School Finance Reform and School Quality: Lessons from Vermont

In June of 1997, the elected leaders of Vermont enacted the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (Act 60) in response to a state supreme court decision in Brigham v. State. Act 60 could provide a unique opportunity to determine if dramatic school finance reforms like those enacted in Vermont generate greater equality in measured student performance. This paper represents an attempt to document the changes in the distributions of spending and of student performance that have occurred in the post-Act 60 period. This paper begins with an overview of the institutional structure of educational finance and provision in Vermont. One purpose of this overview is to make the argument that the Vermont case is particularly interesting because there have not been dramatic demographics changes that could obscure the impact of finance reforms. With this context established, I then use a panel of Vermont school districts that spans the pre- and post-Act 60 period to examine the extent to which there has been convergence across school districts in per pupil expenditures and in student performance. Spending has clearly converged; a definitive answer on the extent of convergence in student performance must wait until more years of data are available.

Understanding Why Universal Service Obligations May Be Unnecessary: The Private Development of Local Internet Access Markets

This study analyzes the geographic spread of commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the leading suppliers of Internet access. The geographic spread of ISPs is a key consideration in U.S. policy for universal access. We examine the Fall of 1998, a time of minimal government subsidy, when inexpensive access was synonymous with a local telephone call to an ISP. Population size and location in a metropolitan statistical area were the single most important determinants of entry, but their effects on national, regional and local firms differed, especially on the margin. The thresholds for entry were remarkably low for local firms. Universal service in less densely-populated areas was largely a function of investment decisions by ISPs with local focus. There was little trace of the early imprint of government subsidies for Internet access at major U.S. universities.Internet; Universal service; Geographic diffusion; Telecommunications

Economic inequality and the provision of schooling

This paper was presented at the conference "Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being" as part of session 3, "Education and crime in urban neighborhoods." The conference was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on May 7, 1999. The authors examine the empirical evidence on the relationship between school finance reform and student outcomes, review the economic literature in the field, and present new evidence of the effects of reform on community and school composition. They argue that if one's goal is to reduce income inequality substantially, one should not look to school finance reform as a particularly effective policy instrument. Even the most optimistic estimates of the impact of school finance reform on the distribution of student performance indicate that these effects are relatively small. Furthermore, the authors note that these small gains may come at a cost - the movement of higher income families into private sector schools, a development that would lead to less diversity within the public schools.Income distribution ; Income ; Education

Design and Synthesis of a 3-D Fragment Library

This thesis describes the design and synthesis of a library of novel 3-D fragments for use in drug discovery. Chapter 1 explains the process of fragment based drug discovery in detail, as well as why the synthesis of novel 3-D fragments is needed and the previous work carried out in the group to design and select 33 initial 3-D fragments. These fragments were designed to fit industry-recommended guidelines on physicochemical properties and their 3- D shape was analysed using principal moments of inertia (PMI) plots to demonstrate that they occupied under-explored areas of 3-D space. Chapter 2 describes synthetic efforts towards four of these fragments. Chapter 3 details a new approach that was devised in order to synthesise 3-D fragments that contained greater functional group variation. This route focussed on the triflation, Suzuki- Miyaura cross-coupling, hydrogenation and derivatisation of β-ketoesters to give 3-D fragments. Using this route, 24 novel 3-D fragments were synthesised. Finally, Chapter 4 contains an analysis of both the physicochemical properties and the 3-D shapes of the 1st and 2nd generation 3-D fragments. These properties are compared to both industry-recommended guidelines and commercially available fragment libraries

On-chip generation of heralded photon-number states

Beyond the use of genuine monolithic integrated optical platforms, we report here a hybrid strategy enabling on-chip generation of configurable heralded two-photon states. More specifically, we combine two different fabrication techniques, \textit{i.e.}, non-linear waveguides on lithium niobate for efficient photon-pair generation and femtosecond-laser-direct-written waveguides on glass for photon manipulation. Through real-time device manipulation capabilities, a variety of path-coded heralded two-photon states can be produced, ranging from product to entangled states. Those states are engineered with high levels of purity, assessed by fidelities of 99.5$\pm$8\% and 95.0$\pm$8\%, respectively, obtained via quantum interferometric measurements. Our strategy therefore stands as a milestone for further exploiting entanglement-based protocols, relying on engineered quantum states, and enabled by scalable and compatible photonic circuits

Re-analysis of the radio luminosity function of Galactic HII regions

We have re-analyzed continuum and recombination lines radio data available in the literature in order to derive the luminosity function (LF) of Galactic HII regions. The study is performed by considering the first and fourth Galactic quadrants independently. We estimate the completeness level of the sample in the fourth quadrant at 5 Jy, and the one in the first quadrant at 2 Jy. We show that the two samples (fourth or first quadrant) include, as well as giant and super-giant HII regions, a significant number of sub-giant sources. The LF is obtained, in each Galactic quadrant, with a generalized Schmidt's estimator using an effective volume derived from the observed spatial distribution of the considered HII regions. The re-analysis also takes advantage of recently published ancillary absorption data allowing to solve the distance ambiguity for several objects. A single power-law fit to the LFs retrieves a slope equal to -2.23+/-0.07 (fourth quadrant) and to -1.85+/-0.11 (first quadrant). We also find marginal evidence of a luminosity break at L_knee = 10^23.45 erg s^(-1) Hz^(-1) for the LF in the fourth quadrant. We convert radio luminosities into equivalent H_alpha and Lyman continuum luminosities to facilitate comparisons with extra-galactic studies. We obtain an average total HII regions Lyman continuum luminosity of 0.89 +/- 0.23 * 10^(53) sec^(-1), corresponding to 30% of the total ionizing luminosity of the Galaxy.Comment: accepted for publication in Ap

An analysis of the effect of Chicago school reform on student performance

Education - Middle West - Chicago (Ill.)