Claremont I and II - Were They Rightly Decided, and Where Have They Left Us?

[Excerpt] “Our children embody the enduring wonder of life. They hold our hopes for the future. We want them to be happy, to succeed in whatever they do both in work and in play. We want them to contribute to our country and the world in constructive ways. But for these hopes to be realized our children must be educated-they must possess the requisite skills and knowledge to function well in this ever changing world. Yet, are we, as a society, meeting our responsibility to educate our children? What do we expect of our public schools? How important are these schools to us? Is a public education fit for the times guaranteed as a constitutional matter? These questions loomed large in the New Hampshire Supreme Court\u27s decisions in Claremont I and Claremont II, issued respectively in 1993 and 1997. Constituting New Hampshire\u27s core education rulings, they are among the Court\u27s most controversial exercises of constitutional jurisprudence. […] This article concludes that the New Hampshire Supreme Court correctly determined in Claremont I that Article 83 established enforceable positive constitutional rights for the provision and funding of an adequate public education. The Court acted properly in recognizing that the judiciary had an important role to play to assure these important constitutional rights. Claremont I properly upheld the State\u27s constitutional obligation to accord the State\u27s public school children with access to an education that would at all times enable them to be good citizens productive in their work. The decision also reflected proper regard for the prerogatives of the elected branches by leaving to them, at least initially, the development of an operational definition of adequacy in education, along with the responsibility to fashion the appropriate means to provide for it. The Claremont II decision, however, does not earn like approbation. It fails to stand up strongly as a tax ruling. It does not constitute a good appellate review of the other Superior Court rulings against the petitioners. The Court majority, after issuing its decision, deferred to the elected branches to give them time to fashion a remedy. Its decision, however, was not well received, or easily accepted, by many in the Legislature. Only after much resistance and much delay did the elected branches manage to put in place certain educational adequacy /funding reforms. Whatever their merits or flaws, this article sees these two decisions as having importantly and positively impacted New Hampshire\u27s public education system. The decisions had a good deal to do with ushering in needed reforms, so that the education system now operates with a specific definition for a constitutionally adequate education, regular assessment and accountability tools, and a costing out of adequacy linked to associated funding. The decisions have thus better positioned the public education system to meet the challenges of the future.

Quitting in Protest: A Theory of Presidential Policy Making and Agency Response

This paper examines the effects of centralized presidential policy-making, implemented through unilateral executive action, on the willingness of bureaucrats to exert effort and stay in the government. Extending models in organizational economics, we show that policy initiative by the president is a substitute for initiative by civil servants. Yet, total effort is enhanced when both work. Presidential centralization of policy often impels policy-oriented bureaucrats ( zealots ) to quit rather than implement presidential policies they dislike. Those most likely to quit are a range of moderate bureaucrats. More extreme bureaucrats may be willing to wait out an opposition president in the hope of tempering future policy when an allied president is elected. As control of the White House alternates between ideologically opposed extreme presidents, policy-minded moderates are stripped from bureaucratic agencies leaving only policy extremists or poorly performing slackers. These departures degrade policy initiative in moderate agencies

Public Sector Personnel Economics: Wages, Promotions, and the Competence-Control Trade-off

We model personnel policies in public agencies, examining how wages and promotion standards can partially offset a fundamental contracting problem: the inability of public sector workers to contract on performance, and the inability of political masters to contract on forbearance from meddling. Despite the dual contracting problem, properly constructed personnel policies can encourage intrinsically motivated public sector employees to invest in expertise, seek promotion, remain in the public sector, and develop policy projects. However, doing so requires internal personnel policies that sort slackers from zealots. Personnel policies that accomplish this task are quite different in agencies where acquired expertise has little value in the private sector, and agencies where acquired expertise commands a premium in the private sector. Finally, even with well-designed personnel policies, there remains an inescapable trade-off between political control and expertise acquisition

Requirements, Design and Prototype of a Virtual User Interface for the AFIT Virtual Spaceplane

The United States Air Force is evaluating the feasibility of designing a military spaceplane capable of accomplishing military objectives from a low earth orbit and atmospheric flight regimes. Current efforts are involved in determining the scientific, operational, and budgetary constraints associated with this concept. This thesis looks at the exploration of new interface techniques associated with the design of a virtual spaceplane and is a subset of the overall virtual spaceplane effort which will assist researchers in determining the feasibility of a military spaceplane. Interface techniques are integrated into a virtual user interface that is designed to accommodate expected operations associated with atmospheric and low earth orbit military operations. We expect these operations to include satellite deployment and recovery reconnaissance, and space station construction and resupply. The focus of the virtual user interface design effort involves the application and integration of current interface design methodologies and virtual environment technologies to support the functionality of a virtual spaceplane

Helminth infections in Apodemus sylvaticus in southern England: interactive effects of host age, sex and year on the prevalence and abundance of infections

Helminth parasites were studied in the wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus, in southern England in September of each of four successive years (1994-1997). Nine species of helminths were recorded: five nematodes (Heligmosomoides polygyrus, Syphacia stroma, Pelodera strongyloides, Trichuris muris, Capillaria murissylvatici), two cestodes (Microsomacanthus crenata, Taenia taeniaeformis) and two trematodes (Corrigia vitta, Brachylaemus recurvum). In total, 134 mice were examined and 91.8% carried at least one species of helminth. The majority of mice carried two to three species (60.5%) and the highest combination was six of the nine species recorded in the study. The patterns of between-year variations in the prevalence and abundance of infection were different for each of the six species for which sufficient quantitative data were available to enable statistical analysis. For H, polygyrus, the most important source of variation arose from between-year differences, host age and. the interaction of these factors: abundance increased with host age but in 1995 the age pattern was markedly different from that in the remaining years. The abundance of C. vitta also varied significantly between years but additionally there was a strong independent age effect. For M. crenata, the year x age interaction was significant, indicating that abundance among different age cohorts varied from year to year but there was also a weak significant main effect of age arising from the youngest age cohort carrying no parasites and the oldest age cohort the heaviest infections. For P, strongyloides the only significant factor was between-year variation with 1995 being a year of exceptionally low prevalence and abundance of infection. No significant between-year variation was detected for S. stroma but there was a strong sex effect (males carrying heavier infections) and an age effect (older mice of both sexes carrying heavier infections). The abundance of Trichuris muris varied only in relation to host age, worm burdens growing in intensity with increasing age, but there was also a significant interaction between year and host sex with respect to prevalence. For the remaining three species, the prevalence of infections was too low (<8.2%) to enable any meaningful interpretation. This analysis emphasizes the need for carefully controlled statistical procedures in aiding the interpretation and the prioritization of the factors affecting worm burdens in wild rodents

A Multivariate Model of Strategic Asset Allocation

Much recent work has documented evidence for predictability of asset returns. We show how such predictability can affect the portfolio choices of long-lived investors who value wealth not for its own sake but for the consumption their wealth can support. We develop an approximate solution method for the optimal consumption and portfolio choice problem of an infinitely-lived investor with Epstein-Zin utility who faces a set of asset returns described by a vector autoregression in returns and state variables. Empirical estimates in long-run annual and postwar quarterly US data suggest that the predictability of stock returns greatly increases the optimal demand for stocks. The role of nominal bonds in long-term portfolios depends on the importance of real interest rate risk relative to other sources of risk. We extend the analysis to consider long-term inflation-indexed bonds and find that these bonds greatly increase the utility of conservative investors, who should hold large positions when they are available.