Using Culturally Ambitious Teaching Practices to Support Urban Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Culturally relevant pedagogy is an ideology upon which strong urban classrooms can be built. However, culturally relevant pedagogy has not been operationalized in a way that allows consistent implementation in classrooms. This work focuses on the conceptualization of culturally ambitious teaching practices (CATP) in mathematics that exemplify the tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy – academic achievement, cultural competence, and critical consciousness – with those of ambitious mathematics teaching practices. This paper will describe the findings of the initial work of developing and operationalizing CATP in mathematics through a quantitative and qualitative analysis

Adolescent Drug Use and the Deterrent Effect of School-Imposed Penalties

Simple OLS estimates of the effect of school-imposed penalties for drug use on a student's consumption of marijuana are biased if both are determined by unobservable school or individual attributes. The potential reverse causality is also a challenge to retrieving estimates of the causal relationship, as the severity of school sanctions may simply reflect the need for more-severe sanctions. I offer an instrumental-variables approach to retrieving an estimate of the causal response of marijuana use to sanctions and thereby demonstrate the efficacy of school-imposed penalties as a deterrent to adolescent drug use. This is the first evidence of such efficacy and, given what is known about the consequences of drug use, suggests that school sanctions may have important long-run benefits.drug, crime, adolescent, risky behavior, expulsion

Gender and the Influence of Peer Alcohol Consumption on Adolescent Sexual Activity

I consider the alcohol consumption of opposite-gender peers as explanatory to adolescent sexual intercourse and demonstrate that female sexual activity is higher where there is higher alcohol consumption among male peers. This relationship is robust to school fixed effects, cannot be explained by broader cohort effects or general anti-social behaviors in male peer groups, and is distinctly different from any influence of the alcohol consumption of female peers which is shown to have no influence on female sexual activity. There is no evidence that male sexual activity responds to female-peer alcohol consumption.peer, adolescent, alcohol, sex, risky behavior

District digest : Economic trends across the region

"The Roles of New and Existing Establishments in Employment in the Fifth District," article by R. Andrew Bauer, pg. 36-39Federal Reserve District, 5th ; Economic conditions ; Economic indicators

Do No-Loan Policies Change the Matriculation Patterns of Low-Income Students?

We empirically examine whether there is discernable variation in the matriculation patterns of low-income students at public flagship institutions in the United States around changes in institutional financial-aid policies that target resident, low-income students with need-based aid. While enrollment responses cannot be attributed to these programs, we do find that institutions that introduce income-targeted aid subsequently enroll financially needier and geographically more-distant students. These findings imply that "improved" access may actually displace some needy students in favor of others.low income, financial aid, no loan, Pell

Fix your attitude: Labor-market consequences of poor attitude and low self-esteem in youth

Using longitudinal data on a cohort of high-school graduates, I show that individuals who reveal poor attitudes and low self-esteem as high-school students attain fewer years of post-secondary education relative to their high-school cohort, are less likely to be employed for pay fourteen years following high school and, where working for pay, realize lower earnings. Further, I find evidence that poor attitude and esteem in high school are significant predictors of the degree of supervision under which individuals ultimately work. Poor attitude and esteem in youth are also closely associated with jobs that require individuals to spend their time working more with things, as opposed to people, for example. These relationships suggest that real economic consequence exist in fostering positive attitude and esteem in youth

Astronaut Rescue Air Pack (ARAP) and Emergency Egress Air Pack (EEAP)

Two designs for a lightweight, low profile, mobile rescue apparatus providing a 15-minute air supply and self-contained two-way communications assembly are described. Units are designed for astronaut use in hazardous environments

Blaming the victim, all over again: Waddell and Aylward's biopsychosocial (BPS) model of disability

The biopsychosocial (BPS) model of mental distress, originally conceived by the American psychiatrist George Engel in the 1970s and commonly used in psychiatry and psychology, has been adapted by Gordon Waddell and Mansell Aylward to form the theoretical basis for current UK Government thinking on disability. Most importantly, the Waddell and Aylward version of the BPS has played a key role as the Government has sought to reform spending on out-of- work disability benefits. This paper presents a critique of Waddell and Aylward’s model, examining its origins, its claims and the evidence it employs. We will argue that its potential for genuine inter-disciplinary cooperation and the holistic and humanistic benefits for disabled people as envisaged by Engel are not now, if they ever have been, fully realized. Any potential benefit it may have offered has been eclipsed by its role in Coalition/Conservative government social welfare policies that have blamed the victim and justified restriction of entitlements

Free Play: Removing Barriers to Athletic Self-Expression in Sport

The choice of what sport to play and the manner in which a person plays it has moral content and represents values that are personally meaningful to the individual athlete. However, due to the hegemonic influence of the concept of fair play, athletes do not have control over, or freedom of expression within, their chosen sports. This has additional and harmful ramifications for those currently excluded from communities of sport practice because the rules of sporting contests have very little flexibility to allow for participant directed change. A rights-based conception of sport encourages athletes to engage in ‘civil disobedience’ within sport to bring about, or at least draw attention to, necessary rule changes, and for sport to tolerate such disobedience so as not to compromise the autonomy of those who dissent to current standards of excellence or practice. This implementation of rights-based sport will be examined in the context of para-sport since individuals with disabilities are one possible group who would benefit significantly. Finally, the ethical arguments and their implications for sport will be practically tested within the context of the Canadian University Rowing Championships and the creation of a unified sport opportunity for ‘able-bodied’ athletes as well as para-athletes alike

Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access

We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol on student achievement. We first estimate the effect using an RD design but argue that this approach is not well suited to the research question in our setting. Our preferred approach instead exploits the longitudinal nature of the data, identifying the effect by measuring the extent to which a student’s performance changes after he gains legal access to alcohol, controlling flexibly for the expected evolution of grades as students make progress towards their degrees. We find that students’ grades fall below their expected levels upon being able to drink legally, but by less than previously documented. We also show that there are effects on women and that the effects are persistent.