The new center will be housed in the Education School building. Photo by Iram Shaikh.

The Education and Batten Schools plan to launch a new Center on Education and Policy and Workforce Competitiveness next fall. The Center will study ways to improve the U.S. education system in the changing global economy.

The idea for the Center first originated in the Education School, Dean Robert Pianta said. Both Education and Batten faculty members were interested in combining their respective expertise as they explore issues surrounding education and leadership.

“There were several of us that basically thought that having such a Center would be a useful thing both for the University but also for educational policy in Virginia and around the country,” said James Wyckoff, center director and education professor.

The Center’s key objectives include plans to increase the access to and quality of elementary-level education, enhance the effectiveness of teachers and work to college enrollment from lower-income and minority families by exploring alternative student aid mechanisms.

Evidence suggests that the country’s educational competitiveness suffers from the performance of its elementary and secondary education systems, which may be of lower overall quality than the systems of other developed nations, Wyckoff said. The Center hopes to address the competitiveness of U.S. workers through improvement in educational and other programs.

“There’s lots of evidence that effective teachers make an enormous difference in student outcomes,” Wyckoff said, adding that the Center will also make an effort to address how to retain and recruit teachers in schools where students do not achieve as highly.

“There is an amount of evidence that, in fact, we need to improve the working conditions broadly for teachers in some schools where student achievement is not high,” he said. “We are interested in what policies might make those schools more attractive to teachers.”

Many schools in urban locations have countered this problem by paying an additional stipend to attract teachers. Nevertheless, Wyckoff and other members of the Center hope to study and evaluate other ways to improve working conditions at these schools and make them more attractive to teachers, he said.

Because of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, the Center will be able to access records for students from third grade to high school to supplement its research, Wyckoff said. The Center also will use other projects such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, which allows students to grade teacher performance. All student information is anonymous, though, to protect each child’s right to privacy.

He added that he hopes the Center’s research will become an objective data source, particularly in the study of student performance, which is an area from which improvements in education policy can be devised.

“I think [the Center] will be successful for several reasons,” Batten Assoc. Dean Eric Patashnik said. “First of all, we’re building upon the existing research strength of the University in education policy. We have world class scholars in James Wyckoff, Sarah Turner and others who have an excellent track record in attracting external research support from leading foundations.”

When the Center opens, organizers from both schools will hold a public reception, where they will introduce the new institution and its goals, Patashnik said.

Mayor Dave Norris hopes to create fixed affordable housing funds. The motion previously failed the past two times the mayor tried. Photo by Iram Shaikh.

Changes to City Council’s political climate this year may provide more support for a measure that would allocate a fixed amount of the city’s funds toward affordable housing.

With the support of two key Council members — Kristin Szakos, who was just elected last November, and Vice Mayor Holly Edwards — Mayor Dave Norris may now able to be able to bring in dollar power to bolster an issue at the top of his platform.

“What’s clear is that you can pay all the lip service you want to affordable housing,” Norris said. “But if you actually want to make a serious commitment to producing affordable housing [and] preserving affordable housing, you’ve got to bring more financial resources to the table.”

Norris attempted to create a fixed allotment of funds for affordable housing twice in years past, but the motion failed because certain Council members opposed it.

The Charlottesville Housing Fund has slowly declined since the 2008 fiscal year, when it had $2.15 million. That figure fell to $1.4 million in 2009 and finally to $1 million in 2010.

“It’s still higher than it was,” Norris said, noting that $400,000 was allocated to the fund in 2006. “But it’s not where it really needs to be if we want to make a bigger impact.”

The housing fund is currently subject to annual budget decisions by Council. The resulting fluctuations, however, may send the wrong message to private investors involved in affordable housing projects, Norris said.

“We want to get it to where it’s [a] sustained commitment that … the developers of [housing projects] can rely on and plan on,” he said. “If they know there are funds available, it gives them the ability to plan for the future.”

But Norris and his supporters have met opposition from those Council members who have been uneasy about the idea of an inflexible commitment to one facet of the city budget.

“We try to do the best with the resources we have,” Council member Satyendra Huja said. “[But] if you precondition the amount for one subject matter, it limits what resources you have for another subject matter.” For example, public education, safety and health are other essential areas toward which the Council must budget its funds, he said.

As Council debates the matter, Charlottesville’s Housing Advisory Committee is now compiling a report on housing project recommendations. Despite the political opposition and a “tight year financially [and] budget-wise,” Norris said he still sees room for an increase.

“We have the political support now to do more than we did this current year,” he said.

—Katherine Raichlen contributed to this article.

A University-supported bill in the General Assembly would prevent campus threat assessment teams from releasing their records and documents under the terms of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Since the Virginia Tech massacre, the commonwealth has required all public colleges and universities to form campus threat assessment teams — which include law enforcement officials, mental health professionals, student affairs and residence staff — to investigate students who may pose threats to themselves or others around them.

Del. Rob Bell, R-Albermarle County — a College and Law School alumnus — and State Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, have sponsored the bill.

The bill’s overarching goal is to “preserve the confidentiality” of threat assessment teams and their findings, Edwards said.

Both the University and the bill’s sponsors believe that the teams need added protection because they are key in preventing violent incidents, Bell said.

“We need a mechanism where we sit down every so often … talk about [possible threats] and see if we think [they are] a real problem,” he said.

Susan Davis, assistant vice president for Student Affairs, said the University’s threat assessment team investigates “individuals whose behavior may present a threat and [intervenes] when appropriate.”

Some groups, however, are worried that the bill could result in a lack of transparency. Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said she is concerned that the threat assessment teams are not always as open as they should be and worries that the bill would exacerbate this.

“This is why there needs to be some sort of mechanism for the records to be released, in the case of some sort of violent or destructive event,” Rhyne said. “We can then go back and look at what signs there were and who knew what — like what they are doing now with the Christmas day bombing … looking back to see who might have known what information was properly shared.”

Overall, Rhyne said she is worried that the public will not have access to necessary information about events to help prevent future ones.

Davis, however, said important information will be released to the public on a need-to-know basis in the aftermath of very serious incidents.

“When dealing with an incident of that magnitude, there are many ways for the information to come out, such as a governor’s panel that was used during the Virginia Tech tragedy,” she said.

Overall, Davis said perhaps the most important concern is not just to maintain a confidential investigation but also to protect the privacy of the individual under investigation.

“More often than not, they are more threats to themselves than to others,” she said.

—Katherine Raichlen and Emily Poe contributed to this article.

An eight-year series of trials conducted nationwide by a team that included University researchers has debunked the popular belief that ginkgo biloba can prevent dementia or improve cognitive function in older adults.

Ginkgo biloba is a flavanoid, an anti-oxidant substance that has anti-inflammatory properties, said Lewis Kuller, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh who helped conduct the trial. In the United States, people have been taking ginkgo biloba not only because they thought it might prevent dementia but also because they believed it to guard against vascular disease, he said.

“Here’s a very inexpensive substance that basically is purchased over the counter,” Kuller said. “Does it really have any benefit in preventing dementia and vascular disease?”

The research team conducted trials from 2000 to 2008. Research took place at six sites around the country: the University of Pittsburgh, Wake Forest University, the University of California at Davis, the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Vermont, Medical School Dean Steven DeKosky said. Exactly 3,069 people participated and were randomly assigned to treatment on either drugs or placebos, he said.

“We did the trial exactly the way you would do it if you wanted it to be approved by the [Food and Drug Administration],” DeKosky said, noting that drug companies follow this process to show their product is efficacious and safe before applying for FDA approval.

The results showed that ginkgo biloba has no effect on preventing dementia or cognitive decline, though it did have a positive effect in preventing lower extremity peripheral vascular disease in a small number of cases, Kuller said.

DeKosky said the results were “disappointing but useful to know.” Americans spend $107 million on ginkgo products, he said, but he expects these numbers to decline based on the trial results.
“There’s always a lot of hope that something [will] come along,” Kuller said in reference to alternative therapies in general. “Dementia’s a very unpleasant disease. We don’t have any treatment for it.”

Kuller said he expects that some people will continue to take ginkgo biloba and believe in its effects but that others will move on to different alternative treatments.

“There’s always a flavanoid of the year,” he said, noting that people develop a belief system around these products even without seeing any “solid substantial evidence.”

The trial also proved to be significant because it is the first study in which researchers started the work, recruited new people and finished the experiment, DeKosky said. In other projects, researchers either continued work on an existing group of subjects or had to stop trials because of negative side effects, he said.

Through the ginkgo biloba trial, researchers have learned much about how to study alternative therapies, DeKosky added.

“One of the things this study shows is how important it is to do these trials in a careful way,” he said.