scholarly journals Insights on how to shape teacher learning policy: The role of teacher content knowledge in explaining differential effects of professional development

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Covay Minor ◽  
Laura Desimone ◽  
Jade Caines Lee ◽  
Eric D. Hochberg
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Content Knowledge ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Federal State ◽  
The Us ◽  
Classroom Change ◽  
State And Local

In the US, many federal, state and local school improvement policies rely on teacher professional development (PD) to foster classroom change. Past research suggests PD that has a content focus is the most effective, but that even content-focused PD varies in its effectiveness. Through in-depth interviews of teachers participating in a middle school science PD randomized control trial in the US, we find that what teachers learn in PD varies significantly based on their prior knowledge and experience. This paper explores several hypotheses about how content knowledge and teacher learning interact. We conclude that the next step toward improving teacher PD is to calibrate learning opportunities to teachers’ prior knowledge. 

Retirement and Pensions in American Economic History

2018 ◽  
pp. 354-374
Author(s):  
Robert Clark ◽  
Lee A. Craig
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Pension Plans ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Defined Benefit ◽  
Retirement Plans ◽  
The Us ◽  
Defined Benefit Plans ◽  
State And Local

The proportion of the US population that survives to retirement age has increased over time, as has the share of the older population that retires. Higher incomes at older ages explain the increase in the incidence of retirement. Pensions provide much of that income. In general, public-sector workers, especially military personnel, were covered by pensions before their private-sector counterparts, and coverage in the public sector remains more widespread, and generous, than it is in the private sector. Public-sector pension plans are more likely to be defined benefit plans than are private-sector plans. Many public-sector employers have promised their employees more in benefits than they have set aside to pay for those benefits. Estimates suggest that the federal, state, and local retirement plans currently in operation are underfunded by as much as $5 trillion.

scholarly journals Who Participates in Content-Focused Teacher Professional Development? Evidence From a Large Scale Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Richter ◽  
Mareike Kunter ◽  
Alexandra Marx ◽  
Dirk Richter
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Content Knowledge ◽  
Teacher Quality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Participation ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

This study investigates the relationship between teacher quality and teachers’ engagement in professional development (PD) activities using data on 229 German secondary school mathematics teachers. We assessed different aspects of teacher quality (e.g. professional knowledge, instructional quality) using a variety of measures, including standardised tests of teachers’ content knowledge, to determine what characteristics are associated with high participation in PD. The results show that teachers with higher scores for teacher quality variables take part in more content-focused PD than teachers with lower scores for these variables. This suggests that teacher learning may be subject to a Matthew effect, whereby more proficient teachers benefit more from PD than less proficient teachers.

How Can Comprehensive School Reform Models Be Successfully Implemented?

2002 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Desimone
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Implementation Fidelity ◽  
Comprehensive School ◽  
Comprehensive School Reform ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Demonstration Program ◽  
Curriculum Instruction ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration

Comprehensive school reform, or CSR, a currently a popular approach to school improvement, is intended to foster schoolwide change that affects all aspects of schooling (e.g., curriculum, instruction, organization, professional development, and parent involvement). Federal, state, and local legislation and funding have supported CSR implementation, and in 1997 Congress enacted the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program, which gives financial support to schools adopting such reforms. This article reviews and synthesizes the literature that documents CSR implementation, positing that the more specific, consistent, authoritative, powerful, and stable a policy is, the stronger its implementation will be. It finds that all five policy attributes contribute to implementation; in particular, specificity is related to implementation fidelity, power to immediate implementation effects, and consistency, authority, and stability to long-lasting change.

Entrepreneurs' Technical Assistance Program (ETAP)

1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.J. Fraikor ◽  
S.K. Purcell ◽  
R.J. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Department Of Energy ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Assistance Program ◽  
Rocky Flats ◽  
Start Up ◽  
The Us ◽  
Technical Assistance Program ◽  
State And Local

In June 1993, the US Department of Energy announced the decision to shut down production of nuclear weapon components at its Rocky Flats plant located near Denver, Colorado, and begin a long-term clean-up of the facility. Faced with very severe economic impacts from downsizing the facility (approximately 8,000 employees at its peak), federal, state, and local governments formed a Community Reuse Organization to develop and implement strategies to mitigate the effects of displaced workers and lost income. This paper describes an innovative partnership concept, specifically aimed at providing technology-based start-up companies with world-class university expertise that they otherwise could not afford.

scholarly journals A spatial database of wildfires in the United States, 1992-2011

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. C. Short
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Program Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
The Us ◽  
Survey System ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Wildfire Planning ◽  
Data Elements

Abstract. The statistical analysis of wildfire activity is a critical component of national wildfire planning, operations, and research in the United States (US). However, there are multiple federal, state, and local entities with wildfire protection and reporting responsibilities in the US, and no single, unified system of wildfire record keeping exists. To conduct even the most rudimentary interagency analyses of wildfire numbers and area burned from the authoritative systems of record, one must harvest records from dozens of disparate databases with inconsistent information content. The onus is then on the user to check for and purge redundant records of the same fire (i.e., multijurisdictional incidents with responses reported by several agencies or departments) after pooling data from different sources. Here we describe our efforts to acquire, standardize, error-check, compile, scrub, and evaluate the completeness of US federal, state, and local wildfire records from 1992–2011 for the national, interagency Fire Program Analysis (FPA) application. The resulting FPA Fire-Occurrence Database (FPA FOD) includes nearly 1.6 million records from the 20 yr period, with values for at least the following core data elements: location, at least as precise as a Public Land Survey System section (2.6 km2 grid), discovery date, and final fire size. The FPA FOD is publicly available from the Research Data Archive of the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (doi:10.2737/RDS-2013-0009). While necessarily incomplete in some aspects, the database is intended to facilitate fairly high-resolution geospatial analysis of US wildfire activity over the past two decades, based on available information from the authoritative systems of record.

scholarly journals Crude Oil and the Nigeria Naira Exchange Rate

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-60
Author(s):  
OMEKWE, Sunday Omiekuma Paul ◽  
OBAYORI, Joseph Bidemi
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rate ◽  
Crude Oil ◽  
Oil Prices ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Foreign Earnings ◽  
Crude Oil Prices ◽  
The Us ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
Basic Source ◽  
State And Local

The paper examined crude oil and the Nigeria naira exchange rate. Crude oil is a natural resource found beneath the water table usually in the delta region or in the sea and ocean. Oil as a hydrocarbon was first found and drilled in Oloibiri in Bayelsa State in 1956, and has become the basic source of Nigeria’s foreign earnings and therefore its foreign exchange. Exchange rate is the value of another country's currency compared to that of your own. But the ups and downs in the price of crude oil has put the Nigerian economy at the edge of the sword. Moreover, since the announced global slump in oil prices, governments at all levels (federal, state and local) have had hard times meeting their expenditure needs. Also, the weak value of the naira in relation to the US. Dollar has not help the country economy. This is because, while the stream of income remained the same, one now need more Naira to pay for some commodities abroad. Also, any drop in crude oil prices tends to lead to a weakened Naira against the dollar on the black market. Therefore, in order to have a chance at developing, a country needs to maintain a competitive exchange rate that is not overvalued.

scholarly journals Refugees’ Access to Housing and Residency in German Cities: Internal Border Regimes and Their Local Variations

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihad El-Kayed ◽  
Ulrike Hamann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Federal State ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Nation States ◽  
State And Local ◽  
German Cities ◽  
Local Levels

This article examines how state regulations, market barriers, racist discrimination as well as NGOs interact and create internal border regimes by enabling, as well as restricting, access to social and civil rights connected to housing and the freedom of movement and settlement for refugees. Our contribution builds on an analysis of federal and state regulations on housing for refugees who are either in the process of seeking asylum or have completed the process and have been granted an asylum status in Germany. The analysis aims to dissect the workings of these regulations in order to develop a detailed understanding of how these internal border regimes define barriers and access to social and civil rights. In addition to legal and regulatory barriers at the federal, state, and local levels, we identify several other barriers that affect if, how, and when refugees are able to enter local housing markets. We will examine these barriers based on an exemplary analysis of the situation in the cities of Berlin and Dresden, whereby we will apply concepts from border as well as citizenship studies to obtain a deeper understanding of the processes at hand. While contributions to the realm of border studies have so far mostly concentrated on national or EU borders, our approach follows recent literature that emphasises the need to analyse the workings of borders <em>internal to</em> nation-states but has so far not addressed local variations of the ways in which refugees are able to access their right to housing. In taking up this approach, we also stress the need to look at local dimensions of an increasing civic stratification of refugee rights, which past research has also conceptualised primarily on the national level. In both cities, we have collected administrative documents and conducted interviews with refugees, NGOs, and representatives from the local administration. Based on this material, we analyse the workings of administrative barriers at the state and local levels along with market barriers and discriminatory practices employed by landlords and housing companies at the local level. In most cases, these conditions restrict refugees’ access to housing. We will contrast these obstacles with insight into the strategies pursued by refugees and volunteers in their efforts to find a place to live in the city.

scholarly journals Determinants of workplace perceptions among federal, state, and local public health staff in the US, 2014 to 2017

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathon P. Leider ◽  
Katie Sellers ◽  
Jessica Owens-Young ◽  
Grace Guerrero-Ramirez ◽  
Kyle Bogaert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Intent To Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Workforce ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Health Staff ◽  
Local Health ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
State And Local

Abstract Background The governmental public health workforce in the United States comprises almost 300,000 staff at federal, state, and local levels. The workforce is poised for generational change, experiencing significant levels of retirement. However, intent to leave for other reasons is also substantial, and diversity is lacking in the workforce. Methods Workforce perception data from 76,000 staff from Health and Human Services (HHS) including 14,000 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were analyzed across 2014 and 2017. Additionally, data from 32,000 state and local health department staff in 46 agencies reporting in both years. Estimates were constructed accounting for survey design and non-response. Results In 2017, women made up 43% of the total US government workforce and 33% of supervisors or higher, compared to 73 and 68% generally in State Health Agencies (p < .0001); and 62% vs 52% in HHS (p < .0001). Among state staff, intent to leave increased from 22 to 31% (p < .0001), but fell in 2017 from 33 to 28% for HHS (p < .0001). Correlates of intent to leave included low job satisfaction, pay satisfaction, and agency type. Federal entities saw the highest proportion respondents that indicated they would recommend their organization as a good place to work. Conclusions While intent to leave fell at federal agencies from 2014 to 2017, it increased among staff in state and local health departments. Additionally, while public health is more diverse than the US government overall, significant underrepresentation is observed in supervisory positions for staff of color, especially women.

scholarly journals The Implementation and Communication of Source Reduction Policy and Initiatives by United States Federal, State, and Local Environmental Agencies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Parson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Current Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Source Reduction ◽  
The Us ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Environmental Agencies

Source reduction is ranked by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as the preferred resource management practice; however, current source reduction efforts in the US are overshadowed by other waste management practices. It was theorized that the source of disparity might be (1) unequal implementation priorities on a Federal, state, or local level, or (2) insufficient communication between environmental agencies and stakeholders. A panel of ten Federal, state, and local waste management officials participated in a modified Delphi survey exploring the issues surrounding source reduction policy implementation and communication. The study resulted in a focused discussion of the value of source reduction and the challenges environmental agencies face in implementing source reduction polices. The study concludes that while the value of source reduction is not debated, there are several barriers to implementing these policies in the US, including questions of authority, lack of consistent leadership, implementation cost, and developing effective communications.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document