Achievement and high school completion rates of Hispanic students with no English language skills compared to Hispanic students with some English language skills attending the same high school in an immigrant responsive city

The purpose of the study was to determine achievement and high school completion rates of Hispanic students (n = 13) with no English language skills compared to Hispanic students (n = 11) with some English language skills attending the same high school in an immigrant responsive city. All students were in attendance in the research school district\u27s high school, ninth-grade through 12th-grade. Entering ninth-grade pretest Las Links Assessment scores compared to the ending high school posttest English Language Development Assessment scores of immigrant high school students with no English Language skills enrolled in the research high school\u27s English Language Acquisition Program were in the direction of improved speaking ( p \u3c .01), listening, (p \u3c .001), reading ( p \u3c .001), writing (p \u3c .001), comprehension (p \u3c .001), and composite (p \u3c .001) dependent t test scores. Null Hypotheses were also rejected in the direction of improved speaking (p \u3c .05), listening, (p \u3c .05), reading (p \u3c .01), comprehension (p \u3c .05), and composite (p \u3c .05) dependent t test scores for immigrant high school students with some English Language skills enrolled in the research high school\u27s English Language Acquisition Program. However, null hypotheses were not rejected for any of the posttest-posttest English Language Development Assessment single classification Analysis of Variance scores comparisons. Results of chi-square ending twelfth-grade core credit accrual towards fulfilling graduation requirements of immigrant high school students with no English Language skills compared to immigrant high school students with some English Language skills enrolled in the research high school\u27s English language acquisition program as measured by core credit accrual towards fulfilling graduation requirements by school year were statistically different ( p = .008) in the direction of greater credit accrual for students with some English Language skills. The null hypothesis was rejected for observed absence frequencies across all four years of high school attendance. Students with no English Language Skills had significantly greater ( p \u3c .05) recorded absences. This pattern of absence frequencies represents a concern for students\u27 who cannot afford to miss days of school if they are to succeed academically but who may have competing demands elsewhere at home and work. We have a moral and professional obligation to determine through research and careful analysis how to bring our immigrant students and families into a quid pro quo relationship with the world of academia--the world through which their hopes, aspirations, dreams, and talents may be realized. Immigrant students with no English language skills and some English language skills clearly benefited from participation in the research high school\u27s English Language Acquisition program

\u3ci\u3eCritical Social Justice Issues for School Practitioners\u3c/i\u3e

Editors: Sandra Harris and Stacey Edmonson Chapter 5: From Ice Raids to Equity: Hispanic Students\u27 Progress through High School in an Immigrant Responsive City, co-authored by John Hill, UNO faculty member. Chapter 9: Focusing School Leadership on Poverty and Ethnicity for K-12 Student Success, co-authored by Jeanne L. Surface, Kay A. Keiser, Peter J. Smith, and Karen L. Hayes. This project was borne of a desire to support these scholar-practitioner leaders. We invited educational leaders to share recent studies which brought issues of social justice to the fore. Certainly, the 20 papers that were accepted as chapters for this book do not address all of the problems with which educators are faced. Nor do the 20 chapters provide definitive answers to these difficult issues. However, they do provide valuable information and ensure that thoughtful, reflective dialogue is occurring regarding critical social justice understandings or misunderstandings.https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/facultybooks/1173/thumbnail.jp

Oxamniquine resistance alleles are widespread in Old World Schistosoma mansoni and predate drug deployment

Do mutations required for adaptation occur de novo, or are they segregating within populations as standing genetic variation? This question is key to understanding adaptive change in nature, and has important practical consequences for the evolution of drug resistance. We provide evidence that alleles conferring resistance to oxamniquine (OXA), an antischistosomal drug, are widespread in natural parasite populations under minimal drug pressure and predate OXA deployment. OXA has been used since the 1970s to treat Schistosoma mansoni infections in the New World where S. mansoni established during the slave trade. Recessive loss-of-function mutations within a parasite sulfotransferase (SmSULT-OR) underlie resistance, and several verified resistance mutations, including a deletion (p.E142del), have been identified in the New World. Here we investigate sequence variation in SmSULT-OR in S. mansoni from the Old World, where OXA has seen minimal usage. We sequenced exomes of 204 S. mansoni parasites from West Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, and scored variants in SmSULT-OR and flanking regions. We identified 39 non-synonymous SNPs, 4 deletions, 1 duplication and 1 premature stop codon in the SmSULT-OR coding sequence, including one confirmed resistance deletion (p.E142del). We expressed recombinant proteins and used an in vitro OXA activation assay to functionally validate the OXA-resistance phenotype for four predicted OXA-resistance mutations. Three aspects of the data are of particular interest: (i) segregating OXA-resistance alleles are widespread in Old World populations (4.29–14.91% frequency), despite minimal OXA usage, (ii) two OXA-resistance mutations (p.W120R, p.N171IfsX28) are particularly common (>5%) in East African and Middle-Eastern populations, (iii) the p.E142del allele has identical flanking SNPs in both West Africa and Puerto Rico, suggesting that parasites bearing this allele colonized the New World during the slave trade and therefore predate OXA deployment. We conclude that standing variation for OXA resistance is widespread in S. mansoni

Achievement and high school completion rates of Hispanic students with no English language skills compared to Hispanic students with some English language skills attending the same high school in an immigrant responsive city

The purpose of the study was to determine achievement and high school completion rates of Hispanic students (n = 13) with no English language skills compared to Hispanic students (n = 11) with some English language skills attending the same high school in an immigrant responsive city. All students were in attendance in the research school district's high school, ninth-grade through 12th-grade. Entering ninth-grade pretest Las Links Assessment scores compared to the ending high school posttest English Language Development Assessment scores of immigrant high school students with no English Language skills enrolled in the research high school's English Language Acquisition Program were in the direction of improved speaking ( p < .01), listening, (p < .001), reading ( p < .001), writing (p < .001), comprehension (p < .001), and composite (p < .001) dependent t test scores. Null Hypotheses were also rejected in the direction of improved speaking (p < .05), listening, (p < .05), reading (p < .01), comprehension (p < .05), and composite (p < .05) dependent t test scores for immigrant high school students with some English Language skills enrolled in the research high school's English Language Acquisition Program. However, null hypotheses were not rejected for any of the posttest-posttest English Language Development Assessment single classification Analysis of Variance scores comparisons. Results of chi-square ending twelfth-grade core credit accrual towards fulfilling graduation requirements of immigrant high school students with no English Language skills compared to immigrant high school students with some English Language skills enrolled in the research high school's English language acquisition program as measured by core credit accrual towards fulfilling graduation requirements by school year were statistically different (p = .008) in the direction of greater credit accrual for students with some English Language skills. The null hypothesis was rejected for observed absence frequencies across all four years of high school attendance. Students with no English Language Skills had significantly greater (p < .05) recorded absences. This pattern of absence frequencies represents a concern for students' who cannot afford to miss days of school if they are to succeed academically but who may have competing demands elsewhere at home and work. We have a moral and professional obligation to determine through research and careful analysis how to bring our immigrant students and families into a quid pro quo relationship with the world of academia—the world through which their hopes, aspirations, dreams, and talents may be realized. Immigrant students with no English language skills and some English language skills clearly benefited from participation in the research high school's English Language Acquisition program

Can budgetary slack still prevail within New Zealand's new public management?\ud

The New Zealand (NZ) Government began its public sector reforms in 1984, with a central focus of changing the accounting culture. The purposes of the reforms were to\ud build a more open public sector, a plainer and clearer way of reporting, emphasising accountability and transparency (Wallace, 1993). Central to the reforms was the adoption of accrual accounting and a 3-year budgeting and planning management cycle within Government Ministries. By establishing whether or not budgetary slack is used as a risk management strategy in NZ's new public management (NPM) control setting, this study examines how successful the reforms are, more that 20 years after their inception. Budgetary slack is the excess requirements for resources or understatement of productive capability. Slack allows a budget to be easily achieved and gives a false perception of managers' performance, defeating the basic purpose of budgets. As little research has been conducted on this phenomenon in NZ's NPM, this study was undertaken. Using budgetary slack and earnings management literature, an empirical model is developed to examine whether the potential for budgetary slack exists in NZ Government Ministries. The five Ministries of: Health, Education, Transport, Justice, and Housing, were chosen for this study. They provide a mix of sizes and are very topical for some specific reasons within the political arena. Results of this study will be of interest to the Government, public sector managers, taxpayers, other stakeholders, and academics