School and district policies and strategies that impact student performance on the Missouri end-of-course algebra I NCLB assessment

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on October 29, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Barbara J. ReysIncludes bibliographical references.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2012.Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Curriculum and instruction."July 2012"This dissertation study performed an analysis of state testing data, teacher survey data, and interview data to describe policies and strategies used by 42 teachers and administrators at 6 high schools having 9-12 grade structure. Following the work of Yañez & Wenrick (2000); Williams, Kirst, Heartel, et al. (2005), a framework for school practices and policies that impact student performance was used to analyze interview and survey responses reported by administrators and teachers participating in this study. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MODESE) allows the Algebra 1 EOC assessments to be administered to students during any year from 6th to 12th grade. If students are administered the Algebra 1 EOC assessment prior to entering secondary school, test scores are banked until the year a student is enrolled in secondary school. Therefore, one policy having a positive impact on student performance involves positioning the district to administer the Algebra 1 EOC to students prior to their entrance into secondary school. In all, a total of eight strategies and policies that are used by successful school districts have been determined to have impact on student improvement on the Missouri Algebra 1 EOC assessment

Twisted Radio Waves and Twisted Thermodynamics

We present and analyze a gedanken experiment and show that the assumption that an antenna operating at a single frequency can transmit more than two independent information channels to the far field violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Transmission of a large number of channels, each associated with an angular momentum "twisted wave" mode, to the far field in free space is therefore not possible.Comment: Final version, accepted for publication in PLoS ON

High School Mathematics: State-Level Curriculum Standards and Graduation Requirements

The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has prompted increased activity at the state level in the specification of mathematics curriculum learning goals in the United States. As a direct result of NCLB, 39 states have replaced or revised their mathematics curriculum standards since 2002 (Reys, 2006). Along with the NCLB requirements focusing on curriculum, states have also increased graduation requirements in order to engage their students in more mathematics throughout their secondary education. The information in this report illustrates that states vary with respect to required mathematics credit hours and courses for graduation.This report was developed as part of the work of the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum, supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ESI-0333879. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation

Rotationally symmetric transverse magnetic vector wave propagation for nonlinear optics

In this paper the theory and simulation results are presented for 3D cylindrical rotationally symmetric spatial soliton propagation in a nonlinear medium using a modified finite-difference time-domain general vector auxiliary differential equation method for transverse magnetic polarization. The theory of 3D rotationally symmetric spatial solitons is discussed, and compared with two (1+1)D, termed "2D" for this paper, hyperbolic secant spatial solitons, with a phase difference of pi (antiphase). The simulated behavior of the 3D rotationally symmetric soliton was compared with the interaction of the two antiphase 2D solitons for different source hyperbolic secant separation distances. Lastly, we offer some possible explanations for the simulated soliton behavior