High School Choice in New York City: A Report on the School Choices and Placements of Low-Achieving Students

School choice policies, a fixture of efforts to improve public education in many cities. aim to enable families to choose a school that they believe will best meet their child's needs. In New York City, choice and the development of a diverse portfolio of options have played central roles in the Department of Education's high school reform efforts. This report examines the choices and placements of New York City's lowest-achieving students: those scoring among the bottom 20 percent on standardized state tests in middle school. Focusing on data from 2007 to 2011, the report looks at who these low-achieving students are, including how their demographics compare to other students in NYC, the educational challenges they face, and where they live. The bulk of the report reviews low-achieving students' most preferred schools and the ones to which they were ultimately assigned, assessing how these schools compare to those of their higher-achieving peers. The findings show that low-achieving students attended schools that were lower performing, on average, than those of all other students. This was driven by differences in students' initial choices: low-achieving students' first-choice schools were less selective, lower-performing, and more disadvantaged. Overall, lower-achievingand higher-achieving students were matched to their top choices at the same rate. Importantly, both low- and higher-achieving students appear to prefer schools that are close to home, suggesting that differences in students' choices likely reflect, at least in part, the fact that lower-achieving students are highly concentrated in poor neighborhoods, where options may be more limited

Intermittent Synchronization in a Pair of Coupled Chaotic Pendula

Numerical simulations have been carried out for a pair of unidirectionally coupled identical pendula under the action of a common external ac torque. Both the master pendulum and the slave pendulum were in chaotic states. The only form of persistent locking appeared to be a computational artifact; otherwise the synchronization of slave to master was found to be intermittent

Intermittent Synchronization of Resistively Coupled Chaotic Josephson Junctions

Numerical simulations have been used to investigate the dynamics of a pair of resistively linked Josephson junctions with ac bias. For suitable choices of parameters, the chaotic states of the two junctions become intermittently synchronized. Intervals of synchronization are interleaved between bursts of desynchronized activity. The distributions of these laminar times and their dependence on the coupling strength are determined. The role of phase winding in the definition of synchronization intervals is considered

Ship and satellite bio-optical research in the California Bight

Mesoscale biological patterns and processes in productive coastal waters were studied. The physical and biological processes leading to chlorophyll variability were investigated. The ecological and evolutionary significance of this variability, and its relation to the prediction of fish recruitment and marine mammal distributions was studied. Seasonal primary productivity (using chlorophyll as an indication of phytoplankton biomass) for the entire Southern California Bight region was assessed. Complementary and contemporaneous ship and satellite (Nimbus 7-CZCS) bio-optical data from the Southern California Bight and surrounding waters were obtained and analyzed. These data were also utilized for the development of multi-platform sampling strategies and the optimization of algorithms for the estimation of phytoplankton biomass and primary production from satellite imagery

Excerpts from selected LANDSAT 1 final reports in geology

The standard formats for the summaries of selected LANDSAT geological data are presented as checklists. These include: (1) value of LANDSAT data to geology, (2) geologic benefits, (3) follow up studies, (4) cost benefits, (5) optimistic working scales, (6) statistical analysis, and (7) enhancement effects

Neutrino oscillation studies and the neutrino cross section

The present uncertainties in the knowledge of the neutrino cross sections for E_nu \sim 1 GeV, that is in the energy range most important for atmospheric and long baseline accelerator neutrinos, are large. These uncertainties do not play a significant role in the interpretation of existing data, however they could become a limiting factor in future studies that aim at a complete and accurate determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters. New data and theoretical understanding on nuclear effects and on the electromagnetic structure functions at low Q^2 and in the resonance production region are available, and can be valuable in reducing the present systematic uncertainties. The collaboration of physicists working in different subfields will be important to obtain the most from this available information. It is now also possible, with the facilities developed for long baseline beams, to produce high intensity and well controlled neutrino beams to measure the neutrino interaction properties with much better precision that what was done in the past. Several projects and ideas to fully exploit these possibilities are under active investigation. These topics have been the object of the first neutrino interaction (NUINT01) workshop.Comment: Summary talk at the 1st workshop on neutrino-nucleus interactions in the few GeV region (NuInt01), Tsukuba, Japan, 13-16 Dec 2001. 14 pages, 7 figure

Dysregulation of cadherins in the intercalated disc of the spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat

The structural integrity of cardiac cells is maintained by the Ca2+-dependent homophilic cell-cell adhesion of cadherins. N-cadherin is responsible for this adhesion under normal physiological conditions. The role of cadherins in adverse cardiac pathology is less clear. We studied the hearts of the stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive (SHRSP) rat as a genetic model of cardiac hypertrophy and compared them to Wistar-Kyoto control animals. Western blotting of protein homogenates from 12-week old SHRSP animals indicated that similar levels of [beta], [gamma]-, and [alpha]-catenin and T, N and R-cadherin were expressed in the control and SHRSP animals. However, dramatically higher levels of E-cadherin were detected in SHRSP animals compared to controls at 6, 12 and 18áweeks of age. This was confirmed by quantitative Taqman PCR and immunohistochemistry. E-cadherin was located at the intercalated disc of the myocytes in co-localisation with connexin 43. Adenoviral overexpression of E-cadherin in rat H9c2 cells and primary rabbit myocytes resulted in a significant reduction in myocyte cell diameter and breadth. E-cadherin overexpression resulted in re-localisation of [beta]-catenin to the cell surface particularly to cell-cell junctions. Subsequent immunohistochemistry of the hearts of WKY and SHRSP animals also revealed increased levels of [beta]-catenin in the intercalated disc in the SHRSP compared to WKY. Therefore, remodelling of the intercalated disc in the hearts of SHRSP animals may contribute to the altered function observed in these animal