Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

School Choice And Home Prices: Evidence From Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Marcus A. Winters

School Choice Demonstration Project

Researchers have paid a great deal of attention to the impact of school choice policies on student educational outcomes. The emphasis on evaluating the impact of school choice policies on student academic proficiency is certainly justified in that the explicit goal of such policies is to improve educational productivity. However, the effects of school choice policies may not end at the schoolhouse door. As with any other large public policy, as they grow in size school choice has the potential for externalities -- either positive or negative -- that could have an impact on the overall community.

Parent And Student Experiences With Choice In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Thomas Stewart, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

Scholars, advocates of various positions, and policymakers have fiercely debated whether the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), also known as the voucher or “Choice” program, has been a godsend or a scourge for the city’s children. Wisconsin policymakers, concerned about that question, identified the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) as the organization to help provide the answers.1 The SCDP is a national research organization, based in the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform, dedicated to the comprehensive, objective, and nonpartisan evaluation of school choice programs. We are drawn together for this project by the opportunity to examine what effects …

Milwaukee Longitudinal School Choice Evaluation: Annual School Testing Summary Report 2007-08, Nathan L. Gray, Patrick J. Wolf, Laura I. Jensen

School Choice Demonstration Project

With the passage of the 2005 Wisconsin Act 125, private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) are now required to administer a nationally normed standardized test annually in reading, mathematics, and science to their MPCP (a.k.a. “Choice”) students enrolled in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades. The law further directs Choice schools to submit copies of the scores from those tests to the School Choice Demonstration Project for processing and reporting to the Legislative Audit Bureau. During the 2007-08 school year, MPCP schools administered either nationally normed tests, such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, or …

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Descriptive Report On Participating Schools, Brian Kisida, Laura I. Jensen, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

This report is the second in a series of annual reports produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) that will provide descriptive information about the private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the oldest and largest urban school voucher program in the U. S. The MPCP was launched in the fall of 1990 with seven participating schools enrolling 341 students.

The Fiscal Impact Of The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: 2009 Update, Robert M. Costrell

School Choice Demonstration Project

In February 2008, the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) issued its first report on the fiscal impact of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) on taxpayers in Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin.

The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation Of The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary Of Second Year Reports, Patrick J. Wolf

School Choice Demonstration Project

The city of Milwaukee is often called a laboratory for experimentation with parental school choice. Milwaukee is home to the first urban school voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), which has grown over the past 18 years to enroll 19,069 students in 124 different private schools 2007-08. A total of 58 public charter schools operate within the city’s boundaries, enrolling 17,549 students last year. Even students in the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system have a variety of magnet, community, open enrollment, and even inter-district school choice options available to them, so long as transportation funding holds out. When …

Evaluation Of Ec-Funded Mine Action In Africa: Volume 2-Country Reports, Gichd

Global CWD Repository

The Evaluation of EC support for mine action in Africa is the first of six regional mine action evaluations that the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) will conduct or commission for the European Commission (EC). These regional evaluations follow from a Global Assessment of EC support for mine action completed in 2005. Given the broad scope of a regional evaluation, no attempt was made to assess the performance of individual projects; rather, the focus was on EC mine action strategy and programming issues at the country and regional levels. In addition to a document review, the evaluation team …

Measuring The Unconscionable, Sarah Stanlick

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The combination of level-headed scientific approaches and passionate activism seems at first glance an incompatible relationship. For the passionate humanitarian, there is a hesitation in fear of "selling out" to the black and white world of science, that science would somehow take the "human" dimension away from human rights. However, the bigger issue-and opportunity-is the multitude of ways that the partnership between scientific method and human rights can yield possibilities and innovations. As described in Sonia Shah's piece in The Nation , scientists are coming together to lend their unique skills and perspective to the ever-changing global status of human …

Optimizing Citizen Engagement During Emergencies Through Use Of Web 2.0 Technologies, Laurie J. Van Leuven

CUP Faculty Research

Emergencies and disasters create hardships for citizens. To speed up recovery, local governments need to engage with citizens in an interactive information sharing system to convey information while the incident is still developing and to help mitigate and recover from damages. Lack of effective communication can decrease public trust and engender stress and anxiety of the survivors. As service delivery becomes more complicated during an emergency, responders can also benefit from additional information from the public to increase situational awareness and better understand the challenges facing citizens. This thesis examines emergency information needs, emerging information sharing trends, and the potential …

Scientists Have Been Out For Some Time Now: A Response To Sonia Shah, Clair Apodaca

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Sonia Shah's categorization of the scientific community as having been "by and large. impassively unmoved [by human rights], churning out their papers, applying for grants and debating esoterica at their private professional meetings" is grossly inaccurate on at least two accounts.

Scientists Promoting Human Rights, Edward Friedman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Scientists have long been involved with work to protect fundamental human rights. The activities of the Federation of American Scientists to expose the health impact of nuclear testing in the atmosphere is typical. In the Soviet Union , many of the leading human rights activists, starting with the great Andrei Sakharov , were scientists. The same is true in China where a major intellectual force inspiring China's 1989 democracy movement was Fang Lizhi , an astrophysicist. Often their contribution to military security even gives them a little bit of protection.

Introduction: Classroom Life In The Age Of Accountability, Gail M. Boldt, Paula M. Salvio, Peter Taubman

Occasional Paper Series

"For this Occasional Paper, we invited teachers to respond to the ways in which proliferation of standards and testing combined with their own loss of professional control is altering the landscape of American education....Our goal is to raise questions about whether and how educators are balancing the demands of high stakes testing, scripted curricula, and a focus on performance outcomes with the emotional complexity of classroom life."--The editors

Immigrant Workers In The Massachusetts Health Care Industry: A Report On Status And Future Prospects, Ramon Borges-Mendez, James Jennings, Donna H. Friedman, Malo Hutson, Teresa Eliot Roberts

Center for Social Policy Publications

Given the vital picture of foreign-born health care workers, this study has the following objectives:

1. To document the labor market position of foreign-born workers in the sector at various levels (national, statewide, sub-regional) including patterns of occupational concentration during the last decade or so, prospects for occupational mobility, wages, geographic concentration, employment by type of establishment (hospitals, community health centers, etc.) and workforce development opportunities;
2. To document, whenever possible, the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of foreign-born workers in the sector, including country of origin and gender among others;
3. To document the qualitative contribution of foreign-born workers in the health care …

Massachusetts' System Redesign To End Homelessness: An Overview And Assessment, Donna H. Friedman, Ghazal Zulfiqar

Center for Social Policy Publications

The Clayton-Mathews and Wilson 2003 analysis of Massachusetts’ expenditures of state and federal dollars to address family homelessness documented a serious system misalignment of public resources: that is, 80% of state and federal resources were tied up in shelter provision, while only 20%, including rental assistance, were designated for homelessness prevention (Clayton-Matthews and Wilson, 2003). Their analysis demonstrated what many had long suspected: if homelessness is to be ended in Massachusetts, fundamental changes would be needed to shift the state system from shelter-oriented toward prevention-oriented. Both the Romney and the Patrick administrations have clearly prioritized this objective with broad-based support …

Advancing The Fiscal Health Of Low-Income Families: A Public And Community Health Approach, Doreen Treacy

Center for Social Policy Publications

For decades, health researchers have documented the links between individual and household income/wealth and clinical health outcomes. The research and literature consistently point to both income inequality (i.e. individual household income/wealth as compared to other households in the same state) and individual household income as predictors of diminished health and morbidity. And yet the current framework for providing financial education, disseminating asset building information, and overall responding to the financial health of individuals and households takes no cues from public health and community health best practices. Further, the documented links between financial stress and compromised physical health are compelling enough …

Poverty In The Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Community, Randy Albelda, M.V. Lee Badgett, Alyssa Schneebaum, Gary J. Gates

Center for Social Policy Publications

In 2007, 12.5% of Americans were officially counted as poor by the United States Census Bureau. People from every region, race, age, and sex are counted among our nation’s poor, where ―poor‖ is defined as living in a family with an income below the federal poverty level. In contrast, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people are invisible in these poverty statistics. This report undertakes the first analysis of the poor and low-income lesbian, gay, and bisexual population. The social and policy context of LGB life provides many reasons to think that LGB people are at least as likely—and perhaps more …

Review Of The Origins Of The Welfare State: Women, Work, And The French Revolution. Lisa Dicaprio. Reviewed By James Midgley., James Midgley

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Book review of Lisa DiCaprio, The Origins of the Welfare State: Women, Work, and the French Revolution. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007. $ 40.00 hardcover.

Financial Intermediaries For Community And Economic Development In Ohio: Market Assessment, Ziona Austrian, Brian A. Mikelbank, Afia Yamoah, Charles Post, Candice Clouse, David O. Kasdan

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This report describes the results of an in-depth market assessment study conducted for the Finance Fund by the Center for Economic Development and the Center for Housing Research and Policy at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs. The Finance Fund, located in Columbus, Ohio, is a statewide nonprofit financial intermediary. It finds funding and provides resources to support organizations that assist low- and moderate-income families and communities.1 The Finance Fund works primarily within low-income rural and urban communities throughout the state of Ohio by connecting local community development organizations and small businesses with needed funding in the form …

Assessment Of Post Demining Impact Assessment For The Mine Action Coordination Center Of Afghanistan, Sippi Azerbaijani-Moghaddam

Global CWD Repository

In May 2007, after training Landmine Impact Assessment Teams (LIATs) for the job, Mine Action Center Afghanistan (MACA) started to conduct PDIA. LIATs perform their duties conscientiously and are generally more comfortable with the figures and calculations involved in economic analysis related to demining rather than the slightly more nebulous aspects related to the ‘people'‐end of activities and social impact assessment. Foremost among the latter would be the relatively unexplored aspects of how mines affect the intimate relations between people and the landscape in predominantly rural or agrarian communities. According to the LIATs basic comparison between forms exploring the pre‐ …

Fast Object Search On Road Networks, Ken C. K. Lee, Wang-Chien Lee, Baihua Zheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present ROAD, a general framework to evaluate Location-Dependent Spatial Queries (LDSQ)s that searches for spatial objects on road networks. By exploiting search space pruning technique and providing a dynamic object mapping mechanism, ROAD is very efficient and flexible for various types of queries, namely, range search and nearest neighbor search, on objects over large-scale networks. ROAD is named after its two components, namely, Route Overlay and Association Directory, designed to address the network traversal and object access aspects of the framework. In ROAD, a large road network is organized as a hierarchy of interconnected regional sub-networks …

Child Care And Development Fund: A Policy Analysis, Colleen K. Vesely, Elaine A. Anderson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Legislated as part of welfare reform, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is the main source of child care government funding earmarked for low-income families. As a block grant, with broad federal guidelines, states have significant freedom in implementing this legislation to meet the needs of their citizens. This diverse implementation has challenged legislators and scholars trying to assess the success of CCDF across the United States. In considering the evaluation research of CCDF, as well as the original goals of this legislation, several major themes related to the diverse state implementation emerged, including access, equity, and stability. This …

Parental Assets: A Pathway To Positive Child Educational Outcomes, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Yeong Hun Yeo, Kate Irish, Min Zhan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A growing body of evidence suggests parental assets have positive effects on children's well-being. Using 2004 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study tests the effect of parental asset holding on child educational outcomes, and explores whether parental involvement and expectations mediate this relationship. Results indicate that assets are a significant predictor of all child academic outcomes of our study; however, income is not a significant predictor for school outcomes when controlling for assets. The mediation analyses show the effect of assets on school outcomes is mediated by two of the three parenting measures: parental expectations …

The Failures Of American Poverty Measures, Stephen Pimpare

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

How we think about need or deprivation-how we judge its severity, its causes and effects, and the progress we have made (or not made) over time in reducing it-has much to do with how we define and then measure it. And, we measure it poorly. The insufficiencies of official data on American poverty are reasonably well known, yet they continue, nonetheless, to be the principal means by which we gauge need in the United States. After a review of such official measures, this article discusses alternative means of evaluating need in the United States, highlighting the benefits of examining poverty …

Review Of Why America Lost The War On Poverty-And How To Win It. Frank Stricker. Reviewed By Mary Ager Caplan., Mary Ager Caplan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Book review for Frank Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty - And How to Win It. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. $59.95 hardcover, $19.95 papercover.

Rural Communities And Awareness Of Doe Environmental Management Programs At The Nevada Test Site: Do Outreach Efforts Matter?, Helen R. Neill, K. K. Snyder, Janet Ward

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

Are residents living in communities around the Nevada Test Site aware of environmental remediation activities and do outreach efforts contribute to awareness? Through a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas administered a mail questionnaire to 14,083 residents and received 1,721 responses. Approximately 90% of the respondents reported awareness of past nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site; 63% reported awareness of low-level radioactive waste disposal at the site; and 41% are aware that the Yucca Mountain Project for high level waste disposal is part of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management and not …

Managing In A Time Of Crisis, Christine G. Springer

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

Some managers shine during a major crisis, while others don’t. As a strategic manager, one must follow a comprehensive protocol that includes the implementation of teams, systems and tools to respond to a crisis. It also requires having an action plan in place to react quickly, manage rumors and respond to victims and stakeholders sincerely while recovering from the crises’ impact. It starts with being willing to ask and answer important questions like: What is the worst that could happen? It then requires addressing how to plan for and avert crises by securing the workplace and the proper management of …

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: March 2009, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2009

LSUHSC Dailly Facilities Updates from March 2009. These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: March 2009, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2009

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from March 13 and 27, 2009.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

2009 March, Office Of Communications & Marketing, Morehead State University.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for March of 2009.

Promoting Positive Outcomes For Healthy Youth Development: Utilizing Social Capital Theory, Julie Anne Laser, George Stuart Leibowitz

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article discusses the central tenets of the theories of social capital, which include exchanges, trust, obligation, bonding, bridging, and issues concerning the marginalization of certain groups. Included is an exploration of the limitations of the approaches of the key theorists, followed by the presentation of a theoretical framework and model of the development of social capital among youth. Additionally, the article discusses the relevancy of social capital for social work practice.