Frozen Assets: Rethinking Teacher Contracts Could Free Billions for School Reform

In an era of limited resources, public school districts under intense pressure to boost student achievement will have to be creative in looking for ways to fund improvements. One often overlooked source of funds: common provisions in teacher contracts

The Gravitational Constant as a quantum mechanical expression

A quantitatively verifiable expression for the Gravitational Constant is derived in terms of quantum mechanical quantities. This derivation appears to be possible by selecting a suitable physical process in which the transformation of the equation of motion into a quantum mechanical wave equation can be obtained by Einstein's geodesic approach. The selected process is the pi-meson, modeled as the one-body equivalent of a two-body quantum mechanical oscillator in which the vibrating mass is modeled as the result of the two energy fluxes from the quark and the antiquark. The quantum mechanical formula for the Gravitational Constant appears to show a quantitatively verifiable relationship with the Higgs boson as conceived in the Standard Model.Comment: 17 page

Spending Choices and School Autonomy: Lessons From Ohio Elementary Schools

Reviews the research on school autonomy and explores how varying degrees of flexibility and control at different types of schools affect resource allocation, including trade-offs between teacher salaries and number of staff. Considers implications

Fading Colors of the Tibetan Prayer Flag

2014 was a Horse Year. Such a year, occurring every twelve years in Tibetan calendar, is considered the best time for a pilgrimage, particularly to sacred mountains. In the region of Golok, the most prominent of them is Amnye Machen (A myes rma chen). It takes about one week to perform circumambulation of Amnye Machen in the usual way: on foot. But in 2014, a new possibility opened: to perform the pilgrimage by car. This paper describes the experiences of a car pilgrimage around Amnye Machen which the author performed in 2014. It shows how different the new pilgrimage route is from the one followed by non-motorized pilgrims and how different experiences it brings. It also describes the landscape affected by the establishment of Mt. Amyesrmachen National Geological Park in the area of Amnye Machen and construction works connected to it

Training centers of a new type

Necessity for innovative production development sets the new requirements for content, organization, forms and methods of management activity. Non-traditional tasks faced by the present system of human resources management require the similar type of non-traditional methodological approaches and tools for social diagnosis, training and management of people in new situations. Therefore special attention should be also given to development of new type training centers that act as concentration of continuous training through forming the networks of comparative analysis and detecting the best practice.Innovating education, human resource, development of management, education centers., Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, D80, I21, I23, O31,

Socio-economic reforms of the 1920s as a preparation for the forthcoming «agrarian radicalism»

The article considers socio-economic reforms of the 1920s in Kazakhstan as a preparation for the forthcoming «agrarian radicalism». Historiography still does not give any distinct conclusions on the question, whether the socio-economical reforms of the 1920s years allayed the problem of inequality in the aul. The author calls for a wider perception spectrum of the so-called Soviet experience of modernization the agrarian sphere of Kazakhstan.Socio-economic reforms, agrarian, radicalism, modernization, Community/Rural/Urban Development, International Development, N01, N55,