The Knoxville City Schools Proficiency Project: A Summary Analysis of Three Years and Year-Three Results

The Knoxville City Schools (KCS) Proficiency Project was designed to help inner-city high school pupils improve their scores on the state proficiency test. Grade-nine pupils in lower achieving project high schools and grade-eight students from the corresponding middle schools were given intense treatment over a three-year period. Proficiency test scores for grade-nine students were analyzed each year and were compared to results in control high schools and to the scores of the total city high school population. Project results showed steady, sustained improvement. By the end of year three, the average percent of pupils passing the state proficiency test in the three target schools approximated the total city average percent passing

Measurement of the generalized spin polarizabilities of the neutron in the low-Q2Q^2 region

International audienceUnderstanding the nucleon spin structure in the regime where the strong interaction becomes truly strong poses a challenge to both experiment and theory. At energy scales below the nucleon mass of about 1 GeV, the intense interaction among the quarks and gluons inside the nucleon makes them highly correlated. Their coherent behaviour causes the emergence of effective degrees of freedom, requiring the application of non-perturbative techniques such as chiral effective field theory1. Here we present measurements of the neutron’s generalized spin polarizabilities that quantify the neutron’s spin precession under electromagnetic fields at very low energy-momentum transfer squared down to 0.035 GeV2. In this regime, chiral effective field theory calculations2,3,4 are expected to be applicable. Our data, however, show a strong discrepancy with these predictions, presenting a challenge to the current description of the neutron’s spin properties