Families hold the key to increasing African American achievement in schools

In recent decades progress in addressing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps between African American and Latino students and white and Asian American students has been painfully slow. William Jeynes has conducted two meta-analyses examining which factors reduce this achievement gap, and the extent to which to parental involvement helps African American students perform well in school. He finds that faith and family factors help to reduce the achievement gap by up to 65 percent. Rather than simply pumping billions of dollars into school-based solutions for improving educational outcomes, he argues that politicians need to take a broader minded approach, and consider policies which recognize the importance of family involvement in improving educational outcomes

Moves towards greater educational standardization epitomized by Common Core have done little to address the decline of American education

The 1960s and 1970s saw a significant decline in national average SAT achievement scores in America. Since that time, successive governments have tried to implement public school reforms, the latest iteration of which is the Common Core policy, which applies consistent national standards. William Jeynes argues that the Common Core policy lowers educational standards and has also had a disappointing effect on test results. He argues in order to improve educational outcomes, rather than increasing moves towards educational standardization, policymakers should encourage greater competition between public and private schools through improved school choice

Policymakers should embrace greater school choice to include private and faith schools to address the achievement gap

For decades education policymakers have been concerned with the achievement gap between school students from low and high income backgrounds. William Jeynes argues that one way to tackle this problem would be to allow greater school choice, which would include private and faith schools. He writes that faith schools yield better educational results for students than traditional public schools or charter schools, and do so at much lower cost

Elemental depth profiling of thin film chalcogenides using MeV ion beam analysis

The comprehensive characterisation is one of many technical challenges in the fabrication of photovoltaic devices from novel materials. We show how the application of recent advances in MeV ion beam analysis, providing the selfconsistent treatment of Rutherford backscattering and particle induced X-ray emission spectra, makes a new set of powerful complementary elemental depth profiling techniques available for all thin film technologies, including the chalcopyrite compound semiconductors. We will give and discuss a detailed analysis of a CuInAl metallic precursor film, showing how similar methods are also applicable to other films of interest

The Effects of Catholic and Protestant Schools: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis was undertaken including 41 studies to determine the influence of Catholic and Protestant schools. The analysis examined studies undertaken at both the elementary and secondary school level. The results indicate that both Catholic and Protestant school students do better than their counterparts in public schools. In addition, Protestant school students excelled more than their Catholic counterparts on most standardized tests, but Catholic school students did better than their Protestant school counterparts on non-standardized measures. The significance of these results is discussed

John Greenleaf Whittier: a psychograph

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1949. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

An evaluation of the effectiveness of intervention strategies for the promotion of health and safety performance in small firms

Recognition of the contribution of small firms to the UK economy has grown considerably since 1995 when this research first began. The poor record of small firms in managing health and safety effectively has caused concern, and efforts made to improve knowledge and awareness of the target group through various initiatives have had some success. This research thesis attempts to identify the range of intervention routes and methods available to reach the target group, and to consider ways of evaluating the outcome of such efforts. Various interventions were tested with small firms, including a Workshop; use of Questionnaires; short postal Reply Slip survey; leading to a closer evaluation of a specific industry- the Licensed Trade. Attitudes and beliefs of the sample were identified, and observations carried out to consider actions taken by workers and others in the workplace. These empirical research findings were used to develop the theme of Primary and Secondary interventions intended to change behaviours, and to confirm assumptions about what small firms currently do to manage health and safety risks. Guidance for small firms was developed as a Secondary intervention tool to support Primary interventions, such as inspection or insurance provision

Simultaneous PIXE and RBS data analysis using Bayesian Inference with the DataFurnace code

The Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy (RBS) and Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) techniques can be used to obtain complementary information about the characteristics of a sample but, traditionally, a gap has separated the available computer codes for analyzing data from each technique, being hard to simultaneously analyze data from the same sample. The recent development of a free and open source library, LibCPIXE, for PIXE simulation and analysis of arbitrary multilayered samples, has permitted to integrate this technique into the DataFurnace code which already handles many other IBA techniques such as Rutherford and non-Rutherford backscattering, elastic recoil detection, and non-resonant nuclear reaction analysis. The fitting capabilities of DataFurnace can therefore now be applied to PIXE spectra as well, including the Bayesian Inference analysis and the simultaneous and coherent fitting of multiple spectra from different techniques. Various examples are presented in which the simultaneous RBS and PIXE analysis allows us to obtain consistent results that cannot be obtained by independent analysis of the data from each technique.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Paper initially presented to IBA2005. Please cite the published version (DOI:10.1016/j.nimb.2006.03.190

Self-assembled germanium islands grown on (001) silicon substrates by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition

The time evolution of self-assembled Ge islands, during low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) of Ge on Si at 650 Deg C using high growth rates, has been investigated by atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. We have found three different island structures The smallest islands are "lens-shaped" and characterized by a rather narrow size distribution, ~4nm high and ~20nm wide. Next to form are a distinct population of multifaceted "dome shaped" islands, up to 25nm high and 80-150 nm wide. Finally, the largest islands that form are square-based truncated pyramids with a very narrow size distribution ~50nm high and ~250nm wide. The pyramidal islands normally seen in the intermediate size range (~150nm) are not observed. The small lens-shaped islands appear to be defect free, while some of the multifaceted islands as well as all the large truncated pyramids contain misfit dislocations. The existence of multifaceted islands, in the size range where multifaceted "dome shaped" islands have previously been reported, is attributed to the high growth rate used. Furthermore, under the growth conditions used, the truncated-pyramid-shaped islands are characterized by a very narrow size distribution

Towards truly simultaneous PIXE and RBS analysis of layered objects in cultural heritage

For a long time, RBS and PIXE techniques have been used in the field of cultural heritage. Although the complementarity of both techniques has long been acknowledged, its full potential has not been yet developed due to the lack of general purpose software tools for analysing the data from both techniques in a coherent way. In this work we provide an example of how the recent addition of PIXE to the set of techniques supported by the DataFurnace code can significantly change this situation. We present a case in which a non homogeneous sample (an oxidized metal from a photographic plate -heliography- made by Niepce in 1827) is analysed using RBS and PIXE in a straightforward and powerful way that can only be performed with a code that treats both techniques simultaneously as a part of one single and coherent analysis. The optimization capabilities of DataFurnace, allowed us to obtain the composition profiles for these samples in a very simple way.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure