Hostile Takeover: The State of Missouri, the St. Louis School District, and the Struggle for Quality Education in the Inner-City

Missouri has been home to many of the landmark moments in the struggle for racial equality. The Missouri Compromise saved the Union; almost four decades later, the determination that Missouri slave Dred Scott was mere property split the Union. During the Civil War that followed, more battles and skirmishes took place in Missouri than in any other state outside of Virginia and Tennessee. After the Civil War Amendments abolished slavery and guaranteed every person equal protection of the law, the United States Supreme Court allowed a Jefferson City, Missouri, inn to refuse service to blacks. The Court later relied upon this decision when creating the separate but equal doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson. This Plessy doctrine began to unravel when aspiring law student Lloyd Gaines won his desegregation lawsuit against the University of Missouri School of Law in 1938. Subsequent decisions in cases originating in St. Louis struck down the enforceability of racial covenants and upheld the congressional ban on housing discrimination. Because the era of court-ordered desegregation arguably began in Missouri with Lloyd Gaines, it is somewhat fitting that the era also concluded in Missouri when the Supreme Court stopped the Kansas City school desegregation program. Against this backdrop came desegregation litigation in St. Louis, which resulted in the first voluntary desegregation settlement in the country. This 1983 agreement desegregated the public schools in St. Louis and the surrounding suburbs during the following sixteen years. Desegregation ended in 1999, at last concluding the saga in St. Louis education that had continued for almost three decades. Or at least most thought the saga had concluded. Because student test scores in St. Louis consistently failed to meet state standards, in 2007 the state of Missouri unaccredited the St. Louis school district and transferred control from the St. Louis school board to a Transitional School District. In Board of Education of the City of St. Louis v. Missouri State Board of Education, the Supreme Court of Missouri upheld the constitutionality of the state\u27s actions. This Note will examine the decision, as well as the history of education in St. Louis and the results of takeovers by Missouri and other states

Regulatory Reform at the State Level: A Guide to Cutting Red Tape for Governors and Executive Branch Officials

This article provides recommendations for governors and other executive branch officials to consider when implementing regulatory reform. Studies have shown that regulatory reform is needed because of the substantial impact on the economy, consumers, and businesses. Recent technological advances have allowed regulations to be quantified by a metric known as regulatory restrictions, which counts uses of “shall,” “must,” “may not,” “prohibited,” and “required.” Quantifying regulatory restrictions allows for comparison of the regulatory scope between states. State-level regulatory reform directed by governors has primarily occurred in three waves following elections in 1994, 2010, and 2016. These reforms have achieved significant results by reducing the number of regulations and saving money that otherwise would have been spent on regulatory compliance

Diversity and Donations: The Effect of Religious and Ethnic Diversity on Charitable Giving

We explore the effects of local ethnic and religious diversity on individual donations to private charities. Using 10-year neighborhood-level panels derived from personal tax records in Canada, we find that diversity has a detrimental effect on charitable donations. A 10 percentage point increase in ethnic diversity reduces donations by 14%, and a 10 percentage point increase in religious diversity reduces donations by 10%. The ethnic diversity effect is driven by a within-group disposition among non-minorities, and is most evident in high income, but low education areas. The religious diversity effect is driven by a within-group disposition among Catholics, and is concentrated in high income and high education areas. Despite these large effects on amount donated, we find no evidence that increasing diversity affects the fraction of households that donate. Over the period studied, ethnic diversity rises by 6 percentage points and religious diversity rises by 4 percentage points; our results suggest that charities receive about 12% less in total donations. As areas like North America continue to grow more diverse over time, our results imply that these demographic changes may have significant implications for the charitable sector.

Using Implementation Science to Guide the Integration of Evidence-Based Family Interventions Into Primary Care

This article is a demonstration of how an implementation-science (IS) framework can be coupled with the measurement of implementation outcomes to effectively integrate evidence-based family interventions in primary care. The primary care environment presents a number of challenges for successfully integrating such interventions. However, IS methods can improve the prospect of successfully implementing a new intervention while simultaneously and rigorously evaluating the impact on salient outcomes. We used our experiences across 2 pilot trials in which the family check-up (Smith, Montaño, Mauricio, Berkel, & Dishion, 2016), an evidence-based family intervention, was integrated into primary care. In these pilot trials, the exploration, preparation, implementation, and sustainment (EPIS) framework and the Proctor et al. taxonomy of implementation outcomes were used to guide the implementation and evaluate its success. Grounding our presentation in our pilot work offers an illustration of applying the EPIS framework and outcomes measurement to real-world problems and contexts. When embarking on new efforts to integrate behavioral interventions into health-care settings, the application of IS frameworks and measurement strategies can create generalizable knowledge that substantively contributes to a sparse literature. Today, those “in the trenches” who are translating evidence-based interventions to their setting can contribute to the corpus of research in integrated care by using IS methods to plan a new program and evaluate its feasibility, adoption, and reach

Molecular dynamics simulation studies of the influence of imidazolium structure on the properties of imidazolium/azide ionic liquids

Journal ArticleAtomistic molecular dynamics simulations were performed on 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium azide [bmim][N3], 1-butyl-2,3-dimethylimidazolium azide [bmmim][N3], and 1-butynyl-3-methylimidazolium azide [bumim][N3] ionic liquids. The many-body polarizable APPLE&P force field was augmented with parameters for the azide anion and the bumim cation. Good agreement between the experimentally determined and simulated crystal structure of [bumim][N3] as well as the liquid-state density and ionic conductivity of [bmmim][N3] were found. Methylation of bmim (yielding bmmim) resulted in dramatic changes in ion structuring in the liquid and slowing of ion motion. Conversely, replacing the butyl group of bmim with the smaller 2-butynyl group resulted in an increase of ion dynamics

The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion

The Article is organized as follows: Part II provides an introduction to implicit bias research, orienting readers to the important aspects of implicit bias most relevant to prosecutorial discretion. Part III begins the examination of implicit bias in the daily decisions of prosecutors. The Part presents key prosecutorial discretion points and specifically connects each of them to implicit bias. Part IV recognizes that, despite compelling proof of implicit bias in a range of domains, there is no direct empirical proof of implicit bias in prosecutorial decision-making. It thus calls for an implicit bias research agenda designed to further examine how and when implicit bias affects prosecutorial decision-making, including studies designed to test ways of reducing the harms of these biases. It then begins a necessarily early look at potential remedies for the harms associated with implicit bias in prosecutorial discretion

The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion

The Article is organized as follows: Part II provides an introduction to implicit bias research, orienting readers to the important aspects of implicit bias most relevant to prosecutorial discretion. Part III begins the examination of implicit bias in the daily decisions of prosecutors. The Part presents key prosecutorial discretion points and specifically connects each of them to implicit bias. Part IV recognizes that, despite compelling proof of implicit bias in a range of domains, there is no direct empirical proof of implicit bias in prosecutorial decision-making. It thus calls for an implicit bias research agenda designed to further examine how and when implicit bias affects prosecutorial decision-making, including studies designed to test ways of reducing the harms of these biases. It then begins a necessarily early look at potential remedies for the harms associated with implicit bias in prosecutorial discretion