Response to “Issues of Academic Support and Performance of Division I Student-Athletes: A Case Study at the University of Minnesota”

“Issues of Academic Support and Performance of Division I Student-athletes: A Case Study at the University of Minnesota” (Kane, Leo, & Holleran, 2008) describes the process used by the University of Minnesota to examine the current state of academics and make data-based recommendations for the improvement of academic support for student-athletes. This paper serves as a benchmark paper for university administrators, faculty, and athletics departments. Many universities have undertaken self-examination in parallel efforts, but few have either documented their process and/or been willing to publicly share the process or the data. The papers’ authors provide important insights into the factors leading to meaningful examination of the issues and the politics leading to significant changes. Too often, in program evaluation (which this study truly was), the investigator fails to incorporate the necessary steps to ensure the identification of the appropriate questions, to gather data to adequately address critical questions relating to decision making, or to strategically include the decision makers who ultimately have the responsibility and the power to implement recommendations. To that end, the work of the University of Minnesota is a model for such a process. Hence, identifying and extracting model processes and examining those processes for ways to improve them can serve to guide others who have similar goals for their athletics programs

A Theoretical And Empirical Investigation Of The Impact Of Labor Flexibility On Risk And The Cost Of Equity Capital

This paper analytically and empirically investigates the linkage between labor costs and a firm’s income volatility, equity risk, and cost of capital. While the relationship between labor costs and the firm’s cost of capital under uncertainty conditions is important, there has been little research examining this issue. While we control for fixed labor costs, we focus on labor flexibility effects as the U.S. temporary staffing sales for 2005 totaled $69.5 billion, 8.5% more than in the previous year (American Staffing Association, 2007). Within the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) framework, we demonstrate analytically and empirically that labor flexibility reduces income volatility, equity risk and cost of capital in the service industry. However, we find that labor leverage has no impact on income volatility, and increases equity risk and cost of equity capital. These results suggest that managers can structure labor costs to minimize the firm’s risk and maximize shareholder value

Do Trading Derivatives Classification Affect Bank Holding Company’s Earnings Volatility And Firm Value?

This study examines the differential impact of bank holding companies (BHCs) that consistently report trading gains (successful speculators) and those that consistently report no gain or trading losses (unsuccessful speculators) on earnings volatility and firm value. Under Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 815 (previously SFAS 133- Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities), all gains/losses related to trading derivatives are recognized in current earnings; whereas, gains/losses on hedging derivatives are netted with changes in the fair value of the underlying asset/liability with only the ineffective portion of the hedge being reported in current earnings. Given differential accounting recognition and underlying risk factors, we expect and find that current period trading gains/losses lead to greater earnings volatility; however, the relationship becomes insignificant when BHCs consistently report trading gains (successful speculators) or no gains and trading losses (unsuccessful speculation). Further we find that successful speculation is significantly negatively associated with firm value, which implies that market participants perceive trading positions held by BHCs as high-risk investments regardless of the outcome of the trading exposure. The findings of this study should be useful to business professionals, bank regulators, and accounting standard setters in determining the economic impact of current accounting standards on bank performance, investors in evaluating the costs and benefits of bank’s derivative risk management policies, and accounting academics in evaluating the impact of current accounting regulation on bank derivative use

LESSONS LEARNED FROM EVALUATING PROGRAMS POR THE GIPTED PROMISING PRACTICES AND PRACTICAL PITFALLS

The world of gifted education is often guided by good theory and research, but sometimes we are not aware of some ofthe practical advice that can be derived from the evaluations of other programs for gifted ad talented students. In this article, I have used my experiences as a program evaluator in identifying both the strengths and weaknesses of programs to suggest common áreas of weaknesses in these programs recommend basic practices that have contributed to the success of gifted programs. The recommendations for administrators and teachers are organized around five categories which were first suggested by Renzulli (1975): program philosophy anddeftnition, student identification and placement, the curriculum, teacher selection and training, and program organization and operation. The basic premise for all high quality programming stems from a sound definition of giftedness and a philosophy for serving gifted students that is consistent with the definition and which is based on principies that are in accord with other educational philosophies of the school. In addition, the  philosophy of providing services should be aligned with the needs of the gifted student that are suggested by the definition that has been adopted. When careful consideration is given to this aspect of program development, there is increased likelihood that other components will also be high quality.Naturally student identification and placement should be an out growth of the definition of giftedness. Further, placement should be according to the needs of the students, not on the basis of fitting all gifted students to one programming arrangement and one curricular offering. It is also important that curriculum be based on the characteristics of the identifted students. One of the major shortcomings in curricular options for gifted students is failure to provide a curriculum that both satisfies Passow criteria (1982), that this curriculum should be curriculum that other students could not do, should not do, and would not do. In addition, the curriculum should be based on sound developmental principies, should reflect attention to increasing complexity, abstractness, pace, openness, independence, insight and transfer, and sophisticated levels ofresource use. Further, program offerings should provide opportunities for appropriate cognitive, social and emotional development of gifted students. The dimensión of curriculum associated with assessment must also be modified for gifted students to ensure they are leaming to strive for excellence in the absolute sense rather than relative to peers and that they are leaming to créate products reflective of the practitioners and researchers in the disciplines The aspects of teacher selection and training are based on both skill and attitude toward teaching the gifted. Teachers should be selected because they have a knowledge of the characteristics and needs of gifted students, because they have a sound knowledge of the discipline(s) they teach, and because they have the repertoire of teaching strategies to deliver a high leveland engaging curriculum. Finally, teachers need a continuing, sound, coherent and focused staff development program that provides coherent support in delivering a program focused on the needs ofthe students. Finally, successful programs are based on careful education of the general staff ofthe school, on a clearly delineated administrative leader with skills in program development and the time to apply those skills, and on adequate resources for the instructional tasks at hand.The last variable which is included in the category of program operation is evaluation, and I offer suggestions for the evaluator as well. These range from identification and involvement of the individuáis who are most impacted by the program, of evaluation of both the documents and thepractice ofthe program, and for maximizing the impact of the evaluation process

Comparative analyses of discourse in specialized STEM school classes

The authors detail the discourse patterns observed within mathematics and science classes at specialized STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) high schools. Analyses reveal that teachers in mathematics classes tended to engage their students in authoritative discourse while teachers in science classes tended to engage students in dialogic discourse. The authors examined variations in the type of discourse in relationship to the discipline being taught, the educational level of the teacher, and course requirements were also explored

The Long-Term Performance Consequences Of Strategic Partnerships In High Tech Industries

In this paper, we examine how inter-firm partnerships impact long-term operating performance. With a global economy, rapid product cycles, capital constraints and advances in technology, firms seldom possess all the capabilities necessary to maintain and grow market share. Consequently, firms rely on a variety of partnerships. Theory suggests that firms enter such relationships to improve performance through access to new products, new markets, or new capabilities. Yet, relatively little is known about the long-term impact of collaborative arrangements such as alliances and established major customer relationships, although such dual partnership arrangements can have a major impact on the firm’s performance success. Our empirical results indicate that inter-firm partnerships affect operating performance, but the impact often depends on the industry, the nature of the firm, and the type of partnership

Human Resource Outsourcing: Long Term Operating Performance Effects From The Providers Perspective

Human resource (HR) outsourcing research has primarily focused on the client with little attention paid to the service provider. As an initial step in understanding this important stakeholder in the HR outsourcing relationship, this study focuses on the financial performance of HR service firms that publicly announce outsourcing contracts. From the provider’s perspective, we investigate firm performance changes subsequent to outsourcing contract announcements, using a sample of 94 publicly available press releases. Our tests show that in the long term, small HR service providers contracted by large client firms experience improvements in operating profitability and margins

Responding to the Challenges of Gifted Education in Rural Communities

There are both achievement and opportunity gaps for low-income students when compared to their economically advantaged peers; and, for rural students, these gaps may be even more pronounced. In this manuscript we draw from our ongoing work in a five-year federally-funded, Jacob K. Javits grant focusing on promoting gifted education in rural schools. To address issues of under-identification of gifted students in these settings, and to investigate ways to maximize achievement, we established an alternative process for identifying gifted students in rural schools; and we created units integrating place-based pedagogy within an evidence-based curriculum model as an intervention. Finally, we discuss preliminary findings from the pilot year and first half of the second year of the study documenting success in augmenting the pool of identified students and engaging teachers in implementing the curriculum. Perhaps more importantly, we document lessons learned and more global takeaways for the field. Specifically, we discuss the influence of deficit thinking with regard to rural schooling (and subsequent recognition of gifts and talents), the risk of generalizing rural to all rural places, and the nuances of rural poverty not captured in commonly used metrics, such as Free and Reduced Lunch

Human resource outsourcing: Market and operating performance effects of administrative HR functions

Using event study methodology and two-stage regression analysis on a sample of firms announcing human resource outsourcing (HRO) contracts, this study tests the association between administrative HRO and firm-level capital market and long run operating performance, with archival financial data controlling for endogeneity and outsourcing decision optimality. The results demonstrate that the equity capital market responds positively to client firms announcing administrative HRO, particularly service firms and those outsourcing transactional HR tasks. Additional statistical analysis shows that suboptimal outsourcing is negatively associated with long run operating performance measured as return on assets and operating return on assets. This study contributes to outsourcing literature by more precisely quantifying outsourcing performance through archival financial data and employing capital market empirical tests. Further, it controls for outsourcing decision optimality in examining long run operating performance effects. This research focuses on HR, a critical function within the firm and value enhancing to the firm

Exploring the Relationship Between Fidelity of Implementation and Academic Achievement in a Third-Grade Gifted Curriculum: A Mixed-Methods Study

This study used sequential mixed-methods analyses to investigate the effectiveness of a research-based language arts curriculum for gifted third graders. Using analytic induction, researchers found that teachers’ beliefs and expectations (time, sense of autonomy, expectations for students, professional expertise) influenced the degree to which they implemented the research intervention with fidelity to its design. Next, maximum variation sampling and quantitative analysis of student outcomes determined that postassessment achievement test scores are higher for students in classrooms with teachers who show high fidelity or adherence to the intervention