Public School Choice And Integration: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina

Using evidence from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the impact of school choice programs on racial and class-based segregation across schools. Theoretical considerations suggest that how choice programs affect segregation will depend not only on the family preferences emphasized in the sociology literature but also on the linkages between student composition, school quality and student achievement emphasized in the economics literature. Reasonable assumptions about the distribution of preferences over race, class, and school characteristics suggest that the segregating choices of students from advantaged backgrounds are likely to outweigh any integrating choices by disadvantaged students. The results of our empirical analysis are consistent with these theoretical considerations. Using information on the actual schools students attend and on the schools in their assigned attendance zones, we find that schools in Durham are more segregated by race and class as a result of school choice programs than they would be if all students attended their geographically assigned schools. In addition, we find that the effects of choice on segregation by class are larger than the effects on segregation by race

A neural marker for social bias toward in-group accents

Accents provide information about the speaker's geographical, socio-economic, and ethnic background. Research in applied psychology and sociolinguistics suggests that we generally prefer our own accent to other varieties of our native language and attribute more positive traits to it. Despite the widespread influence of accents on social interactions, educational and work settings the neural underpinnings of this social bias toward our own accent and, what may drive this bias, are unexplored. We measured brain activity while participants from two different geographical backgrounds listened passively to 3 English accent types embedded in an adaptation design. Cerebral activity in several regions, including bilateral amygdalae, revealed a significant interaction between the participants' own accent and the accent they listened to: while repetition of own accents elicited an enhanced neural response, repetition of the other group's accent resulted in reduced responses classically associated with adaptation. Our findings suggest that increased social relevance of, or greater emotional sensitivity to in-group accents, may underlie the own-accent bias. Our results provide a neural marker for the bias associated with accents, and show, for the first time, that the neural response to speech is partly shaped by the geographical background of the listener

The Development of Education in Roane County, Tennessee

The purpose of the study is to bring together, in logical and orderly form, information from widely scattered sources. This will enable persons who are interested in the history of Roane County Schools to acquaint themselves with the aspects of it presented in this study without long and tiresome searching of many sources of information

Factor analysis of the market structure of the fluid-milk bottling industry in the north central region

This study concerns sociological, psychological, and economic variables that fluid-milk bottlers (from their knowledge and experience) believe are relevant to the marketing problems they face. Many of these marketing problems arose because the competitive conditions in the processing and distribution of milk have undergone substantial changes in recent years. These changes have affected the marketing operations of fluid-milk bottlers and produced changes in relationships between bottlers and retailers. Data were collected from managers of fluid-milk bottling plants located in the North Central Region on their operations, their problems, changes in their market environment, and adjustments in their operations. These data were subjected to factor analysis. This report is devoted mainly to summarizing results from a factor analysis of 195 questions answered by each of 242 managers of plants who supplied supermarket chains with milk and who answered questions about fluid-milk bargaining cooperatives. Hierarchical factor analysis of these data provided 12 group factors and five general factors. A factor is identified as a basic or fundamental variable statistically independent of other factors and relevant to an understanding of bottler behavior. Answers to each question provide data on one variable. Each variable whose simple correlation with any group factor exceeded 0.14 in absolute value was assigned to the group factor with which it was most highly correlated. Also, if a variable’s simple correlation with any general factor exceeded 0.14 in absolute value, the variable was assigned to the general factor with which it was most highly correlated. Each factor was assigned a name and an economic interpretation by studying the nature of the variables assigned to that factor

The Importance Of The Native Language In Foreign Language Learning

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98389/1/j.1467-1770.1948.tb01363.x.pd