Making Inclusive Schooling Part of Our Daily Journey

Introduction by: Jackie Czamanske, Regional Field Facilitator, NYSED S3TAIR Project As a School Improvement Specialist, I’ve facilitated numerous discussions over the years on how a school district may address the various challenges it faces. During these conversations, teams often voice their fears on how including students with disabilities may negatively affect a school\u27s overall performance. The Rochester City School District’s World of Inquiry School provides a solid illustration on how high expectations and inclusion can lock arms in a large urban environment to achieve a performance-enhanced setting for all students. “Are We There Yet?” gives building administrators and leaders an intimate illustration of one school\u27s journey to create an inclusive environment. Concrete guidance on structures, culture, collaboration and a developmental implementation model provide navigational tools on how to “Get the world for EVERY student!

Mapping World News

Students will be able to use an atlas to locate countries on a world map

Adapting the Architectural Avant-Garde: A design proposal for Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center

As culture and technology evolve, how will modern architecture fare? The thoughtful and deliberate adaptation of and addition to a work of modern architecture can be a means to salvage it from the grips of obsolescence by creating a radical new work. This thesis explores the history of obsolescence in architecture through the twentieth century and its entanglement with the avant-garde. It addresses the difficulty of adapting and adding to modern architecture of the recent past, which has yet to accrue age value or appreciation by the general public, and is still in the process of being understood within the field of architecture itself. It explores in particular the complexities of working with the architecture of Paul Rudolph that has waned in functionality and popularity, focusing on the controversial case of the Orange County Government Center, which has posed a great challenge to preservation efforts. While modern architecture continues and will continue to hold value and meaning for our society, myriad forces are working against its durability. As architecture becomes increasingly entwined with and dependent upon technologies, systems and materials that have shorter lifespans, buildings themselves are threatened with obsolescence. We must therefore carry modern architecture into the future, not as a relic but with renewed functionality and significance. As a result, an entirely new architecture can be created that is richer in meaning and succeeds in meeting the increasing complexity and accelerating flux of contemporary life. The avant-garde is inherently bound to obsolescence, championing innovation and progress while declaring all that preceded obsolete; the avant-garde leaves obsolescence in its wake. In this sense, it is the avant-garde that has become mainstream; the truly radical work of architecture eschews obsolescence, preserving works of architecture by declaring them infinitely adaptable

The Reproduction of Artists in Fred Chappell\u27s I Am One of You Forever

Fred Chappell’s I Am One of You Forever features three artists, in addition to Jess, the narrator and protagonist, who visit the Kirkman family home: Uncle Zeno, Uncle Runkin, and Aunt Sam. The novel takes place in the Appalachian mountains in the years leading up to the Second World War, and the characters are concerned with the outside world’s growing influence on their community. Uncle Zeno and Uncle Runkin represent artists who are unconcerned with their audience; they have no focus on the reception of their production, only the art itself. Aunt Samantha, however, has been very successful in the world away from home and her art is concerned with its reception, reproduction, and audience. Aunt Samantha represents the modern artist, one who has no choice but to think about a wide reception, whereas Runkin and Zeno are more old-fashioned craftsmen, only focused on what they’re doing, rather than with leaving a legacy. Additionally, Aunt Sam’s art is completed whereas Uncles Zeno and Runkin’s creations change and process throughout their lives. Uncle Zeno can never finish a story and Uncle Runkin has been working on his one coffin for years and has not been able to complete it. Additionally, the perspective of the narrator, another artist, conflicted with ideas of home and belonging, looking back twenty years into the past contributes to the finality and infinity of Appalachian art and influence

The Learning Season: The Untapped Power of Summer to Advance Student Achievement

Illustrates how test-score gaps between poor and middle-class children widen over the early years due to differences in summer learning. Discusses how various summer programs could support academic success and gives policy and research recommendations

Using Differential Item Functioning to Test for Inter-rater Reliability in Constructed Response Items

ABSTRACT USING DIFFERENTIAL ITEM FUNCTIONING TO TEST FOR INTER-RATER RELIABILITY IN CONSTRUCTED RESPONSE ITEMS by Tamara B. Miller The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015 Under the Supervision of Professor Cindy M. Walker This study used empirical and simulated data to compare and contrast traditional measures of inter-rater reliability to a novel measure of inter-rater scoring differences in constructed response items. The purpose of this research was to investigate an alternative measure of inter-rater differences, based in modern test theory, that does not require a fully crossed design for its calculation. The proposed, novel measure of inter-rater differences utilizes methods that are typically used to examine differential item functioning (DIF). The traditional inter-rater reliability measures and the proposed measure were calculated for each item under the following simulated conditions: three sample sizes (N = 1000, 500 and 200) and 4 degrees of rater variability: 1) no rater differences 2) minimal rater differences 3) moderate rater differences and 4) severe rater differences. The empirical data were comprised of 177 examinees scored on 17 constructed response items by two raters. For each of the twelve simulated conditions plus the empirical data set, each item had four measures of inter-rater differences associated with it: 1) an intraclass correlation (ICC), 2) a Cohen\u27s Kappa statistic, 3) a DIF statistic when examinees were fully crossed with the two raters and Rater 1\u27s scores comprise the reference group while Rater 2\u27s scores comprise the focal group and 4) a DIF statistic when members of the focal and reference groups were mutually exclusive and nested within one rater. All indices were interpreted first using a significance level to calculate the Type I error and power for each index and second using a cut value to determine a False Positive Rate and a True Positive Rate for each index. Comparison of the findings from the two different criteria revealed that the DIF statistic derived from the nested design had a large False Positive Rate, therefore it was determined that this index was best interpreted using a significance level criterion. Additional simulation study results found that across the three different sample sizes the ICC and the Cohen\u27s kappa both had Type I error rates of 0%, the DIF statistic from the fully crossed design had Type I error rate from 2% to 12% while the DIF statistic from the nested design had a Type I error rate from 2% to 10%. Further results of the simulation found that, pertaining to moderate and severe rating differences modeled as constant, pervasive rater severity, the ICC and Cohen\u27s kappa both had uniform power of 0% across all three sample sizes, while the fully crossed DIF statistic had a range of power from 89% to 100% across all three sample sizes and the DIF statistic derived from a nested-design had power ranging from 44% to 100% across all three sample sizes. This combination of adequate power and low Type I error for the DIF statistic from the nested design is notable not only because it shows an ability to detect poor rater agreement, but it achieved this by using a design that does not require both raters to score all of the items. Finally, results from the empirical study, with a sample size of 177 examinees, provided an example of the application of the DIF statistic derived from the nested design in relation to the other three inter-rater reliability indices which all required a fully crossed design. In conclusion, the results of this investigation indicate that the proposed measure may provide a more achievable and more powerful indicator of inter-rater reliability for constructed response items under the investigated conditions, than traditional measures currently provide

Re-Construction Through Fragmentation: A Cosmodern Reading of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

A cosmodern reading of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas creates a positive vision of the future for readers through various techniques of fragmentation including fragmentation of voice, language, and time. By fragmentation, I have in mind the consistent interruption of the novel’s voice, language, and time that requires an active and aware readership. The reader’s interaction with the text makes the novel re-constructive. In fact, the global nature of Mitchell’s novel, its hopeful ending, and its exploration of the effects of globalization can be considered as a means of exploring the dynamic relationships between the characters, the reader, and Mitchell’s authorial voice. Rather than falling back on familiar postmodernist truisms such as the hopelessness of genuine communication or the impossibility of truth, Mitchell creates a hopeful vision of the future of the world, one that champions the life, agency, and personal narrative of the individual