Closing The Achievement Gap: Challenges And Opportunities

Closing the achievement gap between low-and high-achieving public school students is an important goal of public education (p. 42, Lowell Rose and Alec Gallup, Phi Delta Kappan, 2007).  The paper will explore background information and research as well as discuss examples of best practices to close the achievement gap.  Several plans have been proposed as ways to enhance the achievement of under-represented students, according to the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll (Phi Delta Kappan, September 2007, p. 42), including additional instructional time, student assistance and increased assistance outside of the school day.   &nbsp

Faith Matters: Reflections on the Christian Life

In a day in which Christians too often reduce faith to mere sentimentality and atheists decry it as superstitious nonsense, Fr. Kerry Walters offers a series of reflections intended to show that, indeed, faith matters. Drawn from his popular weekly newspaper column “Faith Matters,” these short meditations explore Christian faith from the perspectives of doctrine, spirituality, ethics, politics, art and science, the saints, and the holy seasons that mark the Christian year and set the rhythm of Christian living.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1155/thumbnail.jp

Environmental Concern and Rational Production, Consumption and Rehabilitation

Utility from consumption might be spoiled by the degradation of the environment. The incorporation of a direct dependency of utility on the state of the environment through environmental concern and the incorporation of the effects of production pollution and rehabilitative investment on the environment into a lifetime utility maximization model imply that a minimal degree of impatience is necessary for an interior steady state to exist. This steady state is unique, approachable along a path with damped oscillations of consumption and rehabilitative investment, and characterized by a larger production than in the steady state without environmental concern.Consumption, environmental investment, golden rule

Racial Disparity and the Death Penalty

McAdams examines the rhetoric and data supporting the mass market version of the racial disparity thesis. The system is racist in that it punishes those who kill whites more severely than those who kill blacks

On the Clock: Rethinking the Way Schools Use Time

In an era of increased accountability, educators are searching for new ways to boost student achievement. Is extending the school day the answer

Getting Narrower at the Base: The American Curriculum After NCLB

Examines curriculum changes in elementary, middle, and high schools since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted, requiring regular testing in reading and math. Analyzes shifts in time allocations to four subjects, contributing factors, and implications

Complete Issue 13(2)

Complete digitized issue (volume 13, issue 2, Winter 1976) of Speaker & Gavel

The Romance of Revenge: An Alternative History of Jeffrey Dahmer\u27s Trial

On Feb. 17, 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen consecutive terms of life imprisonment for killing and dismembering fifteen young men and boys. Dahmer had been arrested six months earlier, on July 22, 1991. On Jan. 13 he pled guilty to the fifteen murder counts against him, leaving open only the issue of his sanity. Jury selection began two weeks later, and the trial proper started on Jan. 30. The jury heard two weeks of horrifying testimony about murder, mutilation and necrophilia; they deliberated for five hours before finding that Dahmer was sane when he committed thos crimes. After the verdict, a minister who had counselled members of the victims\u27 families told the Chicago Tribune, I think this will be the beginning of a healing. At his sentencing two days later, Dahmer said, I take all the blame for what I did... Your honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I never wanted freedom. His lawyer told the press that no appeal was planned. What happened after Dahmer\u27s arrest is of minor importance by comparison with what he did, which is unspeakable. Still, the criminal justice system did very well in this case. It handled a revolting set of crimes and a potentially explosive trial with as much civility, compassion, and dispatch as possible. Half a year after the arrest, the trial was truly over, and, let us hope, the healing did begin. Jeffrey Dahmer was tried in Wisconsin - one of the fourteen American states that have no death penalty. How would this drama play in one of the thirty-six other states? He would certainly be charged with capital murder, and then a new set of horrors would begin

The Romance of Revenge

An alternative history of Jeffrey Dahmer\u27s trial shows what the death penalty can do to a homicide case under extreme circumstances. Our system of capital punishment is slow, passionless, impersonal, unreliable, rarely exercised, and costly. Still, it\u27s not likely to change much for the death penalty we have is the death penalty we want. Excerpted with permission from an article first published in Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Vol. 13, pp.71-104 (1993), by permission of the publisher, JAI Press Inc