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2018-12-17
CREATE;
The achievement gap between English language learners and their English-proficient peers in U.S. schools is persistent and well documented (California Department of Education, 2004; Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007; Siegel, 2002). Research shows that among in-school factors that contribute to student achievement, teachers have the biggest impact. Given this, it is imperative that all teachers know how to make academic content comprehensible to learners who are not yet proficient in English.One promising approach to improve the academic performance of English language learners is the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) Model, an empirically tested, research-based model of sheltered instruction developed by researchers at California State University, Long Beach, and the Center for Applied Linguistics under the auspices of the National Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008). The SIOP Model is a lesson planning and delivery system that incorporates best practices for teaching academic English and provides teachers with a coherent approach for improving the achievement of their students. Using strategies and techniques that make academic content comprehensible to students, teachers present curricular content concepts that are aligned with state standards. While doing so, teachers are developing students' academic English skills across the four domains—reading, writing, listening, and speaking—in addition to building their academic vocabulary
2018-11-15
Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice;
Alabama established a sentencing commission in 2000, and has utilized advisory sentencing standards in felonycases since 2006. In 2013, the Alabama Sentencing Standards grew to include presumptive standards for non-violent offenses. Alabama has a "truth in sentencing" statute that does not take effect until 2020 and will require the court to pronounce a minimum term and an extended term (120% of the minimum term) and mandates post-release supervision. Currently, however, offenders are sentenced to a definite term of imprisonment and may be released on parole, if eligible.
2018-10-16
Rockefeller Archive Center;
I visited the Rockefeller Archive Center to research the William H. Whyte papers for my doctoral dissertation, "Transactional Terrains: Partnerships, Bargains and the Postwar Redefinition of the Public Realm, New York City 1965-1980," that traces the architectural and urban history of the privatization of the public realm. At the center of the research is New York City during the "urban crisis" years of the 1960s. The period saw an ongoing shift in how city and state governments initiated, financed, and managed architecture and urban development. As an administrative apparatus of crisis management, the public-private partnership was the fiscal and legal device that was at the center of this shift. With the public-private partnership, there was an increased emphasis on transactions between jurisdictional authorities and private sector actors. The 1960s witnessed the beginnings of organized cultivation of private sector participation by city and state governments, in the funding, management, and provision of public goods (parks, plazas, and housing). By examining the ecology and economy of these public-private partnerships, the dissertation seeks to examine the privatization of the public realm in New York City as a series of complex intersections between the city's economic, political, urban, architectural and real-estate histories beginning in the 1960s. Urbanist William H. Whyte's writings, research, and speeches on the design and value of public spaces in New York City have shaped policy and theory in architecture, urban design, and planning since the early 1960s. He was a prominent figure, specifically for my first chapter.
2018-10-11
Rockefeller Archive Center;
When the Ford Foundation entered India in 1951, its focus was overwhelmingly rural. As its presence expanded over time, it branched out to other areas such as education and culture, small-scale industrial development, manpower and management, population control and family planning, and technical training. Historians of development and U.S. foreign relations have over the past decade explored various facets of the foundation's activities in India. However, thus far, its role in the urban sphere in India and perhaps even globally has not received much scholarly attention. I began my research at the Rockefeller Archive Center in September 2017, with the intention of studying a very specific urban project in India: the Ford Foundation's planning assistance to Calcutta (now Kolkata) from 1961 to 1974, then India's largest and industrially most important city. Given the lack of secondary references on this topic, I came in with some basic questions. 1) Why did the Ford Foundation get involved in Calcutta's urban renewal project? 2) What was the nature of the Foundation's involvement? More specifically, was it a grant for training or simply a planning program? At that stage in my dissertation research, I had hoped to have a chapter on the Ford Foundation and use it as a contrast to study the response of locally-based Indian and British businesses to Calcutta's civic and infrastructural problems, which had started to make international headlines by the late 1950s. In fact, my main focus was on Calcutta's businesses. However, as I will chart out in this report, the archival materials at the RAC persuaded me to reorient and broaden my core research questions and framework.
2018-10-04
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation;
How did misinformation spread during the 2016 presidential election and has anything changed since? A new study of more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 misinformation and conspiracy news outlets answers this question.
The report reveals a concentrated "fake news" ecosystem, linking more than 6.6 million tweets to fake news and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. The problem persisted in the aftermath of the election with 4 million tweets to fake and conspiracy news publishers found from mid-March to mid-April 2017. A large majority of these accounts are still active today.
2018-10-04
Innovation Lab;
This is the tenth Grants in Australia research report. This survey-based resource for Australian grantmakers and grantseekers has been produced regularly since 2006, and is the biggest of its type in Australia. An output of Our Community's Innovation Lab, the report is part of an ongoing research project that charts the development of the field of grantmaking from the grantseeking community's perspective. The goal of this report is to create a snapshot of grantmaking in Australia, to examine developing trends in the field, and to inspire and enable more successful grantseeking and better grantmaking.
2018-10-02
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
This paper raises three issues on the relationship between intellectual property and inequality. The first is a simple logical point. Patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property are public policy. They are not facts given to us by the world or the structure of technology somehow. While this point should be self-evident, it is rarely noted in discussions of inequality or ways to address it.
2018-10-01
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
The main purpose of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to extend health insurance coverage to more individuals. Another potential benefit of the ACA, however, was to free up workers to find jobs that better fit their needs, by ending their dependence on employer-provided health insurance. There is considerable evidence indicating that before the implementation of the ACA, many workers stayed in jobs that they otherwise would have left solely because they needed the health insurance provided by the employer. This was likely to be especially true of workers with children, workers who either have a disability or have a family member with a disability, and older workers. By increasing access to insurance outside of employment, either through Medicaid or the health care exchanges, the ACA made it easier for workers to get jobs that better fit their needs.
There was a substantial increase in voluntary part-time employment in the years immediately after the main provisions of the ACA took effect, which is evidence of this effect on the labor market. The rise in voluntary part-time employment was largest among young people and was especially pronounced for young women.
This study uses data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to assess how people voluntarily employed part-time use the time freed up from work. The ATUS relies on detailed time diaries compiled by respondents to determine how people use their time.
2018-09-13
WaterAid;
Businesses are crucial in bringing about the step change needed to end the global water crisis. The social, moral and macro-economic case for investing in water, sanitation and hygiene is clear. In order to drive transformational change, we need more companies to leverage their tremendous influence across the supply chain. This new guide will provide the evidence businesses need to scale up action.
2018-09-11
European Policy Centre (EPC);
Labour mobility within the European Union continues to be a limited phenomenon. This concerns both long-term intra-EU mobility and more temporary forms of mobility such as posting of workers, i.e. workers posted to another member state in the framework of cross-border service provision. Yet, despite the limited nature of posting, this topic is far from being absent from the public and political debates. Several factors contribute to this. Firstly, a surge in the number of posted workers has been noticed over the recent years and increased attention has therefore been paid to this issue. Quite a few economic sectors, including construction, manufacturing, and social work, are very concerned by this trend. Secondly, several types of abuses have been recorded such as letter-box companies, bogus self-employment and exploitation of the posted workers' vulnerable situation. Thirdly, questions have been raised as to whether the balance struck by the EU legislator in 1996 (when adopting the Posted Workers Directive) between the freedom to provide crossborder services and the workers' social rights is still valid today. These elements highlight the need for a policy adjustment in order to preserve the legitimacy of the citizens' and workers' freedom to move and, to a certain extent, of the social dimension of the European project. In this context, the European Commission published a proposal to revise the 1996 Directive in order to strike a better balance between economic and social rights. But is this proposal sufficient to ensure a level playing field between economic actors and equal treatment between workers? How will this proposal affect the implementation of other EU initiatives aiming to tackle fraud and abuse? What else is needed to address the tensions between the Single Market principles and the EU's social objectives? This discussion paper, published in the context of the Dutch Presidency and the ongoing negotiations of a revised Directive on posted workers, focuses on these questions while proposing some concrete solutions for a fairer policy framework.
2018-09-06
Citizen's Committee for Children of New York;
Citizens' Committee for Children of New York (CCC) has worked over the last year to gather quantitative and qualitative data about the North Shore of Staten Island to provide a comprehensive assessment of the needs of children and families in the area, as well as the resources available to them. CCC's model for community-based research utilizes existing government data on child and family well-being and complements it by mapping community assets and elevating the voices of service providers and community members through a participatory research process. This work builds on our experience maintaining the nation's most comprehensive municipal-level database illustrating the well-being of children and families in New York City, Keeping Track Online.
In this report, we highlight both welcomed and worrisome trends districtwide and across the seven neighborhoods that make up the North Shore—Grymes Hill-Park Hill, Mariner's Harbor, Port Richmond, Stapleton, St. George-New Brighton, West Brighton, and Westerleigh—and compare these outcomes against borough and citywide averages.
In order to address the challenges faced by children and families on the North Shore—and in Staten Island broadly—residents and service providers have come together to engage in efforts to improve outcomes across the range of issues impacting child and family well-being. This includes several collective impact initiatives, a term describing a systematic approach to collaboration among organizations aligned by a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and support from a backbone organization tasked with coordinating the partnership.
CCC's data collection and participatory research process are designed to inform and support efforts in the community to improve well-being for children and families. We believe that reliable data is a foundational element of effective advocacy, and that community engagement elevating the voices and concerns of residents is essential in identifying the challenges that need to be addressed. We are hopeful this report will be a useful tool as residents and service providers continue working to improve outcomes for children and families on the North Shore.
2018-09-03
CEPS;
The focus of this Policy Brief is the Swiss referendum of 2014 against 'mass immigration' in Switzerland. It identifies the challenges that a quota on EU citizens' free movement rights to Switzerland would pose to EU-Swiss relations, considering: i) the value of freedom of movement in the EU and its indivisibility from the internal market and other economic freedoms; ii) the specificity of the EU legal system following the Lisbon Treaty that has established specific democratic and judicial accountability mechanisms; iii) the lack of supranational judicial oversight of the EU-Switzerland agreements framework; and iv) the existence of the so-called guillotine mechanism, according to whichthe termination of the Free Movement Agreement would entail the automatic termination of the other agreements with the EU.
