Is There a New Urbanism? The Growth of U.S. Cities in the 1990s

The 1990s were an unusually good decade for the largest American cities and, in particular, for the cities of the Midwest. However, fundamentally urban growth in the 1990s looked extremely similar to urban growth during the prior post-war decades. The growth of cities was determined by three large trends: (1) cities with strong human capital bases grew faster than cities without skills, (2) people moved to warmer, drier places, and (3) cities built around the automobile replaced cities that rely on public transportation. In the 1990s (as in the 1980s), more local government spending was associated with slower growth, unless that spending was on highways. We shouldn't be surprised by the lack of change in patterns of urban growth, after all the correlation of city growth rates across decades is generally over 70 percent.

The Benefits of the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction

The home mortgage interest deduction creates incentives to buy more housing and to become a homeowner, and the case for the deduction rests on social benefits from housing consumption and homeownership. There is little evidence suggesting large externalities from the level of housing consumption, but there appear to be externalities from homeownership. Externalities from living around homeowners are far too small to justify the deduction. Externalities from homeownership are larger, but the home mortgage interest deduction is a particularly poor instrument for encouraging homeownership since it is targeted at the wealthy, who are almost always homeowners. The irrelevance of the deduction is supported by the time series which shows that the ownership subsidy moves with inflation and has changed significantly between 1960 and today, but the homeownership rate has been essentially constant.

The Benefits of the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction

The home mortgage interest deduction creates incentives to buy more housing and to become a homeowner, and the case for the deduction rests on social benefits from housing consumption and homeownership. There is little evidence suggesting large externalities from the level of housing consumption, but there appear to be externalities from homeownership. Externalities from living around homeowners are far too small to justify the deduction. Externalities from homeownership are larger, but the home mortgage interest deduction is a particularly poor instrument for encouraging homeownership since it is targeted at the wealthy, who are almost always homeowners. The irrelevance of the deduction is supported by the time series which shows that the ownership subsidy moves with inflation and has changed significantly between 1960 and today, but the homeownership rate has been essentially constant.

Part-time cooperative retail-selling programs in the secondary schools in Massachusetts

This item was digitized by the Internet Archive. Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

5. Curriculum-Based Assessment: Implications for Psychoeducational Practice

The topic of this chapter places me somewhere between Camac the Magnificent and a crystal ball gazer! On the one hand, I am being asked to look into the future and discuss the potential implications of curriculum-based assessment (CBA) for psychoeducational practice. Although my graduate students believe I may have superhuman powers and can be all places at the same time, fortune telling was never one of my talents. On the other hand, like Camac, I obviously believe that CBA is an answer, but I\u27m not sure what the questions are going to be. In this paper I assume that all questions asked have the same answer: Use CBA. When a district decides to adopt CBA as a measurement procedure, impacts are anticipated on the service delivery method, accountability procedures, and role functions within that district. The way in which CBA is adopted, the particular model of CBA employed, and the acceptance of CBA in the district will all play a part in the degree to which each of these aspects of the district are affected. Implementing CBA district wide obviously will have implications that may alter the entire system. Equal impact may be noted when CBA is implemented on an individual basis. A single teacher may choose to use CBA within his or her classroom. A single psychologist may choose to use CBA as a means to enhance service delivery. A single resource room teacher may choose to implement CBA for a particular class. Further, the ways in which CBA are used may not be individualized. A single teacher may choose to provide progress monitoring on long-term goals. A resource room teacher may choose to implement progress monitoring for long-term goals and write IEP objectives using CBA. A psychologist may choose CBA as a mechanism for conducting initial evaluations and recommending intervention strategies. Use of CBA by individuals has implications that are somewhat different than when CBA is used in an entire system. For example, when an individual uses CBA to make eligibility decisions, one obviously cannot use CBA alone but must find a way to integrate CBA and traditional assessments. Additionally, using CBA to identify targets for intervention can be valuable only if the delivery system supports intervention planning rather than educational diagnostic decision making. Recognizing that there are some differences between using CBA with an individual versus large-scale application, I will confine my comments to the implications of CBA when employed on a large-scale, district wide basis