The Texas Miracle: Racial Discrimination Alive and Well Sixty Years after Brown

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not and how race plays a role in the funding of Texas public school districts. Beyond these determinations, we explore the legal implications that would come from evidence of a discriminatory funding system, specifically in light of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. In this study, we use both quantitative and legal analysis. We explore population-level data containing information on the funding and racial composition of all Texas public school districts. Descriptive methods such as cross-tabulations were paired with correlation and measures of effect size to explore the relationship between race and school district funding. In our legal analysis, we review relevant legal statutes and case law, situating our quantitative findings within the larger, school finance jurisprudence context.Educatio

Dynamics and statistical mechanics of ultra-cold Bose gases using c-field techniques

We review phase space techniques based on the Wigner representation that provide an approximate description of dilute ultra-cold Bose gases. In this approach the quantum field evolution can be represented using equations of motion of a similar form to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation but with stochastic modifications that include quantum effects in a controlled degree of approximation. These techniques provide a practical quantitative description of both equilibrium and dynamical properties of Bose gas systems. We develop versions of the formalism appropriate at zero temperature, where quantum fluctuations can be important, and at finite temperature where thermal fluctuations dominate. The numerical techniques necessary for implementing the formalism are discussed in detail, together with methods for extracting observables of interest. Numerous applications to a wide range of phenomena are presented.Comment: 110 pages, 32 figures. Updated to address referee comments. To appear in Advances in Physic

Classical Region of a Trapped Bose Gas

The classical region of a Bose gas consists of all single-particle modes that have a high average occupation and are well-described by a classical field. Highly-occupied modes only occur in massive Bose gases at ultra-cold temperatures, in contrast to the photon case where there are highly-occupied modes at all temperatures. For the Bose gas the number of these modes is dependent on the temperature, the total number of particles and their interaction strength. In this paper we characterize the classical region of a harmonically trapped Bose gas over a wide parameter regime. We use a Hartree-Fock approach to account for the effects of interactions, which we observe to significantly change the classical region as compared to the idealized case. We compare our results to full classical field calculations and show that the Hartree-Fock approach provides a qualitatively accurate description of classical region for the interacting gas.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; updated to include new results with interaction

The Business Case for Community Paramedicine: Lessons from Commonwealth Care Alliance's Pilot Program

Mobile integrated health care and community paramedicine (MIH-CP) programs expand the role of traditional emergency medical services personnel to address non-emergency needs and bring outpatient primary and urgent care into patients' homes. These programs offer potential for reducing health care costs, eliminating unecessary emergency department use, and shifting service back to community-based and home settings. Between 2014 and 2015, the Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Care Alliance (CCA) piloted a community paramedicine prgoram, Acute Community Care (ACC), to serve its members in the Greater Boston area.This brief summarizes ACC's business case assessment, which showed that increasing patient volume after the pilot period would reuslt in net savings given the progam's success in averting unnecessary emergency care. By illustrating cost considerations for an expansion of MIH-CP services, this brief may inform the design and sustainability planning of other MIH-CP programs. The business case assessment was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research through support from the Center for Health Care Strategies' Complex Care Innovation Lab, a Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit-funded initiative

Continuous Observation of Interference Fringes from Bose Condensates

We use continuous measurement theory to describe the evolution of two Bose condensates in an interference experiment. It is shown how the system evolves in a single run of the experiment into a state with a fixed relative phase, while the total gauge symmetry remains unbroken. Thus, an interference pattern is exhibited without violating atom number conservation.Comment: 4 pages, Postscrip

Cyber Bullying and Free Speech: Striking an Age-Appropriate Balance

Cyber bullying has generally been dealt with by the courts using one of two legal analyses: the “true threats” doctrine, or the Tinker substantial disruption test. This law review, the Cleveland State Law Review, recently published Anti-Cyber Bullying Statutes: Threat to Student Free Speech (referred to herein as “the Threat to Speech article”), which addressed these two theories, and argued that the current evolution of cyber bullying legislation simply goes too far. For example, Hayward states Anti-cyber bullying laws are the greatest threat to student speech because they seek to censor it anytime it occurs, using “substantial disruption” of school activities as justification and often based only on mere suspicion of potential disruption. The Threat to Speech article advocates greater protection of student speech. While we recognize that any regulation of speech by the state may raise First Amendment concerns, we are not so quick to conclude that cyber bullying regulations “chill student free speech.” Our analysis of the law leads us to the conclusion that school administrators have relatively broad discretion to regulate student speech, provided those regulations either serve legitimate pedagogical ends or protect the rights of other students and the school environment. Indeed, as we will demonstrate below, the evolution of the Supreme Court’s student free speech jurisprudence has followed the trend of granting more and more leeway to administrators. Contrary to the claims in the Threat to Speech article, in our opinion that leeway clearly extends to allowing regulation of speech which originates off campus but has a reasonable likelihood of making its way on campus. We also believe that, in addition to true threats and the Tinker substantial disruption standard described in the Threat to Speech article, school administrators may also regulate student speech consistent with the Court’s holding in Fraser—which set what we refer to as the “fundamental values standard” —and based on the fighting words doctrine

Constitutional Implications of School Punishment for Cyber Bullying

In this article, we address the scope of student free speech rights as it relates to cyber bullying. We provide a review of legal theories under which school administrators can address cyber bullying while still respecting student free speech rights and the First Amendment. Additionally, we address the jurisdiction of administrators to deal with off-campus bullying conduct

Pathways to the Principalship: An Event History Analysis of the Careers of Teachers With Principal Certification

Utilizing rich data on nearly 11,000 educators over 17 academic years in a highly diverse context, we examine the career paths of teachers to determine whether and when they transition into the principalship. We utilize a variety of event history analyses, including discrete-time hazard modeling, to determine how an individual’s race, gender, and their combination—among other characteristics—contribute to their likelihood of making this transition. We found that inequitable pathways to the principalship are not explained by systematic differences in personal and contextual characteristics along lines of race and gender but rather that the selection of school leaders may be a process influenced by systemic bias

Cyber Bullying and Free Speech: Striking an Age-Appropriate Balance

Cyber bullying has generally been dealt with by the courts using one of two legal analyses: the “true threats” doctrine, or the Tinker substantial disruption test. This law review, the Cleveland State Law Review, recently published Anti-Cyber Bullying Statutes: Threat to Student Free Speech (referred to herein as “the Threat to Speech article”), which addressed these two theories, and argued that the current evolution of cyber bullying legislation simply goes too far. For example, Hayward states Anti-cyber bullying laws are the greatest threat to student speech because they seek to censor it anytime it occurs, using “substantial disruption” of school activities as justification and often based only on mere suspicion of potential disruption. The Threat to Speech article advocates greater protection of student speech. While we recognize that any regulation of speech by the state may raise First Amendment concerns, we are not so quick to conclude that cyber bullying regulations “chill student free speech.” Our analysis of the law leads us to the conclusion that school administrators have relatively broad discretion to regulate student speech, provided those regulations either serve legitimate pedagogical ends or protect the rights of other students and the school environment. Indeed, as we will demonstrate below, the evolution of the Supreme Court’s student free speech jurisprudence has followed the trend of granting more and more leeway to administrators. Contrary to the claims in the Threat to Speech article, in our opinion that leeway clearly extends to allowing regulation of speech which originates off campus but has a reasonable likelihood of making its way on campus. We also believe that, in addition to true threats and the Tinker substantial disruption standard described in the Threat to Speech article, school administrators may also regulate student speech consistent with the Court’s holding in Fraser—which set what we refer to as the “fundamental values standard” —and based on the fighting words doctrine