Have MTO Families Lost Access to Opportunity Neighborhoods Over Time?

Reviews research on families who moved to lower-poverty areas through the Moving to Opportunity program, using new data and broader indicators to assess whether their subsequent moves were also to better neighborhoods from which the families benefited

Concentrated Poverty: A Change in Course

Examines how the distribution of concentrated poverty in metropolitan areas has shifted in the past two decades, using data from the Neighborhood Change Database

Population Growth and Decline in City Neighborhoods

Analyzes how neighborhoods in the nation's largest cities grew and declined in the 1990s and how those results compared with patterns of change in the 1980s, based on data from the U.S. Census and the Neighborhood Change Database

Concentrated Poverty: Dynamics of Change

Compares metropolitan census tracts that improved with respect to poverty in the 1990s with those that worsened, looking at the racial composition of both types and in different types of metropolitan areas nationally

A Guide to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data

Provides an overview of the home mortgage application data lenders are required to report and explains how to analyze trends in neighborhood investment, buyers' racial and economic composition, disparities in home loan access, and subprime lending

Exploring the Influence of PBIS, RTI, and MTSS Implementation on Classroom Time, Student Behavior, and Academic Achievement: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover how elementary schools implement evidence-based, multi-tiered programs (i.e., Multi-Tiered System of Support [MTSS]) to improve students’ academic and behavioral successes. Today’s teachers are expected to have a constantly expanding knowledge base and skills that support working within a Multi-Tiered System of Supports, including Response to Intervention (MTSS/RTI). Since the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 2004 and subsequent regulations that allowed school districts to use alternate processes for determining learning disabilities, implementing Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) frameworks in preschool to 12th grade (PK-12) schools has steadily increased. However, most teachers lack the skills and training to implement them successfully. The focus of recent field-based professional development activities is the current teaching force. Most PK-12 schools, however, require an entering teacher to gain this knowledge and skills during their teacher preparation program. Unresponsiveness to instructional interventions is a Multi-Tiered Systems of Support and Response to Intervention concepts. The Multi-Tiered System of Supports and Interventions (MTSS/RTI) is composed of several tiers that encompass classroom experiences, elucidate interventions, and delineate behaviors that foster learning opportunities. The study investigates behavioral observation to inform steps that could be taken for children who are not responding to elementary school to middle school literacy instruction to fill this information gap in the MTSS-RTI decision-making process and proposes the central research question: How do general education elementary school teachers implement tier one, tier two, and tier three of the MTSS/RTI model while delivering differentiated core curriculum instruction in both academics and behavior

An exploration of the relationship between strategic renewal and occupational identity

Strategic renewal research focuses on what activities organizations need to engage in and how these activities need to be organized for successful renewal. During periods of strategic renewal the only certainty is that organizational activities will change, often substantially. Activity change is a challenge for organizations with occupations embedded within them as the activities of members are closely tied to the occupation and the identity of these occupational members (Pratt, Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2006). In spite of the close link to activities, the current research on strategic renewal does not consider the important influence occupational identity has on this process both for the organization and for the occupational members within the organization. My one-year theory elaborating qualitative dissertation at NatNews, a Canadian media organization, examines the relationship between strategic renewal and occupational identity by addressing the question: how are strategic renewal and occupational identity related? There are three key findings emerging from my analysis with deep implications for strategic renewal. First, I find that the beliefs and values forming the foundation of occupational identity conflict. The flexibility in belief enactment has mixed effects and occupational identity can both help and hinder strategic renewal. Second, I isolate two mechanisms linking strategic renewal and occupational identity -meaning and metrics. The meanings associated with activities can be challenged or reinforced as activities are enacted during the strategic renewal process. Building on the work of Plowman et al.(2007) who link feedback to activity adaptation, my findings also highlight that the visibility of metrics impact the connection between strategic renewal and occupational identity. Positive feedback metrics that are only visible to some members can hinder activity change. Finally, I provide compelling evidence that the focus of strategy research on the functional aspects of activities, or what to do and how to do it, is necessary but insufficient to capture the role activities play in organizations during strategic renewal. My findings reveal that activities are repositories for beliefs, values and meanings. These aspects are of equal importance to the functional aspects as they are directly tied to the behavior of those enacting the activities

There are no winners here: Teacher thinking and student underachievement in the 6th grade

The following ethnographic study was conducted with 6th grade teachers in a middle school that has been stigmatized by the public as a failing school and cited by the government as a School in Need of Assistance according to the No Child Left Behind Act. The purpose of the study was to examine what teachers believe about persistent underachievement in order to shed light on whether teacher beliefs inform teachers\u27 efforts to ameliorate underachievement. As my study progressed, my research data suggested that teachers use a faulty testing curriculum that guarantees poor student performance and only serves to confirm mistaken assumptions about student ability. In an act of self-preservation, teachers in my study blamed students for poor performance in order to deflect professional blame away from themselves. This blaming game supports a culture of failure that locates both students and teachers in a losing or no-win situation