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The effects of school reform under NCLB waivers: Evidence from focus schools in Kentucky.
Under waivers to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the federal government required states to identify schools where targeted subgroups of students have the lowest achievement and to implement reforms in these “Focus Schools.” In this study, we examine the Focus School reforms in the state of Kentucky. The reforms in this state are uniquely interesting for several reasons. One is that the state developed unusually explicit guidance for Focus Schools centered on a comprehensive school-planning process. Second, the state identified Focus Schools using a “super subgroup” measure that combined traditionally low-performing subgroups into an umbrella group. This design feature may have catalyzed broader whole-school reforms and attenuated the incentives to target reform efforts narrowly. Using regression discontinuity designs, we find that these reforms led to substantial improvements in school performance, raising math achievement by 17 percent and reading achievement by 9 percent
On the Photorefractive Gunn Effect
We present and numerically solve a model of the photorefractive Gunn effect.
We find that high field domains can be triggered by phase-locked interference
fringes, as it has been recently predicted on the basis of linear stability
considerations. Since the Gunn effect is intrinsically nonlinear, we find that
such considerations give at best order-of-magnitude estimations of the
parameters critical to the photorefractive Gunn effect. The response of the
system is much more complex including multiple wave shedding from the injecting
contact, wave suppression and chaos with spatial structure.Comment: Revtex, 8 pag., 4 fig. (jpg), submit to Physical Review
Chaotic motion of space charge wavefronts in semiconductors under time-independent voltage bias
A standard drift-diffusion model of space charge wave propagation in
semiconductors has been studied numerically and analytically under dc voltage
bias. For sufficiently long samples, appropriate contact resistivity and
applied voltage - such that the sample is biased in a regime of negative
differential resistance - we find chaos in the propagation of nonlinear fronts
(charge monopoles of alternating sign) of electric field. The chaos is always
low-dimensional, but has a complex spatial structure; this behavior can be
interpreted using a finite dimensional asymptotic model in which the front
(charge monopole) positions and the electrical current are the only dynamical
variables.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure
TEFL principles for teaching English in changing Times
Today’s society is influenced by new information technologies, which causes important sociological changes that impact education. As such, the field of EFL today demands different abilities and attitudes from teachers. This paper has two objectives: first, to initiate a reflection on the EFL teachers’ role, taking as an assumption that teachers have been influenced by cultural background experiences in their professional development and that this has caused them to develop a narrow view of ideal methods which may not be appealing for nowadays situations, and second, to propose three principles in foreign language teaching that will allow seeing EFL tasks from a wider view: 1) evaluating what comes from one’s cultural background that conforms to a general understanding of what teaching is, 2) re-shaping the teachers’ role in order to align with society’s demands and 3) assuming a dialogic process to building classroom strategies for language teaching and learning
An intercultural exchange: A reflection of the aspects involved
Interculturality is a trend that has been more visualized nowadays as a consequence of globalization ideas which have cause different cultures to meet. According to this, this article represents a reflection on issues related to interculturality based on the author’s experience when she took part of a trip as a cultural exchange in Scotland in a program granted by the ICETEX and the British council. The development of the article displays theoretical concepts of interculturality illustrated by the author’s anecdotes when she faced the changes in assimilating and accommodating to that new culture. Finally, she introduces a reflection on how these intercultural interchanges made another shape in her actual teaching of the Foreign language
Mentoring Models for student-teachers professional development
This short article was published in a newsletter and it is based on a previous article published called "mentoring pre-service teachers: from reflection to a didactic proposal". The intention in this review is to stress a proposal that can be an innovation for mentoring teachers more focused on critical reflection
Chaos in resonant-tunneling superlattices
Spatio-temporal chaos is predicted to occur in n-doped semiconductor
superlattices with sequential resonant tunneling as their main charge transport
mechanism. Under dc voltage bias, undamped time-dependent oscillations of the
current (due to the motion and recycling of electric field domain walls) have
been observed in recent experiments. Chaos is the result of forcing this
natural oscillation by means of an appropriate external microwave signal.Comment: 3 pages, LaTex, RevTex, 3 uuencoded figures (1.2M) are available upon
request from [email protected], to appear in Phys.Rev.
A moment based approach to the dynamical solution of the Kuramoto model
We examine the dynamics of the Kuramoto model with a new analytical approach.
By defining an appropriate set of moments the dynamical equations can be
exactly closed. We discuss some applications of the formalism like the
existence of an effective Hamiltonian for the dynamics. We also show how this
approach can be used to numerically investigate the dynamical behavior of the
model without finite size effects.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Revtex file, to appear in J. Phys.
Two mini-band model for self-sustained oscillations of the current through resonant tunneling semiconductor superlattices
A two miniband model for electron transport in semiconductor superlattices
that includes scattering and interminiband tunnelling is proposed. The model is
formulated in terms of Wigner functions in a basis spanned by Pauli matrices,
includes electron-electron scattering in the Hartree approximation and modified
Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook collision tems. For strong applied fields, balance
equations for the electric field and the miniband populations are derived using
a Chapman-Enskog perturbation technique. These equations are then solved
numerically for a dc voltage biased superlattice. Results include
self-sustained current oscillations due to repeated nucleation of electric
field pulses at the injecting contact region and their motion towards the
collector. Numerical reconstruction of the Wigner functions shows that the
miniband with higher energy is empty during most of the oscillation period: it
becomes populated only when the local electric field (corresponding to the
passing pulse) is sufficiently large to trigger resonant tunneling.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Nonequilibrium free energy, H theorem and self-sustained oscillations for Boltzmann-BGK descriptions of semiconductor superlattices
Semiconductor superlattices (SL) may be described by a Boltzmann-Poisson
kinetic equation with a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collision term which
preserves charge, but not momentum or energy. Under appropriate boundary and
voltage bias conditions, these equations exhibit time-periodic oscillations of
the current caused by repeated nucleation and motion of charge dipole waves.
Despite this clear nonequilibrium behavior, if we `close' the system by
attaching insulated contacts to the superlattice and keeping its voltage bias
to zero volts, we can prove the H theorem, namely that a free energy
of the kinetic equations is a Lyapunov functional (, ). Numerical simulations confirm that the free energy decays to its
equilibrium value for a closed SL, whereas for an `open' SL under appropriate
dc voltage bias and contact conductivity oscillates in time with the
same frequency as the current self-sustained oscillations.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, minor revision of latex fil
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