Promising State Policies for Personalized Learning

This report is a valuable resource for state policymakers—whether they are seeking to create conditions in state policy to support personalized learning, moving forward with initiatives to develop personalized learning pilot programs, hosting task forces to explore policy issues and needs, or taking a comprehensive policy approach for supporting advanced personalized learning models.Personalized learning is where instruction is tailored to each student's strengths, needs, and interests—including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when, and where they learn—to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible

Interview with Dale Glass

Dale Glass talks about health and medicinehttps://digital.kenyon.edu/elfs_interviews/1054/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of the Nottingham Workplace Parking Levy on Travel to Work Mode Share

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.A Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) scheme raises a levy on private non-domestic off-street parking provided by employers. In April 2012 Nottingham became the first UK City to implement such a scheme with the revenue generated hypothecated for funding two additional tram lines into the city, the refurbishment of the main railway station and enhancements to a number of bus services. Evaluations of similar Parking Space Levies schemes in Australia show that their introduction, along with any transport improvements they part fund, have been followed by mode switch to non-car based modes, a pre-requisite for congestion constraint. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact the introduction of the Nottingham Workplace Parking Levy and its associated transport improvements has had on transport mode choice for commuters. This research however, does not directly demonstrate cause and effect leaving open the possibility that the observed mode shift could be caused by exogenous factors. The paper is based on data collected from a survey of 2,500 commuters in Nottingham, relating to their mode choice. The results indicate that 8.6% of commuters currently travelling by sustainable modes switched from the car between 2010 and 2016 at least in part due to the implementation of the WPL and/or the associated transport improvements. In the region of 50 per cent of those individuals gave the WPL as a stand-alone scheme as an important factor in their decision to shift away from the car via an increase in the cost of parking at work or because their employer had removed workplace parking spaces. However, this research has also revealed evidence of commuters switching to the car away from other modes demonstrating a significant suppressed demand for travel by car which in part offsets some of the beneficial impacts of the WPL package

An Evaluation of Short-term Mesocarnivore Control for Increasing Hatch Rate in Northern Bobwhites

We evaluated the efficacy of short-term trapping on scent-station visitation rates for some nest predators and survival of artificial nests with chicken eggs at 4 sites in west Texas from 1998-2001. Trapping of predators was conducted with cage traps for 30 days just prior to nest initiation (mid-May through mid-June) at a trap density of 1 trap/20 ha. Each site included a treatment (trapped) and control (non-trapped) area that comprised approximately 250 ha. Scent stations were employed before and after trapping to assess impacts of trapping on predator activity/abundance. Simulated nests (using 3 chicken eggs) were established 1-2 days after trapping ended, and monitored weekly to estimate visitation rate. We removed an average of 69 mesomammals per year (n = 274 across all sites), within a 30-day-trapping period. We detected no consistent declines in scent-station visitation rates of target species before or after trapping. We did not detect an increase in survival of artificial nests. We conclude that short-term trapping efforts on small areas used in this study did not reduce the overall predator community enough to affect scent-station visitation rates or survival of artificial nests

Evaluating transport demand management interventions

Theoretical approaches to evaluating public policy initiatives seek to account for the effect of factors external to the initiative which could impact on the outcome of that initiative. The application of this approach within the transport sector is relatively new despite current government Department for Transport guidance advocating its use. Nottingham is the first City in the UK to implement a Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) which places a levy on private non-domestic off street parking provided by employers. The scheme acts as a transport demand management measure with the revenue hypothecated for funding a package of transport improvements. This paper analyses the application of a theoretical evaluation approach, using the example of the Nottingham WPL package as a case study. The analysis includes a logic map based on stakeholder consensus and literature, explaining how the package is expected to meet its stated objectives. The paper concludes that a combination of two theoretical approaches, ‘Theory of Change approach strengthened by elements of ‘Realistic Evaluation, as an appropriate framework for evaluating transport interventions and that this has established a plausible model for change and expected outcomes and impacts for the Nottingham WPL Package. Additionally, it concludes that the available data supports the validity of the established Theory of Change for the Nottingham WPL package with regards to shorter term outcomes. This will be invaluable to any authority which chooses to pursue a similar approach

Workplace parking levies: the answer to funding large scale local transport improvements in the UK?

Despite positive experiences in Australia of utilising area wide workplace parking place charges to pay for public transport improvement, only one UK local authority, to date, Nottingham City Council has chosen to implement a Work Place Parking Levy scheme (WPL). This scheme intends to allocate the revenue raised to fund (amongst other things) two new tram lines. Acceptance by the public and the business community are seen as key barriers to implementing a WPL. The two major criticisms of the Nottingham scheme prior to its implementation were that a WPL would discourage business investment and thus damage the economy while its intended impact on traffic congestion would be minimal. Therefore a detailed assessment of the Nottingham WPL scheme’s performance is essential in order to facilitate transferability of this approach to other UK and European Cities and thus bring WPL into the mainstream for funding transport improvements. This paper outlines the barriers to implementation of the Nottingham WPL scheme, and the rationale behind the chosen use of revenue and how the scheme’s performance will be evaluated as a transport demand management measure, as well as some initial performance monitoring data following the first year of operation. The results to date are discussed with a view to identifying any early indications as to whether traffic congestion and business investment has been impacted by the scheme’s introduction

Recycling Argon through Metamorphic Reactions: the Record in Symplectites

The 40Ar/39Ar ages of metamorphic micas that crystallized at high temperatures are commonly interpreted as cooling ages, with grains considered to have lost 40Ar via thermally-driven diffusion into the grain boundary network. Recently reported laser-ablation data suggest that the spatial distribution of Ar in metamorphic micas does not always conform to the patterns predicted by diffusion theory and that despite high metamorphic temperatures, argon was not removed efficiently from the local system during metamorphic evolution. In the Western Gneiss Region (WGR), Norway, felsic gneisses preserve microtextural evidence for the breakdown of phengite to biotite and plagioclase symplectites during near isothermal decompression from c. 20–25 to c. 8–12 kbar at ~700°C. These samples provide an ideal natural laboratory to assess whether the complete replacement of one K-bearing mineral by another at high temperatures completely ‘resets’ the Ar clock, or whether there is some inheritance of 40Ar in the neo-crystallized phase. The timing of the high-temperature portion of the WGR metamorphic cycle has been well constrained in previous studies. However, the timing of cooling following the overprint is still much debated. In-situ laser ablation spot dating in phengite, biotite-plagioclase symplectites and coarser, texturally later biotite yielded 40Ar/39Ar ages that span much of the metamorphic cycle. Together these data show that despite residence at temperatures of ~700°C, Ar is not completely removed by diffusive loss or during metamorphic recrystallization. Instead, Ar released during phengite breakdown appears to be partially reincorporated into the newly crystallizing biotite and plagioclase (or is trapped in fluid inclusions in those phases) within a close system. Our data show that the microtextural and petrographic evolution of the sample being dated provides a critical framework in which local 40Ar recycling can be tracked, thus potentially allowing 40Ar/39Ar dates to be linked more accurately to metamorphic history

What lies beneath: exploring links between asylum policy and hate crime in the UK

This paper explores the link between increasing incidents of hate crime and the asylum policy of successive British governments with its central emphasis on deterrence. The constant problematisation of asylum seekers in the media and political discourse ensures that 'anti-immigrant' prejudice becomes mainstr earned as a common-sense response. The victims are not only the asylum seekers hoping for a better life but democratic society itself with its inherent values of pluralism and tolerance debased and destabilised