India shining and Bharat drowning: comparing two Indian states to the worldwide distribution in mathematics achievement

This paper uses student answers to publicly released questions from an international testing agency together with statistical methods from Item Response Theory to place secondary students from two Indian states -Orissa and Rajasthan -on a worldwide distribution of mathematics achievement. These two states fall below 43 of the 51 countries for which data exist. The bottom 5 percent of children rank higher than the bottom 5 percent in only three countries-South Africa, Ghana and Saudi Arabia. But not all students test poorly. Inequality in the test-score distribution for both states is next only to South Africa in the worldwide ranking exercise. Consequently, and to the extent that these two states can represent India, the two statements"for every ten top performers in the United States there are four in India"and"for every ten low performers in the United States there are two hundred in India"are both consistent with the data. The combination of India's size and large variance in achievement give both the perceptions that India is shining even as Bharat, the vernacular for India, is drowning. Comparable estimates of inequalities in learning are the building blocks for substantive research on the correlates of earnings inequality in India and other low-income countries; the methods proposed here allow for independent testing exercises to build up such data by linking scores to internationally comparable tests.Secondary Education,Educational Sciences,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Tertiary Education

Learning levels and gaps in Pakistan

The authors report on a survey of primary public and private schools in rural Pakistan witha focus on student achievement as measured through test scores. Absolute learning is low compared with curricular standards and international norms. Tested at the end of the third grade, a bare majority had mastered the K-I mathematics curriculum and 31 percent could correctly form a sentence with the word"school"in the vernacular (Urdu). As in high-income countries, bivariate comparisons show that higher learning is associated with household wealth and parental literacy. In sharp contrast to high-income countries, these gaps decrease dramatically in a multivariate regression once differences between children in the same school are looked at. Consequently, the largest gaps are between schools. The gap in English test scores between government and private schools, for instance, is 12 times the gap between children from rich and poor families. To contextualize these results within a broader South Asian context, the authors use data from public schools in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. Levels of learning and the structure of the educational gaps are similar in the two samples. As in Pakistan, absolute learning is low and the largest gaps are between schools: the gap between good and bad government schools, for instance, is 5 times the gap between children with literate and illiterate mothers.Primary Education,Education For All,Tertiary Education,Secondary Education,Teaching and Learning

Analysis and Implementation of Requirements from Gates Hydraulics s.r.o. Company for External Applications

Import 05/08/2014Obsah této diplomové práce zachycuje rozšíření stávajícího řešení TrackMe a doplňuje jej o další možnosti pro podporu zpracování interních procesů. Zároveň přináší do problematiky nové pohledy za současného využití aktuálních IT technologií. Rovněž nastiňuje využití webových služeb v architektuře výsledné aplikace.Contents of this diploma thesis shows the expansion of the existing application TrackMe and complements it with additional options to support the processing of internal processes. Thesis brings new insights into problems while using current technology in IT. It also outlines the use of Web services in the architecture of the resulting application440 - Katedra telekomunikační technikyvýborn

Do value-added estimates add value ? accounting for learning dynamics

Evaluations of educational programs commonly assume that what children learn persists over time. The authors compare learning in Pakistani public and private schools using dynamic panel methods that account for three key empirical challenges to widely used value-added models: imperfect persistence, unobserved student heterogeneity, and measurement error. Their estimates suggest that only a fifth to a half of learning persists between grades and that private schools increase average achievement by 0.25 standard deviations each year. In contrast, estimates from commonly used value-added models significantly understate the impact of private schools’ on student achievement and/or overstate persistence. These results have implications for program evaluation and value-added accountability system design.Education For All,Tertiary Education,Secondary Education,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning

Religious school enrollment in Pakistan : a look at the data

Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the high and increasing enrollment in Pakistani religious schools, commonly known as madrassas. Given the importance placed on the subject by policymakers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies. The authors of this paper use published data sources and a census of schooling choice to show that existing estimates are inflated by an order of magnitude. Madrassas account for less than 1 percent of all enrollment in the country and there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years. The educational landscape in Pakistan has changed substantially in the past decade, but this is due to an explosion of private schools, an important fact that has been left out of the debate on Pakistani education. Moreover, when the authors look at school choice, they find that no one explanation fits the data. While most existing theories of madrassa enrollment are based on household attributes (for instance, a preference for religious schooling or the household’s access to other schooling options), the data show that among households with at least one child enrolled in a madrassa, 75 percent send their second (and/or third) child to a public or private school or both. Widely promoted theories simply do not explain this substantial variation within households.Teaching and Learning,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Education Reform and Management,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Education Reform and Management,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Youth and Governance

Do Value-Added Estimates Add Value? Accounting for Learning Dynamics

Evaluations of educational programs commonly assume that what children learn persists over time. The authors compare learning in Pakistani public and private schools using dynamic panel methods that account for three key empirical challenges to widely used value-added models: imperfect persistence, unobserved student heterogeneity, and measurement error. Their estimates suggest that only a fifth to a half of learning persists between grades and that private schools increase average achievement by 0.25 standard deviations each year. In contrast, estimates from commonly used value-added models significantly understate the impact of private schools' on student achievement and/or overstate persistence. These results have implications for program evaluation and value-added accountability system design.

Synthesis of C-5" and C-6"-modified α-GalCer analogues as iNKT-cell agonists

Alpha-Galactosyl Ceramide (α-GalCer) is a prototypical synthetic ligand of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells. Upon presentation by the MHC class I-like molecule CD1d, this glycolipid stimulates iNKT cells to secrete a vast amount of both pro-inflammatory Th1 and anti-inflammatory Th2 cytokines. Recently, we discovered that selected 6″-modified α-GalCer analogues may produce markedly Th1-biased responses due to the formation of either an additional anchor with CD1d or by establishing extra interactions with the T-cell receptor of iNKT cells. Here, we report a practical synthesis towards 6″-O-carbamate and galacturonamide analogues of α-GalCer and their evaluation as iNKT cell agonists in mice

Halloween and Valentine’s Day in Slovakia: new holidays or new opportunities for celebration?

This study deals with Halloween and Valentine’s Day in Slovakia from the perspective of the eventisation theory elaborated on by Winfried Gebhardt (2000), which reflects on internal as well as external changes in the field of holidays in modern societies and seeks to elucidate the cultural dimension of the processes of individualisation and pluralisation during the late-modernity period. The authors explore these two holidays as global phenomena with a focus on their holiday practice, i.e. on the ways of celebrating and spending holidays. At the same time, they analyse the historical and social processes related to the transformations of Europe’s and Slovakia’s holiday culture since the end of the 20th century. On this basis, they present research materials that clarify these processes of domestication as well as the ways of celebrating Halloween and Valentine’s Day in Slovakia. The empirical data form the basis for formulating findings on the ways of spending these two “new” holidays and their relationship to the process of eventisation of the holiday culture.Artykuł przedstawia analizę obchodów Halloween i walentynek na Słowacji z perspektywy teorii ewentyzacji, szczegółowo opracowanej przez Winfried Gebhardt (2000). Teoria ta koncentruje się na wewnętrznych i zewnętrznych transformacjach obchodów świąt w nowoczesnych społeczeństwach i objaśnia wymiar kulturowy procesów indywidualizacji i pluralizacji w okresie późnej nowoczesności. Autorzy analizują oba święta jako zjawiska globalne, skupiając się na praktykach ich celebracji, tj. na tym, w jaki sposób są obchodzone, a także przedstawiają procesy historyczne i społeczne związane z transformacjami sposobów świętowania, jakie zaszły w Europie i na Słowacji od końca XX w. Autorzy prezentują także materiały badawcze, które rzucają światło na procesy domestykacji oraz przybliżają sposoby świętowania Halloween i walentynek na Słowacji. Następnie na podstawie danych empirycznych formułują wnioski dotyczące sposobów spędzania tych dwóch „nowych” świąt oraz ich relacji do procesów ewentyzacji kultury świętowania

The Vα14 invariant natural killer T cell TCR forces microbial glycolipids and CD1d into a conserved binding mode

The first crystal structures of iNKT cell TCRs bound to complexes of CD1d and microbe-derived glycolipids provide insight into the structural basis of iNKT cell microbial antigen recognition