The educational effectiveness of bilingual education

Bilingual education is the use of the native tongue to instruct limited Englishspeaking children. The authors read studies of bilingual education from the earliest period of this literature to the most recent. Of the 300 program evaluations read, only 72 (25%) were methodologically acceptable - that is, they had a treatment and control group and a statistical control for pre-treatment differences where groups were not randomly assigned. Virtually all of the studies in the United States were of elementary or junior high school students and Spanish speakers; The few studies conducted outside the United States were almost all in Canada. The research evidence indicates that, on standardized achievement tests, transitional bilingual education (TBE) is better than regular classroom instruction in only 22% of the methodologically acceptable studies when the outcome is reading, 7% of the studies when the outcome is language, and 9% of the studies when the outcome is math. TBE is never better than structured immersion, a special program for limited English proficient children where the children are in a self-contained classroom composed solely of English learners, but the instruction is in English at a pace they can understand. Thus, the research evidence does not support transitional bilingual education as a superior form of instruction for limited English proficient children

High School Choice in New York City: A Report on the School Choices and Placements of Low-Achieving Students

School choice policies, a fixture of efforts to improve public education in many cities. aim to enable families to choose a school that they believe will best meet their child's needs. In New York City, choice and the development of a diverse portfolio of options have played central roles in the Department of Education's high school reform efforts. This report examines the choices and placements of New York City's lowest-achieving students: those scoring among the bottom 20 percent on standardized state tests in middle school. Focusing on data from 2007 to 2011, the report looks at who these low-achieving students are, including how their demographics compare to other students in NYC, the educational challenges they face, and where they live. The bulk of the report reviews low-achieving students' most preferred schools and the ones to which they were ultimately assigned, assessing how these schools compare to those of their higher-achieving peers. The findings show that low-achieving students attended schools that were lower performing, on average, than those of all other students. This was driven by differences in students' initial choices: low-achieving students' first-choice schools were less selective, lower-performing, and more disadvantaged. Overall, lower-achievingand higher-achieving students were matched to their top choices at the same rate. Importantly, both low- and higher-achieving students appear to prefer schools that are close to home, suggesting that differences in students' choices likely reflect, at least in part, the fact that lower-achieving students are highly concentrated in poor neighborhoods, where options may be more limited

Metadata and Minerals : A Library – Museum Pilot Project

The Arthur Lakes Library and the Geology Museum at Colorado School of Mines (Mines) worked together to explore ways to promote the Museum’s unique collections. A task force formed to conduct a pilot project that involved creating digital access, via Mines Institutional Repository, to a set of the Museum’s mineral specimens from Creede Mining District. The Metadata Librarian collaborated with the Museum Collections Manager throughout this process to establish metadata requirements and workflows. This presentation explains how the pilot project came about and describes the preparation, metadata and workflow development, as well as the collaborative experience and evolution of this project

Transactive Knowledge Systems, Shared Leadership Style, and Team Effectiveness

This dissertation examines relationships between transactive memory and transactive knowledge systems, shared leadership style, and team effectiveness. Transactive memory as mediator, perspective-taking and motivation as moderators, and temporal development of transactive memory are also examined. Two studies tested an IMOI model of relationships in a longitudinal field study of students in teams and in an on-line cross-sectional sample of working adults in the United States. Study 1 and 2 provided support for shared leadership style as predictive of transactive memory, and for shared leadership style and transactive memory as predictive of team effectiveness. Both studies support transactive memory and transactive knowledge systems as mediating the relationship between shared leadership style and team effectiveness. No support emerged for perspective-taking or motivation as moderators or for situational factors influencing transactive knowledge systems over time. Findings indicate that situational factors influence emergent team cognitive structures, such as transactive memory, consequently influencing team effectiveness outcomes. Multilevel Linear Models, Study 1. Amazon Mechanical Turks, Study 2

Challenging the 'Shiʿi Century': the Fatimids (909-1171), Buyids (945-1055), and the creation of a sectarian narrative of Medieval Islamic history

This dissertation focuses on two Shiʿi dynasties of the tenth century, the Fatimid caliphate (909-1171) of Egypt and North Africa and the Buyid Amirate (945-1055) of Iraq and Iran. It traces their rise to power from eighth and ninth-century missionary movements, the ways in which they articulated their right to rule, and reactions to their authority. By bringing the Fatimids and Buyids into a comparative framework, the goal of this dissertation is to challenge the notion of the ‘Shiʿi Century,’ a term used to describe this era, as a label that has needlessly narrowed analyses of this period into binaries of Sunni versus Shiʿi and privileged the urban, elite, Sunni textual tradition over experiences of medieval Muslims that are often discredited as ‘heterodox.’ This dissertation focuses on three aspects of Fatimid and Buyid history that have never been studied together. First, it explores the role of eighth- and ninth-century non-Sunni missionary movements in the conversion and Islamization of the non-urban peripheries of the Middle East, which led to the rise to power of the Fatimid and Buyid dynasties. Second, it analyzes the pragmatic ways that these two Shiʿi dynasties combined multiple forms of authority to articulate their legitimacy in a way that appealed to the heterogeneous populations of the tenth-century Middle East. Third, it compares tenth-century reactions to the rise of these two Shiʿi dynasties with depictions of them from the eleventh century and later, arguing that it was only in retrospect that the story of the tenth century was rewritten ex post facto as a sectarian narrative. By comparing the Fatimids and the Buyids and focusing on contemporary Sunni depictions of these dynasties, this dissertation concludes that the significance of the Shiʿi identity of these two dynasties has been exaggerated. Rather than being only Shiʿi anomalies, these dynasties fit into existing processes in the development of Islamic society.Histor

Master of Science

thesisFragile X Syndrome (FxS) is the most common cause of inherited mental disability and autism spectrum disorder. Estimated incidence in males is 1 in 4000 and 1 in 7000 for females. The gene is on the distal end of the long arm of the X chromosome and contains a trinucleotide cytosine, guanine, guanine (CGG) microsatellite repeat in the 5' untranslated region (5'UTR) of the gene. When the repeat region is fully expanded the CpG island near the gene promoter site becomes methylated, and the result is silencing of the gene and loss of protein product. Health issues that correspond to a partially expanded trinucleotide repeat are Fragile X Tremor and Ataxia Syndrome (FXTAS) and Primary Ovarian Insufficiency (POI). Current molecular detection involves Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification of the CGG region, followed by capillary electrophoresis (CE) separation and fluorescent detection of the PCR amplicon with very high sizing resolution for normal and lower range premutation repeats. For larger pre-mutation repeats and full mutations, detection is done with digestion of genomic DNA with methylation sensitive enzymes, followed by Southern blotting. The Southern blots have some significant disadvantages; they are labor intensive, require large amounts of genomic DNA, blot sizing of the CCG repeat region has very imprecise resolution, reagents are expensive and they have a long processing time. Fluorescent detection of PCR product by CE is faster, less expensive, and has iv much higher resolution, but it has not been useful for the detection of full mutations due to PCR inefficiency for large CGG repeats and difficulty of detecting a very large CG rich trinucleotide repeat PCR product. The purpose of this thesis is an overview of the current molecular paradigms of FxS, FXTAS and POI, molecular testing and a comprehensive evaluation of the Celera Fragile X assay and the possibility that use of their 1.5% agarose recipe, gel electrophoresis (GE) and a long injection capillary electrophoresis protocol can detect all premutation and full mutation samples and reduce the need for Southern blotting for molecular detection of full mutation patients

A comparative study between gaming and non-gaming food and beverage operations using Management by Values as an analytical tool

This thesis analyzes gaming and non-gaming hotel restaurants to determine whether there is a need to reevaluate food and beverage operations in gaming hotel restaurants due to the changing trends in the economy and changing consumer demands; Management by Values is used as an analytical tool to determine if gaming hotel restaurants should follow the trend non-gaming hotel operations have established and reorganize their food and beverage operations. A questionnaire followed by a personal interview was used to gather information and Management by Values is used to evaluate the information; The final results proved that gaming operations do not need to re-evaluate operations due to the high level of consistency in profit making centers