scholarly journals The People’s Voice, The People’s Choice: An Overview of Participatory Budgeting in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Marilyn Marks Rubin ◽  
Wendy M. Nicholson

Participatory budgeting was launched in the U.S. in 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, by a member of the city’s Board of Aldermen (the city council) who used $1 million of his discretionary funds to bring his constituents directly into the local budget decision-making process. By 2018, there were 23 more U.S. jurisdictions with a PB process in place: 12 with PB in selected areas (districts); six with a citywide initiative; five with an initiative to allocate specific pots of money, e.g., CDBG funds (see Table 1); and six with an initiative to bring young voters or high school students into budget decisions. In this descriptive paper, we provide a synopsis of PB initiatives in the U.S. based on publically available information and personal interviews with individuals involved in the PB process. Our paper adds to the literature by providing a review of PB initiatives across the U.S. that will be particularly useful for readers who are looking for a quick purview of the topic or who have limited knowledge of PB. 

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara Nicola

Although the internationalization of the U.S. education sector is perhaps the most salient at the postsecondary level, U.S. secondary schools have increasingly experienced the effects of globalization. In recent years, these schools have witnessed a surge in their population of international students. However, there is relatively little scholarship focused on this student population. This Research in Brief article first highlights recent research on nonimmigrant, international high school students in the United States. Using Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological systems theory as a framework, the article then identifies areas where future research is needed to more fully explicate the unique experiences of these students and their effects on the U.S. secondary education sector.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Lee Arbetman

<p>In 1972, a small group of Georgetown University law students developed a series of practical law lessons for use with public high school students in Washington, D.C. These visionaries recognized that ordinary citizens—not just lawyers—needed a basic understanding of practical law in order to take on civic responsibilities. The lessons were popular with the high school students and with their law student teachers. Responding to their practical nature, the high school students called these lessons “Street Law.” The name stuck.</p><p><br />A pilot program in two local high schools in 1972–73 launched a movement—first in the United States but eventually around the world—to teach the public about law and public policy using learner-centered, interactive teaching methods. Today, Street Law programs can be found in every state in the U.S. and in more than 40 countries around the world.</p><p><br />Propelling this global movement to advance justice through practical education about law and democracy is Street Law, Inc., a Washington, D.C. area non-profit organization that is an outgrowth of the early Street Law program at Georgetown University Law Center. That pilot effort has also grown into a full-fledged, credit-bearing experiential education program at Georgetown that has served as a model program for more than 120 law schools across the country and around the world. Nearly 1,000 upper division Georgetown Law students have participated in this program since its inception. Many have gone on to positions as law firm partners, corporate counsel, government officials in the U.S. and abroad, and even members of the federal court bench. They have taken from their law school experience a commitment to public education about law and democracy.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-142
Author(s):  
Stephanie Couch ◽  
Audra Skukauskaite ◽  
Leigh B. Estabrooks

The lack of diversity among patent holders in the United States (1-3) is a topic that is being discussed by federal policymakers. Available data suggests that prolific patent holders and leading technology innovators are 88.3% male and nearly 94.3% Asian, Pacific Islander, or White, and half of the diversity that does exist is among those who are foreign born (3). The data shows that there is a need for greater diversity among patent holders. Few studies, however, are available to guide the work of educators creating learning opportunities to help young people from diverse backgrounds learn to invent. Educators must navigate issues that have complex sociocultural and historical dimensions (4), which shape the ideas of those surrounding them regarding who can invent, with whom, under what conditions, and for what purposes. In this paper, we report the results of an ongoing multimethod study of an invention education pro- gram that has worked with teachers and students in Grades 6 through 12 for the past 16 years. Findings stem from an analysis of end-of-year experience surveys and interview transcripts of six students (three young men and three young women) who participated in high school InvenTeams®. The data were used to investigate three topics: 1) ways high school students who have participated on an InvenTeam conceptualize the term "failure" and what it means to "learn from failure," 2) what supported and constrained the work of the three young women during their InvenTeams experience and the implications for policy makers concerned about the gender gap in patenting, and 3) ways the young men and young women took up (or didn't take up) the identity of "inventor" after working on a team that developed a working prototype of an invention during the previous school year.


2021 ◽  
pp. 089590482110199
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Freeman ◽  
Michael A. Gottfried ◽  
Jay Stratte Plasman

Recent educational policies in the United States have fostered the growth of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career-focused courses to support high school students’ persistence into these fields in college and beyond. As one key example, federal legislation has embedded new types of “applied STEM” (AS) courses into the career and technical education curriculum (CTE), which can help students persist in STEM through high school and college. Yet, little is known about the link between AS-CTE coursetaking and college STEM persistence for students with learning disabilities (LDs). Using a nationally representative data set, we found no evidence that earning more units of AS-CTE in high school influenced college enrollment patterns or major selection in non-AS STEM fields for students with LDs. That said, students with LDs who earned more units of AS-CTE in high school were more likely to seriously consider and ultimately declare AS-related STEM majors in college.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 99-99
Author(s):  
Cindy Bui ◽  
Kyungmin Kim ◽  
Qian Song ◽  
Yuri Jang

Abstract Civic engagement is an important dimension of age-friendly communities but has been understudied among Asian immigrant groups. While research has attributed greater civic engagement among immigrants to acculturation factors, the influence of acculturation may be conditioned upon Asian immigrants’ social network and place attachment to their city. We used data from the Asian American Quality of Life survey to analyze civic engagement activity (e.g., City council meeting, voting in a City election) among a diverse sample of middle-aged and older Asian immigrants in Austin, Texas (N = 994). 34.5% of the sample had participated in at least one civic engagement activity in the past 12 months. We examined how such civic engagement is associated with acculturation factors, and further examined whether one’s friend network and perception of their city moderated the association. We found that number of years lived in the U.S., familiarity with mainstream American culture, and number of friends in one’s social network were positively related to civic engagement activity. Furthermore, we found that the association between years lived in the U.S. and civic engagement was more pronounced for immigrants with larger friend networks; the association between familiarity with American culture and civic engagement was more pronounced for immigrants with more positive perceptions of the city. These findings highlight that acculturation may not operate alone in civic engagement among Asian immigrants. Rather, it may also be important to create opportunities for Asian immigrants to feel connected to their community and build meaningful friend networks to encourage civic engagement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-168
Author(s):  
Desmond Ang

Abstract Nearly 1,000 officer-involved killings occur each year in the United States. This article documents the large, racially disparate effects of these events on the educational and psychological well-being of Los Angeles public high school students. Exploiting hyperlocal variation in how close students live to a killing, I find that exposure to police violence leads to persistent decreases in GPA, increased incidence of emotional disturbance, and lower rates of high school completion and college enrollment. These effects are driven entirely by black and Hispanic students in response to police killings of other minorities and are largest for incidents involving unarmed individuals.


1988 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Cobban

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Semarang was a major port city and administrative centre on Java. Attainment of this position was due partly to the expansion of its hinterland during the nineteenth century. This expansion was closely related to developments in the means of transportation and the consequent ability of plantation owners to bring the products of their plantations to the port for shipment to foreign markets. By the end of the century virtually the whole economic life of central Java focused upon Semarang. The city also exercised administrative functions in the Dutch colonial administration and generally had been responsible for Dutch interests in the middle and eastern parts of the island. The importance of Semarang as an administrative centre increased after 1906. In that year the government incorporated the city as an urban municipality (stadsgemeente). In 1914 it had consular representation from the United States, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Germany, and Thailand. Subsequently, in 1926 it became the capital of the Province of Central Java under the terms of an administrative reform fostered by the colonial government at Batavia. Status as an urban municipality meant that local officials sitting on a city council would govern the domestic affairs of the city. The members of the city council at first were appointed from Batavia, subsequently some of them were elected by residents of the city. By the beginning of the twentieth century Semarang had enhanced its position as a major port on the north coast of the island of Java. It was one of the foremost cities of the Dutch East Indies, along with Batavia and Surabaya, a leading port and a centre of administration and trade. This article outlines the growth of the port of Semarang during the nineteenth century and discusses some of the conflict related to this growth over living conditions in parts of the city during the twentieth century, a conflict which smouldered for several decades among the government, members of the city council, and the non-European residents of the city, one which remained unresolved at the end of the colonial era.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathan D. Shukla ◽  
Tracy E. Waasdorp ◽  
Sarah Lindstrom Johnson ◽  
Mercedes Gabriela Orozco Solis ◽  
Amanda J. Nguyen ◽  
...  

School climate is an important construct for guiding violence prevention efforts in U.S. schools, but there has been less consideration of this concept in its neighboring country Mexico, which has a higher prevalence of violence. The U.S. Department of Education outlined a three-domain conceptualization of school climate (i.e., safe and supportive schools model) that includes engagement, safety, and the school environment. To examine the applicability of this school climate model in Mexico, the present study tested its measurement invariance across middle school students in the United States ( n = 15,099) and Mexico ( n = 2,211). Findings supported full invariance for engagement and modified-safety scales indicating that factor loadings and intercepts contributed almost equally to factor means, and scale scores were comparable across groups. Partial invariance was found for the environment scales. Results of a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) consisting of all 13 school climate scales indicated significantly positive associations among all scales in the U.S. sample and among most scales in the Mexico sample. Implications of these findings are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 862-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly A. Williams ◽  
Chad T. Miller ◽  
Ward Upham

In recent years, many horticulture departments around the United States have been concerned with recruiting and retaining an adequate number of students. One potential recruitment opportunity is the horticulture Future Farmers of America (FFA) Career Development Events (CDEs). For the time period of 1999 to 2012 (14 years), 1462 students participated in the annual state-level horticulture contests, comprising floriculture and nursery/landscape CDEs, held at Kansas State University (KSU). Using the rosters from these two CDEs, we referenced the university’s student information database to determine whether the high school students who participated as FFA horticulture CDE contestants ultimately matriculated to KSU. Fifty-two percent of former FFA horticulture CDE participants were accepted to KSU and 32% matriculated. Of these, 58% enrolled in the College of Agriculture and 19% majored in horticulture. Therefore, 3.5% of total horticulture CDE participants majored in horticulture at KSU. Students who participated in more than one horticulture CDE over time were more likely to major in horticulture at KSU compared with students who competed only once. Thirty-nine percent of students who participated in both horticulture CDEs pursued a baccalaureate program in horticulture. These two student characteristics could be used as indicator data points to target recruitment of future horticulture students. Data about the high school programs that generated contest participants were also summarized. Exceling in the CDE contests was not an indicator CDE participants would pursue a baccalaureate degree in horticulture. These analyses suggest FFA CDEs have some potential to optimize student recruitment efforts.


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