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.     

国际学术出版开放式访问(OA):Ⅰ.实践与前沿问题研究进展

综述当前国际学术出版界开放式访问(Open Access,OA)运动实践和理论研究的部分热点问题.主要讨论OA期刊和OA知识库的概念、实施方式,提高OA文献的可见性和可获取性的若干措施,OA带来的学术文献引用影响力的提高和一些发展趋势.     

Notes and News

For reasons of expediency, Colleges of Education (engaged in initial teacher education outside the university sector) introduced a category of Assistant Lecturer in the 1960s. These posts were created to strengthen the subject studies base within the colleges. They attracted a somewhat modest salary, and young, recent graduates tended to be appointed to them. In this paper, the authors consider the extent to which these posts were a form of preparation for teaching, with some features in common with current ‘workplace’ routes to Qualified Teacher Status in England. The approach is autobiographical, recording and reflecting on the authors’ own experience as Assistant Lecturers in Mathematics in two Colleges of Education in the 1960s and early 1970s.     

The rhetoric of atonement

In this essay, we outline the defining characteristics of the rhetoric of atonement and argue that it as an identifiable sub‐genre of apologia. In building this argument, we examine the purposive and situational constraints that lead to atonement and argue that atonement rhetoric can be defined based on five characteristics. We use an analysis of several instances in which President Clinton relied upon atonement to illustrate the power and function of the sub‐genre.     

A Covenant‐affirming jeremiad: The post‐presidential ideological appeals of Ronald Wilson Reagan

In his post‐presidential discourse, Ronald Reagan did not assume a typical jeremiadic posture, warning that America was straying from conservative dogma. Instead, he warned of other dangers, some of which required alteration in conservatism. He combined those warnings with an optimistic celebration of American exceptionalism. In that way, they served a function similar to a traditional jeremiad, but from an optimistic perspective and without any sense that the nation was straying from its covenant. We coin the term, Covenant‐affirming Jeremiad, to describe the rhetorical characteristic of these addresses.     

The passive style of rhetorical crisis management: A case study of the superfund controversy

While there is a large literature that explains the rhetorical strategies Ronald Reagan used to generate support, there has not been significant analysis of the strategies he used to avoid losing that support in the various crises that threatened his administration. This case study of Reagan's handling of the Superfund controversy reveals that Reagan relied on what Murray Edelman characterizes as the “passive style.” In the passive style, politicians reaffirm personal values, displace blame on subordinates, and use symbolic action to avoid all responsibility. Reagan's successful reliance on the passive style in the Superfund controversy suggests implications for understanding his failure to deal with the Iran‐Contra affair adequately.