Adding Up the Spending: Fiscal Disparities and Philanthropy among New York City Charter Schools

This brief explores the financial resources of New York City charter schools. It also addresses differences in student population characteristics and student outcomes across New York City (NYC) charter schools, and evaluates how financial resources translate to other schooling inputs, such as more or less experienced teachers and smaller or larger class sizes.These schools are examined within the broader context of school funding equity and factors that other research has shown to have the potential to advance or disrupt educational equity. In American public education, funding equity involves multiple levels, linked to the multiple levels of our school systems. State systems govern local public school districts, with schools nested within districts. Public charter schools are either nested within districts or operate as independent entities.NYC charter schools are of particular interest to national audiences mainly because they have been used to argue that charter schools outperform public schools and that New York's experience with charter schools suggests a transferable, nationally scalable policy option. Three studies concerning NYC charter schools in particular are frequently cited: Dobbie & Fryer, 2009; Hoxby, Murarka and Kang, 2009; and CREDO, 2009.It is important to note, however, that the NYC context may be unique in terms of the role played by philanthropy and so-called venture philanthropy. Significant philanthropic attention has been focused on charter management organizations like the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and Achievement First, which manage charter schools in NYC and elsewhere. NYC charter schools are both touted and blasted in the popular media as being the new favored charities of, for example, wealthy hedge fund managers. The extent that NYC charters have become philanthropic favorites means that NYC charter schools may be quite different from those in places like Missouri or Arizona, distant from the NYC philanthropic culture. In fact, even charter schools in Albany and Buffalo or across the river in New Jersey may be insulated from this unique financial setting. Therefore, additional philanthropic resources may explain a great deal of the claimed success of NYC charter schools. If this is the case, attempts to replicate or scale up these supposed successes would be more difficult and costly than assumed.This brief offers concrete information about NYC charters and their finances to help ground these important policy discussions.This brief is published by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), and is one of a series of briefs made possible in part by funding from The Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice

Assessing self-responsibility in employability competencies development among Australian engineering students: introductory report

Self-responsibility study initially outlined the importance of ‘self-directed Adult learning’ either as the method or the outcome of education. Attention was given to the different interest of individual’s in accepting responsibility for their professional development. In this regard, several sources reveal the need for learners to take their own responsibility for developing employability competencies development. However, the concern must be expressed at the incompleteness of research into the personal responsibility for competency development

Perfect Sampling with Unitary Tensor Networks

Tensor network states are powerful variational ans\"atze for many-body ground states of quantum lattice models. The use of Monte Carlo sampling techniques in tensor network approaches significantly reduces the cost of tensor contractions, potentially leading to a substantial increase in computational efficiency. Previous proposals are based on a Markov chain Monte Carlo scheme generated by locally updating configurations and, as such, must deal with equilibration and autocorrelation times, which result in a reduction of efficiency. Here we propose a perfect sampling scheme, with vanishing equilibration and autocorrelation times, for unitary tensor networks -- namely tensor networks based on efficiently contractible, unitary quantum circuits, such as unitary versions of the matrix product state (MPS) and tree tensor network (TTN), and the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA). Configurations are directly sampled according to their probabilities in the wavefunction, without resorting to a Markov chain process. We also describe a partial sampling scheme that can result in a dramatic (basis-dependent) reduction of sampling error.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, renamed partial sampling to incomplete sampling for clarity, extra references, plus a variety of minor change

Listening to Movement: The Use of Dance Movement Therapy in Groups to Reduce Anxiety in Males Struggling with Addiction

A study with the use of dance movement therapy as a counseling approach in a chemical dependency setting was presented. The objective of the study was to find out if the use of dance movement therapy in male chemical dependency groups reduces overall anxiety. The literature review describes dance movement therapy, aspects of chemical dependency and addiction, dance movement therapy used with specific populations, chemical addiction with creative art therapies, the process of recovery (stages of change), fundamentals of group work, anxiety, and movement therapy techniques used in chemical dependency groups. Methods of the study were presented with the use of four movement therapy interventions. The instrument and participants were also described. The results were evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively through pre and post test results and observations. The discussion presents areas for additional research and implications for future research

Bridging Inequity Through Farmer’s Market Mobility: Food Access Barriers and Alternative Food Systems in Kingston, New York

Low-income communities in the United States face disproportionately higher levels of food access barriers than other demographics in the country. Flawed public transportation systems, high cost, inefficient government food assistance programs, and structural exclusivity have created a food system that is largely inaccessible for many low-income individuals. This project demonstrates existing inequity in our food systems and illustrates the ways and which it is experienced by low-income demographics. It describes ways that geographic and physical space, economics, policy, and socio-cultural components impact food access experiences, and the ways these components impact choice and decision-making. While the existing system is unjust and inequitable, alternative food systems can create and foster equity and resiliency. This project illustrates existing exclusivity in alternative food systems, while advocating for their necessity in creating broad systematic change. They must be redefined and recreated as inclusive, community systems, and through this, they have the potential to foster community, create resiliency local food systems, and increase equity. This project uses Kingston, New York as a case study to examine existing barriers and the potential for farmer’s markets and urban farms, such as the Kingston YMCA Farm Project to mitigate food access barriers

A biophysical model of prokaryotic diversity in geothermal hot springs

Recent field investigations of photosynthetic bacteria living in geothermal hot spring environments have revealed surprisingly complex ecosystems, with an unexpected level of genetic diversity. One case of particular interest involves the distribution along hot spring thermal gradients of genetically distinct bacterial strains that differ in their preferred temperatures for reproduction and photosynthesis. In such systems, a single variable, temperature, defines the relevant environmental variation. In spite of this, each region along the thermal gradient exhibits multiple strains of photosynthetic bacteria adapted to several distinct thermal optima, rather than the expected single thermal strain adapted to the local environmental temperature. Here we analyze microbiology data from several ecological studies to show that the thermal distribution field data exhibit several universal features independent of location and specific bacterial strain. These include the distribution of optimal temperatures of different thermal strains and the functional dependence of the net population density on temperature. Further, we present a simple population dynamics model of these systems that is highly constrained by biophysical data and by physical features of the environment. This model can explain in detail the observed diversity of different strains of the photosynthetic bacteria. It also reproduces the observed thermal population distributions, as well as certain features of population dynamics observed in laboratory studies of the same organisms

A Comparison of a Full Time Grazing and a Partial Storage Feeding System, for Dairy Cows

Partial storage feeding has been adopted by a number of Northern Ireland dairy farmers in recent years. This is due in part to increasing cow numbers, and as such, insufficient pasture close to the milking parlour to permit full time grazing. Partial storage feeding may also have environmental benefits, as well as reducing labour requirements associated with \u27droving\u27 and pasture management. In view of this, a study was undertaken to examine animal performance with either a full-time grazing, or a partial storage feeding regime