Destruction of Place: Policy Diffusion and Schenectady\u27s Urban Redevelopment

Cities search for solutions to local problems in other cities and on national policy menus. This process results in many cities relying on the same solution to the same problem. Usually this diffusion of policy across multiple cities produces positive results as environmental protection, water treatment, and other city services are expanded. However in urban redevelopment policy diffusion cannot be successful as redevelopment relies on providing unique, and sometimes competitive, projects to distressed downtowns. The of writings by Jane Jacobs, Gratz and Mintz, and Richard Florida result in a group of methods that can be used to determine the potential success or failure of various redevelopment projects. These methods are applied to the history of Schenectady, New York; the city has experienced both diffused redevelopment and non-diffused redevelopment and thus serves as a useful point of comparison between successful and unsuccessful redevelopment efforts. In Schenectady policy diffusion resulted in an increasingly distressed downtown, while non-diffused policy has produced positive results. Urban redevelopers should search for unique, and avoid diffused, solutions to urban redevelopment problems

Alternative Measures of U.S. Fiscal Deficits

The most widely quoted financial statistic about the U.S. government is its annual budget deficit.  This measure, usually interpreted as an indicator of the extent to which the government is shifting costs incurred in the current period to the future, can be incomplete and misleading. At the very least, informed citizens with an interest in future tax burdens or intergenerational equity need to supplement the current deficit measure with broader, more comprehensive statistics that are currently available, but which also have their own limitations.  In this article, we describe some of the major omissions of the U.S. federal budget deficit and consider the additional information provided by three broader measures of fiscal shortfall: the increase in outstanding gross federal debt; the change in the government’s net financial position; and the change in the fiscal gap.            Effectively, we offer an evaluation of one element of the budget—the deficit—by the single criteria of its comprehensiveness as a measure of the burden of today’s policies on future taxpayers and other stakeholders. Additional budget elements that could be evaluated using other criteria include budget outlays as a measure of the size of government or the effectiveness of the budget process in achieving the goals of efficiency, stability, and equity. These topics, however, are beyond the scope of this paper.

Tax Expenditures, the Size and Efficiency of Government, and Implications for Budget Reform

One possible explanation for the difficulty in controlling the budget is that a major component of spending —tax expenditures—receives privileged status. It is treated as tax cuts rather than spending. This paper explores the implications of that classification and illustrates how it can lead to higher taxes, larger government, and an inefficient mix of spending (too many tax expenditures). The paper then analyzes alternative budgeting approaches that would explicitly incorporate and measure tax expenditures. It concludes by analyzing ways to control tax expenditures (and other spending) and the special challenges presented by tax expenditures.

“I was Invisible to them:” An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of Community Engaged Researchers’ Experience of Institutional Support

Community engaged scholarship has gained attention as public universities begin to answer calls to return to their roots of serving the public good. The scholars at the heart of community engagement play an important role in this mission, but their experiences in the academy are not well understood. As institutional leaders endeavor to support this important work, they need more information about the ways institutional support is experienced by the faculty. Research largely advocates for institutionalization efforts and more responsive promotion and tenure systems. However, the literature has yet to investigate how these strategies for support are felt among the faculty involved, or whether other forms of support are being overlooked. A deeper understanding of the nuanced lived experiences of community engaged scholars could improve their ability to attend to the public purpose of the institution. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the way community engaged researchers experienced institutional support as they worked through unexpected changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This research described the essence of the experience for five community engaged scholars at a public institution with a recognized legacy of community engagement. The study used a hermeneutic qualitative phenomenological approach and participant interviews to investigate the phenomenon. Participants were community engaged scholars at a broad access institution in the Pacific Northwest during a challenging time in history. The year 2020 was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, threats to democracy, and police violence against African Americans, among other crisis events. During these ongoing challenges, community engaged scholars persisted in their research. Their stories emphasized the nuanced experiences within their individual contexts at the same university. Interviews with faculty found a range of experiences. Themes included feelings of inclusion or exclusion, frustration or ease, privilege or restriction, security or instability, and more. Data suggested contextual factors like institution type, disciplinary department, and type of faculty position influenced the way they experienced support. Relationships and connectedness were crucial in women’s experiences in all cases. More broadly, undifferentiated forms of support for community engaged researchers were found to be insufficient. More tailored forms of support for individuals, or groups with commonalities like women, would be a more effective approach. Institutional leaders would do well to recognize the meaningful contributions community engaged scholars are making to the mission of the university and invest in understanding their needs. This study provides a glimpse inside the lived experiences of these faculty and offers insight into the forms of support that would be most meaningful in their work. Improving systems of support for community engaged scholars would pay off in achieving the mission of public universities: serving the communities for whom they were built

Striving toward a critical theory of technology pedagogy in literacy education

As the future unfolds and technology continues to develop at a rapid pace, it has become clear that technology will play a significant role in many facets of our daily existence. In addition to becoming conscious of new technologies, we must also learn how to maneuver these high-tech innovations. When we learn how to operate technology, we become literate; or, we understand how this piece of technology functions. Therefore, literacy now becomes a metaphor to encompass all forms of learning - no longer pertaining to the relatively simple definition of knowing how to read and write. Today, technology is being incorporated into all areas of literacy learning. While some may think the integration of technology will facilitate literacy learning, evidence is emerging to the contrary. Along with its benefits, unfortunately, as a result of the amalgamation of technology with literacy learning, complications regarding literacy acquisition are becoming prevalent. For instance, theorist Brian Street purports that the ideologies and practices of reading and writing are firmly rooted in the context of particular societies, and thus cannot be “isolated or treated as ‘neutral’ or merely technical” (1). Ideals and notions of literacy and what it means to be literate are found in texts, and now a plethora of media – all of which students experience in a variety of content-areas. Trying to understand what denotes literacy involves understanding how a society uses and values it. Technological advances are now complicating the way we think about literacy and literacy learning As technology is here to stay, arguing either for or against its use in literacy learning is not the focus of this thesis. However, it is pertinent to contend for a critical theory of technology in education, so that the complications will be minimized through various solutions geared toward successful literacy development

Ecology of Sphaerotilus in an experimental outdoor channel

This paper describes ecological investigations performed in an outdoor experimental channel receiving Huron River water and beet sugar or crude molasses during two summers of operation (1965 and 1966).The channel was assembled in two lengths, 645 ft (1965) and 704 ft (1966), with sampling stations located one near the beginning, one in the middle and one near the end. At each station, three strands of knitting yarn were suspended and allowed to remain for 24 hr. After this time, the strands were removed, together with attached growth, and fresh strings replaced. The replicate strings were cut into 10 cm sections, with one-half of these sections used for dry weight determinations.The attached organisms were removed by violently shaking the strings suspended in a measured quantity of water. One drop was then removed and direct microscopic counts and identification made immediately. Dry weights were obtained by drying the strings in aluminum weighing pans overnight at 90[deg]C.A total of 12 experiments was run, the duration of each being in most cases five days.In the first series of experiments flow through the channel was at 100 g/min. at an essentially uniform velocity of 1 ft/sec. Nutrient concentration was varied from 1 mg/l as sucrose.In the last series of experiments, nutrient concentration was held at 5 mg/l and velocity varied at the three stations by altering the height of an overflow weir between 0.0 and 0.6 ft, and changing the flow between 25 and 200 g/min. This provided a range of velocities at the station from 0.09 to 1.49 ft/sec.The results of attached organism determinations are presented following each experiment and their response to nutrient concentration and velocity summarized in the Discussion.Sphaerotilus-dominated biological flocs were stimulated to bloom proportions within 30 hr after the addition of as little as 1 mg/l of sucrose. Maximum growth was obtained at a concentration of 5 mg/l at velocities from 0.58 to 1.49 ft/sec in the temperature range of 20-28[deg] C after around 72 hr of feeding. About this time, detaching and floating material was equivalent to new material being formed, and the term "saturation population" was proposed to describe this condition.The biological floc community was composed chiefly of Sphaerotilus natans, Melosira varians, M. granulata, Nitzschia sp., Navicula sp., Cosmarium sp., Euglena sp., and the protozoans, Bodo sp., Tetrahymena pyriformis, Colipidium colpoda, and Amoeba sp., tendipedid and simuliid larval forms also apparently found a mutualistic association within the flocs.Saturation population and classical Sphaerotilus flocs could not be obtained at temperatures below 17[deg] C. The typical form was replaced in dominance at low temperatures by an unidentified filamentous bacillus, the total mass of which never approached that of the classical growth.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/33316/1/0000711.pd

Technical Paper Series Congressional Budget Office Washington, DC VALUING FEDERAL LOANS AND LOAN GUARANTEES USING OPTIONS-PRICING METHODS

Technical papers in this series are preliminary and are circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment. These papers are not subject to CBO's formal review and editing processes. The analysis and conclusions expressed in them are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as those of the Congressional Budget Office. References in publications should be cleared with the authors. Papers in this series can be obtained at www.cbo.gov/tech.cfm