Self Assessment Model for Local Boards of Education to Evaluate Effectiveness

Statement of Purpose The purpose of this field study was to develop a model self-assessment process for local boards of education. Since 1977, this researcher has served as Assistant Regional Superintendent of Schools in Champaign and Ford Counties. From that experience the researcher determined that many local boards do not define and implement a formal self-evaluation process. Of the twenty-one school districts in Champaign and Ford Counties only three have planned and conducted a self-assessment program during the past four years. Since 1983, 57 per cent of the total school board membership of these districts has changed. In 1985, the Illinois General Assembly passed significant school reform legislation which placed additional expectations on local school districts and the boards of education which govern those districts. Thus, this study was timely and relevant to the need for local oards to evaluate their effectiveness in providing leadership and direction for their local school districts. Procedure Although this field study was directed for use by the school districts in Champaign and Ford Counties, the researcher believes it may be modified and adapted to serve other school districts. The study was divided into four chapters. Chapter I provides background information on the problems and concerns confronting local school boards. Chapter II provides a review of the research and literature concerning the role and responsibilities of local boards of education. Justification of the need for the development and use of a model to assess school board effectiveness is presented. Chapter III presents the self-assessment model for use by the boards of education in Champaign and Ford Counties. This chapter identifies the important components which need to be evaluated for effectiveness in the self-evaluation process. These components are the basis for the questionnaire which is to be completed by the members of the local board of education. This chapter provides a guide for using the model and presents a list of recommendations which can be implemented by the local board to improve effectiveness. Chapter IV provides the summary, findings and recommendations for the utilization of the self-assessment model by the local board of education

Modelling alternative strategies for delivering hepatitis B vaccine in prisons : the impact on the vaccination coverage of the injecting drug user population

Since 2001 hepatitis B vaccination has been offered to prisoners on reception into prisons in England and Wales. However, short campaigns of vaccinating the entire population of individual prisons have achieved high vaccination coverage for limited periods, suggesting that short campaigns may be a preferable way of vaccinating prisoners. A model is used that describes the flow of prisoners through prisons stratified by injecting status to compare a range of vaccination scenarios that describe vaccination on prison reception or via regular short campaigns. Model results suggest that vaccinating on prison reception can capture a greater proportion of the injecting drug user (IDU) population than the comparable campaign scenarios (63% vs. 55 . 6% respectively). Vaccination on prison reception is also more efficient at capturing IDUs for vaccination than vaccination via a campaign, although vaccination via campaigns may have a role with some infections for overall control

Climate change: Why the conspiracy theories are dangerous

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Geometry of Policy Improvement

We investigate the geometry of optimal memoryless time independent decision making in relation to the amount of information that the acting agent has about the state of the system. We show that the expected long term reward, discounted or per time step, is maximized by policies that randomize among at most $k$ actions whenever at most $k$ world states are consistent with the agent's observation. Moreover, we show that the expected reward per time step can be studied in terms of the expected discounted reward. Our main tool is a geometric version of the policy improvement lemma, which identifies a polyhedral cone of policy changes in which the state value function increases for all states.Comment: 8 page

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In an electro-acoustic transduction mechanism, an ac modulation (here in the audio frequency range) of the electric field in an atmospheric pressure air plasma gives rise to a rapid increase in the gas temperature and dimensions of the gas volume. As in natural lightning, the rapid expansion in the ionised column though the air produces external pressure variations at the modulation frequency.  \ud Spatial and temporal measurement of the gas temperature can identify the nature of the thermal expansion and provide a direct approach to understanding its relationship to the sound pressure wave that is generated. However, the established method through spectroscopic measurement of rotational line emission from nitrogen molecules is limited to the main current channel where relaxation and subsequent optical emission of the excited nitrogen molecules occurs. The wider picture is revealed through the use of the Schlieren method where the refractive index gradients caused by gas heating in the plasma are imaged