1,203 research outputs found
Milwaukee Independent Charter Schools Study: Report on One Year of Student Growth
Analyzes results of an evaluation of gains in reading and math scores over one academic year among independent charter school students compared with public school students, by charter school type, student characteristics, and school-switching
Milwaukee Longitudinal School Choice Evaluation: Annual School Testing Summary Report 2008-09
With the passage of the 2005 Wisconsin Act 125, private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) have been required to administer annual standardized tests in reading, mathematics, and science to their MPCP students enrolled in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades. The law further directs Choice schools to submit copies of the scores from those tests to the School Choice Demonstration Project for processing and reporting to the Legislative Audit Bureau. During the 2008-09 school year, MPCP schools administered either nationally normed tests, such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, or the state criterion-referenced Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations (WKCE). The School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) received student test scores from 113 of the 116 schools participating in the MPCP that were required to administer tests. Specifically, the SCDP received 5,654 nationally normed student test scores and 1,134 WKCE test scores. Seventy-nine of 113 schools submitted only normed tests, 16 schools submitted only the WKCE, and 18 submitted both types of tests
Milwaukee Independent Charter Schools Study: Report on Two- and Three-Year Achievement Gains
The general purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of Milwaukee’s independent charter schools in promoting student achievement growth. Independent charter schools are authorized by non-school district entities and are considered independent because they are not a part of the Milwaukee Public School District (MPS). Throughout the course of this report we will estimate three-year achievement growth for independent charter school students who were in grades 3 through 8 at baseline (2006-07). We will examine four years of scores in reading and math on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE). Specifically, the report presents the results of an analysis comparing achievement gains of independent charter students to the achievement gains of a group of matched comparison students attending MPS. Our next report, to be released in spring 2012, will examine four-year achievement gains
Milwaukee Independent Charter Schools Study: Report on One Year of Student Growth
The general purpose of this evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of independent charter schools in promoting two desirable student outcomes: student achievement growth and educational attainment. Independent charter schools are authorized by non-district entities and are considered “independent” because they are not a part of the Milwaukee Public School District. We will estimate achievement growth of independent charter school students in grades 3-8 over four years in reading and math on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE). Similarly, in later reports we will track student attainment, specifically whether uppergrade cohorts in our evaluation graduate from high school. Case studies of independent charter schools will help us to identify best practices in these schools and will also be addressed in future reports
Milwaukee Independent Charter Schools Study: Final Report on Four-Year Achievement Gains
The general purpose of this five-year evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of Milwaukee’s independent charter schools in promoting student achievement growth. Independent charter schools are authorized by nonschool-district entities and are considered “independent” because they are not a part of the Milwaukee Public School District (MPS). Throughout the course of this report we will estimate four-year achievement gains for independent charter school students who were in grades 3-8 during the 2006-07 school year using reading and math achievement data from the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE). Specifically, the report presents the results of an analysis comparing achievement gains of independent charter students to the achievement gains of a carefully matched sample of students attending MPS
Overscreening and Underscreening in Solid-Electrolyte Grain Boundary Space-Charge Layers
Polycrystalline solids can exhibit material properties that differ
significantly from those of equivalent single-crystal samples, in part, because
of a spontaneous redistribution of mobile point defects into so-called
space-charge regions adjacent to grain boundaries. The general analytical form
of these space-charge regions is known only in the dilute limit, where
defect-defect correlations can be neglected. Using kinetic Monte Carlo
simulations of a three-dimensional Coulomb lattice gas, we show that
grain-boundary space-charge regions in non-dilute solid electrolytes exhibit
overscreening -- damped oscillatory space-charge profiles -- and underscreening
-- decay lengths that are longer than the corresponding Debye length and that
increase with increasing defect-defect interaction strength. Overscreening and
underscreening are known phenomena in concentrated liquid electrolytes, and the
observation of functionally analogous behaviour in solid electrolyte
space-charge regions suggests that the same underlying physics drives behaviour
in both classes of systems. We therefore expect theoretical approaches
developed to study non-dilute liquid electrolytes to be equally applicable to
future studies of solid electrolytes
Discovery of an 86 AU Radius Debris Ring Around HD 181327
HST/NICMOS PSF-subtracted coronagraphic observations of HD 181327 have
revealed the presence of a ring-like disk of circumstellar debris seen in 1.1
micron light scattered by the disk grains, surrounded by a di use outer region
of lower surface brightness. The annular disk appears to be inclined by 31.7
+/- 1.6 deg from face on with the disk major axis PA at 107 +/-2 deg . The
total 1.1 micron flux density of the light scattered by the disk (at 1.2" < r <
5.0") of 9.6 mJy +/- 0.8 mJy is 0.17% +/- 0.015% of the starlight. Seventy
percent of the light from the scattering grains appears to be confined in a 36
AU wide annulus centered on the peak of the radial surface brightness (SB)
profile 86.3 +/- 3.9 AU from the star, well beyond the characteristic radius of
thermal emission estimated from IRAS and Spitzer flux densities assuming
blackbody grains (~ 22 AU). The light scattered by the ring appears bilaterally
symmetric, exhibits directionally preferential scattering well represented by a
Henyey-Greenstein scattering phase function with g = 0.30 +/- 0.03, and has an
azimuthally medianed SB at the 86.3 AU radius of peak SB of 1.00 +/- 0.07 mJy
arcsec^-2. No photocentric offset is seen in the ring relative to the position
of the central star. A low surface brightness diffuse halo is seen in the
NICMOS image to a distance of ~ 4" Deeper 0.6 micron HST/ACS PSF-subtracted
coronagraphic observations reveal a faint outer nebulosity, asymmetrically
brighter to the North of the star. We discuss models of the disk and properties
of its grains, from which we infer a maximum vertical scale height of 4 - 8 AU
at the 87.6 AU radius of maximum surface density, and a total maximum dust mass
of collisionally replenished grains with minimum grain sizes of ~ 1 micron of ~
4 M(moon).Comment: 45 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Are Debris Disks and Massive Planets Correlated?
Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope Legacy Science Program
``Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems'' (FEPS), we have searched for
debris disks around 9 FGK stars (2-10 Gyr), known from radial velocity (RV)
studies to have one or more massive planets. Only one of the sources, HD 38529,
has excess emission above the stellar photosphere; at 70 micron the
signal-to-noise ratio in the excess is 4.7 while at wavelengths < 30 micron
there is no evidence of excess. The remaining sources show no excesses at any
Spitzer wavelengths. Applying survival tests to the FEPS sample and the results
for the FGK survey published in Bryden et al. (2006), we do not find a
significant correlation between the frequency and properties of debris disks
and the presence of close-in planets. We discuss possible reasons for the lack
of a correlation.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures. Accepted to Astrophysical Journa
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The 1930s as black mirror: Visions of historical repetition in the global financial press, 2007-2009
Media coverage of the recent financial crisis has referred extensively to various past crises, and in particular to the events of the 1930s. This article suggests that the idea of the Great Depression has effectively come to function as a kind of historical ‘black mirror’ – a quasi-object within which conjuncture and historical representation interact to produce an image of capitalist history itself. Focusing on the journalistic output of four key financial publications, I trace how portrayals of the 1930s have evolved over the course of the crisis. I find that while the 1930s are frequently and consistently invoked in ways that purport to reveal the historicity of the crisis, these representations produce an oscillation between different visions of historical repetition, which in turn underpin competing interpretations of the crisis as it unfolds. In so doing, I argue, appeals to the 1930s have simultaneously served to conceal and disclose the constitutive relation of historical imagination to historical process – a double move that has had the paradoxical effect of both securing and undermining the reproduction of finance capitalism as we have come to know it
China and the crisis : global power, domestic caution and local initiative
Even though the global crisis had a quick and dramatic impact on Chinese exports, the Chinese government responded with a range of policy responses that have helped maintain high rates of growth. This success has helped propel China to the centre of global politics, accelerating what many perceive to be a power shift from the West to China. But these gains were achieved by reversing policy in previous years designed to make a fundamental shift in China‟s mode of development, and have highlighted the problems associated with making such a transition. At the moment that many are looking at the Chinese "model" as a potential alternative to the Washington Consensus, one of the consequences of the crisis is to further question the long term efficacy of this "model" in China itself
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