The Role of the City in Fostering Intergroup Communication in a Multicultural Environment: Saint-Petersburg’s Case

In this paper two aspects of the issue will be discussed. First, there is the role of authorities, NGOs in forming the multicultural environment in the city with cultural diversity. Second, the city as social context, the images and myths of the city determine discourse on multiculturalism and influence the cross-cultural communication in the city. After describing historically shaped images of the city, employment of city’s myths and symbols in discourse and policy of multiculturalism, and role of city’s institutions in fostering inter-group communication, this paper will discuss the inclusive culture of the city, shaped by the networking interaction, which blurs the distinction between «insiders» and «outsiders». Here the trends of (post)modern inter/trans-national relations will be extrapolated on the trans-cultural interaction in the multicultural city, taking into consideration that network interactions build up not between the territories, but in the space, where logic of borders overcomes.Multicultural, Identity, Image, Myth, Discourse, We-groups, Inclusive networks, Inclusive culture, Transnational interaction, Transnational civil society

Chartering Turnaround: Leveraging Public Charter School Autonomy to Address Failure

Persistently low-achieving public schools around the country have received $5.8 billion from the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, in addition to district and state funds, and other supplementary federal funds. Despite all of these sources of funding, most of the schools receiving them have failed to make a dramatic difference in improving student achievement. However, according to a new report jointly released by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the Center on School Turnaround, autonomy provided by state charter laws can be better leveraged to improve school turnaround efforts.The report, Chartering Turnaround: Leveraging Public Charter School Autonomy to Address Failure, provides case studies of three charter management organizations (CMOs) that have successfully restarted low-achieving public schools, adding a valuable component to the limited body of research that exists about turnaround models. The report highlights the freedoms that benefit poor-performing schools most significantly, including: the autonomy to hire, retain and reward staff; the ability to adjust the length of school year, academic program and curriculum; and, the option to develop tailored approaches for finances and facilities

Better Choices: Charter Incubation as a Strategy for Improving the Charter School Sector

The twenty years since Minnesota passed the nation's first charter school law have seen a great expansion in school choice, with charters operating in all but ten states and enrolling nearly two million students nationwide. Yet while parents now enjoy more schooling options for their children, a disappointing number of charter schools fail to provide excellent educations. As an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio, we struggle daily with birthing and growing high-quality charter schools -- which is why we find promising and underutilized approaches like charter incubation so appealing

Law and Institutions: two reasons for Sicilian backwardness?

Many reasons for the low level of local development in Sicily have been advanced through the years, often connected to historical and geographical explanations. More frequently the reasons of the backwardness (better low rate of development) is connected to high level of crime and of mafia phenomenon, or to structural grounds (first of all, Sicily is an island) and intra regional markets’ dimensions. Little space, instead, has been devoted to institutions and law and to the effectiveness of legislative self-government. In ours paper we will slight the constitutional profile trying, instead, to answer, with the typical approach of the economic analysis if is it possible that some reasons of the backwardness of Sicilian economic development are hidden just in this constitutional diversity of Sicily.

Exploring the ‘middle ground’ between state and market: the example of China

Studies of housing systems lying in the ‘middle ground’ between state and market are subject to three important shortcomings. First, the widely used Esping-Andersen (EA) approach assesses only a subset of the key housing outcomes and may be less helpful for describing changes in housing policy regimes. Second, there is too much emphasis on tenure transitions, and an assumed close correspondence between tenure labels and effective system functioning may not be valid. Third, due attention has not been given to the spatial dimensions in which housing systems operate, in particular when housing policies have a significant devolved or localised emphasis. Updating EA’s framework, we suggest a preliminary list of housing system indicators in order to capture the nature of the housing systems being developed and devolved. We verified the applicability of this indicator system with the case of China. This illustrates clearly the need for a more nuanced and systematic basis for categorising differences and changes in welfare and housing policies

A Stability Pact for the Caucasus in Theory and Practice - A Supplementary Note. CEPS Working Document No. 152, September 2000

In response to appeals of the leaders of the South Caucasus for a Stability Pact for the region, CEPS published in May 2000 a consultative document with a comprehensive proposal (available on www.ceps.be). Subsequently the authors have held extensive consultations with the leaders in all three states of the South Caucasus, and in four of the key autonomies (Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia, Adjaria, Ossetia). The present paper draws together the information and ideas collected during these consultations, although the conclusions are only attributable to the authors. The main argument of the original document is maintained, and strengthened with more precise views on how the conflicts might be solved within the framework of a Stability Pact. However the proposed Stability Pact process could be more than just an approach to conflict resolution. It has systemic or even constitutional aspects, with elements to overcome the transitional problems of the weak state and ease the confrontations of traditional notions such as independence versus territorial integrity, or the choice between federation and confederation, which are part of the present impasse. Particular consideration is also given to how a Caucasus Stability Pact could serve the interests of Russia as the region’s key player, together with enhanced cooperation with the EU over a Southern Dimension concept

Out of the Debate and Into the Schools

Explores how practices and strategies at pilot and charter schools with autonomy in governance, budget, staffing, professional development, scheduling, and curriculum and instruction lead to different outcomes from those at traditional public schools

Simulation of the Long-Term Effects of Decentralized and Adaptive Investments in Cross-Agency Interoperable and Standard IT Systems

Governments have come under increasing pressure to promote horizontal flows of information across agencies, but investment in cross-agency interoperable and standard systems have been minimally made since it seems to require government agencies to give up the autonomies in managing own systems and its outcomes may be subject to many external and interaction risks. By producing an agent-based model using 'Blanche' software, this study provides policy-makers with a simulation-based demonstration illustrating how government agencies can autonomously and interactively build, standardize, and operate interoperable IT systems in a decentralized environment. This simulation designs an illustrative body of 20 federal agencies and their missions. A multiplicative production function is adopted to model the interdependent effects of heterogeneous systems on joint mission capabilities, and six social network drivers (similarity, reciprocity, centrality, mission priority, interdependencies, and transitivity) are assumed to jointly determine inter-agency system utilization. This exercise simulates five policy alternatives derived from joint implementation of three policy levers (IT investment portfolio, standardization, and inter-agency operation). The simulation results show that modest investments in standard systems improve interoperability remarkably, but that a wide range of untargeted interoperability with lagging operational capabilities improves mission capability less remarkably. Nonetheless, exploratory modeling against the varying parameters for technology, interdependency, and social capital demonstrates that the wide range of untargeted interoperability responds better to uncertain future states and hence reduces the variances of joint mission capabilities. In sum, decentralized and adaptive investments in interoperable and standard systems can enhance joint mission capabilities substantially and robustly without requiring radical changes toward centralized IT management.Public IT Investment, Interoperability, Standardization, Social Network, Agent-Based Modeling, Exploratory Modeling

Autonomic service configuration for telecommunication MASs with extended role-based GAIA and JADEx

Autonomie Communications have attracted huge attention recently for the management of telecommunication networks in the European Network Research Community. The purpose of this research is to offer the abilities such as autonomy, scalability, adaptation as well as simplicity for management application in complex networks. The accomplished networks inspired by biological mechanisms or market-based concepts could enable agents to be of intelligence, scalablility, and interoperabliliry in the management functional domains with regards to the large volume requirements from services' fulfillment perspective in decentralized Multi-Agent Systems. In accordance with TMF and FIPA specifications and requirements, the autonomy attributes self-configuring, self-adapting, self-limiting, self-preserving, and self-optimizing are involved into our simulation. Resource allocation requests are bidded for a long session in the multi-unit Vickrey-Clarke-Groves auction. This design adopts the software development methodology-GAIA and the framework-JADEx. We have shown multiple service configuration in dynamic network can be nearly optimized by autonomie behaviors via bidding according to business objectives for getting maximum revenues. We conclude this end-to-end approach maintains self-managing capability, easy-to-implement scalability, and more incentively compatible and efficient over other common implementation so that it could achieve the optimal solution to the flexible requirements for the Service Fulfillment for advanced IP networks. © 2005 IEEE

Learning Time in America: Trends to Reform the American School Calendar

In the nearly two years since the report, " Learning Time in America: Trends to Reform the American School Calendar" was released, the drive to enable more schools to expand time has grown even more intense. Policy opportunities at both the state and federal levels, combined with significant initiatives in large districts, have acted to shift the concept of expanded time from a secondary education reform strategy to one that has become central to the national effort to improve schools serving high-poverty students. Why should practitioners and policymakers alike pay close attention to the matter of learning time? Research indicates that the amount of time students have available to engage in learning is a key indicator of their level of achievement at both the individual and the school levels.Consequently, how much time schools have to educate their students holds enormous implications for our ability to adequately prepare the next generation for their individual futures and, in turn, for the capacity of our nation to remain globally competitive. Moreover, research has also identified a yawning gap in spending on children's educational enrichment beyond school, with dollar amounts committed by families in the top quartile rising much faster over the past thirty years than resources committed by those in the bottom quartile.This growing differential among children in learning outside the current school day and year means that, more than ever, schools operate as the primary institution through which our country can hope to equalize opportunity, and, in turn, expanding and strengthening the educational program at high-poverty schools has become a critical lever to achieve such equity.The National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL), which is dedicated to redesigning and expanding school time to improve opportunities and outcomes for high poverty students, has joined forces with the Education Commission of the States (ECS), whose mission it is to foster the exchange of ideas on education issues among the states, to produce this snapshot of school time in America. By focusing on some of the key actions that have taken place at the federal, state, and local levels since July 2011, we seek to advance the national conversation about how the nation's schools can harness the power of time to realize a vision of high-quality education for all. We conclude this brief with an updated version of a number of public policy recommendationsthat we issued in the original report. These revised recommendations take into account the rapidly shifting policy context and provide policymakers a roadmap for how they can best support efforts to effectively expand learning time in schools