed in school and repeat one if the first three grades 14 percent if the time. S.C. Kids Count, a partnership letween the S.C. Budget and Zontrol Board and the S.C. Department of Health and Human services established to help iisadvantaged children, estimates hat 500,000 children in South Carolina are at risk of “becoming inskilled, disconnected, and inproductive adults.” In June 1999, Gov. Jim Hodges signed into law First Steps to School Readiness, a statewide education initiative designed to help pre-first grade children and their families develop the tools necessary to succeed. The First Steps program seeks to provide families with support and access to services that will lead to optimal development. Through cooperative action, First Steps promotes high quality preschool programs and access to health care which reduces physical, developmental, and learning problems. Each of South Carolina’s 46 counties has a First Steps partnership board that assess the needs and resources of the county. Strategic plans to address the needs of the families and children of the particular community are then developed. Richland County, for instance, is creating community centers for children in high-need areas, and Lexington County is expanding access to health care and increasing parent education. First Steps will receive $39 million in state support in 2002. Though this is less than the $45 million Hodges hoped to obtain, it is an increase over the previous budget year. First Steps has also accumulated $7.3 million in private donations. A recent development at First Steps is the Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation (PIE) Program. PIE is a cooperative effort among First Steps, the USC Institute of Families in Society, Kids Count, and USC psychology professor Abe Wandersman. The program seeks to make evaluation an integral part of First Steps. The evaluation process is outlined in a paper entitled “PIE a la Mode: Mainstreaming Evaluation and Accountability in Every County of a Statewide School Readiness Initiative” written by Dr. Wandersman and 14 other professors, graduate students, and contributors. The paper won the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) 2001 President’s Prize. The evaluation process consists of two parts. First, every county will do a self-evaluation aided by Effective Practice Experts from the USC Institute of Families in Society. Dr. Wandersman said that the self assessment allows counties to be “self-determined, to learn for themselves, and to experience continuous quality improvement.” The second part of the evaluation will be conducted by out-of-state contractors. Baron Holmes, the Project Director of the South Carolina Kids Count Project, said PIE amounts to implementing “good management practice and common sense.” Wandersman stressed the importance of evaluating First Steps as a way to “improve the quality of community life.” There are a number of ideas that sound good, he said, “that don’t really work.” The PIE process helps the First Steps program employ ideas that do work. Dr. Wandersman will present his paper at an AEA conference in St. Louis in the fall. When asked about his feelings at being asked to speak, he said, “With a [paper] tide like Pie a la Mode, how could I resist? The news desk can be reached at gamecockudesk® hotmail.com Virus CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 sites would have seen slow aGcess iui mutu ui uidi uay diiu guiicii uu response after the Code Red was recognized. “That night was a bit of a blur,” said Wilkinson, who, with co-worker Ken Sallenger, found the virus on USC’s Web server. The virus, nicknamed Code Red, spent the first 19 days of July infecting computers. Then for nine days, starting on July 20, those infected flooded the home page of the Bush Administration (www.whitehouse.gov). The White House Web site has been immunized against the worm and hasn’t been affected. lhe virus, which also attects Web sites hosted by infected computers, displays the slogan “Hacked by Chinese!” Though Wilkinson and Salinger caught the virus before USC Web sites were defaced, USC did experience slow Internet performance. Classes using the Internet last Thursday were left waiting as message traffic from infected computers left the entire Internet at a crawling speed. The virus exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet servers running on computers through Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. The vulnerability was discovered in June, and Microsoft has released a patch that prevents computers from infection. The patch is available atwww.microsoft.com/technet. The virus spreads by selecting 100 addresses logged in an infected computer, scanning them for the hole and then infecting those vulnerable. Original estimates put the number of computers infected at 12,000, but the System Administration, Networking and Security Institute later estimated that number to be about 200,000 computer. USC’s actions to cut off Web activity on the night of July 19 was to ensure that the school’s systems could be cleaned out without being infected again. Students that feel their systems may have been infected should go to the Microsoft link or to the school’s Web site, www.sc.edu, which provides a free virus scan. The news desk can be reached at □amecockudesk® hotmail.com I 1 Bedr" Porch - l Bedroom w/ Sun Room 7°°Sf 800 SF 5499 $580 — HUGE ROOMMATE FLOORPLAN —■ — CONVENIENT TO USC — LOCATED AT THE RIVER — —• AWESOME POOL •— — FITNESS CENTER — — TENNIS COURTS — — W/D CONNECTIONS — — WALK IN CLOSETS — — WE PAY FOR YOUR WATER — 2 Bedroom w/ Sun Room 2 Bedroom w/ Porch “ffof CALL (803)