Standardized testing is eroding the foundation of parentalsupport and engagement essential to student success

In the past decade, federal and state education initiatives such as the Common Core and No Child Left Behind have been put into place with the aim of improving students’ academic performance. In new research, Jesse H. Rhodes examines the impact of the standardized testing that comes along with these reforms. He finds that these tests erode parents’ confidence in government and reduces their involvement in their children’s schools. He argues that by taking parents’ influence away, standardized testing reforms have alienated them from their children’s schools – and from government in general – thus discouraging them from engaging in education

Competing Partisan Regimes and the Transformation of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2015

On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula enabling federal preclearance of proposed voting changes in jurisdictions with documented histories of racial discrimination. This paper interprets this event as the most recent symptom of a long-term partisan and institutional struggle over the scope of federal voting rights enforcement. Lingering liberal Democratic influence in Congress, coupled with conservatives’ fears of violating the norm of racial equality, obstructed Republican diminution of federal voting rights enforcement via legislation. Consequently, Republicans turned to lower-profile administrative and especially judicial venues, which offered conservative elected officials chances to circumscribe voting rights enforcement while simultaneously maintaining a public facade of support for the norm of racial equality. Over time, this dynamic has yielded a situation in which the Court has come to serve as the judicial arm of the Republican Party, at least in the realm of voting rights.Le 26 juin 2013 la cour suprême frappa d’inconstitutionnalité la formule permettant de déterminer quelles juridictions s’étaient rendues coupables de discriminations historiques et devaient soumettre tout changement de leurs procédures électorales à la tutelle de l’Etat fédéral. Cet article présente cet événement comme la manifestation la plus récente d’une lutte institutionnelle et partisane centrée sur l’application du droit de vote. La persistance de l’influence de l’aile gauche du parti démocrate au Congrès, ainsi que la peur des républicains d’enfreindre la norme d’égalité raciale, empêchèrent les conservateurs d’affaiblir la protection du droit de vote par la voie législative. Par conséquent, les républicains se sont tournés vers les voies administratives et judiciaires, plus discrètes, qui leur permirent d’affaiblir l’application du droit de vote tout en maintenant un discours public de respect de l’égalité raciale. Au cours du temps, cette dynamique créa une situation dans laquelle la Cour Suprême est devenue le bras armé du Party républicain au moins dans le domaine du droit de vote

Contrary to popular belief, American presidential election campaigns have become less partisan over time

Partisan polarization has perhaps been most common term used to describe American politics in recent years. In new research, Jesse H. Rhodes and Zachary Albert investigate how partisanship has manifested in presidential campaigns over the past six decades. They find that – contrary to the impression created by contemporary public discussion and media coverage – explicit partisanship has declined dramatically as a feature of presidential campaigns, largely due to the abandonment of partisan rhetoric by Democratic presidential candidates. They argue that Democratic candidates have avoided partisan appeals in their public rhetoric in order to reach out to moderate voters alienated by corrosive partisanship

Presidents more likely to represent the concerns of white Americans than black Americans in speeches, yet Obama proves to be exception to rule

Using data from Gallup Poll’s “most important problem” question from 1969 to 2012 Melinda R. Tarsi, Jesse H. Rhodes, and Tatishe M. Nteta were able to evaluate whether Presidents addressed issues of importance to African Americans when delivering speeches to the public. Despite views held by many that Obama failed to represent black interests while in the White House, research found that he was the lone president to prioritize black issues over white issues in his major speeches

The Effect of Judicial Decisions on Issue Salience and Legal Consciousness in Media Serving the LGBTQ+ Community

Scholars have long questioned whether and how courts influence society. We contribute to this debate by investigating the ability of judicial decisions to shape issue attention and affect toward courts in media serving the LGBTQ+ community. To do so, we compiled an original database of LGBTQ+ magazine coverage of court cases over an extended period covering major decisions, including Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health (2003), and Lofton v. Secretary of Department of Children & Family Services (2004). We argue these cases influence the volume and tone of LGBTQ+ media coverage. Combining computational social science techniques with qualitative analysis, we find increased attention to same-sex marriage after the decisions in Lawrence, Goodridge, and Lofton, and the coalescence of discussions of courts around same-sex marriage after Lawrence. We also show how LGBTQ+ media informed readers about the political and legal implications of struggles over marriage equality

Heavy element production in a compact object merger observed by JWST

The mergers of binary compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes are of central interest to several areas of astrophysics, including as the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) 1, sources of high-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) 2 and likely production sites for heavy-element nucleosynthesis by means of rapid neutron capture (the r-process) 3. Here we present observations of the exceptionally bright GRB 230307A. We show that GRB 230307A belongs to the class of long-duration GRBs associated with compact object mergers 4–6 and contains a kilonova similar to AT2017gfo, associated with the GW merger GW170817 (refs. 7–12). We obtained James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy 29 and 61 days after the burst. The spectroscopy shows an emission line at 2.15 microns, which we interpret as tellurium (atomic mass A = 130) and a very red source, emitting most of its light in the mid-infrared owing to the production of lanthanides. These observations demonstrate that nucleosynthesis in GRBs can create r-process elements across a broad atomic mass range and play a central role in heavy-element nucleosynthesis across the Universe

Review of \u3cem\u3ePresidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush\u3c/em\u3e

This article reviews Daniel Galvin\u27s Presidential Party Building (Princeton University Press, 2010)

Ideology Construction, Grassroots Mobilization, and Party Strategy in South Africa and the United States, 1934–1948

According to recent scholarship, parties in a variety of electoral systems can significantly increase their share of the vote with “flanking moves” designed to siphon off opponents’ supporters with appeals to neglected policy concerns. These models do not specify the conditions that enable parties to carry out such maneuvers, however. We maintain that to take advantage of flanking opportunities, parties must undertake two tasks—ideology construction and grassroots mobilization— prior to the emergence of those opportunities. We illustrate our argument with a comparative-historical analysis of the National Party in South Africa and theRepublican Party in the United States. Facing similar strategic contexts after the Great Depression, the two parties responded very differently to opportunities to attract voters through conservative racial appeals during the 1940s