Preparing Youth for College and Career: A Process Evaluation of Urban Alliance

Urban Alliance, headquartered in Washington, DC, serves at-risk youth through its high school internship program, which provides training, mentoring, and work experience to high school seniors from distressed communities in Washington, DC; Baltimore; Northern Virginia; and Chicago. The program serves youth before they become disconnected, helping them successfully transition to higher education or employment after graduation. Urban Alliance has commissioned the Urban Institute to conduct a six-year, randomized controlled trial impact and process evaluation of its high school internship program. This report provides a process analysis of the program; the analysis is informed by extensive evaluator observation and interviews with staff, stakeholders, and youth. It also presents baseline information about Urban Alliance and the youth participating in its high school internship program in Washington, DC, and Baltimore in the 2011–12 and 2012–13 program years. Subsequent reports as part of the impact study will describe the early-adulthood impacts of the Urban Alliance internship program on the youth it serves. Below is a summary of the findings in this first of three reports

Vulnerability, Risk, and the Transition to Adulthood

Examines whether poverty and single parenthood influence the likelihood of risk behavior and dropping out among youth and how these behaviors affect the trajectory of connectedness and employment patterns in adulthood. Considers policy implications

Buried Treasure in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: Changing Tastes in the Twentieth Century as Seen Through the Music of the Golden Gate Park Concert Band

Buried deep under the Spreckels Temple of music, the bandstand In San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, lay a treasure trove of sheet music and concert programs belonging to the Golden Gate Park Concert Band. This band, which has delighted audiences and park-goers in San Francisco for 140 years, had over a thousand scores and programs each waiting to be archived and preserved. From documents marked “Property of the WPA,” to handwritten letters from composers, to photographs of since forgotten events, these newly archived materials detail historic trends that shed light on San Francisco’s unique civic culture. Along with conventional critical research, the data paints a picture depicting civic history, developing class identities, and the cultural value of music in a highly tangible way. Thorough examining of the materials in the band’s archives, the thesis tracks some of San Francisco’s most prominent cultural trends, as seen along the lines of major historical events and eras including: the turn of the twentieth century, The Great Depression and World War Two, the post-war years, and the birth of the hippie counterculture in San Francisco. This case study provides a look at how musical ensembles forge not only an identity for themselves but exist as a reflection of the world around them

Promotion Determinants in Corporate Hierarchies: An Examination of Fast Tracks and Functional Area

This chapter estimates a dynamic reduced-form model of intra-firm promotions using an employer–employee panel of over 300 of the largest corporations in the United States in the period from 1981 to 1988. The estimation conditions on unobserved individual heterogeneity and allows for both an endogenous initial condition and sample attrition linked to individual heterogeneity in demonstrating the relative importance of variables that influence promotion. The role of the executive’s functional area in promotion is considered along with the existence and source of promotion fast tracks. We find that while the principal determinant of promotions is unobserved individual heterogeneity, functional area has a high explanatory power, resulting in promotion probabilities that differ by functional area for executives at the same reporting level and firm. No evidence is found that an executive’s recent speed of advancement in pay grade has a positive causal impact on in-sample promotions after conditioning on the executive’s career speed of advancement, except for the lowest level executives the data. Fast tracks appear to largely result from heterogeneity in persistent individual characteristics, not from an inherent benefit in recent advancement itself

Dido & Aeneas: Act I

Dido and Aeneas is a story not about the choices that Dido makes, but rather the impact that the other characters’ choices of have on her. She needs to be in a position where she is absolutely powerless; hence the concept for the first act centers on a re-telling of Dido’s story as a young girl in the 1950\u27s. In this scene, Dido rises from the ashes of woe to a place of joy; the audience should begin to connect with her emotionally, making her demise all the more tragic and cathartic. Using this time and place also makes her seem innocent, underscoring the sadness of her demise. Dido may not start out as a likable character, but by the end of act one, she should be able to capture the hearts of the audience

Dido & Aeneas: Act I

Dido and Aeneas is a story not about the choices that Dido makes, but rather the impact that the other characters’ choices of have on her. She needs to be in a position where she is absolutely powerless; hence the concept for the first act centers on a re-telling of Dido’s story as a young girl in the 1950\u27s. In this scene, Dido rises from the ashes of woe to a place of joy; the audience should begin to connect with her emotionally, making her demise all the more tragic and cathartic. Using this time and place also makes her seem innocent, underscoring the sadness of her demise. Dido may not start out as a likable character, but by the end of act one, she should be able to capture the hearts of the audience

Dido & Aeneas: Act I

Dido and Aeneas is a story not about the choices that Dido makes, but rather the impact that the other characters’ choices of have on her. She needs to be in a position where she is absolutely powerless; hence the concept for the first act centers on a re-telling of Dido’s story as a young girl in the 1950\u27s. In this scene, Dido rises from the ashes of woe to a place of joy; the audience should begin to connect with her emotionally, making her demise all the more tragic and cathartic. Using this time and place also makes her seem innocent, underscoring the sadness of her demise. Dido may not start out as a likable character, but by the end of act one, she should be able to capture the hearts of the audience

Jewish Nationalism in Music

The latter half of the nineteenth century saw a major rise in nationalism. Composers began writing music that became indicative of their native land, as well as music exoticizing other people. However, the Jewish people had no land of their own; they were scattered throughout many parts of the world. This did not stop writing composers, both Jews and Gentiles, from writing what could arguably be called “Jewish music.” When looking at these works one must ask the question: “Is this an exercise in nationalism or in exoticism?” There are four basic categories that works dealing with Jewish themes can be divided into. The first category is non-Jewish composers writing apparently nationalistic Jewish works. Composers such as Maurice Ravel and Max Bruch used traditional Jewish musical material in their works in an attempt to create authentically Jewish music. The second category is Jews writing nationalistic music. Arnold Schoenberg and Leonard Bernstein wrote works drawing upon their personal experiences as well as the music of their ancestors. The third category belongs to non-Jewish composers writing music that exoticizes the Jewish people. These are generally works by anti-Semitic composers such as Wagner and Mussorgsky who portrayed the Jews as stereotypes in their works. The final category consists of Jewish composers writing autoexotic music. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof is a prime example of this concept. The musical, written by Jews, heavily portrays stereotypes of the Jewish people and music in order for the audience to understand it. This research discusses these works through musical and lyrical analysis alongside the synthesis of to scholarly writings on Jewish music