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In this White Paper, we present recommendations for the scientific community and funding agencies to foster the infrastructure for a collaborative multi-messenger and time-domain astronomy (MMA/TDA) ecosystem. MMA/TDA is poised for breakthrough discoveries in the coming decade. In much the same way that expanding beyond the optical bandpass revealed entirely new and unexpected discoveries, cosmic messengers beyond light (i.e., gravitational waves, neutrinos, and cosmic rays) open entirely new windows to answer some of the most fundamental questions in (astro)physics: heavy element synthesis, equation of state of dense matter, particle acceleration, etc. This field was prioritized as a frontier scientific pursuit in the 2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics via its "New Windows on the Dynamic Universe" theme. MMA/TDA science presents technical challenges distinct from those experienced in other disciplines. Successful observations require coordination across myriad boundaries -- different cosmic messengers, ground vs. space, international borders, etc. -- all for sources that may not be well localized, and whose brightness may be changing rapidly with time. Add that all of this work is undertaken by real human beings, with distinct backgrounds, experiences, cultures, and expectations, that often conflict. To address these challenges and help MMA/TDA realize its full scientific potential in the coming decade (and beyond), the second in a series of community workshops sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA titled "Windows on the Universe: Establishing the Infrastructure for a Collaborative Multi-Messenger Ecosystem" was held on October 16-18, 2023 in Tucson, AZ. Here we present the primary recommendations from this workshop focused on three key topics -- hardware, software, and people and policy. [abridged], Comment: Workshop white paper

Intel's software guard extensions (SGX) provide hardware enclaves to guarantee confidentiality and integrity for sensitive code and data. However, systems leveraging such security mechanisms must often pay high performance overheads. A major source of this overhead is SGX enclave transitions which induce expensive cross-enclave context switches. The Intel SGX SDK mitigates this with a switchless call mechanism for transitionless cross-enclave calls using worker threads. Intel's SGX switchless call implementation improves performance but provides limited flexibility: developers need to statically fix the system configuration at build time, which is error-prone and misconfigurations lead to performance degradations and waste of CPU resources. ZC-SWITCHLESS is a configless and efficient technique to drive the execution of SGX switchless calls. Its dynamic approach optimises the total switchless worker threads at runtime to minimise CPU waste. The experimental evaluation shows that ZC-SWITCHLESS obviates the performance penalty of misconfigured switchless systems while minimising CPU waste., Comment: 10 pages, 53rd Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)

The increasing application of machine learning techniques in everyday decision-making processes has brought concerns about the fairness of algorithmic decision-making. This paper concerns the problem of collider bias which produces spurious associations in fairness assessment and develops theorems to guide fairness assessment avoiding the collider bias. We consider a real-world application of auditing a trained classifier by an audit agency. We propose an unbiased assessment algorithm by utilising the developed theorems to reduce collider biases in the assessment. Experiments and simulations show the proposed algorithm reduces collider biases significantly in the assessment and is promising in auditing trained classifiers., Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures and 9 tables. The work has been accepted by PAKDD2022

We present the Phase A Science Case for the Multi-conjugate Adaptive-optics Visible Imager-Spectrograph (MAVIS), planned for the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). MAVIS is a general-purpose instrument for exploiting the highest possible angular resolution of any single optical telescope available in the next decade, either on Earth or in space, and with sensitivity comparable to (or better than) larger aperture facilities. MAVIS uses two deformable mirrors in addition to the deformable secondary mirror of the AOF, providing a mean V-band Strehl ratio of >10% (goal >15%) across a relatively large (30 arc second) science field. This equates to a resolution of <20mas at 550nm - comparable to the K-band diffraction limit of the next generation of extremely large telescopes, making MAVIS a genuine optical counterpart to future IR-optimised facilities like JWST and the ELT. Moreover, MAVIS will have unprecedented sky coverage for a high-order AO system, accessing at least 50% of the sky at the Galactic Pole, making MAVIS a truly general purpose facility instrument. As such, MAVIS will have both a Nyquist-sampled imager (30x30 arcsec field), and a powerful integral field spectrograph with multiple spatial and spectral modes spanning 370-1000nm. This science case presents a distilled set of thematically linked science cases drawn from the MAVIS White Papers (www.mavis-ao.org/whitepapers), selected to illustrate the driving requirements of the instrument resulting from the recent MAVIS Phase A study., Comment: 141 pages, 79 figures, 10Mb. Modified version of the Phase A Science Case submitted to ESO in April 2020 as part of the MAVIS Phase A design study. Full resolution version available upon request

We show that attractors are semicontinuous for closed relations on compact Hausdorff spaces. Semicontinuity is what guarantees that small changes to a system do not result in massive growth of certain features, notably attractors. That is, there is a certain preservation of structure. When it comes to flows, semiflows, and maps, it is well established that attractors are semicontinuous. In [2], relations were established as a way to generalize maps, and a formal definition of attractors was established. Relations (in the dynamical systems sense) represent discrete time systems, which may lack uniqueness (or existence) in forward time., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures (one with two parts)

We already know a great deal about dynamical systems with uniqueness in forward time. Indeed, flows, semiflows, and maps (both invertible and not) have been studied at length. A view that has proven particularly fruitful is topological: consider invariant sets (attractors, repellers, periodic orbits, etc.) as topological objects, and the connecting sets between them form gradient like flows. In the case of systems with uniqueness in forward time, an attractor in one system is related to nearby attractors in a family of other, "close enough" systems. One way of seeing that connection is through the Conley decomposition (and the Conley index) [2], [13]. This approach requires focusing on isolated invariant sets - that is, invariant sets with isolating neighborhoods. If there is an invariant set $I$, which has an isolating neighborhood $N$ $\ldots$. This approach was expanded to discrete time systems which lack uniqueness in forward time, using relations, in [7] and [11]. Relations do not rely on uniqueness in forward time, but the graph of any map is a relation; thus they serve to generalize maps. Some of this is reviewed in the next few sections. In addition, I expanded on work done in [7] to show that in compact metric spaces, attractors for closed relations continue (see Section 6). On the continuous time side, more work needs to be done. This paper is a step toward a more systematic approach for continuous time systems which lack uniqueness in forward time. This work applies to Filippov systems [4] and in control theory [12]. In the following pages, we establish a tool (multiflows) for discussing the continuous time case and develop a framework for understanding attractors (and therefore stability) in these systems. A crucial part of this work was establishing attractor / attracting neighborhood pairs, which happens in Section 5.5., Comment: 52 pages, 20 figures; author's dissertation

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways that teachers use Connected Classroom Technology (CCT) to potentially support achievement on translation problems that require moving between algebraic representations. Four mathematics classrooms were chosen based on their gain scores on pre- and post-test Algebraic translation problems. Two classrooms with the highest and the lowest gain scores were chosen among the classrooms with pre-test scores that were below 50%. This study used video-recorded observational data and found that teachers in effective classrooms created environments wherein students used multiple representations simultaneously and translated between representations through discussion. In contrast, teachers in less effective classrooms fostered environments wherein students used representations independently and missed opportunities to translate representations through discussion. [For the complete proceedings, see ED583608.]

This white paper summarizes the conclusions of the Snowmass White Paper "Spectroscopic Needs for Imaging Dark Energy Experiments" (arXiv:1309.5384) which are relevant to the calibration of LSST photometric redshifts; i.e., the accurate characterization of biases and uncertainties in photo-z's. Any significant miscalibration will lead to systematic errors in photo-z's, impacting nearly all extragalactic science with LSST. As existing deep redshift samples have failed to yield highly-secure redshifts for a systematic 20%-60% of their targets, it is a strong possibility that future deep spectroscopic samples will not solve the calibration problem on their own. The best options in this scenario are provided by cross-correlation methods that utilize clustering with objects from spectroscopic surveys (which need not be fully representative) to trace the redshift distribution of the full sample. For spectroscopy, the eBOSS survey would enable a basic calibration of LSST photometric redshifts, while the expected LSST-DESI overlap would be more than sufficient for an accurate calibration at z>0.2. A DESI survey of nearby galaxies conducted in bright time would enable accurate calibration down to z~0. The expanded areal coverage provided by the transfer of the DESI instrument (or duplication of it at the Blanco Telescope) would enable the best possible calibration from cross-correlations, in addition to other science gains., Comment: White paper submitted to the National Research Council Committee on a Strategy Optimize the U.S. O/IR System in the Era of the LSST, 4 pages

This white paper summarizes those conclusions of the Snowmass White Paper "Spectroscopic Needs for Imaging Dark Energy Experiments" (arXiv:1309.5384) which are relevant to the training of LSST photometric redshifts; i.e., the use of spectroscopic redshifts to improve algorithms and reduce photo-z errors. The larger and more complete the available training set is, the smaller the RMS error in photo-z estimates should be, increasing LSST's constraining power. Among the better US-based options for this work are the proposed MANIFEST fiber feed for the Giant Magellan Telescope or (with lower survey speed) the WFOS spectrograph on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Due to its larger field of view and higher multiplexing, the PFS spectrograph on Subaru would be able to obtain a baseline training sample faster than TMT; comparable performance could be achieved with a highly-multiplexed spectrograph on Gemini with at least a 20 arcmin diameter field of view., Comment: White paper submitted to the National Research Council Committee on a Strategy Optimize the U.S. O/IR System in the Era of the LSST, 5 pages

Interest in single-sex classes continues to grow in the United States, but there has been little research at the elementary level in this country or elsewhere to help guide educators' decision-making about the overall value of single-sex classes in public schools and the specific value of single-sex classes in public schools for increasing boy's reading achievement. The major purpose of our study was to find out if single-sex classes in two public elementary schools in Arkansas, one in grade 5 and the other in grade 6, seemed to make a difference in boys' reading achievement in the 2008-2009 year, as judged by scores on annual state assessments. That is, did boys in an all-boys' class do better than, the same as, or worse than comparable boys in a mixed class? We were interested in whether boys' literacy scores significantly improved in a single-sex class because of the large and growing gap in reading (and writing) achievement between boys and girls by the high school years. The single-sex classes in the two elementary schools for which we had state assessment data showed differing results. In one school, boys in the boys' class gained significantly more in Literacy than boys in the mixed class. In the other school, boys in the boys' class did not gain significantly more or less than boys in the mixed class in Literacy, but they did gain significantly less than the boys in the mixed class on the Reading test from a nationally normed test that the school also gives. As we also found, girls did not gain significantly more in Mathematics in a girls' class than in a mixed class in either school, but they did not gain significantly less. However, the trends in gain scores for boys and girls in Literacy and in Mathematics tended to favor the single-sex classes. There does not seem to be an academic downside in experimenting with single-sex classes so far as is suggested by test results in these two elementary schools. Boys' and Girls' Scores in Mathematics are appended. (Contains 18 tables and 4 footnotes.)

This paper considers whether high schools in competitive environments use grade inflation to attract and retain families, perhaps in addition to more constructive responses. Two measures of grade inflation are used: the cutoffs used by each school to assign a letter grade to a percent score; and high school GPA after controlling for test scores, a rich set of student and school characteristics, and (for a subset) college GPA. Two measures of competition are used: the enrollment-based concentration of school districts in metropolitan areas, and an instrument for this concentration. In both OLS and IV, increased competition significantly affects grade cutoffs: a one standard deviation increase in competition results in about a 0.12 to 0.18 standard deviation fall in the grade cutoffs (ceteris paribus, lower cutoffs yield higher grades). However, in both OLS and IV, competition does not significantly affect the actual assigned grades as measured by GPA. This pattern of results suggests that school administrators under competitive pressure may ease grade standards, but that teachers may re-adjust their scoring to leave actual grades relatively unchanged. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure and 4 footnotes.)

This study investigates why teachers, identified by their school principal as being leaders or having leadership potential, chose not to become school principals. At a time in which the literature is reporting a shortage of qualified applicants for school administrative positions the identified reasons most cited by teacher leaders include testing/accountability pressures too great, job generally too stressful, too much time required, and societal problems make it difficult to focus on instruction. The key factors for teacher leaders choosing not to pursue a career in school administration are categorized as stress and time demands are too great. (Contains 5 tables.)

The 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act requires all states to report annually to the U.S. Department of Education the number of prospective teachers at each teacher training institution who pass their own state tests for licensure. However, the law left decisions on what tests to require in each field, what to assess on them, and their passing scores up to each state. To determine the content knowledge in reading and mathematics that subject tests for prospective special education teachers assess, this study drew on information available on the Web sites for Educational Testing Service, the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, and National Evaluation Systems. It examined the extent to which these tests address three research-based components of reading pedagogy (instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary knowledge), the weights attached to knowledge of these three components, and the quality of the sample questions provided for them. It estimated the percentage of test items addressing mathematics content and these three components on each test. It also analyzed the descriptions of ETS's tests of "principles of teaching and learning" to see whether these tests assess understanding and use of educational theories that underlie effective research-based practices. The findings of this study suggest that one solution for ensuring that prospective special education teachers begin their teaching careers with a substantial amount of research-based knowledge of reading instruction is to require them to take a dedicated test of research-based reading instructional knowledge, as do California, Massachusetts, and Virginia, in addition to any other tests required for their license. To ensure an adequate amount of relevant mathematical knowledge, states might consider replicating the 40-item test of mathematics content that Massachusetts will require of all aspiring elementary and special education teachers in 2009. States will also need to design their own tests of basic principles of teaching to ensure that they assess knowledge of educational theories that underlie effective research-based practices. Profiles of Thirteen Tests for Elementary and Sometimes Other Teachers are appended. (Contains 1 figure, 2 tables and 5 footnotes.)

Effects of the high school environment, part-time university instructors, and classroom ethnic/racial diversity on first-year student preparation and enrollment persistence are estimated via hierarchical linear and logistic regression. After controlling for student socio-demographic characteristics and motivation to enter college, high school attributes bear little relevance to level of academic preparation at the start of the first year of study. In contrast, academic performance of low-income students at the end of the first year is negatively associated with several features of the high school environment. There is little evidence that student persistence is negatively affected by exposure to part-time instructors during the first year in college. Ethnic/racial diversity in the classroom appears to slightly enhance persistence of non-Asian minority students, but shows no positive relationship with cognitive growth. Unmet financial need marginally increases the dropout risk of students taking greater course loads net of socio-demographic background, academic preparation, first-year grades, on-campus residency, and type of aid received. Results are based on institutional matriculation records of 2,800 first-year students at a moderately selective public university and official high school accountability reports collected by the state's department of education. (Contains 8 tables and 6 footnotes.)

While there is a wealth of research on school finance equity and adequacy, and school finance theory clearly documents differences between the two concepts, no study has examined whether the reforms engendered by each approach actually differ in terms of resource distribution. This study examines the issues using district level data on expenditure by function from two, large national datasets: U.S Census of Governments School System Finance File (F-33, 1972-2002) and the National Center for Education Statistics' Longitudinal School District Fiscal-Nonfiscal File (FNF, 1990-2000). A difference-in-differences estimator with state and year fixed effects indicates that both court-mandated equity and adequacy reforms decrease resource inequities. However, estimates based on data from the F-33 file show negligible differences between equity and adequacy reforms, while estimates based on data from the FNF file indicate adequacy reform does not decrease horizontal inequities as much as court-mandated equity reform. To examine these contradictory findings, we implement a two-stage regression approach to examine if court-mandated adequacy reform is associated with a state funding mechanism accounting for certain educational needs of students. Court-mandated adequacy reform does not result in the allocation of additional resources to low income districts when compared to states under court-mandated equity reform. We conclude that, contrary to school finance theory, resource distribution patterns following court-mandated equity and adequacy reforms are not statistically different. (Contains 14 footnotes and 7 tables.)

Throughout the history of publicly-funded voucher programs--enacted and proposed--the impact on taxpayers has been a recurring issue. As the nation's longest-running program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) provides an important case study. The fiscal impact of Milwaukee's program has evolved in very significant ways over its 18-year history, both in size (as the program grew) and in its allocation among different groups of taxpayers--Milwaukee property taxpayers, non-Milwaukee property taxpayers, and Wisconsin state taxpayers. This report closely examines the features of the MPCP funding formula, and its interaction with the state's regular district funding formula over the program's history to better understand the impact on taxpayers. Appendices include: (1) Review of selected previous literature; (2) Further Details in Funding Formulas; and (3) Equations Underlying Tables and Figures. (Contains 66 footnotes, 8 tables, and 9 figures.)

This report focuses on the initial design, implementation and baseline results of the five-year Longitudinal Educational Growth Study (LEGS) of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) being conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP). The LEGS will be the first evaluation of the participant effects of the MPCP using student-level data to be implemented since the initial pilot program expanded dramatically in 1995. Included this initial report are baseline descriptions of achievement tests for a representative sample of MPCP students in grades 3 through 9, as well as outcomes for comparable samples of students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Also included are a descriptive analysis of survey results of MPCP parents and a carefully matched sample of MPS parents as well as a brief description of the results of student surveys for both samples. The first section of the baseline report discusses the construction of a sample of 2,727 MPCP students in grades 3-9. The report also discusses the selection of 2,727 similar Milwaukee Public School students. For both samples the core of this longitudinal study will be to track the educational progress across the two samples through school year 2011-12. We demonstrate that the sample of MPS students constructed by the SCDP is more similar to the representative MPCP sample along demographic and initial achievement criteria than other potential comparison groups of MPS students. The baseline results indicate that MPCP students in grades 3 to 5 are currently scoring slightly lower on the math and reading portions of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations (WKCE) than their MPS counterparts. However, no such difference exists for students in grades 6 to 8. Benchmark Test results for 9th graders are also similar between the two groups. The differences in grades 3 to 5 are almost exclusively due to lower MPCP math scores that disappear in grades 6 to 8. According to our surveys of parents and students, MPCP parents had lower incomes, but higher levels of education than MPS parents. The two groups were also quite similar on how they learned of their child's school and the qualities they sought in schools. A key difference was that MPCP parents got more information from churches and valued religious instruction more than MPS parents. In both groups, over 70 percent of students were attending their parents' first choice of schools. Both MPCP and MPS parents and students showed high levels of satisfaction with their schools--in some cases higher than national averages. However, MPCP parents and students were generally more positive about their schooling experience than their counterparts in MPS. MPCP parents were less likely to report problems at school such as school violence, and had slightly higher educational expectations for their children, than comparable MPS parents. Students were also very positive about their schools, differing only slightly in their evaluation of their school climate depending on whether they were in the MPCP or MPS. Five appendices are included: (1) Description of the Study Mandate; (2) Constructing the Sample for Study; (3) Data Collection Procedures and Protocols; (4) Parental Survey Tables; and (5) Student Survey Tables. (Contains 2 figures, 6 tables and 16 footnotes.)

This phenomenological study of school consolidation is an investigation of how education policy that dictates the reorganization of schools and districts impacts educational choices, learning environments, and school culture. Although quality studies of optimal school size for promoting student achievement and cutting costs have emerged in the consolidation literature, few rigorous studies exist that investigate the affective costs and benefits of school consolidation policies. We present the findings from twenty-five interviews in four Arkansas school districts with students, teachers, and administrators who moved as a result of district consolidation, as well as those who were already in receiving schools. In addition to evidence verifying and throwing into doubt arguments in the existing literature both supporting and opposing consolidation, we report evidence of three new themes: 1) those moving schools and in receiving schools have different experiences, with those moving much more affected; 2) adults and children are affected differently, with children much more adaptable; and 3) some promising consolidation strategies to mitigate the problems of consolidation have begun to emerge. (Contains 2 tables.)

The greatest limitation in establishing causality in observational studies on the effect of financial aid is the presence of endogeneity or selection bias associated with aid status. To control for this statistical confoundedness that besets the research corpus to date, this study estimates the effect of financial aid on freshmen retention at a moderately selective, public university using propensity score-matching in multi-stage regression analyses. The correlational pattern that emerged from twenty-four logit models suggests higher-income students accrue a retention benefit from financial aid, unlike low-income students, net of first-year academic experience and type and amount of aid received. Conversely, retention of low-income freshmen is more likely due to academic performance compared to those from high-income background. Findings on the effect of aid are consistent with the economics of moral hazard and unobservable behavior. (Contains 6 footnotes, 8 tables, and 2 figures.)

Econometric cost functions have begun to appear in education adequacy cases with greater frequency. Cost functions are superficially attractive because they give the impression of objectivity, holding out the promise of scientifically estimating the cost of achieving specified levels of performance from actual data on spending. By contrast, the opinions of education stakeholders form the basis of the most common approach to estimating the cost of adequacy, the professional-judgment method. The problem is that education cost functions do not in fact tell us the cost of achieving any specified level of performance. Instead, they provide estimates of average spending for districts of given characteristics and current performance. It is a huge and unwarranted stretch to go from this interpretation of regression results to the claim that they provide estimates of the minimum cost of achieving current performance levels, and it is even more problematic to extrapolate the cost of achieving at higher levels. In this paper we review the cost function technique and provide evidence that draws into question the usefulness of the cost function approach for estimating the cost of an adequate education. (Contains 28 footnotes and 7 figures.) [Funding for this paper was provided by the Missouri Show-Me Institute.]

Recent studies have used increasingly complex methodologies to estimate the effect of peer characteristics--race, poverty, and ability--on student achievement. A paper by Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin using Texas state testing data has received particularly wide attention because it found a large negative effect of school percent black on black math achievement. This paper replicates the HKR models using state testing data from North and South Carolina and national testing data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. The replications fail to support the Texas results. In most models tested, black peer effects are small and not statistically significant, and in the few instances where effects are significant, they are much weaker than those found in Texas. Moreover, it appears that computational problems in the HKR study led to incorrect estimates for black peer effects. An appendix is included. (Contains 8 tables, 5 figures and 15 footnotes.)

Many educators choose to believe that learning to read and write is as natural as learning to listen and speak, even though scientifically based research does not support their belief. However, most educators (as well as the public) believe that most students must be taught mathematics to learn it. Moreover, there is a body of research evidence that attests to the positive relationship between students' mathematics achievement and their teachers' mathematics knowledge. Teachers who know more mathematics than their peers have students who learn more mathematics than their peers. Thus, state and federal officials, as well as the general public, are rightly concerned about the academic qualifications of those who teach mathematics (and science) in the public schools, especially since there has been a steady decline for decades in the number of mathematics and science majors or minors choosing secondary school teaching careers. There has also been a steady decline in the number of high-achieving women seeking to become elementary teachers or teachers of other subjects. About two decades ago, in an effort to ensure that their teachers had an adequate grasp of the field of their license before they began teaching, states began to require the passing of a subject matter licensure test for entry into the profession. Licensure tests--typically tests assessing the basic substantive knowledge needed for professional practice--are the major objective measure of quality control used by most professions for entry into the profession. By default, licensure tests have determined what new teachers in elementary, middle, and high school need to know in mathematics in order to teach the subject. They have also influenced how new teachers taught mathematics if they or other required tests contained pedagogical items. However, people lack a critical summary of the research on the content, value, and uses of teacher licensure tests. A small but growing number of studies have examined the content or value of teacher licensure tests and their relationship to student achievement. The purpose of this paper is to indicate what can be learned from these studies, especially those that examine the content or use of teacher tests assessing mathematics knowledge, and to highlight a number of questions that warrant research if these tests are to serve the same function that licensure tests serve other professions. Three appendices are included: (1) Topics for the Elementary, Middle, and High School Mathematics Licensure Tests in Massachusetts; (2) Pass Scores by Test Administration from May 2005-May 2006 on Three Mathematics Tests for Teacher Licensure in Massachusetts; and (3) License-Specific Evaluation Questions for Prospective Mathematics Teachers in Massachusetts. (Contains 1 footnote.)

Political theorists have long argued that the average citizen's lack of information and lack of clear policy preferences provide the rationale for public policy to be guided by experts and elites. Others counter that it is precisely the practice of deference to elites that perpetuates and even exacerbates the problem of apathetic and uninformed citizens. According to them, requiring citizens to take responsibility for political decisions and procedures motivates them to obtain the information and training necessary to become effective citizens. Here we look at school choice programs as an environment poised to provide insight into this debate. Theories of school choice suggest that parents need to and can make informed decisions that will tend to situate their students in appropriate schools. School choice, in a sense, brings elements of participatory democracy into the world of compulsory education, and thus brings the same potential benefits and problems that have long challenged democratic theorists. Increasing choices to parents may give them an incentive to raise their information levels about the schools their children attend. Akin to the information gathering of consumers in a marketplace, choice parents should have more reasons to gather more information about their schools than parents without options. Alternatively, a lack of any increase in information levels amongst school choosers would suggest that despite the increased incentives to gather information, having choices per se is not sufficient to overcome the costs of information gathering. To test whether the availability of school choice increases parent information about schools, we analyze data from the second year experimental evaluation of the Washington Scholarship Fund, a privately-funded partial-tuition voucher program. We find that presenting parents with choices does lead to higher levels of accurate school-based information on measures of important school characteristics. Specifically, parents in the school choice treatment group provided responses that more closely matched the school-reported data about school size and class size than did parents of control group members. Robustness Check Using Covariates in Ordered Logit is appended. (Contains 4 tables and 6 footnotes.)

To measure the extent to which schools are properly informing parents about NCLB school choice we sent emails to choice-eligible schools requesting information. The emails were made ambiguous in their origin and purpose so that schools could believe that they came from parents. What we found was widespread lack of cooperation. The vast majority of schools failed to reply at all. Those that did reply were mostly concerned with who we were and why we were asking. Only a tiny minority of schools provided us with the information requested. It is clear that schools are failing to properly inform parents about NCLB school choice. It is also obvious that little is being done to monitor or enforce compliance with these provisions of NCLB. (Contains 2 tables and 24 endnotes.)

Proponents of school choice argue that schools of choice build stronger parent communities. Using data from the National Household Education Surveys Program, a nationally-representitive cross-section of U.S. households, I examine the empirical evidence for this claim. To account for the difficulties in identifying causal effects in cross-sectional observational data, I estimate a model that includes the parent's unobserved propensity to both participate in school activities and to choose a public or private school other than their geographically assigned public school. (Contains 3 tables and 5 footnotes.)

School quality and grade completion by students are shown to be directly linked, leading to very different perspectives on educational policy in developing countries. Unique panel data on primary school age children in Egypt permit estimation of behavioral models of school leaving. Students perceive differences in school quality, measured as expected achievement improvements in a given school, and act on it. Specifically, holding constant the student's own ability and achievement, a student is much less likely to remain in school if attending a low quality school rather than a high quality school. This individually rationale behavior suggests that common arguments about a trade-off between quality and access to schools may misstate the real issue and lead to public investment in too little quality. Further, because of this behavioral linkage, there is an achievement bias such that common estimates of rates of return to years of school will be overstated. The paper demonstrates the analytical importance of employing output-based measures of school quality. (Contains 29 footnotes.)

Substantial uncertainty exists about the impact of school quality on the black-white achievement gap. Our results, based on both Texas Schools Project (TSP) administrative data and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS), differ noticeably from other recent analyses of the black-white achievement gap by providing strong evidence that schools have a substantial effect on the differential. The majority of the expansion of the achievement gap with age occurs between rather than within schools, and specific school and peer factors exert a significant effect on the growth in the achievement gap. Unequal distributions of inexperienced teachers and of racial concentrations in schools can explain all of the increased achievement gap between grades 3 and 8. Moreover, non-random sample attrition for school changers and much higher rates of special education classification and grade retention for blacks appears to lead to a significant understatement of the increase in the achievement gap with age within the ECLS and other data sets. (Contains 20 tables, 2 figures and 42 footnotes.) An appendix is included which develops the decomposition presented in equation (1). [Support for this work has been provided by the Packard Humanities Institute.]

The National Governors' Association is urging states to develop a standardized cohort graduation rate definition and to develop data systems with quality data that can in turn be used to produce a reliable indicator. This paper is an examination of one state's graduation rate using the cohort method. The statistics generated are compared to a panel based graduation rate, the Average Freshmen Graduation Rate (AFGR) produced by the National Center for Education Statistics and the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) published in Education Week. The cohort, panel and AFGR methods generated similar results across all years while the CPI produced a lower rate for two of four years examined. The CPI appears to be more susceptible to population fluctuations than those that use four years of data. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

Social promotion has long been the normal practice in American schools. Critics of this practice, whereby students are promoted to the next grade regardless of academic preparation, have suggested that students would benefit academically if they were made to repeat a grade. Supporters of social promotion claim that retaining students (i.e, holding them back) disrupts them socially, producing greater academic harm than promotion would. A number of states and school districts, including Florida, Texas, Chicago, and New York City, have attempted to curtail social promotion, by requiring students to demonstrate academic preparation on a standardized test before they can be promoted to the next grade. This study analyzes the effects of Florida's test-based promotion policy on student achievement two years after initial retention. It builds upon our previous evaluation of the policy in two ways. First, we examine whether the initial benefits of retention observed in the previous study continue, expand, or contract in the second year after students are retained. Second, we determine whether discrepancies between our evaluation and the evaluation of a test-based promotion policy in Chicago are caused by differences in how researchers examined the issue, or by differences in the nature of the programs. Our analysis shows that, after two years of the policy, retained Florida students made significant reading gains relative to the control group of socially promoted students. These academic benefits grew substantially from the first to the second year after retention. That is, students lacking in basic skills who are socially promoted appear to fall further and further behind over time, whereas retained students appear to be able to catch up on the skills they are lacking. Further, we find these positive results in Florida, both when we use the same research design that we used in our previous study, and when we use a design similar to that employed by the evaluation of the program in Chicago. The differences between the Chicago and Florida evaluations appear to be caused by differences in the details of the programs, and not by differences in how the programs were evaluated. (Contains 5 tables and 10 footnotes.)

In the positive theory of public bureaucracy, the prevailing view is that the structure of public agencies is designed from the top down by political superiors. Faced with bureaucrats who may disagree with them on policy and who are advantaged by private information, superiors choose rules and procedures to try to ensure that agencies do what they are supposed to do. At least some portion of bureaucratic structure, however, cannot be explained in this way. It emerges from the bottom up through collective bargaining, it is driven by the organizational power of ordinary bureaucrats rather than by their information power, and it results in work rules intended to promote their occupational interests rather than to have any specific effects on implementation or policy--although the unintended consequences for the latter may be significant. When this happens, the theory overlooks an aspect of structure that is essential for understanding the way government operates. This paper begins to explore the connections between collective bargaining, bottom-up structure, and bureaucratic behavior. The empirical focus is on the public schools, the bureaucrats are public school teachers, and the analysis shows that a very common type of contract rule--which gives senior teachers transfer rights over jobs--affects the way teachers distribute themselves across schools, and leads to a situation in which disadvantaged schools (those with high percentages of minorities) find it especially difficult to attract quality teachers. What the analysis shows, more generally, is that even very simple types of bottom-up structure can have significant effects on bureaucrats and their agencies--and the current theory needs to recognize as much. (Contains 5 tables and 23 footnotes.)

In response to the rapid rise in court cases related to the adequacy of school funding, a variety of alternative methods have been developed to provide an analytical base about the necessary expenditure on schools. These approaches have been titled to give an aura of a thoughtful and solid scientific basis: the professional judgment model, the state-of-the-art approach, the successful schools method, and the cost function approach. Unfortunately, none can provide a reliable and unbiased answer to the question "how much do adequate schools cost?" Each is highly manipulable, generally satisfying the interested party commissioning the work to be done but not meeting the fundamental tenets of scientific inquiry. This paper reviews and critiques the methodology as applied in a substantial number of states. (Contains 43 endnotes.)

The Hancock school finance case put the adequacy doctrine to its strictest test yet, to see if even a national educational leader such as Massachusetts could be found in constitutional violation. The doctrine failed this test, as the court found in favor of the defendants due to the vigorous reform program since 1993. The court credited the state's steady educational progress, closing of funding gaps between rich and poor districts, and its strong program of accountability and standards. None of this is relevant under the adequacy doctrine, which posits a constitutional funding requirement tied to specified educational outcomes. The lessons of Hancock are that courts need not accept the adequacy doctrine as the constitutional standard, but the best strategy to head off judicial intervention is to adopt Massachusetts-type reforms. (Contains 10 figures and 66 footnotes.)

In August 2004 the first ever federally funded school voucher program began in Washington, D.C. Eligible students could attend a private school of their choice in the District of Columbia. Each participant received up to $7,500 for school tuition, fees, and transportation. In addition, the D.C. Public School System (DCPS) and D.C. charter school system each received $13 million in federal grants to improve their programs. This study examines the fiscal impact of the voucher program on DCPS and the District of Columbia. The program is currently funded by the federal government and creates a net inflow of funds to both the District and DCPS. This study also examines the fiscal impact of the program under several proposed changes to the law. Those scenarios include funding the program locally, making it universally available to all D.C. public school students, and expanding capacity by including regional private schools. Our findings include the following: (1) The current program saves the city nearly $8 million, mostly because it is federally funded and includes a federal grant to public schools; (2) If federal grant subsidies were withdrawn and the program were locally funded, the city would still save $258,402 due to the greater efficiency of school choice; (3) A locally funded universal program would maximize the economic benefits of school choice, saving $3 million; and (4) The process by which both DCPS and its schools are funded is not conducive to efficiency or excellence. The voucher program currently allows the central administration to retain an even higher share of overall funding than it did previously, leaving the management of reduced expenditures predominately at the school level. A universal school choice program could help to put a larger share of resources into the hands of schools. (Contains 27 notes and 7 tables.)