Teacher Perception and Their Understanding of Progress Monitoring Throughout a Longitudinal Assessment System

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the phenomenon of teacher perception and their understanding of progress monitoring throughout a longitudinal assessment system. This monitoring of student progress is to enhance their academic skills in mathematics and provide necessary interventions for growth as measured on a longitudinal assessment system through fidelity of implementation of interventions processed through progress monitoring. Data was collected from participant responses through interviews, a demographic survey, and focus groups. Interview respondents participated in a closed-door, face-to-face interview. The survey was used to collect specific demographic data to provide a concise snapshot of each individual teacher. From the interviews, four major themes and 13 sub-themes emerged from 302 codes. Focus group respondents participated in a closed door, small group setting that concentrated on a single, open-ended question. From the focus groups, three major themes and nine sub-themes emerged from an average of 26 codes per group. Analysis of the themes captured a collage of personal responses from participants. Participants’ shared perceptions of progress monitoring that varied from each other to the extent that some believed it was synonymous with grading assignments and not actually monitoring the progress of academic growth and skill mastery. Moreover, this led to the teacher belief that there was a need for professional development, training and open communication with other math teachers and educational support staff. Participants also identified a gap in student understanding of progress monitoring and the root purpose for longitudinal assessments. Participants also believed students should be a part of their own learning and progress monitoring. A web of connections recognized need and want for progress monitoring. Finally, the shared perceptions in this study presented an avenue for continued conversation within the district of study and other educational communities - conversations that must continue until students are making adequate growth

Workers at Risk: Regulatory Dysfunction at OSHA

This white paper explores the causes of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)’s regulatory dysfunctions and describes their negative impacts on OSHA and America’s Workers. With the decreasing power of unions to organize and press employers to implement strong health and safety programs, employees in every occupation rely on OSHA to protect them from occupational hazards. Yet, in the last decade, OSHA has dropped more standards from its regulatory agenda than it has finalized, largely due to insufficient budge authority. And the agency’s enforcement program has assessed such paltry fines for even fatality-related violations of the law that many employers see no incentive in addressing hazards, much less developing precautionary health and safety programs. After describing OSHA’s problems in detail, this paper outlines a number of reforms that could enhance the agency’s performance. Although certain aspects of the Occupational Safety and Health Act could use improvement, the recommendations in this paper focus on regulatory reform—administrative actions that OSHA could implement in the short term.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

PEMBELAJARAN BIOLA PADA EKSTRAKURIKULER ORKESTRA DI SMP NEGERI 6 SURABAYA

SMP Negeri 6 Surabaya termasuk satu-satunya SMP Negeri yang menerapkan metode Suzuki dalam pembelajaran biola pada ekstrakurikuler orkestra. Di dalam pembelajaran musik harus melakukan tahapan belajar secara berurutan yaitu: mendengarkan musik, menyanyikan atau menirukan, mengulang terus menerus dan menyempurnakannya. Dari beberapa instrumen orkestra yang menjadi pilihan peserta didik di SMP Negeri 6 Surabaya  yang mengkuti ekstrakurikuler orkestra adalah instrumen biola. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk; (1) Mendeskripsikan bagaimana pelaksanaan pembelajaran biola pada  ekstrakurikuler orkestra di SMP Negeri 6 Surabaya; (2) Mendeskripsikan bagaimana penerapan biola pada ekstrakurikuler orkestra di SMP Negeri Surabaya. Pendekatan penelitian ini adalah kualitatrif. Subjek penelitian, yaitu tim orkestra SMPN 6 Surabaya, pelatih dan pembina. Pengumpulan data melalui beberapa cara yaitu : observasi, wawancara, studi dokumen dan studi kepustakaan. Keabsahan data dalam penelitian kualitatif diproses melalui teknik triangulasi. Anallisis data dalam penelitian kualitatif dilakukan sejak sebelum memasuki lapangan, selama dilapangan, dan setelah selesai di lapangaan. Metode yang digunakan dalam pembelajaran biola di SMP Negeri 6 Surabaya adalah menggunakan Metode Suzuki yang diajarkan dengan beberapa metode pembelajaran gabungan atau kombinasi anatara metode ceramah, demonstrasi, tanya jawab, metode drill. Penerapan metode pengajaran biola pada ekstrakurikuler orkestra di SMP Negeri 6 Surabaya, yaitu; (1) mendahulukan mendengar musik baru memainkan alat music,dengan cara guru mendemonstrasikan lagu yang dipelajari peserta didik menirukan lagu tersebut; (2) setiap materi diajarkan dengan mengulang-ulang agar siswa lancer memainkan lagu yang dipelajari; (3) pembelajaran membaca notasi balok menggunakan penjarian sesuai yang ada di dalam metode Suzuki sehingga peserta didik lebih mudah; (4) Proses pembelajaran biola di SMP Negeri 6 Surabaya menggunakan beberapa tahapan yaitu diawali dengan penyelarasan nada, latihan tangganada, latihan teknik, pembelajaran menuju materi lagu dan evaluasi.Kata kunci : Metode Pembelajaran Biol

The People’s Agent: Executive Branch Secrecy and Accountability in an Age of Terrorism

Shapiro and Steinzor apply the agency theory to the question of how much secrecy is too much. They use the theory to evaluate the impact of burgeoning secrecy in the likelihood that the executive branch officials will engage in faithful and forceful implementation of statutory materials, particularly in the arenas of protecting public health, safety, and natural resources

Health Disparities Among Racial and Ethnic Minority Firefighters

ABSTRACT Background: Racial/ethnic minorities are substantially underrepresented in the fire service and this situation is unique when compared to similarly mentally and physically demanding and hazardous occupations such as the military and law enforcement. There is little systematic research to provide greater clarity about this significant disparity. The purpose of this study is to examine physical and behavioral health issues of racial/ethnic minority firefighters when compared to their white, non-Hispanic counterparts and potentially identify areas for future research that might assist in improving their substantial underrepresentation. Materials and Methods: We report the results of a secondary analysis of data combining the baseline evaluations of two different firefighter health studies, the Firefighter Injury and Risk Evaluation (FIRE) and Fuel 2 Fight (F2F) studies. Male career firefighters (N=1,404) were from 31 fire departments across the US and its territories. White, non-Hispanic firefighters comprised 72.5% of the sample (n=1,018) and 27.5% classified themselves as a racial/ethnic minority. Firefighters who agreed to participate comprised 94% (F2F) and 97% (FIRE) of those available and all underwent assessments including body composition, fitness, and general/behavioral health, and job satisfaction. Results: We examined differences in health and job status between minority and non-minority firefighters and between firefighters in minority- (MDCs) and white-dominated communities (WDCs). After adjusting for potential confounds, there were significant main effects for the individual minority status vs. non-minority status on both BMI and BF%, indicating that minority firefighters had significantly higher average BMI (28.8±0.3kg/m2) and BF% (24.7± 0.7%) when compared to their white, non-Hispanic colleagues (27.7±0.2kg/m2and 23.1±0.6% for BMI and BF%, respectively). Minority firefighters also were 59% more likely to be obese (adjusted [A]OR=1.59; 95% CI=1.16-2.18). Firefighters serving in MDCs reported significantly more poor health days (Mean±SE; 3.2±0.2 days) than firefighters serving in WDCs (2.8±0.2 days; p=0.038). In addition, minority firefighters reported significantly more poor health days (3.6±0.4 days) than their non-minority colleagues (2.8±0.2 days; p=0.003), while the interaction indicates that minority firefighters in MDCs reported more poor health days than the other groups (p Conclusions: Individual and community minority status (i.e., ethnic density effect) were both significantly associated with a number of important health status indicators, with racial/ethnic minority firefighters demonstrating greater risk for unfavorable body composition and more poor physical health days. In addition, minority firefighters in WDCs reported the highest prevalence of lifetime diagnosis of depression by a physician, while minority firefighters in MDCs had the lowest. Many of these health status indicators have recently been studied within the context of experiences with discrimination, demonstrating that racial discrimination is associated with greater risk for obesity, depression, and poor physical and mental health and could be contributing to health disparities and potentially negatively impacting racial/ethnic minority firefighter health, safety, and retention

Reusing Data and Metadata to Create New Metadata Through Machine-Learning & Other Programmatic Methods

Recent improvements in natural language processing (NLP) enable metadata to be created programmatically from reused original metadata or even the dataset itself. Transfer-learning applied to NLP has greatly improved performance and reduced training data requirements. In this talk, well compare machine-generated metadata to human-generated metadata and discuss characteristics of metadata and data archives that affect suitability for machine-learning reuse of metadata. Where as human-generated metadata is often populated once, populated from the perspective of data supplier, populated by many individuals with different words for the same thing, and limited in length, machine-generated metadata can be updated any number of times, generated from the perspective of any user, constrained to a standardized set of terms that can be evolved over time, and be any length required. Machine-learning generated metadata offers benefits but also additional needs in terms of version control, process transparency, human-computer interaction, and IT requirements. As a successful example, well discuss how a dataset of abstracts and associated human-tagged keywords from a standardized list of several thousand keywords were used to create a machine-learning model that predicted keyword metadata for open-source code projects on code.nasa.gov. Well also discuss a less successful example from data.nasa.gov to show how data archive architecture and characteristics of initial metadata can be strong controls on how easy it is to leverage programmatic methods to reuse metadata to create additional metadata