Confronting the “Acid Test”: Educators’ Perspectives on Expanding Access to Advanced Placement at a Diverse Florida High School

This study examines educators’ perspectives on accountability mandates designed to expand access to the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) classes to traditionally underserved students at a diverse suburban high school in Florida, Palm Crest High School. Consistent with Elmore (1979), district and site-based administrators focused on the “forward mapping,” of implementation and identified teacher “gatekeeping” as well as parental expectations as chief barriers to opening up AP enrollment. Teachers, however, found implementation problematic—accountability levers had contradictory provisions and overall neglect nonacademic barriers to college access for low-income African American and Hispanic students. The current value-added model of incorporating student exam performance as a key component of teacher evaluations complicates the advocacy associated with increasing low-SES students’ participation in AP classes as educators strive to maintain high pass rates amid open-enrollment policies. We argue for increased support systems to enhance students’ preparedness for taking college-level courses while in high school, leading to increased college attendance and degree completion.     

Young Voter Perceptions of Political Satire as Persuasion: A Focus on Perceived Influence,Persuasive Intent,and Message Strength

This study focuses on the perceived effectiveness of political satire. A pair of experimental studies using original satirical works offer findings for audience perceptions regarding two types of satire, juvenalian and horatian, compared to traditional opinion-editorial argumentation. The two studies produced replicable findings that indicate clear perceptions of persuasive intent associated with both types of satire, and horatian satire ranking lower than traditional opinion-editorials in perceived message strength and perceived influence on self.     

Understanding the 9/11 Commission archive: control, access, and the politics of manipulation

This article examines a range of issues surrounding the archive developed by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known and the ??9/11 Commission.?? We provide a partial biography of the 9/11 Commission??s archival record as it was being assembled. This contemporaneous analysis of the politics surrounding this archive during its formative stage lends insights into the political and power dynamics shaping this archive. We review how the public record and public knowledge of 9/11 were shaped by the processes surrounding the accretion of this archive by charting records access and control controversies before, during, and years after the Commission submitted its final report. Despite claims from all sides that what was needed was an unfiltered, non-partisan and accurate review of what went wrong and how it went wrong, the story we outline underscores that the composition, accumulation, access to, and control of the archival record surrounding 9/11 was shaped as much by political concerns over blame and responsibility (and evading it) as it was by good faith efforts to get to the heart of the matter. In the charged atmospherics of modern US politics, custodial power over the record and access to it was used to prevent political embarrassment and to submerge??as opposed to surface??basic facts. Those with powers over access were not willing to risk having the documentary record either accessed or analyzed in a truly independent manner. This does not bode well, and in fact represents a deeper structural reality that will confound similar future governmental investigations that require access from those it is investigating. There is no reason to doubt that, absent a seismic shift in how the record is maintained and controlled, the archive will continue to be used as a means to shape and interfere with legitimate inquiries.     

Students Who Demonstrate Strong Talent and Interest in STEM Are Initially Attracted to STEM through Extracurricular Experiences

What early experiences attract students to pursue an education and career in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? Does hands-on research influence them to persevere and complete a major course of academic study in STEM? We evaluated survey responses from 149 high school and undergraduate students who gained hands-on research experience in the 2007–2013 Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Programs (ASSIP) at George Mason University. Participants demonstrated their strong interest in STEM by volunteering to participate in ASSIP and completing 300 h of summer research. The survey queried extracurricular experiences, classroom factors, and hands-on projects that first cultivated students’ interest in the STEM fields, and separately evaluated experiences that sustained their interest in pursuing a STEM degree. The majority of students (65.5%, p < 0.0001) reported extracurricular encounters, such as the influence of a relative or family member and childhood experiences, as the most significant factors that initially ignited their interest in STEM, while hands-on lab work was stated as sustaining their interest in STEM (92.6%). Based on these findings collected from a cohort of students who demonstrated a strong talent and interest in STEM, community-based programs that create awareness about STEM for both children and their family members may be key components for igniting long-term academic interest in STEM.     

Television Use and Social Capital: Testing Putnam's Time Displacement Hypothesis

Robert Putnam (1995a, 19956) charged that television is the driving force behind the decline in social capital in America. He argued that television viewing has privatized our leisure time, thus inhibiting participation outside the home. However, Putnam's time displacement hypothesis never has been tested. We empirically examined the extent to which television reduces social capital through time displacement. Analyses of data from a Midwestern city (N = 416) did not support the time displacement hypothesis; time spent with television did not affect civic engagement through perceptions of time pressure. There was only a direct negative impact of television viewing time on civic engagement. Time spent reading newspapers enhanced engagement. Moreover, this relation worked indirectly through time pressures-the more time spent with newspapers, the less time pressures one perceived.     

The West Wing and Depictions of the American Presidency: Expanding the Domains of Framing in Political Communication

This study uses framing to assess how the office of the President of the United States is depicted on NBC's The West Wing. This work represents a theoretical and empirical domain extension of framing in political communication, an area of study dominated by analyses of news content. Three distinct presidential depictions are analyzed: chief executive, political candidate, and private citizen. This quantitative content analysis of the 2001–2002 The West Wing television season addresses the frequency with which the fictional president performs these three roles and posits several hypotheses concerning the relative presentation of personality characteristics across contexts. All three roles are represented with substantive frequency, with the chief executive role dominating. Principled character traits are evident more often when the fictional President Bartlet is acting as chief executive than as a private citizen. Conversely, Bartlet presents more engaging personality traits when acting as a private citizen than as either chief executive or political candidate. Implications for these finding are outlined and future lines of research are detailed.     

Construct Validity of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE)

The use of established scales in research is beneficial for benchmarking, but problematic when local results are invalid, both for local administrators and for the data pool in which the data become part. Administrators at one southeastern community college, as part of a statewide system's effort to exceed a given threshold on the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), focused on the importance of local validation of an instrument assumed to be valid.     

Getting Ready for School: Piloting Universal Prekindergarten in an Urban County

Investments in high-quality early care and education have been shown to reap societal benefits across the lives of the children served. A key intervention point is in the lives of 3- to 5-year olds during the period prior to entering kindergarten. Many jurisdictions have developed broad-based prekindergarten initiatives. This study reports on a pilot universal prekindergarten program in 24 sites in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Child assessment data were collected on 204 children from early care classrooms for 3- to 5-year olds across 3 time points by trained observers using 2 standardized instruments. Changes in achievement scores were shown to be significantly predicted by race, parental education level, and whether the family spoke English as a second language, with largest gains shown among children who were most behind at baseline. The findings serve to illuminate the developmental trajectory of children before kindergarten and how data can be used to inform practice and policy.     

The application of networks in basic computer science and information science research

A list of important criteria for research projects in computer network technology and the application of networking to basic computer and information science research is presented. Ten specific research areas deserving of support are identified. Brief snapshots of each of these research areas are given.