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Charter School Performance In Rhode Island, Lena Vye May 2019

Charter School Performance In Rhode Island, Lena Vye

Senior Honors Projects

In the last few decades, there has been considerable debate over whether or not charter schools are beneficial to the American education system. Charter schools are given government funding, but they have independence from the established educational system. Charter school supporters argue that increased autonomy and innovation in teaching, as well as competition between schools, improves the quality of education. Opponents of charter schools argue that charter schools are not more effective than public schools. However, the research is mixed: some studies suggest charter schools perform better, some suggest they perform similarly, and some suggest that they perform worse than …


Immigration Policy Reform: International Students And Higher Education, Anna M. Kwiatkowski Apr 2019

Immigration Policy Reform: International Students And Higher Education, Anna M. Kwiatkowski

Honors College Theses

How has the rise in immigration around the world affected international students in obtaining student visas? Many states in the Global North are implementing restrictive immigration policies to combat the high influx of immigrants. Using the United Kingdom (UK) as a case study, I investigate how these policies have led to a decrease in the number of international students enrolled in higher education institutions (HEIs) throughout the UK. This has led to negative impacts on the higher education sector and economy, forcing politicians to reconsider and backtrack on immigration policies regarding international students in late 2017. Through the lens of …


Variations In Media Framing Of U.S.-Cuba Policy, Anna Foster Apr 2019

Variations In Media Framing Of U.S.-Cuba Policy, Anna Foster

Honors College

This thesis looks at the usage of media framing in regard to Obama’s and Trump’s U.S.-Cuban policy. It analyzes articles from the New York Times and the Miami Herald and how they used framing techniques to present Obama’s 2016 opening of relations with Cuba, and Trump’s 2017 change in policy. After reading through the articles, content analysis was used in order to quantify the trends found in the framing techniques used by both papers. The findings of this paper show two very different approaches to both policies, despite many similarities in the framing techniques used by the New York Times …


Framing And Immigration Through The Trump Era, Rudy Alamillo, Chris Haynes, Raul Madrid Mar 2019

Framing And Immigration Through The Trump Era, Rudy Alamillo, Chris Haynes, Raul Madrid

Political Science Faculty Publications

For the last decade, undocumented or illegal immigration has been one of the most contested policy issues in the United States, with significant news attention on policies affecting the undocumented population, ranging from deportations to comprehensive immigration reform, the DREAM Act, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite these prominent and multifaceted policy debates, scholarship on media framing and public opinion remain more focused on the portrayal of immigrants rather than policies affecting them. In general, we find that policy frames are far more consequential to public opinion than equivalency frames (variations in how news media describe unauthorized immigrants, either …


Naming Names: The Impact Of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution On Citizen Assessment Of Policy Outcomes, Scott S. Boddery, Laura P. Moyer, Jeff Yates Mar 2019

Naming Names: The Impact Of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution On Citizen Assessment Of Policy Outcomes, Scott S. Boddery, Laura P. Moyer, Jeff Yates

Political Science Faculty Publications

The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influences the public's agreement with the Court's rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people …


Given Today's New Wave Of Protectionsim, Is Antitrust Law The Last Hope For Preserving A Free Global Economy Or Another Nail In Free Trade's Coffin?, Allison Murray Feb 2019

Given Today's New Wave Of Protectionsim, Is Antitrust Law The Last Hope For Preserving A Free Global Economy Or Another Nail In Free Trade's Coffin?, Allison Murray

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Critical Juncture Concept’S Evolving Capacity To Explain Policy Change, John Hogan Jan 2019

The Critical Juncture Concept’S Evolving Capacity To Explain Policy Change, John Hogan

Articles

This article examines the evolution of our understanding of the critical junctures concept. The concept finds its origins in historical intuitionalism, being employed in the context of path dependence to account for sudden and jarring institutional or policy changes. We argue that the concept and the literature surrounding it—now incorporating ideas, discourse, and agency—have gradually become more comprehensive and nuanced as historical institutionalism was followed by ideational historical institutionalism and constructivist and discursive institutionalism. The prime position of contingency has been supplanted by the role of ideas and agency in explaining critical junctures and other instances of less than transformative …


U.S. Policymakers' Perspectives Regarding The Causes Of Terrorism And The Impact On U.S. Counterterrorism Policy, Jeffrey David Mcmanus Jan 2019

U.S. Policymakers' Perspectives Regarding The Causes Of Terrorism And The Impact On U.S. Counterterrorism Policy, Jeffrey David Mcmanus

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

U.S. counterterrorism policy appears to be influenced by different perspectives, as evidenced by conflicting statements by U.S. presidents regarding the causes of terrorism. Academic theories are not always applied by U.S. government employees who develop, influence, and implement counterterrorism policy. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to understand U.S. government policymakers' perspectives on the causes of terrorism, the influences on these views, and the impact on U.S. counterterrorism policy. Six theories regarding the causes of terrorism provided the theoretical framework. Additional theories related to individual and organizational impact on decision-making provided a broader conceptual framework. Data were collected …


Russian Climate Politics In 2019: Concessions And Trade Offs, Nikita O. Minin Jan 2019

Russian Climate Politics In 2019: Concessions And Trade Offs, Nikita O. Minin

Senior Projects Spring 2019

In the paper portion of this project, Russia’s political justifications for the signing of the Kyoto Protocol and the refusal to sign the Paris Accord are analyzed. Russia’s current adaptive strategies and trajectory towards creating a potentially devastating future for the planet are assessed in terms of their economic justifications. Overall this paper argues that the Paris Accord needs to be amended to be economically and politically fair for all signing countries. Currently Russia could lose GDP if they signed the accord, and this is presented as the primary reason for Russia’s refusal to sign. The thesis of the paper …


How The Mexican Cartels Have Capitalized On U.S. Policies, Ande Troutman Jan 2019

How The Mexican Cartels Have Capitalized On U.S. Policies, Ande Troutman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigated how the Mexican cartels have taken advantage of loop holes in U.S. policy to grow their drug market and power. Three policies were examined to demonstrate how the cartels adapted to policy changes and continued to thrive and expand. The first policy analyzed was the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened up the borders between Mexico and the United States. The next policy investigated was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which instituted harsher punishments for illegal immigration and caused mass deportation. The final policy examined was the Federal Assault Weapons Ban …


The Use Of Public Consultation To Construct Sex Work Related Policies, Ryan Horan Jan 2019

The Use Of Public Consultation To Construct Sex Work Related Policies, Ryan Horan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The present study is a qualitative analysis of the Online Public Consultation of Prostitution -Related Offences (OPCPRO), conducted by the Canadian Department of Justice in 2014. This research describes themes that arose within the discourses of respondents to the OPCPRO, and offers a critical examination of the use of online consultations in the production of public policy. I argue that respondents to the OPCPRO, regardless of their support or opposition for criminalization of sex work, strategically draw on values echoed within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to frame their policy propositions as consistent with sex workers individual rights. I …