Let\u27s Not Do Anything Drastic: Processes of Reproducing Rural Marginalization in Education Policy Decision-Making

At a school board meeting in micropolitan Athens County, parents of children attending the district’s smallest elementary school, Chauncey Elementary, packed in to defend the school against consolidation. They made calls for a levy to cover the impending budget shortfall and offered to reduce their classrooms by half if other schools would also bear some of the costs. They spent their holiday season defending their school, a source of vibrancy in the small town, from being closed. In the meeting, someone advocating for alternatives to closure suggested cutting administrator positions. The board response, according to one parent-leader? “Let’s not do anything drastic!”. As the U.S. urbanizes, rural autonomy over local institutions has dwindled and rural residents are marginalized by policies which govern those institutions. Recent work, some with a large public reach, has described contemporary rural politics as driven by resentment (Cramer 2016), rage (Wuthnow 2019), or something otherwise “the matter” with rural people (Frank 2005). Urbanormativity theory, with its focus on the cyclical relationship between representations of rurality and structural forces of urbanization, has the potential to shed light on how such ideologies develop and are reinforced through processes of marginalization from political and community life in rural places (Fulkerson and Thomas 2019). In this project, I use a mixed-methods retrospective case study of school consolidation in Appalachia as a way to understand the process by which local politics come to marginalize people and places along lines of rurality and social class. I also examine how this marginalization and loss of autonomy contribute to the development of rural politics and identity. Drawing from multiple methods, I examine the structural and social processes by which school consolidation was achieved, with alternatives to closure labeled as “drastic measures”. I pay particular attention to the shifting role of the state in curtailing decisions about rural schools and the ways neoliberal ideology lent itself to justifying rural marginalization. Further, I examine the impacts of these school consolidations on the rural community and its local politics. The concentration of negative outcomes in Chauncey constructed the community as a political “sacrifice zone” (Scott 2010). The processes and outcomes of this consolidation, I argue, serves as a useful case study to better understand political divisions along rural-urban lines

Pay-for-Performance in Five State Medicaid Programs: Lessons for the Nursing Home Sector

This project looks at the pay-for-performance program in five state Medicaid programs and lists the lessons that the Nursing Home Sector can learn from. They are: The federal government has traditionally sought to ensure quality outcomes through nursing home (NH) surveys conducted by state officials; Some states have begun to experiment with pay-for-performance (P4P) incentives, which provider higher Medicaid reimbursement to those facilities achieving desired outcomes; By 2007, there were 9 state P4P programs covering 20% of NHs and 16.7% of residents; Little is known about the use of P4P to promote quality and efficiency in the NH sector

The Impact of Privacy Laws on Online User Behavior

Policymakers worldwide draft privacy laws that require trading-off between safeguarding consumer privacy and preventing economic loss to companies that use consumer data. However, little empirical knowledge exists as to how privacy laws affect companies' performance. Accordingly, this paper empirically quantifies the effects of the enforcement of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on online user behavior over time, analyzing data from 6,286 websites spanning 24 industries during the 10 months before and 18 months after the GDPR's enforcement in 2018. A panel differences estimator, with a synthetic control group approach, isolates the short- and long-term effects of the GDPR on user behavior. The results show that, on average, the GDPR's effects on user quantity and usage intensity are negative; e.g., the numbers of total visits to a website decrease by 4.9% and 10% due to GDPR in respectively the short- and long-term. These effects could translate into average revenue losses of $7 million for e-commerce websites and almost$2.5 million for ad-based websites 18 months after GDPR. The GDPR's effects vary across websites, with some industries even benefiting from it; moreover, more-popular websites suffer less, suggesting that the GDPR increased market concentration

Formal Verification Toolkit for Requirements and Early Design Stages

Efficient flight software development from natural language requirements needs an effective way to test designs earlier in the software design cycle. A method to automatically derive logical safety constraints and the design state space from natural language requirements is described. The constraints can then be checked using a logical consistency checker and also be used in a symbolic model checker to verify the early design of the system. This method was used to verify a hybrid control design for the suit ports on NASA Johnson Space Center's Space Exploration Vehicle against safety requirements

The effect of HIV counselling and testing on HIV acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review

Annually, millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) receive HIV counselling and testing (HCT), a service designed to inform persons of their HIV status and, if HIV-uninfected, reduce HIV acquisition risk. However, the impact of HCT on HIV acquisition has not been systematically evaluated. We conducted a systematic review to assess this relationship in SSA

The Development of Techie Times

Summer 2020 provided the motivation and opportunity to move summer outreach programs into the virtual world. Faculty and students in the Purdue University School of Engineering Technology moved face-to-face programs into a middle school program called Techie Times. This program was designed to provide students with an organized platform occurring just before the school year started, allowing them to learn at home, working with family, or independently. The program was designed to take place nonconsecutively over eight days, covering five various STEM topics. Some of these activities were already a part of the middle school curriculum; others were not. That provided an opportunity to engage students and teach them principles that support various engineering technology curricula. Students were recruited from across the country. Students were placed into three cohorts sorted by biological age and then into smaller groups to enhance interactions. Volunteers moderated the smaller groups representing corporate engineering retirees, university professors, and others interested in helping. The volunteers were provided with information to support the principles being learned in the activity of the day. They asked the students to demonstrate what they did at home and then asked them questions about what they learned from the activity. In the older age groups, volunteers generated hypotheses and tested them to see if they worked, thus providing a challenge for the older and more experienced students. This camp proved to be well-timed on the summer calendar. Parents expressed their pleasure in their students becoming a bit more disciplined as they transitioned from their summer activities to the upcoming school year. This paper will review the program’s curriculum, observations by the parents/guardians, and feedback from the students. The program is an example of a well-transformed outreach program that engaged and enlightened students

Designing and Testing an Inventory for Measuring Social Media Competency of Certified Health Education Specialists

Objective: The aim of this study was to design, develop, and test the Social Media Competency Inventory (SMCI) for CHES and MCHES. Methods: The SMCI was designed in three sequential phases: (1) Conceptualization and Domain Specifications, (2) Item Development, and (3) Inventory Testing and Finalization. Phase 1 consisted of a literature review, concept operationalization, and expert reviews. Phase 2 involved an expert panel (n=4) review, think-aloud sessions with a small representative sample of CHES/MCHES (n=10), a pilot test (n=36), and classical test theory analyses to develop the initial version of the SMCI. Phase 3 included a field test of the SMCI with a random sample of CHES and MCHES (n=353), factor and Rasch analyses, and development of SMCI administration and interpretation guidelines. Results: Six constructs adapted from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and the integrated behavioral model were identified for assessing social media competency: (1) Social Media Self-Efficacy, (2) Social Media Experience, (3) Effort Expectancy, (4) Performance Expectancy, (5) Facilitating Conditions, and (6) Social Influence. The initial item pool included 148 items. After the pilot test, 16 items were removed or revised because of low item discrimination (r.90), or based on feedback received from pilot participants. During the psychometric analysis of the field test data, 52 items were removed due to low discrimination, evidence of content redundancy, low R-squared value, or poor item infit or outfit. Psychometric analyses of the data revealed acceptable reliability evidence for the following scales: Social Media Self-Efficacy (alpha=.98, item reliability=.98, item separation=6.76), Social Media Experience (alpha=.98, item reliability=.98, item separation=6.24), Effort Expectancy(alpha =.74, item reliability=.95, item separation=4.15), Performance Expectancy (alpha =.81, item reliability=.99, item separation=10.09), Facilitating Conditions (alpha =.66, item reliability=.99, item separation=16.04), and Social Influence (alpha =.66, item reliability=.93, item separation=3.77). There was some evidence of local dependence among the scales, with several observed residual correlations above |.20|. Conclusions: Through the multistage instrument-development process, sufficient reliability and validity evidence was collected in support of the purpose and intended use of the SMCI. The SMCI can be used to assess the readiness of health education specialists to effectively use social media for health promotion research and practice. Future research should explore associations across constructs within the SMCI and evaluate the ability of SMCI scores to predict social media use and performance among CHES and MCHES

Anion Photoelectron Spectroscopy of Deprotonated ortho-, meta-, and para-methylphenol

The anion photoelectron spectra of ortho-, meta-, and para-methylphenoxide, as well as methyl deprotonated meta-methylphenol, were measured. Using the Slow Electron Velocity Map Imaging technique, the Electron Affinities (EAs) of the o-, m-, and p-methylphenoxyl radicals were measured as follows: 2.1991±0.0014, 2.2177±0.0014, and 2.1199±0.0014 eV, respectively. The EA of m-methylenephenol was also obtained, 1.024±0.008 eV. In all four cases, the dominant vibrational progressions observed are due to several ring distortion vibrational normal modes that were activated upon photodetachment, leading to vibrational progressions spaced by ∼500 cm−1. Using the methylphenol O–H bond dissociation energies reported by King et al. and revised by Karsili et al., a thermodynamic cycle was constructed and the acidities of the methylphenol isomers were determined as follows: ΔacidH0298K=348.39±0.25, 348.82±0.25, 350.08±0.25, and 349.60±0.25 kcal/mol for cis-ortho-, trans-ortho-, m-, and p-methylphenol, respectively. The excitation energies for the ground doublet state to the lowest excited doublet state electronic transition in o-, m-, and p-methylphenoxyl were also measured as follows: 1.029±0.009, 0.962±0.002, and 1.029±0.009 eV, respectively. In the photoelectron spectra of the neutral excited states, C–O stretching modes were excited in addition to ring distortion modes. Electron autodetachment was observed in the cases of both m- and p-methylphenoxide, with the para isomer showing a lower photon energy onset for this phenomenon