Moving Towards Educational Equity?: How is New York State's School Funding Reform Impacting Educational Equity on Long Island?

This report identifies the 11 Long Island districts with the most student poverty and compares them with the 11 districts with middle student poverty, and the 11 districts with the least student poverty. In addition to poverty, this report looks at the demographic composition of these districts, and percentage of English language learners. Historically on Long Island, as elsewhere, there has been a large funding gap between school districts with high poverty and those with little poverty. The funding gap, as examined by The Education Trust and others, documents the difference in educational opportunity between school districts. In order to make this calculation it is necessary to both examine expenditures per pupil and student need (as measured by the proportion of student poverty). Policy makers and researchers across the spectrum agree that it generally costs more to provide equivalent educational opportunity to students from poor households as those from middle class or wealthier households. This report factors student poverty into the measurement of the funding gap. The report examines the effectiveness since 2007 of different state school aid categories at closing the funding gap--specifically looking at foundation aid, high tax aid and all state operating aid as a whole. In addition, this report looks at student outcomes according to 8th grade English Language Arts and Math exams, graduation rates, Regents diploma rates, and college enrollment rates in order to evaluate whether there has been progress at closing the achievement gaps since funding reforms were instituted

Accuracy assessment of Digital Surface Models generated by Semiglobal matching algorithm using Lidar data

To measure the accuracy of Digital Surface Models (DSMs) generated by high resolution satellite images (HRSI) using semi-global matching algorithm in comparison with LIDAR DSMs, two different test areas with different properties and corresponding attributes and magnitudes of errors are considered. Error characteristics are classified as systematic and gross errors and significance of them to measure the accuracy of DSMs are evaluated. In this manner and to avoid the influence of outliers in accuracy assessment robust statistical methods are proposed. According to final values obtained for two test areas it can be concluded that the performance of DSMs generated by stereo matching for mountainous wooden areas in respect to the accuracy of LIDAR DSM are poor. In contrast, in case of residential urban areas the quality of the DSM generated by HRSI is able to follow the accuracy of LIDAR data

Different Types of Participation in Constitution Making Processes: Towards a Conceptualisation

Though participatory constitution making processes in post-conflict states and in states transitioning from authoritarian rule have become a new trend, scholarly research has yet to approach the notion of participation in a sharp and distinct way. In this article, I develop a novel approach for differentiating participation in constitution making, depending on the extent of influence that participants are granted, illustrating this reasoning with eight empirical cases from the African continent

Different Types of Participation in Constitution Making Processes: Towards a Conceptualisation

Though participatory constitution making processes in post-conflict states and in states transitioning from authoritarian rule have become a new trend, scholarly research has yet to approach the notion of participation in a sharp and distinct way. In this article, I develop a novel approach for differentiating participation in constitution making, depending on the extent of influence that participants are granted, illustrating this reasoning with eight empirical cases from the African continent