Pursuing the Principalship: Factors in Assistant Principals’ Decisions

School administrators who are hired to lead and guide schools and districts must possess a number of characteristics that allow them to become successful leaders. The presence or absence of a strong educational leader can make all the difference in school climate and student achievement (Kelley, Thornton, & Daugherty, 2005). Educational leaders need to be cognizant of what constitutes an effective leader and which characteristics have the most effective impact on student achievement. Alford et al. (2011) stated, while principals are engaged in the managerial tasks of the school, securing the building for safety, ensuring bus routes, student schedules, and the day-to-day management tasks, the instructional needs of the faculty and students compete for attention (p. 29)

An Examination of Student Disengagement and Reengagement from an Alternative High School

Each year, 20% of U.S. students drop out of high school (Balfanz, Bridgeland, Bruce, & Fox, 2013). There is an abundance of research on student behaviors from researchers who explored the process of student disengagement from school (Bowers, Sprott, & Taff, 2013; Lessard, Butler-Kisber, Fortin, Marcotte, Potvin, & Royer, 2008), however there is a lack of understanding of why students disengage in the first place. This study was conducted to examine students’ perceptions of the effect of an alternative high school on their decision to either graduate or drop out. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with ten former students and three staff members from an alternative high school. Half of the former student participants who reengaged by attending the alternative high school graduated and half of them did not. The former students perceived that relationships between staff members and students led to the success of the alternative high school. They believed that push-out factors at the traditional high school caused their disengagement, and that they exercised autonomy in their choices of whether pull-out factors would impact their decision to graduate or drop out. The former students shared that personalized instruction and peer-to-peer learning encouraged them to feel ownership for their learning and taught them to respect fellow students and teachers. Data from the teacher and administrator interviews provided additional information about the workings of the alternative high school

Do Resources Matter? The Relationship Between Instructional Expenditures and College Readiness Indicators

Public schools face seemingly endless scrutiny. Educators have experienced an increased level of accountability and demand to graduate students who are college ready or well prepared to enter the workforce. The topic of educational funding is often at the forefront of public discussion and debate in Texas. While policymakers recurrently examine the way public schools have been funded (Fermanich, 2009), school district leaders are forced to unrelentingly evaluate and assess the efficacy and results of instructional programs and performance measures. With the push for college readiness for all students, the topic of funding adequacy has continued to be an issue

Reports of the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) Management measures for sole in area VIIa (STECF-16-04).

The European Commission may consult the STECF on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines. This report deals with management measures for sole in area VIIa. The STECF issues its advice by written procedure in March 2016.JRC.G.3 - Maritime affair

Methodological Issues in Multistage Genome-Wide Association Studies

Because of the high cost of commercial genotyping chip technologies, many investigations have used a two-stage design for genome-wide association studies, using part of the sample for an initial discovery of ``promising'' SNPs at a less stringent significance level and the remainder in a joint analysis of just these SNPs using custom genotyping. Typical cost savings of about 50% are possible with this design to obtain comparable levels of overall type I error and power by using about half the sample for stage I and carrying about 0.1% of SNPs forward to the second stage, the optimal design depending primarily upon the ratio of costs per genotype for stages I and II. However, with the rapidly declining costs of the commercial panels, the generally low observed ORs of current studies, and many studies aiming to test multiple hypotheses and multiple endpoints, many investigators are abandoning the two-stage design in favor of simply genotyping all available subjects using a standard high-density panel. Concern is sometimes raised about the absence of a ``replication'' panel in this approach, as required by some high-profile journals, but it must be appreciated that the two-stage design is not a discovery/replication design but simply a more efficient design for discovery using a joint analysis of the data from both stages. Once a subset of highly-significant associations has been discovered, a truly independent ``exact replication'' study is needed in a similar population of the same promising SNPs using similar methods.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-STS288 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Principles for the post-GWAS functional characterisation of risk loci

Several challenges lie ahead in assigning functionality to susceptibility SNPs. For example, most effect sizes are small relative to effects seen in monogenic diseases, with per allele odds ratios usually ranging from 1.15 to 1.3. It is unclear whether current molecular biology methods have enough resolution to differentiate such small effects. Our objective here is therefore to provide a set of recommendations to optimize the allocation of effort and resources in order maximize the chances of elucidating the functional contribution of specific loci to the disease phenotype. It has been estimated that 88% of currently identified disease-associated SNP are intronic or intergenic. Thus, in this paper we will focus our attention on the analysis of non-coding variants and outline a hierarchical approach for post-GWAS functional studies

Multiple functional risk variants in a SMAD7 enhancer implicate a colorectal cancer risk haplotype

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of colorectal cancer (CRC) have led to the identification of a number of common variants associated with modest risk. Several risk variants map within the vicinity of TGFβ/BMP signaling pathway genes, including rs4939827 within an intron of SMAD7 at 18q21.1. A previous study implicated a novel SNP (novel 1 or rs58920878) as a functional variant within an enhancer element in SMAD7 intron 4. In this study, we show that four SNPs including novel 1 (rs6507874, rs6507875, rs8085824, and rs58920878) in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with the index SNP rs4939827 demonstrate allele-specific enhancer effects in a large, multi-component enhancer of SMAD7. All four SNPs demonstrate allele-specific protein binding to nuclear extracts of CRC cell lines. Furthermore, some of the risk-associated alleles correlate with increased expression of SMAD7 in normal colon tissues. Finally, we show that the enhancer is responsive to BMP4 stimulation. Taken together, we propose that the associated CRC risk at 18q21.1 is due to four functional variants that regulate SMAD7 expression and potentially perturb a BMP negative feedback loop in TGFβ/BMP signaling pathways

The Persistence and Attrition of Online Learners

Student retention is a growing concern as more university programs move toward online learning. With a continual increase in online program choices, it is important to recognize course elements that affect the success of online learners (Kane, Shaw, Pang, Salley, & Snider, 2015). University professors need strategies to provide assistance for students and to decrease the number of students who fail to progress in online programs. It is important that faculty support students, but just as important that universities provide time, opportunities, and resources for such support to occur

Concordance studies between hospital discharge data and medical records for the recording of lower extremity amputation and diabetes in the Republic of Ireland.

Background Hospital discharge data have been used to study trends in Lower Extremity Amputation (LEA) rates in people with and without diabetes. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of routine hospital discharge data in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) for this purpose by determining the level of agreement between hospital discharge data and medical records for both the occurrence of LEA and diagnosis of diabetes. Methods Two concordance studies between hospital discharge data (HIPE) and medical records were performed. To determine the level of agreement for LEA occurrence, HIPE records were compared to theatre logbooks in 9 hospitals utilising HIPE over a two-year period in a defined study area. To determine the level of agreement for diabetes diagnosis, HIPE records were compared to laboratory records in each of the 4 largest hospitals utilising HIPE over a one week period in the same study area. The proportions of positive and negative agreement and Cohen’s kappa statistic of agreement were calculated. Results During a two-year study period in 9 hospitals, 216 LEAs were recorded in both data sources. Sixteen LEAs were recorded in medical records alone and 25 LEAs were recorded in hospital discharge records alone. The proportion of positive agreement was 0.91 (95% CI 0.88-0.94), the proportion of negative agreement was 0.99 (95% CI 0.98-0.99) and the kappa statistic was 0.91 (95% CI 0.88-0.94). During a one-week study period in 4 hospitals, 49 patients with diabetes and 716 patients without diabetes were recorded in both data sources. Eighteen patients had diabetes in medical records alone and 2 patients had diabetes in hospital discharge records alone. The proportion of positive agreement was 0.83 (95% CI 0.76-0.9), the proportion of negative agreement was 0.99 (95% CI 0.98-0.99) and the kappa statistic was 0.82 (95% CI 0.75-0.89). Conclusions This study detected high levels of agreement between hospital discharge data and medical records for LEA and diabetes in a defined study area. Based on these findings, we suggest that HIPE is sufficiently reliable to monitor trends in LEAs in people with and without diabetes in the RoI