A Program Evaluation of the Implementation of Personalized Learning in a Rural Elementary School

The global workforce is constantly changing. Students sitting in today’s classrooms are being prepared for jobs that do not currently exist. Students must graduate ready to be problem solvers, collaborators, and self-starters. Students must become in charge of their learning, and teachers must possess the skill set in order to facilitate this kind of learning. As a result, many states and school districts are implementing personalized learning. This study provides a program evaluation of the implementation of personalized learning, and focused primarily on the implementation of student data notebooks and teacher-shared flexible grouping and measured teacher efficacy and student achievement as a result. Findings from this study indicated that while the implementation of personalized learning is still in the beginning stages, the structures of student data notebooks and flexible learning groups are in place. While there were not significant changes in the area of student achievement in this study, teachers now have higher levels of efficacy. As the implementation of personalized learning continues, it is the hope that student achievement will increase as a result of the teachers’ growing levels of efficacy. Recommendations include the continued growth of collective efficacy, collaboration with other districts implementing personalized learning, and a focus on professional development on instructional strategies to support student individualization and student creativity. The results of this study could be useful to district leaders, school leaders, and teachers as they continue to implement personalized learning

The Nuremberg Trials: A Postmodern Justification of Natural Law

UMKC Honors Colleg

The Hancock Amendment: Missouri's Tax Limitation Measure

In 1980, a Springfield businessman began an initiative petition drive in support of a constitutional amendment that would limit state and local government taxation andspending. That amendment was adopted by the voters on November 4, 1980. It is generally known as the Hancock amendment, after the principal advocate Mel Hancock, and can be found in Article X Sections 18-24 of the Missouri Constitution. The amendment is modeled after a constitutional provision adopted by Michigan voters in 1978 known as the Headlee Amendment. Although Missouri courts have decided dozens of cases interpreting various provisions of the Hancock Amendment, none of the decisions have been based on the construction which Michigan courts have placed on the Headlee Amendment, which are at significant variance from Missouri decisions

[F]ilthy, bestial, and abominable corruptions: Reassessing Gothicism and Antebellum Reform in The Blithedale Romance

My essay will explore the narrating character Miles Coverdale as the primary Gothic subject of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance (1852), and moreover it will tie in aspects of the Gothic environment, showing how dungeons and dark corners depicted in the narrative correspond with Coverdale as a maddening figure. My claim is not that Coverdale actually loses his sanity, but that he secludes and excludes himself as a response to a constant threat of institutionalization. I will build on the ideas of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in The Coherence of Gothic Conventions (1980), which argues that Gothic structures like castles, tombs, and prison chambers should be read as places of restraint or exclusion. Additionally, I will refer to Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject to elucidate the significance of Coverdale as the "radically excluded" subject and (2), in accordance with that, I will draw on Michel Foucault to claim that Coverdale's confinement to the sick-chamber (a make-shift hospital room, as it were) resembles what Foucault describes as "the hospital for the incurably mad" (41). One important aspect of my argument is to show that Coverdale appears monstrous when he is on the loose, an outcast of the community. Ultimately, I will show that Hawthorne appropriates these gothic conventions to present a social critique of institutional reform on the tenet that reform culture had established unattainable ideals and values for individuals like Coverdale. Christopher Castiglia's Interior States explains that during the 1840s the focus of reform expanded to include individual vices like drinking and gambling in addition to social injustices such as slavery (8). Through his portrayal of Zenobia, Hawthorne explicitly questions the collective issue of women's rights but, as my essay will explore, he more importantly challenges readers to address the developing problem of regulated identities. Understanding Coverdale as the central Gothic figure of Blithedale, then, identifies Hawthorne's larger concerns with the political injustices of reform