Dual Confinement of Grand Unified Monopoles?

A simple formal computation, and a variation on an old thought experiment, both indicate that QCD with light quarks may confine fundamental color magnetic charges, giving an explicit as well as elegant resolution to the `global color' paradox, strengthening Vachaspati's SU(5) electric-magnetic duality, opening new lines of inquiry for monopoles in cosmology, and suggesting a class of geometrically large QCD excitations -- loops of Z(3) color magnetic flux entwined with light-quark current. The proposal may be directly testable in lattice gauge theory or supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Recent results in deeply-inelastic electron scattering, and future experiments both there and in high-energy collisions of nuclei, could give evidence on the existence of Z(3) loops. If confirmed, they would represent a consistent realization of the bold concept underlying the Slansky-Goldman-Shaw `glow' model -- phenomena besides standard meson-baryon physics manifest at long distance scales -- but without that model's isolable fractional electric charges.Comment: 17 pages, standard LaTex, to appear in Physics Reports commemorating Richard Slansk

Assessing the Determinants and Implications of Teacher Layoffs

Analyzes the factors that predict which teachers are likely to be laid off in Washington state in the current seniority-based system and which would likely be laid off in an effectiveness-based system. Considers implications for student achievement

National Board Certification and Teacher Effectiveness: Evidence from Washington

We study the effectiveness of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in Washington State, which has one of the largest populations of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in the nation. Based on value-added models in math and reading, we find that NBPTS certified teachers are about 0.01-0.05 student standard deviations more effective than non-NBCTS with similar levels of experience. Certification effects vary by subject, grade level, and certification type, with greater effects for middle school math certificates. We find mixed evidence that teachers who pass the assessment are more effective than those who fail, but that the underlying NBPTS assessment score predicts student achievement. Finally, we use the individual assessment exercise scores to estimate optimal weights for value-added prediction

A Leap of Faith: Redesigning Teacher Compensation

Summarizes three reports: Teacher Attitudes About Compensation Reform, Returns to Skill and Teacher Wage Premiums, and Teacher Labor Markets and the Perils of Using Hedonics to Estimate Compensating Differentials in the Public Sector

A Closer Look at the Elementary Fermions

Although there have been many experimental and theoretical efforts to measure and interpret small deviations from the standard model of particle physics, the gap that the model leaves in understanding why there are only three generations of elementary fermions, with hierarchical masses, has not received the attention it deserves. I present here an attempt to fill this gap. Although our findings are mostly only qualitative, they nevertheless may be of heuristic value. Rules concerning the elementary fermions, some previously known and some new, lead to a number of conclusions and questions that seem worth pursuing. Some clarify the standard model, and others suggest possible modifications, the implications of which are discussed.Comment: 8 page