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Background/Context: The study examines teachers' and administrators' perspectives on the persistent academic failure of African American male high school students. The study took place between 2003 and 2005 in a low-performing high school in Summerfield County, a Black suburban county in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States with a poverty rate below 8%, according to the 2000 United States census. At the time of the study, there were a number of initiatives across the state designed to address what was being referred to as "the minority achievement gap." The researchers--most of whom were African American faculty and graduate students at the University of Maryland--were interested in understanding what teachers and other school personnel such as counselors and administrators would have to say about why African American students, particularly males, tended to persistently underperform on standardized measures of achievement, had higher rates of suspension and expulsion from school, were overrepresented in special education, and had significantly higher dropout rates than all other subgroups in this mostly Black and middle-class suburban school district. Purpose and Research Questions: In the present article, we build on the work of scholars of critical race studies in education and scholars concerned about teachers' impact on student achievement to explore teachers' beliefs about African American students, and we discuss the possible implications for African American males in troubled schools. We used critical race ethnographic methods to collect data on the following research questions: (1) How does a low-performing high school in a low-performing school district cope with the persistent problem of African American male underachievement? (2) In particular, how do teachers and administrators understand the problem? (3) How might this impact their ability to work successfully with African American male students? Setting: The study took place in Summerfield County, a majority-Black suburban county in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The county is known as the wealthiest Black county in the nation. With over 100,000 students, its school district is one of the largest and lowest performing in the state. At the time of the study, the district was ranked 23rd out of 24 districts in the state in measures of standardized achievement. The research took place in a midsized all-Black high school in a section of the county that is contiguous with one of the poorer sections of a nearby city. The high school, with a 99% Black population of slightly fewer than 1,000 students , was one of the lowest performing high schools in the district. Participants: The main participants in the study consisted of two groups: (1) a sample of 50 teachers, administrators, and counselors, and (2) a subsample of 6 teachers in art, music, technology, social studies, and math who participated in ongoing individual interviews, a focus group, and classroom observations. Research Design: This study involved a series of focus groups, formal and informal interviews with teachers, counselors, and administrators, and 18 months of ethnographic observations in the school. Conclusions: Researchers found that school personnel overwhelmingly blamed students, their families, and their communities for the minority achievement gap. In short, the school was pervaded by a culture of defeat and hopelessness. Ongoing conversations with a smaller group of teachers committed to the success of African American male students revealed that the school was not a safe space for caring teachers who wanted to make a difference in the lives of their students.

Emerald ash borer (EAB) Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire is an invasive non-native woodboring beetle that has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees ( Fraxinus spp.) in North America. Identifying the arthropod community associated with ash trees has been highlighted as an important research requirement in understanding the wider effects of EAB., We harvested live ash trees infested with EAB at 37 sites in Maryland from 2011 to 2014 and collected a total of 2031 arthropods. All arthropods were identified to order and 94.6% were identified to family or below. The community comprised 13 orders, 60 families and 41 genera, with 28 arthropod species identified. Coleoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera accounted for 98.3% of arthropods collected., Data on changes in richness and diversity over time were fitted to second-order polynomial models, corresponding with a transition in the dominant taxa from woodboring beetles (Cerambycidae) to parasitoids (Braconidae and Eulophidae). This resulted in changes to community composition as the EAB infestation intensified., The findings of the present study provide further evidence of the diversity of arthropods at risk from EAB. Given the number of invasive non-native insects threatening North American forests, establishing what taxa are present is important for predicting the likely broader impacts of these invasions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (EAB), is an invasive beetle that has caused widespread mortality of ash trees in North America. To date, four parasitoids have been introduced in North America for EAB biological control, including the egg parasitoid Oobius agrili Zhang & Huang (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae). Monitoring EAB egg parasitism is challenging because female beetles oviposit in bark crevices and EAB eggs and O. agrili are small (<1 mm in diameter). Consequently, multiple methods have been developed to recover this parasitoid. Here we compared two methods, visual surveys and bark sifting, used to monitor establishment of O. agrili in Maryland, USA. From 2009 to 2015, a total of 56,176 O. agrili were released at 32 sites across the state. In 2016, we surveyed nine of the study sites for O. agrili establishment using both methods. We compared the amount of time spent searching for eggs separately in each method, and also analyzed the effects of years-post release, total number of parasitoids released, and median month of release, on percent parasitism of EAB eggs, and the percentage of trees per site with parasitized EAB eggs. We found that visually surveying ash trees for EAB eggs was more efficient than bark sifting; the percent parasitism observed using the two methods was similar, but visually surveying trees was more time-efficient. Both methods indicate that O. agrili can successfully establish populations in Maryland, and June may be the best month to release O. agrili in the state. Future research should investigate EAB phenology in the state to help optimize parasitoid release strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]