Six Districts Begin the Principal Pipeline Initiative

This first report of an ongoing evaluation of The Wallace Foundation's Principal Pipeline Initiative describes the six participating school districts' plans and activities during the first year of their grants. The evaluation, conducted by Policy Studies Associates and the RAND Corporation, isintended to inform policy makers and practitioners about the process of carrying out new policies and practices for school leadership and about the results of investments in the Principal Pipeline Initiative. This report is based on collection and analysis of qualitative data, including the districts' proposals, work plans, and progress reports and semi-structured interviews in spring 2012 with 91 administrators employed by districts and their partner institutions. Leaders in all districts report wanting to enlarge their pools of strong applicants for principal positions and to identify and cultivate leadership talent as early as possible in educators' careers.Districts are actively working on allrequired pipeline components: (1) with stakeholder participation, they have developed standards and identified competencies for principals, which they plan to use to guide principal training, hiring, evaluation, and support; (2) they are initiating or strengthening partnerships with university training programs; (3) for hiring, they have standard performance tasks and are developing systems to capture data on candidates' experience; (4) they have diagnostic evaluation tools and are working to build the capacity of principals' supervisors and mentors to support principals' skill development. In addition, all are also bolstering district-run training programs for graduates of university training programs who aspire to become principals

Evaluation of the School Administration Manager Project

Examines the results to date of a Wallace-supported project to help principals delegate some administrative and managerial tasks to school administration managers and spend more time interacting with teachers, students and others on instructional matters

Structure and dynamics of a model glass: influence of long-range forces

We vary the amplitude of the long-range Coulomb forces within a classical potential describing a model silica glass and study the consequences on the structure and dynamics of the glass, via molecular dynamics simulations. This model allows us to follow the variation of specific features such as the First Sharp Diffraction Peak and the Boson Peak in a system going continuously from a fragile (no Coulomb forces) to a strong (with Coulomb forces) glass. In particular we show that the characteristic features of a strong glass (existence of medium range order, bell-shaped ring size distribution, sharp Boson peak) appear as soon as tetrahedral units are formed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. To be published in J.Phys.: C

Cumulative and Differential Effects of Early Child Care and Middle Childhood Out-of-School Time on Adolescent Functioning.

Effects associated with early child care and out-of-school time (OST) during middle childhood were examined in a large sample of U.S. adolescents (N = 958). Both higher quality early child care AND more epochs of organized activities (afterschool programs and extracurricular activities) during middle childhood were linked to higher academic achievement at age 15. Differential associations were found in the behavioral domain. Higher quality early child care was associated with fewer externalizing problems, whereas more hours of early child care was linked to greater impulsivity. More epochs of organized activities was associated with greater social confidence. Relations between early child care and adolescent outcomes were not mediated or moderated by OST arrangements in middle childhood, consistent with independent, additive relations of these nonfamilial settings

Physical and chemical stability of Galesville Sandstone at elevated temperatures and pressures

Galesville Sandstone is currently being considered as a candidate lithology for a Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) demonstration facility. This paper summarizes the results of a preliminary set of laboratory-scale autoclave experiments on a sample of the Galesville from the Media natural gas storage field in Illinois. The dependent variables of interest are percent changes in air permeability, liquid water permeability, and friability (disaggregation potential). The independent variables include temperature (50 to 300/sup 0/C), pressure (60 to 120 bars), time (0.5 to 2.0 months), oxygen content (0 to 21%), carbon dioxide content (0.0 to 0.1%), autoclave type, autoclave stirring frequency, and the humidity conditions. Three humidity conditions were simulated: (1) dry air only, (2) air and water vapor, and (3) liquid water only. Temperature, humidity and time were the dominant variables. Apparently, solutioning of silica and carbonate cements attributes markedly to the observed increases in friability and permeability for cores treated at elevated temperature in a liquid and/or vapor environment. The lack of confining pressure may also be a significant factor. The average change for air and liquid permeabilities was approximately 30 +- 10% for all conditions tested. The average increase in the friability index was 150%

Long-term stability of earthen materials in contact with acidic tailings solutions

The objectives of the studies documented in this report were to use experimental and geochemical computer modeling tools to assess the long-term environmental impact of leachate movement from acidic uranium mill tailings. Liner failure (i.e., an increase in the permeability of the liner material) was not found to be a problem when various acidic tailings solutions leached through liner materials for periods up to 3 years. On the contrary, materials that contained over 30% clay showed a decrease in permeability with time in the laboratory columns. The high clay materials tested appear suitable for lining tailings impoundment ponds. The decreases in permeability are attributed to pore plugging resulting from the precipitation of minerals and solids. This precipitation takes place due to the increase in pH of the tailings solution brought about by the buffering capacity of the soil. Geochemical modeling predicts, and x-ray characterization confirms, that precipitation of solids from solution is occurring in the acidic tailings solution/liner interactions studied. In conclusion the same mineralogical changes and contaminant reactions predicted by geochemical modeling and observed in laboratory studies were found at a drained evaporation pond (Lucky Mc in Wyoming) with a 4 year history of acid attack

Direct reaction measurements with a 132Sn radioactive ion beam

The (d,p) neutron transfer and (d,d) elastic scattering reactions were measured in inverse kinematics using a radioactive ion beam of 132Sn at 630 MeV. The elastic scattering data were taken in a region where Rutherford scattering dominated the reaction, and nuclear effects account for less than 8% of the cross section. The magnitude of the nuclear effects was found to be independent of the optical potential used, allowing the transfer data to be normalized in a reliable manner. The neutron-transfer reaction populated a previously unmeasured state at 1363 keV, which is most likely the single-particle 3p1/2 state expected above the N=82 shell closure. The data were analyzed using finite range adiabatic wave calculations and the results compared with the previous analysis using the distorted wave Born approximation. Angular distributions for the ground and first excited states are consistent with the previous tentative spin and parity assignments. Spectroscopic factors extracted from the differential cross sections are similar to those found for the one neutron states beyond the benchmark doubly-magic nucleus 208Pb.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Identity is About us: Leadership Lessons Learned During an Accreditation Journey

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156444/2/jls21694_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156444/1/jls21694.pd

Pre-discovery observations of CoRoT-1b and CoRoT-2b with the BEST survey

The BEST wide-angle telescope installed at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence and operated in remote control from Berlin by the Institut fuer Planetenforschung, DLR, has observed the CoRoT target fields prior to the mission. The resulting archive of stellar photometric lightcurves is used to search for deep transit events announced during CoRoT's alarm-mode to aid in fast photometric confirmation of these events. The "initial run" field of CoRoT (IRa01) has been observed with BEST in November and December 2006 for 12 nights. The first "long run" field (LRc01) was observed from June to September 2005 for 35 nights. After standard CCD data reduction, aperture photometry has been performed using the ISIS image subtraction method. About 30,000 lightcurves were obtained in each field. Transits of the first detected planets by the CoRoT mission, CoRoT-1b and CoRoT-2b, were found in archived data of the BEST survey and their lightcurves are presented here. Such detections provide useful information at the early stage of the organization of follow-up observations of satellite alarm-mode planet candidates. In addition, no period change was found over ~4 years between the first BEST observation and last available transit observations.Comment: AJ, accepte