Patterns of Failure in Texas Urban Improvement Required Schools: An Equity Audit Expansion

The achievement gap is a concept that has long been explored in education; students of color, low socioeconomic status, those who speak languages other than English, and students labeled as special education perform lower on student achievement tests and often receive less in terms of funding and resources (Harris & Hopson, 2008). Brown (2010) stated, As a result, these students, without realizing it, often fall into a predetermined mold designed for school failure and social inequity (p. 2)

Managing the Regulatory State: The Experience of the Bush Administration

This Article traces the history of Presidential management of the regulatory state up to the administration of President George W. Bush. It focuses on the latter\u27s implementation of smarter regulation, an approach to regulation based on unfunded mandates on the private sector implemented through the Office of Management and Budget, an organization within the Executive Office of the President. It finds cost-benefit analysis an essential, yet often neglected, tool for implementing efficient and effective regulations. It concludes the policies promoted under President Bush\u27s OMB have effectively cut costs by streamlining the rule-making process and discouraging adopting new federal rules, but cautions there is still a sea of overlapping regulations and conflict over turf among agencies causing the administrative state to steadily rise in cost

Environmental Education Programming for the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service.

Environmental education is a component of community-based education programs. Environmental education in the United States and in Louisiana was described (Objectives 1 and 2). Because of rapid changes in environmental science, and the responses of citizens to environmental topics, extension faculty need additional programming techniques and more process and strategic skills training. Programming techniques and skills training were reviewed (Objective 3). Extension has included representatives from key state and federal agencies with expertise in, and responsibility for, environmental topics on its environmental education advisory committees. The Delphi technique was utilized in this study, with agency representatives as panelists, to determine and prioritize subject matter content for an environmental education program to be delivered to farmers (Objective 4). The Round 1 instrument included a list of 55 environmental topics which was provided to 56 state and federal agency representatives. Panelists were asked to rate the topics for inclusion in an environmental education program for farmers and were invited to add topics. Of 56 potential panelists, 41 responded, and ten added 25 topics. The Round 2 instrument included the individual panelist\u27s Round 1 ratings, the mean of the panel\u27s Round 1 ratings, the 25 added topics, a request to rate the added topics, and an invitation to change any Round 1 rating. Of 41 Round 1 panelists, 40 responded to Round 2. Most chose not to change any of their Round 1 topic ratings. Drinking water and point source water quality categories of topics received higher ratings while air quality and solid waste categories received lower ratings. The Delphi method provided an efficient and inexpensive technique for obtaining the views of agency experts. It is one method for obtaining input from advisory committees, for enhancing collaboration between extension educators and agency representatives, and for helping panelists learn more about a wide range of environmental topics. It should be used by extension environmental educators

A laboratory investigation of anaerobic sludge digestion for dairy manure

An increasing trend toward total confinement of dairy herds as well as livestock being fed for marketing has resulted in farmers having large volumes of manure produced in small areas. The encroachment of suburbia into farming areas has added new problems to the burden of manure disposal. Efficient, economical methods of stabilizing large volumes of manure and rendering it free from odor while reducing its potential as a pollutant are necessary. Anaerobic sludge digestion is one possible method of stabilizing manure and eliminating odor with a minimum of labor and with possible valuable by-products to help offset its cost. The purpose of this study was to design and build laboratory equipment with which to investigate anaerobic sludge digestion of dairy manure, and to investigate the effects of sludge mixing on reduction of total volume, total solids, volatile solids and on gas production. The laboratory equipment was built and was operated continuously for three months. The data collected indicated that continuously mixed digesters were considerably more effective than unmixed or partially mixed digesters. Increasing the speed of mixing had little effect on total or volatile solids content of the settled sludge. Increased mixing speed significantly increased the total and volatile solids con-tent of the supernatant. An optimum mixing speed for maximum gas pro-duction was observed, above or below which gas production decreased, The author concluded that anaerobic sludge digesters may play an important role in agricultural waste disposal and that gas mixing should be preferred to mechanical mixing

Uncovering Meaning in Montessori Teachers’ Lived Experiences of Cosmic Education as a Tool for Social Justice

This inquiry focused on the lived experiences of Montessori teachers in implementing Montessori’s Cosmic Education as a tool for social justice in their classrooms in order to more fully understand Cosmic Education’s meaning, purpose, and practice. The researcher also sought to understand how Cosmic Education could be an effective pedagogy of place, providing historical and social contexts in which students may develop and grow. The study used a post-intentional phenomenological design (Vagle, 2014), and was based on a series of interviews with five Montessori teachers from different classroom age levels. The data were analyzed using poetic inquiry through the form of found poetry. Emerging themes of Cosmic Education as a pedagogy of place and how that pedagogy of place contributed to agency in social justice were identified

Instructional Transformation: How do Teaching and Learning Change with a One-to-one Laptop Implementation?

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the College of Education at Morehead State University by John C. Branch IV on April 29, 2014

Adaptive learning, endogenous inattention, and changes in monetary policy

This paper develops an adaptive learning formulation of an extension to the Ball, Mankiw, and Reis (2005) sticky information model that incorporates endogenous inattention. We show that, following an exogenous increase in the policymaker’s preferences for price vs. output stability, the learning process can converge to a new equilibrium in which both output and price volatility are lower.Monetary policy ; Information theory