scholarly journals Quantification, Inequality, and the Contestation of School Closures in Philadelphia

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meg Caven

Public education relies heavily on data to document stratified inputs and outcomes, and to design interventions aimed at reducing disparities. Yet despite the promise and prevalence of data-driven policies and practices, inequalities persist. Indeed, contemporary scholarship has begun to question whether and how processes such as quantification and commensuration contribute to rather than remediate inequality. Using the 2013 closure of 24 Philadelphia public schools as a case study, I employ a mixed-methods approach to illuminate quantification and commensuration as nuanced processes with contingent, dualistic, and paradoxical relationships to inequality. The quantified approach to selecting schools for closure predisposed poor and minority communities to institutional loss because academic underperformance, a key selection metric, was correlated with disadvantage. Paradoxically, academic performance measures, coupled with commensuration strategies, also enabled advocates to successfully overturn closure recommendations. I offer an evidentiary account of how quantification can perpetuate inequality, and I complicate prevailing understandings of quantification as a technology of power.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Mah

This research investigated the Ride for Free Public Transportation program for seniors in Oakville, Canada. Using a mixed-methods approach, participants were surveyed (n=131) to understand their travel behaviour, and interviewed (n=16) to understand their perspectives towards taking public transportation. While 63% of seniors said that the Ride for Free Transit Program did not impact their travel behaviour, 37% said that it increased their public transit use. The most popular reason for seniors to use public transportation was taking it by themselves. Some interview respondents said that they used public transportation because they would not have to ask others for rides or they did not have access to a car. Seniors suggested that more education of how to use the bus and transfer could increase senior ridership. This research may aid other municipalities considering similar programs, which could help to sustain the independent mobility of seniors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Valenzuela ◽  
Simon Rodriguez

AbstractThis case study describes the Desafío TEP project, which arose from a public-private alliance between the Arauco Educational Foundation, the Center for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE) from the University of Chile, and the Andalién Sur Local Public Education Service (SLEP). The goal of the project is to develop a model for the prevention of school exclusion (resulting from repetition and dropout) in public schools.Although the initiative was in consideration to be suspended due to the closure of schools across the country caused by COVID-19, instead the proposal was completely redesigned, recognizing that the pandemic would increase the problems of school exclusion. The innovations generated in this redesign are anticipated to lead to long-term sustainability and scalability in the region through cost reductions and the promotion of remote interactions between different establishments working in networks, such as the SLEP, the schools, and the teams from the CIAE and Arauco Educational Foundation. This network is further supported by the actors in the educational system of the territory.


Geografie ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liviu Chelcea ◽  
Raluca Popescu ◽  
Darie Cristea

Our understanding of gentrification outside of the Anglo-Saxon core is relatively undeveloped. In order to contribute to a more de-centered approach, we ask who are the gentrifiers and how do they change central city neighbourhoods in a post-socialist context? The answers are explored through a mixed-methods approach, using both quantitative and qualitative data: construction permits analysis, census tract data, field trips, and interviews with tenants, former owners, and real estate agents. Findings indicate that gentrifiers vary in nature. They include state tenants, former owners, marginal gentrifiers, political capitalists, and institutional investors. Through their actions, central neighbourhoods have gained younger, more educated, and smaller households. Beyond this case study, we emphasize the usefulness of rent gap theories, the need to study displaced households, and the potential of property rights to enrich theories of gentrification.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Tay

Abstract Obituaries are a tractable source of metaphorical depictions of death, which in turn offer unique insights into the near-universality versus culture and context-specificity of metaphors. In multicultural settings, they can shed further light on the underexplored question of how metaphor use interacts with linguistic and religious identities. This paper is a case study of newspaper obituaries (N = 337) in the multicultural and multilingual context of Singapore. It uses a mixed-methods approach to uncover the types of death-related metaphors across languages and religions, their near-universal and culture-specific aspects, and significant associations between religion and metaphor use/non-use (χ² (2, N = 337) = 84.54, p < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.501, Log (BF10) = 47.14), language and metaphor use/non-use (χ² (1, N = 337) = 71.2, p < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.46, Log (BF10) = 42.25), and religion and language of the deceased (χ² (2, N = 337) = 48.11, p < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.378, Log (BF10) = 19.7). The findings extend prevailing discussion from the substantive contents of metaphors to the intra-societal pragmatics of their use, connecting metaphor explicitly with the construction of religious and linguistic identities.


First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Recuero ◽  
Felipe Soares ◽  
Otávio Vinhas

This paper aims to analyze and compare the discursive strategies used to spread and legitimate disinformation on Twitter and WhatsApp during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. Our case study is the disinformation campaign used to discredit the electronic ballot that was used for the election. In this paper, we use a mixed methods approach that combined critical discourse analysis and a quantitative aggregate approach to discuss a dataset of 53 original tweets and 54 original WhatsApp messages. We focused on identifying the most used strategies in each platform. Our results show that: (1) messages on both platforms used structural strategies to portray urgency and create a negative emotional framing; (2) tweets often framed disinformation as a “rational” explanation; and, (3) while WhatsApp messages frequently relied on authorities and shared conspiracy theories, spreading less truthful stories than tweets.


Numen ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Camurça ◽  
Sueli Martins

RESUMOA partir de um estudo de caso de escolas municipais na cidade de Juiz de Fora, este artigo visa discutir a questão de fundo da laicidade no Brasil. Tomando a perspectiva do debate internacional atual que analisa este processo de uma forma plural e não como via única que tem como modelo os países europeus e os EUA, busca-se aqui estabelecer uma tipologia - três casos paradigmáticos - que nos aproxime das formas diferenciadas e informais de regulação do religioso no ambiente público escolarPalavras-chave: Chave: Escolas públicas, laicidade, regulação, religiões, BrasilABSTRACTDrawing upon a case study on public schools in the city of Juiz de Fora (MG), this article aims to discuss the substantive issue of secularism in Brazil. The paper builds on the current international debate that analyzes the process of secularization under a plural and multidimensional, rather than one-imensional perspective, which has been modeled on European countries and the United States. We seek to establish a typology based on three paradigmatic cases that may bring us closer to the differing forms and informal regulation of the religious phenomenon in the public education environment.Keywords: Public schools, secularism, regulation, religions, Brazil 


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Gibbs ◽  
Tusty ten Bensel ◽  
Madison K. Doyle ◽  
William Wakefield

Drug courts attempt to gain participant compliance and alcohol and other drug (AOD) use abstinence through a strategy of moderate and progressive sanctioning, but its discretionary application possesses the capacity for disparity across participants and behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine the drug court team’s (DCT) discretionary use of sanctions in response to continued participant AOD use. A mixed-methods approach was used for analyzing agency data ( n = 1,032) and interviews of five members of the DCT. Data were collected from an adult felony drug court over a 6-year period (2008–2013) and use to answer the following research question: “What participant characteristics and program performance measures affected sanctioning outcomes?” We found that offender attributes did play a role in the sanctioning decision, but program performance measures were stronger predictors of sanction type.


Author(s):  
Jacobus Daniel van der Walt ◽  
Eric Scheepbouwer ◽  
Bryan Pidwerbesky ◽  
Brian Guo ◽  
Max Ferguson ◽  
...  

With the advancement of digital technology, the collection of pavement performance data has become commonplace. The improvement of tools to extract useful information from pavement databases has become a priority to justify expenditures. This paper presents a case study of PaveMD, a tool that integrates multi-dimensional data structures with a data-driven fuzzy approach to identify good performing pavement sections. Combining this tool with an innovative paradigm where the focus is on repeating success can bring additional value to existing pavement databases. The case study shows that PaveMD can identify pavement sections that are performing well by comparing performance measures for the New Zealand context. In this paper, PaveMD's development is described, and its implementation is showcased using data from the New Zealand Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) database. It is recommended that this approach be further developed and extended to other infrastructure databases internationally.


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