Public Funding for NonPublic Education: School Vouchers Initiatives

On June 27, 2002, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the United States Supreme Court upheld Ohio\u27s school voucher initiative, authorizing government aid for students in failing Cleveland public schools to attend, upon independent parental choice, private and parochial schools. Similar education reform initiatives may face distinct challenges in the Commonwealth. Significantly, traditional legal interpretation of Virginia constitutional provisions has been more restrictive than those of federal constitutional provisions addressing government entanglement with religion. While carefully crafted voucher initiatives aiding sectarian private schools may pass muster under the U.S. Constitution, application of the Commonwealth\u27s constitutional requirements could warrant a different result

Intensity Based Non-rigid Registration of 3D Whole Mouse Optical and MR Image Volumes

Novel magnetic resonance (MR) imaging techniques can be validated using accurate co-registration with histology. Whole-animal histological sections allow for simultaneous analysis of multiple tissues, and may also aid in registration by providing contextual information and structural support to tissues which if isolated from the body would be difficult to register. This thesis explores the feasibility of co-registration between whole mouse histology with 3D MR images using an intermediate optical image volume acquired during tissue sectioning. Of the two transformations required for this approach, 3D co-registration of MR and optical images is more challenging to perform due to changes in contrast, slice orientation, and resolution between these modalities. Here, an automated non-rigid registration technique utilizing mutual information is proposed to accurately register 3D whole mouse optical and MR images as a first step towards automated registration of histology. Validation of this technique was accomplished through calculation of post-registration target registration error

Public Funding for NonPublic Education: School Vouchers Initiatives

On June 27, 2002, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the United States Supreme Court upheld Ohio\u27s school voucher initiative, authorizing government aid for students in failing Cleveland public schools to attend, upon independent parental choice, private and parochial schools. Similar education reform initiatives may face distinct challenges in the Commonwealth. Significantly, traditional legal interpretation of Virginia constitutional provisions has been more restrictive than those of federal constitutional provisions addressing government entanglement with religion. While carefully crafted voucher initiatives aiding sectarian private schools may pass muster under the U.S. Constitution, application of the Commonwealth\u27s constitutional requirements could warrant a different result

Parent Cooperative Early Childhood Settings: Empowering Family Strengths and Family Engagement for All Young Children

Parent cooperative preschools are unique educational enterprises because they involve the participation of parents and children. The purpose of this historical qualitative analysis examines the history of parent cooperative preschools and the contributions of this type of early childhood setting, including parent engagement in the classroom, family strengths (both personal and in the community), and the teacher’s role in the classroom as a facilitator, leader, and parent educator. Reflections from past parent cooperative board members of a parent cooperative are included sharing their personal contributions, joys, collaborations, and challenges of engagement in this type of early childhood program. The reflections from the parent cooperative board members share insight into the role they played in the awareness of early childhood education to society, family engagement, advocacy, and the critical importance of this type of early childhood setting for all young children. Parent cooperative preschools encourages families to engage in reciprocal relationships with teachers by offering learning activities for the home and in the community. They are associated with important values and virtues for families to grow and learn with their child

Historical Changes in Planform Geometry of the Amite and Comite Rivers and Implications on Flood Routing

The Amite River Basin is a 2,220 square-mile basin spanning from southwest Mississippi through southeast Louisiana, encompassing Baton Rouge and its suburbs. In response to historic flooding in August 2016 and other major flood events in the past several decades, the basin has been the subject of a number of studies to quantify the impacts of changes in land-use and reduction in river length and sinuosity. However, there have yet to be relationships defined between the changes in the historical river planform and the resulting flow, stages, and subsequent flood depths. River lengths and sinuosity were measured from the 1930s to present, confirming there has been an overall 6 and 13% decrease in length and sinuosity of the Comite and Amtie Rivers upstream of their confluence, respectively, from the 1930s to present. Planform geometries from four time period scenarios from the 1930’s to present were input into a combined 1D/2D unsteady flow HEC-RAS model, which is run using four spatially-variable rainfall events ranging from 1- to greater than 500-year return period flows to examine the significance on flood characteristics. The results show an overall increase in flow and stage peak magnitude over time, corresponding to an overall decrease in river length and sinuosity. The impacts were largest for for the 3- to 6-year return period flow event due to the magnitude and rainfall distribution of the historic event used. Results from this study will be compared to and combined with complementary projects, focused on spatial and temporal changes in land use and precipitation events, to better understand the driving variables impacting the stages, discharges, and subsequent flood risk within the basin. Further, this knowledge can be applied to better inform mitigation and construction projects within the basin in the future

Teaching Metaphors: Supporting Professional Growth and Shaping Teacher Identity

A phenomenological study was conducted to further a better understanding, and inquire a new awareness, on how metaphors can support professional growth and shape teacher identity for early childhood education students. Examining teaching metaphors might be another strategy for teacher preparation programs to help early childhood education students in identifying their pre-existing values about teaching and learning. Teaching metaphors may guide students to reflect on values and beliefs that make an important impression on their individual teaching journey

An Educational Open Source Development Model: From Cooperative Synchronicity to Intentional Collaboration

As educators, we have a long tradition of sharing materials and ideas. Another professional community has almost as long a history of idea and materials exchange and revision: an international network of open source software developers connected by the Internet. Working primarily as volunteers, this community has produced and fine-tuned many pieces of software, including the Internet’s most popular Web server, the Apache Web server.What if talented software developers could work with educators to develop and customize educational software? In addition, what if a mechanism were in place to help educators share the materials that they create in this virtually collaborative manner

When Fathers Matter/Why Fathers Matter: The Impact of the Paternal Involvement on the Offspring of Adolescent Mothers

After a long period of scholarly neglect, social scientists are finally beginning to pay attention to the influence of fathers on children. This new tide of interest in the role of fathers has been so strong that the standard cliché about fathers being slighted in studies of family behavior hardly applies any longer. Recent research on teenage parenthood represents a particularly good example of the growing interest in the extent and consequences of male involvement

Stepfamily Relationship Quality and Stepchildren’s Depression in Adolescence and Adulthood

Before reaching adulthood, one third of all youth in the United States will reside in a stepfamily household—a familial context marked by distinct challenges. Relatively few studies have explored family processes that promote youth adjustment in stepfamilies, and even fewer studies have examined these links across adolescence, emerging adulthood, and beyond. To address these gaps, we use a nationally representative sample of 758 adolescent stepchildren to examine the concurrent and long-term influence of mother–child, stepfather–child, nonresident father–child, and stepcouple relationship quality on stepchildren’s depression across three stages of development: adolescence, emerging adulthood, and young adulthood. Results from longitudinal structural equation modeling indicate that higher quality mother–child and stepfather–child relationships are directly associated with reductions in depression during adolescence and indirectly associated with reductions in depression during emerging and young adulthood via prior levels of depression; higher quality stepcouple relationships are directly associated with reductions in depression during emerging and young adulthood