Early Impacts of the El Dorado Promise on Enrollment and Achievement

The “Promise” strategy gained prominence with the announcement of the Kalamazoo Promise program in Michigan in November 2005. The program, known as a universal, place-based scholarship initiative, offers full college tuition to any Kalamazoo Public Schools graduate attending a public college in Michigan. In January 2007, El Dorado, Arkansas announced the El Dorado Promise: a new program that guaranteed that high school graduates from the area can afford college thanks to a $50 million gift from the Murphy Oil Corporation. The El Dorado Promise is modeled after the Kalamazoo program; scholarships are not based on students’ grades in high school or financial need. Through the Promise, Murphy Oil will pay tuition and mandatory fees for up to five years for recipients. To receive the Promise, a student must enroll in a community college or a four-year university – public or private, in Arkansas or out-of-state – and maintain a 2.0 college grade-point average in college

Cohomology at infinity and the well-rounded retract for general Linear Groups

Let $\bold G$ be a reductive algebraic group defined over \Q, and let $\Gamma$ be an arithmetic subgroup of \bold G(\Q). Let $X$ be the symmetric space for $\bold G(\R)$, and assume $X$ is contractible. Then the cohomology (mod torsion) of the space $X/\Gamma$ is the same as the cohomology of $\Gamma$. In turn, $X/\Gamma$ will have the same cohomology as $W/\Gamma$, if $W$ is a ``spine'' in $X$. This means that $W$ (if it exists) is a deformation retract of $X$ by a $\Gamma$-equivariant deformation retraction, that $W/\Gamma$ is compact, and that $\dim W$ equals the virtual cohomological dimension (vcd) of $\Gamma$. Then $W$ can be given the structure of a cell complex on which $\Gamma$ acts cellularly, and the cohomology of $W/\Gamma$ can be found combinatorially

The Common Core Debate

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have ignited a passionate national debate about the standards that guide the education of our nation’s and state’s students. The purpose of this Arkansas Education Report is to add some clarity to the Common Core debate as well as offer a perspective that is specific to the Natural State

Graduation Rates in Arkansas

In April 2014, the National Center for Education Statistics published a national report on state-level graduation rates in 2010-11 and 2011-12. The news was positive for the nation, as the national rate reached 80% for the first time, and for Arkansas, as students in the Natural State boasted higher than average rates in both years. While the statewide news was good, Arkansans may well be interested in the graduation rates of particular schools across the state

Public School Choice and Desegregation in Arkansas

Public school choice is an umbrella term for policies that allow students to enroll in a public school other than their residentially-assigned school. Public school choice, also called openenrollment, is typically divided into two categories: intra-district choice, transfers to schools in the same district, and inter-district choice, transfers to schools in other districts

Introducing DASEP: the doubly asymmetric simple exclusion process

Research in combinatorics has often explored the asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP). The ASEP, inspired by examples from statistical mechanics, involves particles of various species moving around a lattice. With the traditional ASEP particles of a given species can move but do not change species. In this paper a new combinatorial formalism, the DASEP (doubly asymmetric simple exclusion process), is explored. The DASEP is inspired by biological processes where, unlike the ASEP, the particles can change from one species to another. The combinatorics of the DASEP on a one dimensional lattice are explored, including the associated generating function. The stationary probabilities of the DASEP are explored, and results are proven relating these stationary probabilities to those of the simpler ASEP.Comment: For review for special issue of "S\'eminaire Lotharingien de Combinatoire" devoted to lattice path

A Promise Kept in El Dorado? An Evaluation of the Impact of a Universal, Place-Based College Scholarship on K-12 Achievement and High School Graduation

The El Dorado Promise is a scholarship program that provides approximately $7,818 per year toward college tuition - for up to five years - to public high school graduates in El Dorado, Arkansas who have attended El Dorado schools since at least the ninth grade. The program was announced in January 2007, and students were able to use the college scholarships in the fall of 2007. School leaders in El Dorado hoped that the enhanced access to college would increase student interest, engagement, and achievement throughout the school district. In this study, I use one-to-one student-level matching to estimate the impacts of the El Dorado Promise on student achievement and high school graduation. I find positive overall achievement effects of the program in both math and literacy, a .12 to .15 standard deviation unit increase over the comparison group over a five-year period. Very few El Dorado students experienced the treatment over the maximum period of five years, with the average student experiencing 1.5 years of the treatment. Annual effects of the Promise ranged from 0.06 to 0.08 standard deviation units, meaning that El Dorado Promise students boasted test scores that were roughly 6 to 8 percent of a standard deviation better than their matched peers each year. Effects are larger for certain subgroups of students, particularly high-achieving students. However, a placebo test indicates that only math impacts can be attributed with high confidence to the introduction of the Promise. For graduation rates, I find mixed results, with some estimates producing largely null effects and others suggesting the Promise had a negative impact on high school graduation

A strategy for efficiently collecting aerosol condensate using silica fibers:application to carbonyl emissions from e-cigarettes

Analysing harmful constituents in e-cigarette aerosols typically involves adopting a methodology used for analysing tobacco smoke. Cambridge filter pads (CFP) are the basis of numerous protocols for analysing the various classes of compounds representing 93 harmful and potentially harmful constituents identified in tobacco smoke by the FDA. This paper describes a simplified method for trapping the low volatility components of e-cigarette aerosols using a single trapping procedure followed by physical extraction. The trap is a plug of amorphous silica fibres (0.75 g of 4 µm diameter) within a 10mL syringe inserted between the e-cigarette mouthpiece and the pump of the vaping machine. The method is evaluated for emissions from three generations of e-cigarette device (Kangertech CE4, EVOD and Subox Mini-C). On average the silica wool traps about 94% of the vapourised liquid mass in the three devices and higher levels of condensate is retained before reaching saturation compared with CFP. The condensate is then physically extracted from the silica wool plug using a centrifuge. Condensate is then available for use directly in multiple analytical procedures or toxicological experiments. The method is tested by comparison with published analyses of carbonyls, among the most potent toxicants and carcinogens in e-cigarette emissions. Ranges for HPLC-DAD analyses of carbonyl-DNPH derivatives in a laboratory formulation of e-liquid are formaldehyde (0.182±0.023 to 9.896±0.709 µg puff-1), acetaldehyde (0.059±0.005 to 0.791±0.073 µg puff-1) and propionaldehyde (0.008±0.0001 to 0.033±0.023 µg puff-1); other carbonyls are identified and quantified. Carbonyls concentrations are also consistent with published experiments showing marked increases in with variable power settings (10W - 50W). Compared with CFPs, e-cigarette aerosol collection by silica wool requires only one vaping session for multiple analyte groups, traps more condensate per puff, collects more condensate before saturating

Intrinsic Motivation in Public Service: Theory and Evidence from State Supreme Courts

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the intrinsic preferences of state appellate court judges. We construct a panel data set using published decisions from state supreme court cases merged with institutional and biographical information on all (1,700) state supreme court judges for the 50 states of the United States from 1947 to 1994. We exploit variation in the employment conditions of judges over this period of time to measure the effect of these changes on a number of measures of judicial performance. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that judges are intrinsically motivated to provide high-quality decisions, and that at the margin they prefer quality over quantity. When judges face less time pressure, they write more well-researched opinions that are cited more often by later judges. When judges are up for election then performance falls, consistent with the hypothesis that election politics is time-consuming. These effects are strongest when judges have more discretion to select their case portfolio, consistent with psychological theories that posit a negative effect of contingency on motivation (e.g. Deci, 1971). Finally, the intrinsic preference for quality appears to be higher among judges selected by non-partisan elections than among those selected by partisan elections