Policy Barriers to School Improvement: What's Real and What's Imagined?

Some of the most promising reforms are happening where school leaders are thinking differently about how to get the strongest student outcomes from the limited resources available. But even principals who use their autonomy to aggressively reallocate resources say that persistent district, state, and federal barriers prohibit them from doing more.What are these barriers? What do they block principals from doing? Is there a way around them?CRPE researchers probed these questions with principals in three states (NH, CT, MD). These principals cited numerous district, state, and federal barriers standing in the way of school improvement. The barriers, 128 in all, fell into three categories: 1) barriers to instructional innovations, 2) barriers to allocating resources differently, and 3) barriers to improving teacher quality.Upon investigation, researchers found that principals have far more authority than they think. Only 31% of the barriers cited were "real" -- immovable statutes, policies, or managerial directives that bring the threat of real consequences if broken.The report recommends educating principals on the authority they already possess, to help them find workarounds to onerous rules. The report also outlines a number of specific state and district policy changes to grant schools the autonomy they need to improve student outcomes

Asian Americans and the 2008 Election

Presents results of a survey of Asian Americans' views on the 2008 election and political participation. Examines candidate preferences, issues of concern, and percentages of likely voters, by party affiliation, voting record, ethnic group, and state

Figuring Out/In Rhetoric: From \u3ci\u3eAntistrophē\u3c/i\u3e to \u3ci\u3eAlloiostrophē\u3c/i\u3e

We begin with critical reflections on rhetoric as the antistrophē of dialectic. Here is the first line of Aristotle\u27s Rhetoric: Rhetoric is the counterpart [antistrophos] to dialectic. What this means exactly has been a point of some controversy over centuries of study in the rhetorical tradition. As John Rainolds said, There are as many interpretations of this little word . . . as there are interpreters. However, we see something other, namely that these many interpretations of rhetoric as antistrophē are actually one. The result is an amplification of the face of rhetoric to look, act, perform, and affect change like dialectic. Antistrophē is the trope that dominates and amplifies the rhetorical tradition as civic discourse. Set in this conceptual contextualization, rhetoric\u27s dialectical face is a catastrophe for rhetoric, for difference, and for democratic deliberation. Why and how this is so involves an inward-looking investigation into how antistrophē encapsulates rhetoric in terms of argument and style. In this chapter, we also offer a way out of this traditional sensibility by troping rhetoric otherwise. Traditionally, tropes and figures are cast as tools to be used by agents. But Hayden White has detailed how tropes operate on and within discourse and, structurally speaking, determine the modes-e.g., argument, style-of discourse. In our analysis, the trope of antistrophē, because it defines what rhetoric is, testifies to the fundamental structure of rhetoric. There are other tropes. Tropes are rhetoric\u27s opportunity for enlarging rhetoric\u27s structural relation with contingency through difference. Our reliance on tropes is committed to using rhetoric\u27s resources so as not to betray our opportunity, something Giles Wilkeson Gray warned rhetoricians about as early as 1923

A Revolution in Tropes: Alloiostrophic Rhetoric

A Revolution in Tropes is a groundbreaking study of rhetoric and tropes. Theorizing new ways of seeing rhetoric and its relationship with democratic deliberation, Jane Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud explore and display alloiōsis as a trope of difference, exception, and radical otherness. Their argument centers on Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric through particular tropes of similarity that sustained a vision of civic discourse but at the same time underutilized tropes of difference. When this vision is revolutionized, democratic deliberation can perform and advance its ends of equality, justice, and freedom. Marie-Odile, N. Hobeika, and Michele Kennerly join Sutton and Mifsud in pushing the limits of rhetoric by engaging rhetoric alloiostrophically. Their collective efforts work to display the possibilities of what rhetoric can be. A Revolution in Tropes will appeal to scholars of rhetoric, philosophy, and communication.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1201/thumbnail.jp

Introduction: A Revolution in Tropes

Our view of tropes is that they are rhetoric\u27s own unique resources, but for ineluctable historiographical reasons have been more or less closed off from the production of theory. Our trope project began simply enough. If the workings of tropes could be identified in a new way, then the aim and purpose of rhetoric could be retheorized in terms new to democratic deliberation. Working under the slogan Yes, tropes-but all of them, we attempted a new classification system based on the Greek roots of hundreds of tropes listed in various old and new sources such as Bernard Dupriez\u27s A Dictionary of Literary Devices, A-Z and Richard Lanham\u27s A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, respectively

Configurations: Encountering Ancient Athenian Spaces of Rhetoric, Democracy, and Woman

This essay encounters configurations of “woman” in the space of rhetoric and democracy. By “configuration” we mean how a woman is postured and positioned in this space. We deal in ancient Athens recognizing that an ancient conceptual space called rhetoric, an art or techne of civic discourse, is embedded in the contemporary lived space of American civic discourse always constructing the rhetorical figure of woman and continuously under construction. We explore this conceptual space rhetorically, that is, not to articulate the feelings or meanings the space would have had for the ancient Athenians, but rather to articulate how this conceptual space still figures “woman.” The articulation of conceptual and lived spaces is therefore our framework for seeing power relations and exploring communicative relations in terms of gender, sexuality, and citizenry. Drawing from such diverse fields as philosophy, rhetoric, architecture, classics, archeology, mythology, and women’s studies, we theorize space, experiencing it as active, energetic, and productive, rather than as a backdrop, or a scene, or a place in which things happen(ed). Our lived experience of rhetoric and democracy is shaped by the agora, the civic space of ancient Athens. We are struck by the Temple of Hephaestus, which sits above the bouleterion, the place of civic deliberation and persuasion for the ancient Greeks. We experience the domination of “woman,” both in terms of physical space and conceptual space. Our experience of this domination entails an act of seeing (ie. theorizing from the Greek theorien, to see) her capture, trade, domestication, commodification, and silencing in the space of rhetoric and democracy. Moreover, we see, hence we theorize, the ways in which this domination of “woman” is considered necessary to create civilization, hence how this domination came to be celebrated, lucrative, virtuous, ideal, and prized. Our act of seeing exposes how the space of rhetoric and democracy has traditionally dominated “woman,” and in our exposé, we become aware of the wares and ware of civic exchange. We experience this awareness as a limen, a space of intersection where woman can affirm woman

Dust in the 55 Cancri planetary system

The presence of debris disks around $\sim$ 1-Gyr-old main sequence stars suggests that an appreciable amount of dust may persist even in mature planetary systems. Here we report the detection of dust emission from 55 Cancri, a star with one, or possibly two, planetary companions detected through radial velocity measurements. Our observations at 850$\mu$m and 450$\mu$m imply a dust mass of 0.0008-0.005 Earth masses, somewhat higher than that in the the Kuiper Belt of our solar system. The estimated temperature of the dust grains and a simple model fit both indicate a central disk hole of at least 10 AU in radius. Thus, the region where the planets are detected is likely to be significantly depleted of dust. Our results suggest that far-infrared and sub-millimeter observations are powerful tools for probing the outer regions of extrasolar planetary systems.Comment: 8 pages and 2 figures, to appear in the Astrophysical Journa

Encoded Hydrogel Microparticles for Sensitive and Multiplex microRNA Detection Directly from Raw Cell Lysates

In recent years, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as promising diagnostic markers because of their unique dysregulation patterns under various disease conditions and high stability in biological fluids. However, current methods of analyzing miRNA levels typically require RNA isolation, which is cumbersome and time-consuming. To achieve high-throughput and accurate miRNA profiling, this study eliminates the need for purification steps by detecting miRNA directly from raw cellular lysate using nonfouling polyethylene glycol microparticles. In contrast to recent studies on direct miRNA measurements from cell lysate, our hydrogel-based system provides high-confidence quantification with robust performance. The lysis buffer for the assay was optimized to maximize reaction and labeling efficiency, and this assay has a low limit of detection (<1000 cells) without target amplification. Additionally, the capability for multiplexing was demonstrated through analyzing the levels of three endogenous miRNAs in 3T3 cell lysate. This versatile platform holds great potential for rapid and reliable direct miRNA quantification in complex media, and can be further extended to single-cell analysis by exploiting the flexibility and scalability of our system.National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (Grant 5R21CA177393-02

An adjustment inventory for primary grades

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit