Who Leads Turnaround Schools? Characteristics of Principals in Tennessee's Achievement School District and Innovation Zones

Purpose: While previous research has examined the impact of school turnaround models, less is known about the principals who lead these turnaround schools. This study examines the personal demographics, experience, educational background, prior school performance, salaries, and turnover of principals who led two turnaround models in Tennessee's lowest performing schools: a state-run Achievement School District (ASD) that has not yielded positive nor negative effects and local Innovation Zones (iZones) that averaged positive effects on student achievement over six years. Methods: We analyze longitudinal, administrative data from the Tennessee Department of Education from 2006–2007 to 2017–2018 to compare pre- and post-reform means and trends in principal characteristics between ASD, iZone, and similarly low-performing comparison schools. Results: ASD schools had higher principal turnover rates and lost principals whose schools performed higher while iZone schools retained more principals and lost principals whose schools performed lower. Moreover, iZone schools employed more experienced principals, more Black principals, and principals with higher graduate degree attainment and paid their principals more than ASD schools. Salary differences between ASD and iZone schools were not explained by principals’ characteristics, such as years of experience. Implications: Our findings reveal differences in leadership characteristics between iZone and ASD schools that were consistent with differences in the effectiveness of the two turnaround approaches.

Playing Upon Biographical Myths: William Shakespeare and Lesia Ukrainka as Characters in Contemporary Drama

The article sets out to explore two plays by contemporary playwrights, one American (Don Nigro, Loves Labours Wonne), the other Ukrainian (Neda Nezhdana, And Still I will Betray You), focusing on William Shakespeare and Lesia Ukrainka, respectively, within the framework of “the author as character” subgenre of fictional (imaginative) biography. Accordingly, the article considers the correlation between the factual and the fi ctional as one of its foci of attention. Drawing upon a variety of theoretical approaches (Paul Franssen, Ton Hoenselaars, Ira Nadel, Aleid Fokkema, Michael MacKeon, Ina Shabert and others), the article summarizes the principal characteristics of “the author as character” subgenre and proceeds to discuss how they operate in the dramas under scrutiny. The analysis makes it abundantly clear that in Nigro’s and Nezhdana’s plays the balance between fact and fi ction is defi nitively tipped in favor of the latter. By centering their (quasi) biographical plays on highly mythologized artists of national standing, both dramatists aimed at demythologizing these cult fi gures, inevitably placing them, however, within new mythical plots combining a Neo-Romantic vision of the artist as demiurge, with a Neo-Baroque as well as fin de siècle apology of death and a postmodern denial of one objective reality.

From Traditional to Autonomous Vehicles: A Systematic Review of Data Availability

The increasing accessibility of mobility datasets has enabled research in green mobility, road safety, vehicular automation, and transportation planning and optimization. Many stakeholders have leveraged vehicular datasets to study conventional driving characteristics and self-driving tasks. Notably, many of these datasets have been made publicly available, fostering collaboration, scientific comparability, and replication. As these datasets encompass several study domains and contain distinctive characteristics, selecting the appropriate dataset to investigate driving aspects might be challenging. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that performs a systematic review of a substantial number of vehicular datasets covering various automation levels. In total, 103 datasets have been reviewed, 35 of which focused on naturalistic driving, and 68 on self-driving tasks. The paper gives researchers the possibility of analyzing the datasets’ principal characteristics and their study domains. Most naturalistic datasets have been centered on road safety and driver behavior, although transportation planning and eco-driving have also been studied. Furthermore, datasets for autonomous driving have been analyzed according to their target self-driving tasks. A particular focus has been placed on data-driven risk assessment for the vehicular ecosystem. It is observed that there exists a lack of relevant publicly available datasets that challenge the creation of new risk assessment models for semi- and fully automated vehicles. Therefore, this paper conducts a gap analysis to identify possible approaches using existing datasets and, additionally, a set of relevant vehicular data fields that could be incorporated in future data collection campaigns to address the challenge.

OBLICI ZAVEŠTANjA U SRPSKOM PRAVU

The subject of this paper is to investigate the influence of the testamentary formalism on the realization of the testamentary freedom. In this context, the author of the paper explores whether the legal conditions for disposing of the property in case of death on the basis of a certain type of testament and the formal requirements for the validity of each of them are defined in Serbian law in such a way that they offer good basis for the realization of testamentary freedom. Having given brief description of the types of testaments in the history of Serbian law, the author continues to research this matter in contemporary Serbian law by classifying the types of testaments based on their principal characteristics. In the central part of the paper, the author aims to determine whether the existing forms of testaments secure the authenticity of the last will of the deceased and legal security and underlines strength and weaknesses of all nine forms of testaments in Serbian law. In concluding remarks, the author argues that the low number of wills as the basis of inheritance, as well as their frequent annulment by court as a result of failing to meet the formal requirements for their validity, point to the fact that there is a need for the reform in this field of law and proposes some de lege ferenda solutions.

From Unicorns to Mules: Phillip Pettit, Hannah Arendt, and the Liberal Human Rights Regime

<p>The research presented here is an effort to interpret the discrepancy between the theoretical inalienability of human rights and the ease with which they are alienated in practice; a paradox Hannah Arendt regarded as the most conspicuous and cruel contradiction of human rights discourse. Proponents of the contemporary human rights regime have recognised that two principal characteristics of liberal human rights politics—namely, the double appellation of the Rights of Man and Citizen and an insistence on sovereignty and power-politics—directly contribute to this paradox. Nonetheless, they deem the current approach to combating rights violations to be ‘the best we can hope for’. After discussing this pragmatic liberal approach, this paper continues by analysing the alternative approaches championed by two republican traditions which criticise liberal human rights—Pettit’s neo-republicanism and Arendt’s participatory republicanism. The former of these proposes an institutional commitment to the rights of the citizen, whereas the latter deems the direct action of political subjects to be the most effective form of guaranteeing written rights in practice. Finally, in agreement with Arendt’s thought, this paper argues that while liberal power-politics and neo-republican institutionalism have their place in human rights politics, rights are at their most secure as expressions of autonomous action.</p>

From Unicorns to Mules: Phillip Pettit, Hannah Arendt, and the Liberal Human Rights Regime

<p>The research presented here is an effort to interpret the discrepancy between the theoretical inalienability of human rights and the ease with which they are alienated in practice; a paradox Hannah Arendt regarded as the most conspicuous and cruel contradiction of human rights discourse. Proponents of the contemporary human rights regime have recognised that two principal characteristics of liberal human rights politics—namely, the double appellation of the Rights of Man and Citizen and an insistence on sovereignty and power-politics—directly contribute to this paradox. Nonetheless, they deem the current approach to combating rights violations to be ‘the best we can hope for’. After discussing this pragmatic liberal approach, this paper continues by analysing the alternative approaches championed by two republican traditions which criticise liberal human rights—Pettit’s neo-republicanism and Arendt’s participatory republicanism. The former of these proposes an institutional commitment to the rights of the citizen, whereas the latter deems the direct action of political subjects to be the most effective form of guaranteeing written rights in practice. Finally, in agreement with Arendt’s thought, this paper argues that while liberal power-politics and neo-republican institutionalism have their place in human rights politics, rights are at their most secure as expressions of autonomous action.</p>

Save the Indigenous Teaching and Learning: ELT

This paper explores not only the care of the indigenous in nativity of teaching of English Language and also advising the methods for language learners and language teachers, the methods where all learners do have some access for cognitive knowledge of intellectual development in language. The learners according to GT method to use their cognitive faculty to memorize grammatical rules, vocabulary lists, translation and reading comprehension and many more. This paper doesn’t explain all the rules but principal characteristics of GT method, it suggests GT method importance. It unravels the focus learning through cognitive system which is a real thinking as native speakers do. The word indigenous here meant the nativity of EL, the teaching of educated native speakers of ELT which second language teachers cannot faithfully do the same but there are absolute qualities can be gained from native speakers learning. There are hundreds and thousands of software technologies that teach English Language. Information and communication technologies (ICT) refer to technologies that provide easy access to information through telecommunications. This includes the internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and other communication mediums. Learning EL through ICT is a half-backed knowledge. All developed countries they setup and use digital learning. Here thanks to technology but if the curriculum is not designed with the standard approaches and the methods of ELT, surely a wrong learning enter! Even it leads to kill the language standards due to unnecessary globalized jargon. Globalization is one of the many terms virtually quotidian in present times discourse.

Quantitative analysis of Cenozoic faults and fractures and their impact on groundwater flow in the bedrock aquifers of Ireland

Faults and fractures are a critical store and pathway for groundwater in Ireland’s limestone bedrock aquifers either directly as conductive structures or indirectly as the locus for the development of karst conduits. From the quantitative analysis of post-Devonian faults and fractures in a range of lithological sequences, this report describes the principal characteristics of Cenozoic strike-slip faults and joints, the youngest and the most intrinsically conductive fractures within Irish bedrock. Analysis of these structures in more than 120 outcrop, quarry, mine and cave locations in a range of bedrock types, provides a basis for: (1) definition of quantitative models for their depth dependency, lithological control, scaling systematics and links to preexisting structure, (2) conceptualisation of their impact on groundwater behaviour, and (3) estimation of groundwater flow parameters. The quantitative models provide constraints on fracture-controlled flow connectivity. Commonly observed decreases in sustainable flows and water strike interceptions with depth are attributed to increasing confinement and decreasing fracture connectivity and dissolution. Faults and joints have quite different end member geometries, with faults having strongly heterogeneous scale-independent properties and joints more often showing scale-dependent stratabound properties. The highest and most sustainable groundwater flows are usually associated with the complexity of structure of Cenozoic faults and of preexisting Carboniferous structures (on which conductive fracturing localises), enhanced by karstification and strongly jointed limestone bedrock particularly in the near-surface. Increased groundwater flow is promoted within bedded, rather than massive (i.e. unbedded), limestone sequences, characterised by bedding-parallel fractures and karst connecting otherwise subvertical fractures and subvertical wells.