Sustainability of a school reform program as measured by Title I students achievement, behavior, and attitudes

The sustainability of a Different Ways of Knowing Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program, and the influence of the reform model on student achievement, behavior, and attitudes following a three-year implementation phase, was evaluated. The fourth-grade pretest compared to sixth-grade posttest gains made by students (n = 50) as they completed the Title I eligible Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration programs indicated that the sustainability plans in place at the conclusion of the implementation phase continued to result in positive student outcomes. Levels of performance for the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration programs\u27 students were also found to be congruent with the posttest achievement, behavior, and attitude data for students participating in similar neighborhood non-Comprehensive non-Title I eligible School Reform Demonstration programs (n = 50) during the sustainability phase. Reform model implementation sustainability supported student achievement, behavior, and attitudes consistent with continued school success. The study results support a cautious approach to district-wide reform model program scale-up

How to Build Collective Capabilities: The 3C-Model for Grassroots-led Development

Capabilities need to be built from the bottom-up. Social innovations at the grassroots seek to present new solutions to existing social problems. However, since the poor suffer from limitations on their individual capabilities and agency, they engage in acts of collective agency to generate new collective capabilities that each individual alone would not be able to achieve. The question is: how can these acts of collective agency be initiated, supported and sustained in practice? What roles can development actors (such as the state, donors and NGOs) play in supporting these acts of collective agency? Drawing on the literature on social innovation, the capability approach, participation and empowerment, the paper argues that three crucial C-processes are integral conditions for promoting successful, scalable and sustainable social innovations at the grassroots, namely: (1) Conscientization; (2) Conciliation and (3) Collaboration. By linking the individual, collective and institutional levels of analysis, the paper demonstrates the importance of individual behavioural changes, collective agency and local institutional reforms for the success, sustainability and scalability of social innovations at the grassroots. The paper acknowledges conflict, capture and cooptation as potential limitations and recognizes the role of contextual factors in initiating, implementing and sustaining social innovations at the grassroots

Usability Assessment of the fly.faa.gov Website

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Air Traffic Control System Command Center provides information about arrival and departure delays through its website: www.fly.faa.gov. This document reports results from a usability assessment of this website. Researchers from the FAA Human Factors Research and Engineering Group, Federal Aviation Administration NAS Human Factors Group William J. Hughes Technical Center Atlantic City International Airport, NJ 08405, conducted the assessment to determine how successfully users could complete common tasks, such as finding delay information, definitions of acronyms and aviation terms, and answers to frequently asked questions. We found that the participants were able to find most delay information easily, but had some difficulty finding non-delay information. Also, we identified some differences in performance between the expert users, moderate users, and novice users, with novice users typically having more difficulty finding information than moderate users and expert users. The assessment also examined user satisfaction. The participants reported a high level of user satisfaction, with no apparent differences based on their level of aviation-related expertise. However, the human factor so observations and questionnaire data indicated several areas of the website that could be improved. In this report, we provide a list of usability issues rated and ranked according to severity, and we provide recommendations for addressing these issues, which should help guide future enhancement efforts

Evaluation of Human Performance While Wearing Respirators

The goal of this study was to assess the feasibility of respirator use in Air Traffic Control and Technical Operations. We evaluated several models of Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) and N95 respirators for usability, effects on human performance, and effects on the wearer\u2019s well-being. We found that binoculars could not be used with any of the PAPRs. Wearing a PAPR affected communication, but the characteristics of the respirator, especially the sound level and frequency spectrum of the noise, played a significant role in determining the extent of the effect and the subjective experience of wearing it. The accuracy levels of face-to face communication were below those that were considered to be minimally acceptable. For the N95 respirators, we found negative effects on face-to-face communication and observed obstructiveness during simulated maintenance

Correction: Implementation of Genomic Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in the Caribbean: Lessons learned for sustainability in resource-limited settings.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0001455.]