Expanding the Role of Maryland Community Colleges in K-12 Teacher Preparation: Benefits and Costs of Implementing the Associate of Arts in Teaching (AAT) Degree

This study uses benefit-cost analysis to compare three alternative scenarios for implementing the Associate of Arts in Teaching (AAT) degree in Maryland community colleges. The first policy scenario is that community colleges retain their traditional role in K-12 teacher preparation by providing lower-division transfer courses and programs for undergraduate students who are seeking to transfer into teacher education programs at four-year institutions (historical role for Maryland community colleges). The second policy scenario is that community colleges expand their traditional role in K-12 teacher preparation by offering the AAT degree in addition to providing lower-division transfer courses and programs (current role for Maryland community colleges). The third policy scenario is that community colleges offer the AAT degree as the exclusive lower-division requirement for students seeking admission into teacher preparation programs at four-year colleges and universities (hypothetical future role for Maryland community colleges). Drawing on the seminal work of Schultz (1963) and Becker (1964; 1975; 1993), human capital theory serves as the guiding theoretical framework for this study. The three policy scenarios under consideration in this benefit-cost analysis were designed to increase a particular type of human capital investment by providing opportunities for community college students to enter the teacher preparation pipeline in higher education. This study examines the benefits and costs that are associated with each of these three alternatives to explore which policy provides the greatest net benefit to the State of Maryland

Measurement of the W±ZW^{\pm}Z boson pair-production cross section in pppp collisions at s=13\sqrt{s}=13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

The production of $W^{\pm}Z$ events in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The collected data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb$^{-1}$. The $W^{\pm}Z$ candidates are reconstructed using leptonic decays of the gauge bosons into electrons or muons. The measured inclusive cross section in the detector fiducial region for leptonic decay modes is $\sigma_{W^\pm Z \rightarrow \ell^{'} \nu \ell \ell}^{\textrm{fid.}} = 63.2 \pm 3.2$ (stat.) $\pm 2.6$ (sys.) $\pm 1.5$ (lumi.) fb. In comparison, the next-to-leading-order Standard Model prediction is $53.4^{+3.6}_{-2.8}$ fb. The extrapolation of the measurement from the fiducial to the total phase space yields $\sigma_{W^{\pm}Z}^{\textrm{tot.}} = 50.6 \pm 2.6$ (stat.) $\pm 2.0$ (sys.) $\pm 0.9$ (th.) $\pm 1.2$ (lumi.) pb, in agreement with a recent next-to-next-to-leading-order calculation of $48.2^{+1.1}_{-1.0}$ pb. The cross section as a function of jet multiplicity is also measured, together with the charge-dependent $W^+Z$ and $W^-Z$ cross sections and their ratio