Limited Access to AP Courses for Students in Smaller and More Isolated Rural School Districts

This brief assesses trends in access to, enrollment in, and success in Advanced Placement (AP) coursework in relation to school district poverty, racial composition, and urbanicity. It uses data merged from the 2011–2012 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the 2012 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), and the 2010 Decennial U.S. Census. Authors Douglas Gagnon and Marybeth Mattingly report that nearly one-half (47.2 percent) of rural districts have no secondary students enrolled in AP courses, compared with only 20.1 percent of town, 5.4 percent of suburban, and 2.6 percent of urban districts. Remote rural districts with small populations are nearly ten times less likely to offer access to AP courses than are larger rural districts on the fringe of urbanized areas. Even in districts that have some access to AP coursework, the proportion of students enrolled in an AP course in urban and suburban districts is roughly double that in town and rural districts. Students in more affluent districts have higher success rates than those in less affluent districts, regardless of place type

Most U.S. School Districts Have Low Access to School Counselors: Poor, Diverse, and City School Districts Exhibit Particularly High Student-to-Counselor Ratios

In this brief, authors Douglas Gagnon and Marybeth Mattingly examine access to school counselors in public school districts, as well as how this access is mediated by district demographic and location characteristics. They use a large nationally representative data source compiled from the 2013–2014 Civil Rights Data Collection, the 2014 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, and 2007 urban centric locales made available by the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct their analyses. The authors report that only 17.8 percent of school districts meet the American School Counselor Association’s recommended student-to-school counselor ratio of 250:1 or lower. The median ratio is 411:1. Although rural districts are the most likely to lack any school counselors, the median caseload in rural districts is lower, at 380:1, and 25.5 percent meet ASCA recommendations. Only 4.2 percent of city districts nationwide meet or exceed a ratio of 250:1, with the median city district reporting a student-to-counselor ratio of 499:1. Access to school counselors varies considerably across states. Median ratios are over 1000:1 in Arizona and California but under 250:1 in North Carolina, North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Montana

Beginning teachers are more common in rural, high-poverty, and racially diverse schools

This brief considers whether the concentration of beginning teachers in a district is associated with the district\u27s poverty rate, racial composition, or urbanicity. Authors Douglas Gagnon and Marybeth Mattingly report that poor communities have moderately higher percentages of beginning teachers than communities with lower poverty rates and that a higher concentration of minority students in a district is associated with a higher percentage of beginning teachers. Large cities, remote towns, and rural districts have higher percentages of beginning teachers than midsized-small cities, suburbs, and fringe-distant town districts. The combined impact of poverty, race, and urbanicity has a substantial effect on the probability that a district has a critically high percentage of beginning teachers. A high percentage of beginning teachers likely reflects higher teacher turnover in the district, and could suggest issues of teacher quality. The brief uses combined data from the 2009-2010 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the 2009 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), and the 2010 U.S. Census to form a nationally representative data source of 6,569 districts

Lorenz-Mie theory for 2D scattering and resonance calculations

This PhD tutorial is concerned with a description of the two-dimensional generalized Lorenz-Mie theory (2D-GLMT), a well-established numerical method used to compute the interaction of light with arrays of cylindrical scatterers. This theory is based on the method of separation of variables and the application of an addition theorem for cylindrical functions. The purpose of this tutorial is to assemble the practical tools necessary to implement the 2D-GLMT method for the computation of scattering by passive scatterers or of resonances in optically active media. The first part contains a derivation of the vector and scalar Helmholtz equations for 2D geometries, starting from Maxwell's equations. Optically active media are included in 2D-GLMT using a recent stationary formulation of the Maxwell-Bloch equations called steady-state ab initio laser theory (SALT), which introduces new classes of solutions useful for resonance computations. Following these preliminaries, a detailed description of 2D-GLMT is presented. The emphasis is placed on the derivation of beam-shape coefficients for scattering computations, as well as the computation of resonant modes using a combination of 2D-GLMT and SALT. The final section contains several numerical examples illustrating the full potential of 2D-GLMT for scattering and resonance computations. These examples, drawn from the literature, include the design of integrated polarization filters and the computation of optical modes of photonic crystal cavities and random lasers.Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in Journal of Optics. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from i

Variation found in rates of restraint and seclusion among students with a disability

The restraint and seclusion of individuals—practices usually associated with highly restrictive environments—are extreme responses to student behavior used in some public schools. In this brief, authors Douglas Gagnon, Marybeth Mattingly, and Vincent Connelly report that restraint and seclusion are used much more frequently on students with a disability than on students without a disability. In addition, the majority of U.S. school districts does not restrain or seclude students with a disability; 59.3 percent of districts report no instances of restraint, while 82.5 percent do not report a single instance of seclusion. However, a small proportion of districts report exceedingly high rates. The authors also find that low-poverty, low-diversity school districts use restraint and seclusion on students with a disability more than twice as often as high-poverty, high-diversity districts. The authors conclude that, overall, the relationships between restraint and seclusion rates, and disability type and school characteristics, warrant further research. This brief draws on data from the 2009–2010 Civil Rights Data Collection and the 2009 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates

Restraint and Seclusion of Students With a Disability Continue to Be Common in Some School Districts Patterns Remain Relatively Consistent Despite Recent Policy Changes

In 2013, Carsey released a brief that analyzed rates of restraint and seclusion using a large, nationally representative data set of U.S. school districts. This brief, which analyzes a more comprehensive data set and the most current Civil Rights Data Collection, serves as a follow-up to the pre­vious brief. Authors Douglas Gagnon, Marybeth Mattingly, and Vincent Connelly report that, despite numerous states with revised policies related to seclusion and restraint in schools between 2009 and 2012, trends in the rates of restraint and seclusion of students with a disability in the United States remained relatively consistent between survey years. Low-poverty, low-minority districts are more likely to report high rates of restraint than are high-poverty, high-minority districts, although this trend in the most recent data is less pronounced than the trend found in the 2009−2010 data. In addition, restraint and seclusion are most common in cities and least common in rural places. The authors conclude that future research should examine the factors that lead to the use of restraint and seclusion in some schools, as well as what conditions lead to uptake of alternative approaches to managing challenging student behavior

A Demographic and Economic Profile of Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin

In this brief, authors Andrew Schaefer, Marybeth Mattingly, and Douglas Gagnon present a demographic and economic profile of Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin, with a specific focus on families with children. Analyzing data from the American Community Survey and U.S. Decennial Census on family income and poverty, they compare—wherever possible—conditions in Duluth and Superior to those in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the nation as a whole. They report that, in both Duluth and Superior, poverty among families with children has increased substantially in the last 15 years; by 2010 and 2015, family poverty was higher in each city than across the nation or statewide. In St. Louis County, Minnesota—home of Duluth—low income families have experienced declines in their income over the past 40 years, while income has grown for more well-off families

State EITC Programs Provide Important Relief to Families in Need

In this brief, authors Douglas Gagnon, Marybeth Mattingly, and Andrew Schaefer discuss the estimated effects of state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) benefits on rates of poverty in 2010–2014 using the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. They report that, on average, individuals in states with refundable state EITCs receive a 17.6 percent match of their federal EITC benefit, and the state supplement pulls an estimated 0.3 percent of these states’ combined populations out of poverty. Children receive the greatest benefit, as state EITCs reduce child poverty by 0.7 percentage point overall. Even those who remain poor after receiving state EITC benefits get a sizeable boost: on average these families receive $455, which amounts to 2.4 percent of their total family earnings. The authors also examined state EITC receipt by family characteristics, finding larger average benefits for metropolitan and non-white- and Hispanic-headed households. Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas would experience the greatest estimated reductions in child poverty rates if they were to adopt a state EITC

Federal EITC Kept 2 Percent of the Population Out of Poverty Greatest Poverty Reductions in Texas, North Carolina, and Arizona

This brief documents the proportion of Americans who would have been poor absent the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), all else being equal, across 2010–2014. It consists of a pooled sample using the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) between the years of 2011–2015. Authors Douglas Gagnon, Marybeth Mattingly, and Andrew Schaefer examine Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rates as well as hypothetical increases in the rates of poverty in the absence of federal EITC benefits. They report that the proportion of people who are poor in the United States as measured by the SPM would increase by two percentage points without EITC dollars. In addition, children are especially at risk of becoming poor without EITC benefits, as 1 out of every 25 would become poor without the EITC. The authors also highlight variability across states, noting that the federal EITC led to the greatest poverty reductions in the states of Texas, North Carolina, and Arizona