Three Essays on the Economics of Education

This dissertation comprises essays that exploit geographic data in an effort to provide new causal evidence on three topics facing education policy makers. Chapter 1 investigates the consequences of domestic violence exposure. I show that episodes of domestic violence cause a short-term increase in absences, but I do not find evidence that the events increase or decrease the number of disciplinary infractions, conditional on attending school. In addition, I measure spillovers to peers using plausibly exogenous daily and annual variation in peer group composition. In contrast to earlier research, my spillover results suggest that neither peers’ behavior nor their test scores are impacted. Chapter 2 analyzes the relationship between longer student commutes and outcomes including attendance and achievement. I find little evidence of a marginal effect when adding an additional mile to a students’ commute on either academic achievement or attendance. In contrast to the null effects arising from a marginal increase in distance, I find robust evidence that being within walking distance to school affects attendance. Being able to walk to school increases attendance by 0.76 percentage points. It is not clear whether this increased attendance translates to higher achievement on annual exams. While point estimates are positive, the effects on achievement are not measured precisely enough to reject a null achievement effect. Chapter 3 evaluates the effects of charter schools on New York City neighborhoods. Using unique New York City laws that impact geographical access to charter schools, I employ a new approach to identifying the causal effect of charter school entry on neighborhoods. I find that for every 10 percent increase in charter market share, neighborhood student achievement (i.e. students at both charter and traditional schools) increases 0.01 standard deviations in ELA and 0.04 standard deviations in Math. I find no evidence that charter schools causally reduce or improve achievement of students remaining in traditional public schools; however, charter schools do cause substantial sorting into the neighborhood’s schools, greater concentration of students with disabilities in traditional public schools, and selection by black and Hispanic students into more segregated schools

A study of Chaucer\u27s influence on English literature through Dryden

Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the greatest poets of our English literature. If Shakespeare stands apart as our greatest, then it is John Milton who must dispute with Chaucer the honor of second place. Milton undoubtedly surpasses Chaucer in the grandeur of his imagination and the sublimity or his poetic style; but he cannot equal him in the range and variety of his art. On one hand we have Chaucer, the grave and serious poet.always keenly conscious that our human life is a shifting quicksand of mutability, that lasting happiness can never be our earthly portion; whereas we have but to turn the page and find evidence of his sprightly fancy and lively wit and humor--humor that ranges all the way from the most delicate hint or the ludicrous to the broadest farce--a farce that is often anything but delicate. Further, he brought to English poetry a wide range of experience. As a young man we know that he saw military service, and as an older man he twice made the long journey to Italy. In England , bis duties in the custom house and other employments in civil government allowed him to associate with and talk with all sorts and conditions of men. However, if he knew the world of experience.he was equally familiar with the world of books. He must have been a voracious reader. It is said that he possesBed a library or some sixty volumes,which in fourteenth century England was an imposing collection. He bad not only read or looked into the Latin classics, but he was also intimately acquainted with the courtly poets of France, and bis knowledge of Italian opened for him the great pages or Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Besides literature, we know Chaucer to have been interested in the pseudo-science of bis day, astronomy, the mysteries of alchemy, and he knew in detail the medieval theory or dreams. And, throughout hie poetry we find evidence of the philosopher--sometimes serious, sometimes delightfully ironical. It is not strange that one of his contemporaries aptly refers to him as the noble philosophical poet in English. And in addition to the variety and range or his poetry, he had shown that our newly recovered English could be the vehicle of poetry as elevated and profound as that of any poet who used the more exalted medium or Latin, or as light and graceful as that of any courtly singer of France--but he was also a poet who could condescend at times to write a lively tale of ribald farce

Beyond the Classroom and the Laboratory: General Electric Scientists Sparked an Environmental Movement

During the first decades of the 20th century, the General Electric Company, in Schenectady, New York, developed an engineer training program with a world class faculty, well-equipped laboratories, and hundreds of jobs for eager young college graduates. Scientists who had trained in disciplines of chemistry and physics in Europe were invited to work in the laboratories and were given the freedom to do “pure science,” which led to a golden age of invention. This paper traces the relationships between many of the top scientists and engineers and tells a little known story about their extracurricular activities as they took advantage of the recreating in New York’s Adirondack Park. Many of the young scientists and engineers took an interest in preserving the wilderness areas and, especially, in saving the islands of Lake George—from logging, development, and erosion caused by a commercial dam. These scientists became activists who volunteered to haul rocks, write letters, and venture into politics to help defend the Forever Wild clause of the New York Constitution. GE became a sort of incubator for leadership in the wilderness preservation movement

Mentorship experiences of doctoral students: Effects on program satisfaction and ideal mentor qualities

The road to doctoral completion is often fraught with barriers, self-doubt, and complications. Creighton, Creighton, and Parks (2010, Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 18(1), 39-52. doi:10.1080/13611260903448342) asserted that mentoring plays a crucial role in the development and success of graduate students, especially those in doctoral programs. The mentorship of doctoral students can also assist in alleviating the attrition rates that are currently estimated to be between 40% and 60%. In this quantitative study, correlational and stepwise regression analyses were conducted to examine the most beneficial qualities currently enrolled doctoral students find in a mentor and to describe the relationship between the qualities of a mentoring experience and doctoral students’ satisfaction with their program. This study analyzed data collected from currently enrolled doctoral students (n = 339) through the use of online Facebook and LinkedIn doctoral groups. The findings of this study suggested that higher reported levels of program satisfaction were significantly correlated to mentor satisfaction rates. Further, academic and instrumental mentoring scales were reported by respondents to be most beneficial qualities in a mentor. Findings of this study offered evidence that institutional and department leaders of doctoral programs can implement mentoring programs and, moreover, provide faculty members’ opportunities to build mentoring of doctoral students into their faculty loads. Leaders everywhere should recognize the importance of mentorship benefits not only to students, but also to program satisfaction, retention, and degree completion

Citron binds to PSD-95 at glutamatergic synapses on inhibitory neurons in the hippocampus

Synaptic NMDA-type glutamate receptors are anchored to the second of three PDZ (PSD-95/Discs large/ZO-1) domains in the postsynaptic density (PSD) protein PSD-95. Here, we report that citron, a protein target for the activated form of the small GTP-binding protein Rho, preferentially binds the third PDZ domain of PSD-95. In GABAergic neurons from the hippocampus, citron forms a complex with PSD-95 and is concentrated at the postsynaptic side of glutamatergic synapses. Citron is expressed only at low levels in glutamatergic neurons in the hippocampus and is not detectable at synapses onto these neurons. In contrast to citron, p135 SynGAP, an abundant synaptic Ras GTPase-activating protein that can bind to all three PDZ domains of PSD-95, and Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaM kinase II) are concentrated postsynaptically at glutamatergic synapses on glutamatergic neurons. CaM kinase II is not expressed and p135 SynGAP is expressed in less than half of hippocampal GABAergic neurons. Segregation of citron into inhibitory neurons does not occur in other brain regions. For example, citron is expressed at high levels in most thalamic neurons, which are primarily glutamatergic and contain CaM kinase II. In several other brain regions, citron is present in a subset of neurons that can be either GABAergic or glutamatergic and can sometimes express CaM kinase II. Thus, in the hippocampus, signal transduction complexes associated with postsynaptic NMDA receptors are different in glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons and are specialized in a way that is specific to the hippocampus

An emergentist critique of the contract theory of the state of nature, with a consideration on two types of polity and their origins.

The theories of the state of nature provided by the political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke have made a significant impact in the general conceptions of the origin of states. Though there are many critical differences in the conceptions of the state of nature between each in their seminal works, they both possess of a view of states that is rational and constructivist. In this paper, I use the game theory concepts of the coordination game, collective action problem, and focal point to illustrate a lacuna in this rational and constructivist conception of the origin of states, as their models of state formation contain their own collective action problems. I then utilize the evolutionary biology theories of inclusive fitness and kin selection to pose a model of the origin of states that is based on an emergent dynamic. In this model, I suggest that states are social technologies whose early instantiations are made to mediate between kinship groups, acquiring constructive characteristics as social complexity builds and the needs and structure of society shifts. I discuss a number of historical anecdotes to illustrate this point. Lastly, I propose two models of state organization utilizing the Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of rhizomatic and arborescent structures based on this emergent conception of the state of nature. I also make use of the systems theory concept of cybernetics to consider control structures and efficiency in these political structures. Some states maintain arborescent structures, with the potential for complete sovereignty consisting of a monopoly on violence and the right to decide exceptions to legal and customary procedure. Others are rhizomatic, consisting of institutional networks in a state of political equilibrium without a central coordinating organization. Both types contain emergent and constructed forms, but the existence of constructed polities of either type is reliant on the emergent of constructed forms first