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While state policymakers are ultimately responsible for public schools statewide, their influence over local school districts has always been incomplete at best. State chiefs, the ostensible leaders of state education agencies, have limited powers and local school boards ultimately control most of the money and staff. As a result, when state leaders seek change in local school systems--whether to address financial mismanagement, corruption, or weak outcomes for students--they are often stymied by factors outside of their control. State takeovers of local school districts emerged as one strategy for overcoming these limitations on state authority. State takeovers suspend the powers of local boards and put in place a state-appointed superintendent. They aim to provide states a direct means for influencing the oversight and operation of local schools that does not hinge on gaining local leaders' cooperation. While state takeovers can be powerful, they are never permanent. To understand how state leaders have sought to sustain the hard-won improvements they gained through state takeovers, the authors interviewed a total of 10 current and former senior state officials who had overseen state takeovers or served as state-appointed superintendents. The interviews provide key lessons for states seeking to make improvements in districts and schools navigating a transition to local control, and emphasize the need to focus on sustainability well before state interventions begin. The authors summarize the main themes that emerged from their interviews in three sections: (1) State takeover is an important but limited tool; (2) States must build a local political base for takeover-initiated reforms; and (3) Exit strategies must set the conditions for long-term success.

Since 2011 DC School Reform Now (DCSRN) has worked to help families in the city's most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods find success with school choice and enroll in high-quality schools. DCSRN's parent advocates focus on understanding the families they serve and the barriers they must overcome--an approach that requires flexible, one-on-one support. They might help a family understand which high schools their daughter is eligible to attend, overcome a language barrier with school staff, or assist with finding the paperwork required to complete enrollment. No issue is too large or too small for these advocates. Organizations like DCSRN are an essential part of the educational ecosystem in a growing number of cities. Similar parent-engagement or "navigator" organizations have emerged in cities such as Oakland, Houston, and Boston. But these organizations rarely have the resources to reach all of the families who might benefit from their services. And we still need to understand how different models for providing these services vary in their effectiveness. These are systemic issues that deserve attention.

The current debate about charter schools' effects on school district finances hinges on enrollment loss. Critics claim that the surge in charter enrollment in California since 2000 has driven enrollment loss statewide--cutting districts' income more than their costs, especially in cities where many students attend charter schools. State officials are under pressure to cap the growth of charter schools as a way of stabilizing district enrollments, and thus finances. This brief examines state and district data on district and charter school enrollment trends over the past 10 years. We pay particular attention to Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego, where claims of harm done by charter enrollment growth have been made most often. The brief makes three points: (1) Surges and declines in K-12 enrollment have long been a fact of life in California districts. Statewide numbers of school-age children are currently falling and will continue to do so; (2) The growth of charter schools cannot account for all of the enrollment loss experienced by urban school districts; and (3) Charter school enrollment is not currently a major factor in continued district enrollment decline. [To view "Do Charter Schools Cause Fiscal Distress in School Districts?" see ED595169 and "Do the Costs of California Charter Schools Outweigh the Benefits?" see ED595193.]

Much attention has been focused on the costs charter school enrollment imposes on school districts. Getting an honest answer to this question is important for school districts so that they may adjust their expenditures appropriately. However, as Ladd and Singleton, the authors of a North Carolina study attempting to quantify those costs point out, a broader analysis of the societal benefits and costs associated with charter school policy also is needed to help policymakers assess the value of the policy and whether it should be continued or adjusted. This brief offers a discussion of the types of benefit and cost issues that should be considered and points to evidence to inform those considerations. First we consider potential benefits, then costs, and finally how we might compare the two. It is not meant to be a definitive analysis, but rather a way to bring nuanced discussion and debate to politically laden issues. We argue that, on face, the public policy benefits of charter schooling in California are more evident than the costs. However, more data and benefit-cost analysis are needed to make a clear determination. [To view "Charter Schools and District Enrollment Loss," see ED595191 and "Do Charter Schools Cause Fiscal Distress in School Districts?" see ED595169.]

The claim that charter schools cause financial harm to school districts is a major element in the debate around charter schools in California. Critics allege that enrollment in charter schools drains resources from school districts, forcing them to make cuts to staff and services and eventually contributing to fiscal distress. The charge that enrollment loss causes harm to students instead of inspiring school districts to improve is a critical question and requires good evidence to answer. This brief examines the relationship between charter school enrollment and fiscal distress in California. We find no evidence that charter school enrollments increase the likelihood of school districts entering fiscal distress. Prior research suggests a variety of factors contribute to fiscal distress and as a result, state policymakers are unlikely to find resolution to the problem in the charter sector. [For "Charter Schools and District Enrollment Loss," see ED595191. For "Do the Costs of California Charter Schools Outweigh the Benefits?" see ED595193.]

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Louisiana's Recovery School District took over responsibility for most of New Orleans' public schools. In 2018 the state takeover came to an end. For the first time since Katrina, nearly all of the city's public schools are in the hands of the Orleans Parish School Board. We set out to understand how the return to local control has shaped the trajectory of education in the city, with an eye toward implications for other states and localities facing similar transitions. We conducted two rounds of interviews, in 2016 and 2018, with local board members, current and former district staff, charter school leaders and board members, community-based advocates, and state officials. Our interviews focused on understanding how the shift to local control has shaped the role of key government officials and their partners in the nonprofit sector, how local leaders are responding to the demands generated by local control, and what concerns people have about the future of education in New Orleans. State and local leaders took numerous steps to ensure that a return to local control did not spell an end to the conditions enabling the academic improvements that occurred under state control. We find, in large part, these preparations had their intended effects. For now, the reforms are insulated from the opposition by unique state legislation designed to protect them, as well as from local leaders who have a stake in sustaining them. But continued progress in New Orleans will hinge upon whether local leaders can assemble support for continued action on low performance and address the emerging challenges facing students, families, and schools. This won't be easy. The board faces an increasingly raucous opposition, and local leaders have yet to aggressively guide the system of schools in new, productive directions. The wholesale changes that occurred in New Orleans likely could not have happened without state intervention. For other localities worried about sustaining systemic transformations after takeovers end, New Orleans offers key lessons in how proactive policymaking can create a bulwark that safeguards school autonomy and other key features of the reforms and underscores the value of deliberate transfers of knowledge and talent.

For nearly two decades teachers unions and charter schools have defined the major points of conflict over school reform, forming an "us vs. them" narrative that pits one against the other. By design, charter schools are free from many state and district regulations--including collective bargaining agreements. And when students enroll in charter schools, money from traditional public school districts follows, reducing the resources available in the bargaining process. As a result, many union leaders view rapid growth in charter schools as a threat to their very existence--depriving them of members and weakening the power of collective bargaining. Previous research was unable to inform why teachers in charter schools choose to unionize, whether and how contracts evolve over time in ways that mimic or differ from those that exist in traditional school districts, and if unionization and bargaining address teachers' stated motivations and priorities. In this report, the authors set out to understand trends in charter school unionization, document teachers' motivations for unionization, assess whether and how collective bargaining agreements in charter schools differ from those in traditional school districts, and explore variation in contracts over time. They tracked changes in the rate of unionization in charter schools across the nation, interviewed 21 teachers and administrators involved in recent negotiations across 9 cities with semi-structured interview protocols, and analyzed collective bargaining agreements in unionized charter schools. They learned: (1) Nationally, charter schools are no more likely to be unionized today than they were a decade ago, but unionization is gaining traction in some localities; (2) Breakdowns in trust between administrators and teachers, and teachers' desire for influence, spark unionization efforts, but dissatisfaction with work conditions can fuel them; (3) Collective bargaining agreements in charter schools are similar to district contracts, but they are more likely to preserve key flexibilities; (4) Unionization can enhance teachers' sense of efficacy in working with administrators, but it rarely resolves all of the issues underlying bargaining campaigns; and (5) Administrators and unions can be more effective in their work with teachers.

The pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has affected countries all across the world, heavily burdening the medical infrastructure with the growing number of patients affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). With ventilators in limited supply, this public health emergency highlights the need for safe, fast, reliable, and economical alternatives to high-end commercial devices and has prompted the development of easy-to-use and mass-producible ventilators. Here, we detail the design of the HDvent Emergency Ventilator System. The device performs ventilation through mechanical compression of manual resuscitators and includes control electronics, flow and pressure sensors, and an external data visualization and monitoring unit. We demonstrate its suitability for open loop, pressure- and volume-controlled ventilation. The system has not undergone clinical testing and has not been approved for use as a medical device. The project documentation needed to reproduce the prototype is freely available and will contribute to the development of open source ventilation systems., Comment: All source files available at https://github.com/HDventilator/

We report measurements on the H$^{+}$ + H$^{+}$ fragmentation channel following direct single-photon double ionization of neutral NH$_{3}$ at 61.5 eV, where the two photoelectrons and two protons are measured in coincidence using 3-D momentum imaging. We identify four dication electronic states that contribute to H$^{+}$ + H$^{+}$ dissociation, based on our multireference configuration-interaction calculations of the dication potential energy surfaces. The extracted branching ratios between these four dication electronic states are presented. Of the four dication electronic states, three dissociate in a concerted process, while the fourth undergoes a sequential fragmentation mechanism. We find evidence that the neutral NH fragment or intermediate NH$^+$ ion is markedly ro-vibrationally excited. We also identify differences in the relative emission angle between the two photoelectrons as a function of their energy sharing for the four different dication states, which bare some similarities to previous observations made on atomic targets., Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables

We present state-selective measurements on the NH$_2^{+}$ + H$^{+}$ and NH$^{+}$ + H$^{+}$ + H dissociation channels following single-photon double ionization at 61.5 eV of neutral NH$_{3}$, where the two photoelectrons and two cations are measured in coincidence using 3-D momentum imaging. Three dication electronic states are identified to contribute to the NH$_2^{+}$ + H$^{+}$ dissociation channel, where the excitation in one of the three states undergoes intersystem crossing prior to dissociation, producing a cold NH$_2^+$ fragment. In contrast, the other two states directly dissociate, producing a ro-vibrationally excited NH$_2^+$ fragment with roughly 1 eV of internal energy. The NH$^{+}$ + H$^{+}$ + H channel is fed by direct dissociation from three intermediate dication states, one of which is shared with the NH$_2^{+}$ + H$^{+}$ channel. We find evidence of autoionization contributing to each of the double ionization channels. The distributions of the relative emission angle between the two photoelectrons, as well as the relative angle between the recoil axis of the molecular breakup and the polarization vector of the ionizing field, are also presented to provide insight on both the photoionization and photodissociation mechanisms for the different dication states., Comment: 18 pages, 21 figures, 3 tables

We study the performance of efficient quantum state tomography methods based on neural network quantum states using measured data from a two-photon experiment. Machine learning inspired variational methods provide a promising route towards scalable state characterization for quantum simulators. While the power of these methods has been demonstrated on synthetic data, applications to real experimental data remain scarce. We benchmark and compare several such approaches by applying them to measured data from an experiment producing two-qubit entangled states. We find that in the presence of experimental imperfections and noise, confining the variational manifold to physical states, i.e. to positive semi-definite density matrices, greatly improves the quality of the reconstructed states but renders the learning procedure more demanding. Including additional, possibly unjustified, constraints, such as assuming pure states, facilitates learning, but also biases the estimator., Comment: v3: published version

The Pauli exclusion principle is a fundamental law underpinning the structure of matter. Due to their anti-symmetric wave function, no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. Here, we report on the direct observation of the Pauli principle in a continuous system of up to six particles in the ground state of a two-dimensional harmonic oscillator. To this end, we sample the full many-body wavefunction by applying a single atom resolved imaging scheme in momentum space. We find so-called Pauli crystals as a manifestation of higher order correlations. In contrast to true crystalline phases, these unique high-order density correlations emerge even without any interactions present. Our work lays the foundation for future studies of correlations in strongly interacting systems of many fermions., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures

Many-body physics describes phenomena which cannot be understood looking at a systems' constituents alone. Striking manifestations are broken symmetry, phase transitions, and collective excitations. Understanding how such collective behaviour emerges when assembling a system from individual particles has been a vision in atomic, nuclear, and solid-state physics for decades. Here, we observe the few-body precursor of a quantum phase transition from a normal to a superfluid phase. The transition is signalled by the softening of the mode associated with amplitude vibrations of the order parameter, commonly referred to as a Higgs mode. We achieve exquisite control over ultracold fermions confined to two-dimensional harmonic potentials and prepare closed-shell configurations of 2, 6 and 12 fermionic atoms in the ground state with high fidelity. Spectroscopy is then performed on our mesoscopic system while tuning the pair energy from zero to being larger than the shell spacing. Using full atom counting statistics, we find the lowest resonance to consist of coherently excited pairs only. The distinct non-monotonic interaction dependence of this many-body excitation as well as comparison with numerical calculations allows us to identify it as the precursor of the Higgs mode. Our atomic simulator opens new pathways to systematically unravel the emergence of collective phenomena and the thermodynamic limit particle by particle., Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures

We explore the relationship between symmetrisation and entanglement through measurements on few-particle systems in a multi-well potential. In particular, considering two or three trapped atoms, we measure and distinguish correlations arising from two different physical origins: antisymmetrisation of the fermionic wavefunction and interaction between particles. We quantify this through the entanglement negativity of states, and the introduction of an antisymmetric negativity, which allows us to understand the role that symmetrisation plays in the measured entanglement properties. We apply this concept both to pure theoretical states and to experimentally reconstructed density matrices of two or three mobile particles in an array of optical tweezers.

In an economy driven by technological innovation and a complex social landscape, schools can no longer count on traditional academic preparation to set children up for success later in life. The types of skills that will enable students to succeed in the 21st century--such as the ability to solve complex problems, transfer knowledge to new domains, and communicate with diverse audiences--are distinct from those routinely offered in K-12 education. To remedy these gaps, educators, school districts, and philanthropists have looked to a set of approaches that go by a variety of names (e.g., deeper learning, personalized learning, student-centered learning) but rest on a set of instructional approaches that allow students to express more agency over their learning and create space to apply what they learn to solve real-world problems. These 21st Century learning approaches are no longer only accessible to the most privileged students. This paper offers a first look at whether contemporary investments in 21st century learning are likely to pay dividends to students who have historically not benefited from these experiences, including students from low-income families and students entering school who have fallen behind. Drawing on a national study of schools implementing these practices and a deep look at two states (Colorado and Connecticut), the authors consider how academically disadvantaged students experience these learning environments and what factors contribute to their success with these approaches. They find that while 21st century learning is embraced by a surprisingly high number of schools serving historically underserved students, the uptake of these approaches does not always translate into better learning opportunities for those students. [This paper is part of a multiyear, multimethod study of 39 schools that participated in the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) Regional Funds for Breakthrough Schools initiative and the Next Generation Systems Initiative (NGSI), both supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.]

This brief provides an overview of five strategies used for persistently underperforming schools that demand significant changes to how schools are organized. It draws upon published research, as well as the experiences of cities pursuing different types of improvement strategies. None of the five strategies offer a surefire way to improve schools, but any of them is more likely to succeed when operating under the right circumstances. Pursuing multiple strategies, making the most of the capacities that exist across both the district and charter sectors, and regularly taking stock of what is working increase the odds that cities will find success. Three of the five strategies are designed to restructure schools through new governance and staffing arrangements. These include: (1) school reconstitution; (2) innovation zones; and (3) charter conversion. Two other strategies are designed to help students enroll in better schools: (1) school closure based on persistent low performance; and (2) requests for proposals for new schools. The brief concludes with questions that leaders can use to guide and assess implementation.

Many who attempt district-charter collaboration point to "politics" as a constraint that affects their work, but little is understood about why some collaborations enjoy broad support while others become mired in conflict. Drawing upon CRPE's multiyear study of district-charter collaborations in dozens of cities as well as research on other cross-sector initiatives, this report explores how politics shapes collaboration and offers strategies to help education leaders improve their chances of success. The report finds: (1) District-charter collaborations are inherently political. These efforts can succeed only if both sides see it to their advantage to work together; (2) Not all cities are well poised politically for collaboration. Declining enrollment, a weak charter sector, and unfavorable community politics can undermine district-charter work on common goals and (3) Mutual wins and shared values may offer a sweet spot where collaboration can take root. District-charter collaborations have been more likely to find success when the sectors found it in their interests to work together, not because either made a one-sided sacrifice.

Local superintendents must do an important job while equipped with, at best, modest authority. Superintendents are ultimately responsible for all the schools in their district, and they at least nominally supervise everything that happens in those schools. Yet superintendents cannot count on obedience or even support from the people who work for them, given that both educators and administrators possess wide discretion in implementation. This paper is written to help current and potential superintendents see the full scope of their role and how leaders from various backgrounds can approach it. In a series of studies beginning in the late 1980s, the authors have interviewed superintendents about their successes and failures in building civic support for needed initiatives. The paper draws examples from this earlier work, as well as from Center on Reinventing Public Education's (CRPE's) ongoing tracking of developments in reform-driven cities and the experiences of other public officials whose ability to overcome the structural limitations of their roles offer important lessons for district leadership. Most superintendents, current and aspiring, understand the importance of getting along with other power centers in the school system and the community at large. This paper goes further by attempting to show how superintendents can build coalitions and thereby exercise real power to accomplish things that conventional wisdom would say are beyond them.

We propose a method to directly measure the complex phase distribution, superfluid density and velocity field in an ultracold atomic superfluid. The method consists of mapping the momentum distribution of the gas to real space using matterwave focusing, and manipulating the amplitude and phase by means of tailor made optical potentials. This makes it possible to find analogues of well-known techniques in optical microscopy such as Zernike phase contrast imaging, dark field imaging and schlieren imaging. Applying these ideas directly at the level of the macroscopic wavefunction of the superfluid will allow visualization of interesting effects such as phase fluctuations and topological defects, and enable measurements of transport properties such as vorticity.

We present a novel system providing summaries for Computer Science publications. Through a qualitative user study, we identified the most valuable scenarios for discovery, exploration and understanding of scientific documents. Based on these findings, we built a system that retrieves and summarizes scientific documents for a given information need, either in form of a free-text query or by choosing categorized values such as scientific tasks, datasets and more. Our system ingested 270,000 papers, and its summarization module aims to generate concise yet detailed summaries. We validated our approach with human experts., Comment: Accepted to EMNLP 2019

While the fast-paced inception of novel tasks and new datasets helps foster active research in a community towards interesting directions, keeping track of the abundance of research activity in different areas on different datasets is likely to become increasingly difficult. The community could greatly benefit from an automatic system able to summarize scientific results, e.g., in the form of a leaderboard. In this paper we build two datasets and develop a framework (TDMS-IE) aimed at automatically extracting task, dataset, metric and score from NLP papers, towards the automatic construction of leaderboards. Experiments show that our model outperforms several baselines by a large margin. Our model is a first step towards automatic leaderboard construction, e.g., in the NLP domain., Comment: ACL 2019

Washington, D.C., has looked to school choice as one way to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged students. School choice attempts to "level the playing field" between students of different backgrounds by making it possible for all families to have access to a city's high-quality public schools--whether students live near these schools or not. But the process of school choice requires substantial investments of time and resources, something not all families are able to do. As a result, the option of school choice, on its own, does not resolve gaps in access to high-quality schools. DC School Reform Now (DCSRN) launched the High Quality Schools Campaign (HQSC) as an effort to address the challenge of ensuring that school choice works for all families in Washington, D.C. This initiative connects families in the city's most underserved regions--where fewer high-quality schools are available--with "parent advocates" who guide families through the process of choosing a school, from learning about schools (with an emphasis on schools receiving high performance ratings) to completing the application to enrolling their child in school for the fall. The goal of the HQSC is to dramatically increase the number of families who actively take advantage of school choice and enroll in the city's top-rated schools (both district and charter). This brief is the first in a multiyear series that examines the HQSC and offers lessons for other districts and organizations interested in offering better support for families navigating the process of choosing a school. The aims of this evaluation are: (1) inform DCSRN's ongoing work to expand the HQSC to serve more families and expand their impact; and (2) document best practices that can be used by other school districts and community-based organizations to improve families' access to high-quality schools.

In 2014, the Springfield Public School district in Massachusetts had tried just about every strategy in the turnaround playbook to improve a set of struggling middle schools, but these efforts failed to generate the desired improvement. In 2015, drawing inspiration from national efforts to infuse schools with enhanced autonomy and accountability, the district voluntarily ceded operational control of six middle school campuses to the newly formed Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP), an independent nonprofit charged with overseeing the turnaround effort. SEZP offers principals freedom from district rules in exchange for increased accountability for results. These changes, along with a new collective bargaining agreement for teachers working in SEZP and new supports for students and principals, represent a marked departure from Springfield's previous efforts. This case study profiles SEZP, comparing and contrasting it with conventional turnaround strategies such as district-led turnaround, reconstitution, chartering, and state-initiated turnaround. Key findings include: (1) SEZP brought together a package of reforms aimed at generating improvement and a new governance model that gives schools much greater freedom to change without needing to ask permission or fear regulatory second-guessing; (2) SEZP offers a "middle way" between other school turnaround strategies: providing more local participation and less controversy compared to either state takeovers or chartering, and committing more deeply to school autonomy, tailored support, and choice of talent compared to conventional district-led turnarounds; and (3) Thus far, SEZP has seen less controversy and more goodwill than many other turnaround efforts, but whether the strategy results in improved student outcomes remains to be seen.

State chiefs have new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act, but their formal powers are still limited. Despite these constraints, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) analysis finds that chiefs can make a difference by wielding their powers strategically, to build coalitions and persuade others. While turnover in the field is high, with 70% of current chiefs on the job less than two years, newcomers are taking their seats at a time of opportunity. Drawing on interviews with current and former state chiefs, authors Hill and Jochim identify chiefs' opportunities for influence in light of the ideas in Richard E. Neustadt's 1960 book, "Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership." The analysis and concrete examples are intended to help current and aspiring chiefs understand how to use their authorities as the basis of bargaining, build their professional reputation, and approach decision-making. Key takeaways include: (1) Chiefs should fully understand their own advantages and think hard about how to bargain effectively with others in the state capital and in school districts; (2) Developing new coalitions takes time and sustained attention. By pulling together broader coalitions than normally control education policy, chiefs can expand the horizons of possibility; (3) To build a personal reputation for effectiveness, a chief must have and be known to have strong and specific goals to build something new or to change the status quo--and communicate them to those affected or those who may serve as a source of support; and (4) In order to maximize power, chiefs must approach every decision as an opportunity to strengthen their future effectiveness. This paper is part of a series of publications from CRPE's "Linking State and Local School Improvement" initiative, meant to inform state education leaders, policymakers, and advocacy groups about how to best support promising local school improvement efforts.