Teachers and student achievement in the Chicago public high schools

We match administrative data on Chicago public high school students and teachers at the classroom level to estimate the importance of teachers to mathematics test score gains. We show that sampling variation and other measurement issues are important drivers of naïve estimates of teacher effects, in some cases accounting for the majority of dispersion in teacher quality. However, correcting for these problems, teachers are still economically and statistically influential. Replacing a teacher with another that is rated two standard deviations superior in quality can add 0.35 to 0.45 grade equivalents, or 30 to 40 percent of an average school year, to a student's math score performance. Furthermore, the teacher quality ratings are relatively stable within an individual instructor over time and reasonably consistent across most student types, with the notable exception of the lowest achieving students, where the same two standard deviation improvement in teacher quality adds only 0.20 grade equivalents. Finally, we relate our measured teacher effects to observable characteristics of the instructors and show that the vast majority is unexplained by standard observable characteristics of teachers, including those that are typically used for compensation purposesAchievement tests - Illinois ; Education

Clipart Pastoral: Image and the Labour of Lyric Selfhood in Contemporary British Poetry

Given on 7/5/2015 at The Place For Poetr

Don Delillo's Point Omega: Mediated Vision and the Novel After the Subject

Given 23/2/2016 at London Conference of Critical Thought 201

Buffer Zones: Visuality and the Time of Networks in Tom McCarthy's Satin Island

Given on 6/3/2016 at Birkbeck English and Humanities' Work In Progress conferenc

10:04: Everyday Life and the Novel as Late Capitalist Limit-Form

Given on 23/11/2016 at Historical Materialism conference 201

Enhanced Multi-Qubit Phase Estimation in Noisy Environments by Local Encoding

The first generation of multi-qubit quantum technologies will consist of noisy, intermediate-scale devices for which active error correction remains out of reach. To exploit such devices, it is thus imperative to use passive error protection that meets a careful trade-off between noise protection and resource overhead. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that single-qubit encoding can significantly enhance the robustness of entanglement and coherence of four-qubit graph states against local noise with a preferred direction. In particular, we explicitly show that local encoding provides a significant practical advantage for phase estimation in noisy environments. This demonstrates the efficacy of local unitary encoding under realistic conditions, with potential applications in multi-qubit quantum technologies for metrology, multi-partite secrecy and error correction.Comment: 7 figure

Non-Trivial Vacua in Higher-Derivative Gravitation

A discussion of an extended class of higher-derivative classical theories of gravity is presented. A procedure is given for exhibiting the new propagating degrees of freedom, at the full non-linear level, by transforming the higher-derivative action to a canonical second-order form. For general fourth-order theories, described by actions which are general functions of the scalar curvature, the Ricci tensor and the full Riemann tensor, it is shown that the higher-derivative theories may have multiple stable vacua. The vacua are shown to be, in general, non-trivial, corresponding to deSitter or anti-deSitter solutions of the original theory. It is also shown that around any vacuum the elementary excitations remain the massless graviton, a massive scalar field and a massive ghost-like spin-two field. The analysis is extended to actions which are arbitrary functions of terms of the form $\nabla^{2k}R$, and it is shown that such theories also have a non-trivial vacuum structure.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX2e with AMS-LaTeX 1.2, 7 eps figure

Dispelling the Myths of Hunger: The Atlanta Community Food Bank and Collins Memorial UMC

Our group worked with the Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB) on their campaign to showcase the work of their partner agency Collins Memorial United Methodist Church (Collins Memorial UMC) through utilizing social media. We assisted ACFB in this endeavor by creating a short video which will be featured on the ACFB website and YouTube channel. We also created a sustainability plan booklet so that the project could be duplicated to showcase other partnerships. During the month of January, we researched the area of Bolton Road where distribution takes place and performed windshield and walking tours to have a deeper understanding of the need of fresh food supply in the community. Additionally, our student group volunteered to assist in distributing food to over 300 people weekly at the food pantry from the end of January 2013 through April 2013. On distribution days, we met with volunteers and clients and gained knowledge about the history of the area from formal and informal interviews. In April, we spent much of our time editing our final video and creating a sustainability plan. Our work with Collins Memorial UMC helped to identify the common interests of the community and key stakeholders: to end hunger and food insecurity. The utilization of social media will help the ACFB disseminate that message that hunger is a prevalent social issue which affects varying classes and populations, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or gender, available to a wide audience

Validation of Optimal Fourier Rheometry for rapidly gelling materials and its application in the study of collagen gelation

Rheological Gel Point measurements may incur errors in the case of rapid gelling systemsdue to the limitations of multiple frequency oscillatory shear techniques such as frequency sweeps and Fourier Transform Mechanical Spectroscopy, FTMS. These limitations are associated with sample mutation and data interpolation. In the present paper we consider how an alternative rapid characterisation technique known as Optimal Fourier Rheometry, OFR, can be used to study a rapidly gelling material, namely collagen at near physiological temperatures. The OFR technique is validated using a model reference gelling system whose GP characteristics have been widely reported. An analysis of the susceptibility of OFR measurements to rheometrical artefacts is made prior to its use in study of rapid gelling collagen gels formed over a range of physiologically relevant collagen concentrations. The results of this OFR are the first measurements of the stress relaxation characteristics of collagen gels in a single rheological experiment