The Louisiana Recovery School District\u27s long term relationship to student dropout and achievement

May 14, 2013 marked the 10 year anniversary of the creation of the Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD), the turnaround intervention for low performing public schools. Since 2003, the RSD has grown to include over 80 schools across the state. The purpose of this multilevel longitudinal study was to examine the relationship of the Louisiana Recovery School District to student and school outcomes including risk of dropout and standardized test scores. The dissertation measured these influences over time (2007-2010). The data collected were derived from Louisiana’s Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) and quantitative data on dropout status from the Louisiana Department of Education Student Information System (SIS) database. To explore the RSD’s relationship to risk of dropout and student achievement scores over time, two analyses were conducted. First, to examine the relationship between student and school level predictors and the risk of dropout, a multilevel discrete-time survival analysis was conducted. The level 1 analysis included time and student level covariates, while level two included school level covariates. The results of the this analysis indicate that when controlling for student level covariates, RSD students are at a 3.25 times greater risk of dropout than traditional public school students. Next, in the study of the RSD’s relationship to student achievement, a three-level hierarchical linear model was run to account for repeated measures and nested data. The level one analysis examined the influence of time on LEAP/iLEAP scores. The level two analysis examined the influence of student characteristics including race, gender, and free and reduced lunch status on student scores. The third level examined the influence of aggregated school level predictors including school type (RSD versus traditional public school) on student scores. Results indicate that student characteristics of disadvantage including minority status and low socioeconomic status are linked to lower test performance over time. For Sample A, the school level covariate, school type, was significant in each model, suggesting that even when controlling for student and other school level factors, school type accounted for variation in student scores over time. RSD students performed significantly lower than TPS students in both ELA and math over the 4 year period of the study. The school level covariate, school type, was also significant for Sample B indicating that students in RSD schools perform lower on ELA and Math portions of the LEAP/iLEAP/GEE than their TPS counterparts. When controlling for other school level covariates in Sample B, the effect for school type was no longer significant. No other school level covariates were significant in the models suggesting that variation in outcomes was accounted for by student level characteristics and time rather than by school level characteristic

Isoscaling Studies of Fission - a Sensitive Probe into the Dynamics of Scission

The fragment yield ratios were investigated in the fission of 238,233U targets induced by 14 MeV neutrons. The isoscaling behavior was typically observed for the isotopic chains of fragments ranging from the proton-rich to the most neutron-rich ones. The observed high sensitivity of neutron-rich heavy fragments to the target neutron content suggests fission as a source of neutron-rich heavy nuclei for present and future rare ion beam facilities, allowing studies of nuclear properties towards the neutron drip-line and investigations of the conditions for nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei. The breakdowns of the isoscaling behavior around N=62 and N=80 manifest the effect of two shell closures on the dynamics of scission. The shell closure around N=64 can be explained by the deformed shell. The investigation of isoscaling in the spontaneous fission of 248,244Cm further supports such conclusion. The Z-dependence of the isoscaling parameter exhibits a structure which can be possibly related to details of scission dynamics. The fission isoscaling studies can be a suitable tool for the investigation of possible new pathways to synthesize still heavier nuclei.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, RevTex, final version, to appear in Phys. Rev. C as a regular articl

Evaluation of Product Quality in QFD using Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) Techniques in Manufacturing Industry

Every customer wants to purchase the best quality product but the price factor is only the reason due to which most of customers compromise with quality. The main purpose of our study is to find a best suitable method which will be helpful to design such product having good quality with affordable price. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the most powerful method for analyzing the customer demands and selection of most important or valuable voice which has to be corrected or modified. The integrated approach of QFD and Optimization techniques (i.e. AHP, TOPSIS, PROMETHEE, etc.) can be used to analyze the product quality manufacturing industry. A QFD optimization methodology is formulated in this study with suitable illustrations and tried to find a best method of product design. Keywords: Quality Function Deployment, PROMETHEE, AHP, TOPSIS, House of Quality

Beyond the Crayon Box

Background: Colorism is ingrained in systems like racism. Since, it is a global phenomenon among people of color also of all ages, it is pertinent to inform best practices in education with young people to promote healthy developmental growth. To diminish the racial/ethnic/color disparities experienced by students of color in American schools, it is essential to have substantial literature available that consist of the adverse consequences that colorism have on children and youth in schools. Such information will aid educators to better serve and care for the well-being of those who suffer effects of colorism. Methods/Design: Scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles will be searched utilizing 10 of the EBSCOhost databases, JSTOR, Social Service Abstracts, and Google Scholar. The EBSCOhost databases will have an open date along with limiters for geography and age. JSTOR, Social Service Abstracts, and Google Scholar will have a publication date ranch of 2009-2020. Dissertations and Theses grey literature will not be excluded from those databases. The search selections of literature will be inclusive of all methodology designs. Following the PRISMA-P guidelines, the eligibility of literature will be set through raters screening the titles, abstracts, and subsequent full-texts. Data extraction and synthesis will be conducted for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Discussion: This scoping review will ascertain barriers to success for young people of color through examining the outcomes linked to colorism. Furthermore, it will disseminate an understanding of cultural competency to meet the needs of diverse groups

Beyond the Crayon Box

Background: Colorism is ingrained in systems like racism. Since, it is a global phenomenon among people of color also of all ages, it is pertinent to inform best practices in education with young people to promote healthy developmental growth. To diminish the racial/ethnic/color disparities experienced by students of color in American schools, it is essential to have substantial literature available that consist of the adverse consequences that colorism have on children and youth in schools. Such information will aid educators to better serve and care for the well-being of those who suffer effects of colorism. Methods/Design: Scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles will be searched utilizing 10 of the EBSCOhost databases, JSTOR, Social Service Abstracts, and Google Scholar. The EBSCOhost databases will have an open date along with limiters for geography and age. JSTOR, Social Service Abstracts, and Google Scholar will have a publication date ranch of 2009-2020. Dissertations and Theses grey literature will not be excluded from those databases. The search selections of literature will be inclusive of all methodology designs. Following the PRISMA-P guidelines, the eligibility of literature will be set through raters screening the titles, abstracts, and subsequent full-texts. Data extraction and synthesis will be conducted for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Discussion: This scoping review will ascertain barriers to success for young people of color through examining the outcomes linked to colorism. Furthermore, it will disseminate an understanding of cultural competency to meet the needs of diverse groups

Tracing the evolution of the symmetry energy of hot nuclear fragments from the compound nucleus towards multifragmentation

The evolution of the symmetry energy coefficient of the binding energy of hot fragments with increasing excitation is explored in multifragmentation processes following heavy-ion collisions below the Fermi energy. In this work, high-resolution mass spectrometric data on isotopic distributions of projectile-like fragments from collisions of 25 MeV/nucleon 86Kr and 64Ni beams on heavy neutron-rich targets are systematically compared to calculations involving the Statistical Multifragmentation Model. The study reveals a gradual decrease of the symmetry energy coefficient from 25 MeV at the compound nucleus regime (E*/A < 2 MeV) towards 15 MeV in the bulk multifragmentation regime (E*/A > 4 MeV). The ensuing isotopic distributions of the hot fragments are found to be very wide and extend towards the neutron drip-line. These findings may have important implications to the composition and evolution of hot astrophysical environments, such as core-collapse supernova.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

The decay time scale for highly excited nuclei as seen from asymmetrical emission of particles

A novel method was developed for the extraction of short emission times of light particles from the projectile-like fragments in peripheral deep-inelastic collisions in the Fermi energy domain. We have taken an advantage of the fact that in the external Coulomb field particles are evaporated asymmetrically. It was possible to determine the emission times in the interval 50-500 fm/c using the backward emission anisotropy of alpha-particles relative to the largest residue, in the reaction 28Si + 112Sn at 50 MeV/nucleon. The extracted times are consistent with predictions based on the evaporation decay widths calculated with the statistical evaporation model generalized for the case of the Coulomb interaction with the target.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett.

School Mental Health in Charters: A Glimpse of Practitioners from a National Sample

Charter schools are part of a global push for alternative governance models in public education. Even though U.S. charter schools enroll nearly 3.2 million children, little is known about school mental health (SMH) practice in charter schools. The current study was the first step in a line of inquiry exploring SMH and school social work practice in charter schools. Using cross-sectional survey research methods, the authors conducted brief one-time phone surveys with charter school social workers and counselors identified using a stratified random sampling strategy with national charter school lists. The final sample for analysis was 473 schools. Of these, 44.4% (n = 210) had a school social worker or counselor present at least one day per week, of whom 67 (30.5%) were school social workers. The school social work sample reported a number of job titles, including “school social worker” (67%) and many (13.4%) that were a variation of counselor (e.g., “behavioral counselor,” “social emotional counselor”). Half were employed by their school, five were employed by an outside organization contracted with the school and eight were employed by the school’s chartering organization. More than three-quarters (83%) had a master\u27s degree in social work as their highest degree. Our findings provide a snapshot of the SMH and school social work workforce within the emerging practice setting of charter schools. Findings suggest that the SMH workforce may be professionally similar to those in traditional public schools, but with more flexibility for interprofessional collaboration, professional advocacy, and role definition. Other implications for research are also discussed