A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

The 'Book of Life' in the press: comparing German and Irish media discourse on human genome research

The essay compares German and Irish media coverage of human genome research in the year 2000, using qualitative and quantitative frame analysis of a print media corpus. Drawing from a media-theoretical account of science communication, the study examines four analytic dimensions: (1) the influence of global and national sources of discourse; (2) the nature of elaboration on important themes; (3) the extent of societal participation in discourse production; (4) the cultural conditions in which the discourse resonates. The analysis shows that a global discursive package, emphasizing claims of scientific achievement and medical progress, dominates media coverage in both countries. However, German coverage is more extensive and elaborate, and includes a wider range of participants. Irish coverage more often incorporates the global package without further elaboration. These finding indicate that the global package is 'localized' differently due to national patterns of interests, German participation in human genome research, traditions of media coverage, and the domestic resonance of the issue.     

A Potential Case of Linguistic Prejudice: The Expression of Identity in ‘Black and White’

The existence of a race-based stigma has been well documented among adolescents and young adults within higher educational settings; however, similar studies among students at historically Black universities are rare. Specifically, the ‘acting white’ accusation is a common, and yet seldom openly discussed phenomenon that exist within the African American community. This type of stigma is often relegated to certain characteristics (i.e., behaviors, preferences, etc.) that may defy individual and collective assumptions regarding African Americans. Utilizing nearly 200 student questionnaires, this study identified the extent to which speaking correct English as well as other specific behaviors are associated with being accused of acting white. This process incorporated the use of bivariate correlation and regression models. Findings suggest that speaking correct English as well as the existence of other factors (i.e., preferences in dress, associations, etc.) are significantly related to the accusation. This includes both experiential and nonexperimental student responses. In determining predictor variables, those who experience as well as how they respond to the accusation revealed statistical significance. The study concludes by offering areas of further research as well as suggested policy implications within higher educational settings. This includes an examination of complex and multilayered aspects of identity among minority groups within academic environments.     

Factors associated with early career progression in professional Australian Football players

This study examined the association between individual and team characteristics and the probability of being offered a second contract in professional Australian Football. Contract status was obtained from the AFL for players who were drafted in the AFL National Draft between 1999 and 2013 (n = 999). Individual player characteristics were retrieved from the AFL while variables relating to performance were accessed online via Champion Data®. A binary logistic regression examined the influence of each characteristic on the probability of a professional Australian Football player receiving a second contract. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the associated AUC were used to assess the discriminant ability of both a training (n = 938) and test data set (n = 61). The characteristics that influenced the probability of receiving a second contract included first year debut (pr 0.606), draft order (pr – 0.126), draft year (pr 0.059), games played (pr 1.848), team state (pr 0.458), rising star nomination (pr 1.553) and team ladder position (pr ?0.043) (χ² (8) = 198.28, p < 0.001). The ROC curve demonstrated an AUC of 82.4% (training) and 76.0% (test). A combination of individual and team based characteristics are associated with early career progression in professional Australian Football.     

Journal Peer Review: an Endorsement in Principle

A first study by the authors found that publications in refereed (i.e., peer‐reviewed) serials were viewed as significantly more important in tenure and promotion decisions than publications in non‐refereed serials. Neither the title of the respondent (i.e., dean, chairman, co‐ordinator, director, or head) nor graduate designation (i.e., Master's degree‐granting versus doctoral degree‐granting institutions) affected the results. A further split by geographical regions (western versus central versus eastern Canada), by institutional designation within regions, and by holders of Canadian versus foreign doctorates did not significantly alter the original findings. Thus peer‐reviewed publications continue to have higher ratings than other publications in tenure and promotion decisions. Possible reasons for these findings are presented along with implications for future research.