The Effects of School Quality and Family Functioning on Youth Math Scores: a Canadian Longitudinal Analysis

This paper tries to disentangle the relative importance of family and school inputs on a child's cognitive achievement as measured by her percentile score on a mathematics test. We replicate a study by Todd and Wolpin (2007) in the United States with Canadian data. In contrast to their work that uses state-level indicators of school quality, we estimate our model with data from Statistics Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) which provides micro-level information on the family and school history of the child. The sample used for the analysis is based on the 7- to 15-year-old longitudinal children who have completed at least two consecutive math tests. As in Todd and Wolpin, we conclude that cognitive outcomes are determined by current and past family inputs. Contrary to them, who find no impact of school inputs, we find that the quality of schools has a positive impact on achievement in mathematics.Math scores, human capital, child development, school and family inputs, panel data

Childcare Policy and Cognitive Outcomes of Children: Results from a Large Scale Quasi-Experiment on Universal Childcare in Canada

Effects of a low-fee universal childcare policy, initiated in Québec, the second most populous province in Canada, on the cognitive development of preschool children are estimated with a sample of 4- and 5-year-olds (N=8,875; N=17,154). In 1997, licensed and regulated providers of childcare services began offering daycare spaces at the reduced fee of $5 per day per child for children aged 4. By 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 59 months (not in kindergarten). The study uses 6 cycles of biennial data drawn from Statistics Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (1994-2004) and quasi-experimental estimation methods to provide evidence that the policy had substantial negative effects on preschool children's Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores. The negative effects are found to be stronger for children with mothers who have lower levels of education.Preschool children, school readiness, childcare, kindergarten, treatment effects, natural experiment

Impact of Early Childhood Care and Education on Children's Preschool Cognitive Development: Canadian Results from a Large Quasi-experiment

On September 1st 1997, a new early childhood care and education policy was initiated by the provincial government of Québec, the second most populous province in Canada. Providers of childcare services licensed by the Department of the Family began offering daycare spaces at the reduced parental contribution of $5 per day per child for children aged 4. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement and engaged in a plan to create new childcare facilities and pay for the cost of additional$5 per day childcare spaces. By September 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 59 months and the number of partly subsidized spaces increased from 77,000 in 1998 to 170,000 spaces, totally subsidized, by midyear 2003. In addition, on September 1st 1997, all public schools offered full-day rather than part-day kindergarten for 5-year-old children. No such important policy changes for preschool (including kindergarten) children were enacted in the other Canadian provinces over the years 1994 to 2003. Using biennial data drawn from Statistics Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), conducted since 1994-1995, this study attempts to estimate the effect of the policy on Québec’s preschool children cognitive test scores. A non-experimental evaluation framework based on multiple pre- and post-treatment periods is used to estimate the effect of the early childhood care and education regime on school readiness. The econometric results support the hypothesis that the policy had no effects on the cognitive development of 4-year-olds (the PPVT-R raw scores and the PPVT-R standardized scores). However, we provide evidence that the policy had a substantial negative impact on the scores of 5-year-olds.preschool children, school readiness, childcare, kindergarten, treatment effects, natural experiment

Impact of Early Childhood Care and Education on Children's Preschool Cognitive Development: Canadian Results from a Large Quasi-experiment

On September 1st 1997, a new early childhood care and education policy was initiated by the provincial government of Québec, the second most populous province in Canada. Providers of childcare services licensed by the Department of the Family began offering daycare spaces at the reduced parental contribution of $5 per day per child for children aged 4. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement and engaged in a plan to create new childcare facilities and pay for the cost of additional$5 per day childcare spaces. By September 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 59 months and the number of partly subsidized spaces increased from 77,000 in 1998 to 170,000 spaces, totally subsidized, by midyear 2003. In addition, on September 1st 1997, all public schools offered full-day rather than part-day kindergarten for 5-year-old children. No such important policy changes for preschool (including kindergarten) children were enacted in the other Canadian provinces over the years 1994 to 2003. Using biennial data drawn from Statistics Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), conducted since 1994-1995, this study attempts to estimate the effect of the policy on Québec’s preschool children cognitive test scores. A non-experimental evaluation framework based on multiple pre- and post-treatment periods is used to estimate the effect of the early childhood care and education regime on school readiness. The econometric results support the hypothesis that the policy had no effects on the cognitive development of 4-year-olds (the PPVT-R raw scores and the PPVT-R standardized scores). However, we provide evidence that the policy had a substantial negative impact on the scores of 5-year-olds

Harnessing the Power of Many: Extensible Toolkit for Scalable Ensemble Applications

Many scientific problems require multiple distinct computational tasks to be executed in order to achieve a desired solution. We introduce the Ensemble Toolkit (EnTK) to address the challenges of scale, diversity and reliability they pose. We describe the design and implementation of EnTK, characterize its performance and integrate it with two distinct exemplar use cases: seismic inversion and adaptive analog ensembles. We perform nine experiments, characterizing EnTK overheads, strong and weak scalability, and the performance of two use case implementations, at scale and on production infrastructures. We show how EnTK meets the following general requirements: (i) implementing dedicated abstractions to support the description and execution of ensemble applications; (ii) support for execution on heterogeneous computing infrastructures; (iii) efficient scalability up to O(10^4) tasks; and (iv) fault tolerance. We discuss novel computational capabilities that EnTK enables and the scientific advantages arising thereof. We propose EnTK as an important addition to the suite of tools in support of production scientific computing

The Sparse Cardinal Sine Decomposition applied to Stokes integral equations

International audienceNumerical simulations of two-phase flows driven by viscosity (e.g. for bubble motions in glass melting process) rely on the ability to efficiently compute the solutions to discretized Stokes equations. When using boundary element methods to track fluid interfaces, one usually faces the problem of solving linear systems with a dense matrix with a size proportional to the system number of degrees of freedom. Acceleration techniques, based on the compression of the underlying matrix and efficient matrix vector products are known (Fast Multipole Method, H-matrices, etc.) but are usually rather cumbersome to develop. More recently, a new method was proposed, called the " Sparse Cardinal Sine Decomposition " , in the context of acoustic problems to tackle this kind of problem in some generality (in particular with respect to the Green kernel of the problem). The proposed contribution aims at showing the potential applicability of the method in the context of viscous flows governed by Stokes equations

Chapitre 3: PROTEGER LES PAUVRES PENDANT LA REPRISE ET AU-DELA

peer reviewedLa Note sur la situation économique du Burkina Faso est une publication périodique de la Banque mondiale (BM) qui met en évidence les tendances économiques récentes et discute des questions de développement pertinentes pour le pays. Elle s’appuie sur les études analytiques existantes et en cours de la Banque mondiale pour présenter et analyser les principaux problèmes économiques et sociaux actuels. La mise à jour est destinée au grand public et sert de véhicule pour contribuer aux débats entre les décideurs politiques, les ONG, les chercheurs et les citoyens concernant les choix économiques auxquels le pays est confronté

Parallelized and Vectorized Tracking Using Kalman Filters with CMS Detector Geometry and Events

The High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be characterized by greater pileup of events and higher occupancy, making the track reconstruction even more computationally demanding. Existing algorithms at the LHC are based on Kalman filter techniques with proven excellent physics performance under a variety of conditions. Starting in 2014, we have been developing Kalman-filter-based methods for track finding and fitting adapted for many-core SIMD processors that are becoming dominant in high-performance systems. This paper summarizes the latest extensions to our software that allow it to run on the realistic CMS-2017 tracker geometry using CMSSW-generated events, including pileup. The reconstructed tracks can be validated against either the CMSSW simulation that generated the hits, or the CMSSW reconstruction of the tracks. In general, the code's computational performance has continued to improve while the above capabilities were being added. We demonstrate that the present Kalman filter implementation is able to reconstruct events with comparable physics performance to CMSSW, while providing generally better computational performance. Further plans for advancing the software are discussed

Former à la classe inversée en contexte de visioconférence : retours sur deux itérations d'une recherche orientée par la conception

National audienceAs part of a collaborative design-based research project, flipped classroom training in a videoconferencing context was given twice to teachers. The pedagogical design of this training was structured in a framework based on the creation of a learning community, the learning presence and the real experience as a learner of a flipped classroom experience in a videoconferencing context. Following the first iteration, empirical findings, from the point of view of learning, as well as the activity of the instructors or the technopedagogical features implemented, led to the development of a first research project aimed at describing the presence created within this community, according to the learning presence model [11]. This work helped to highlight a certain lack of socio-cognitive presence and to raise questions about the pedagogical presence.Dans notre projet de recherche collaborative orientée par la conception, une formation sur la classe inversée en contexte de visioconférence a été donnée à deux reprises à des enseignants et conseillers pédagogiques. Le design pédagogique de cette formation se structurait dans un cadre misant sur la création d'une communauté d'apprentissage, la présence à distance et le vécu en tant qu'apprenant d'une expérience de classe inversée en contexte de visioconférence. Suite à la première itération, des constats empiriques, tant du point de vue de l'apprentissage, que de l'activité des formateurs ou des caractéristiques technopédagogiques mises en oeuvre, ont motivé l'élaboration d'un premier travail de recherche visant à décrire la présence suscitée au sein de cette communauté, selon le modèle de la présence à distance [11]. Ce travail a notamment permis de mettre en évidence une certaine carence en matière de présence sociocognitive et de soulever des questions sur la présence pédagogique

Eye movement responses to caloric vestibular irrigations reveal the contribution of voluntary processes to autonomic reflexes

editorial reviewedCan autonomic reflexes inform us about higher-order cognitive processes ? To address this issue, we studied habituation (a form of non-associative learning) of the slow, uncontrolled eye movement response (nystagmus) following repetitive caloric (warm water) vestibular irrigation. After a 30s irrigation trial (total trials=6), participants (n=26) either kept their gaze fixated, or let their gaze free, testing voluntary adaptations of the nystagmus response measured with electrooculography (EOG). Participants also reported the intensity of the vertigo that they experienced after each irrigation. We found that the amplitude of the nystagmus response decreased over repetitive irrigations, revealing a clear habituation (repeated measures ANOVA with participants as random factor, F(5)=-18.8, p<0.001). We further showed that the amplitude of nystagmus is reduced after the gaze fixation condition compared to the freely moving gaze (interaction between irrigation and fixation, F(5,1)=5.1, p=0.025). Finally, by relying on a model comparison approach, we demonstrate that the oculomotor response holds partial information on the decrease of the vertigo experienced over successive irrigations, suggesting a bi-directional interaction between central and autonomic processes (Likelihood-ratio chi-squared test between mixed-models predicting vertigo response and including or excluding the duration of nystagmus, 2(12)=11.96, p=0.013). These findings suggest that reflexes carry partial information about voluntary processes. From the interoceptive active inference framework, these results might be relevant for evidencing signs of sentience when this cannot be communicated overtly