The irony of rigor: ‘no-excuses’ charter schools at the intersections of race and disability

Across the United States, the ‘no-excuses’ charter school movement featuring strict discipline policies and rigorous academic standards has gained popularity among schools serving poor and working-class students of color. In this article, we examine how Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities¹ negotiated and experienced these charter school practices of rigor, which disciplined, managed, and regulated students’ social differences. Drawing from a yearlong qualitative research study, we examine interviews with Black and Latinx parents who experienced conflict with charter schools and the school lawyers, along with school artifacts we gathered such as parent handbooks and website information. We found parents experienced what we refer to as the ‘irony of rigor:’ the contradictory double-movement through which students of color with disabilities desired inclusion into ‘rigorous’ charter schools which then excluded them using ‘rigor’ as a central feature of student pushout practices. We present the irony of rigor in three interrelated acts: Act I: the lure of rigor (i.e. what drew parents to charter schools); Act II: the body meets rigor (i.e. how schools disciplined and managed student differences); and Act III: the consequences of rigor (i.e., what happened to students and parents while and after experiencing rigorous practices). We contextualize the irony of rigor within the relationship between disability, race, and neoliberalism.     

The market for paintings in the Venetian Republic from Renaissance to Rococò

We study the art market in the Venetian Republic from 1550 to 1750 analyzing the determinants of the prices (adjusted for the cost of living measured by the price of wheat) of figurative paintings. Reputation of the painters, size of the paintings and other quantifiable factors affect prices as expected. Other relevant factors include the placement of the paintings (on altars, ceilings or walls), whose impact reflects differences in demand elasticities. We find evidence of the law of one price confirming price equalization between high and low demand geographical destinations and between different subjects. Finally, in a Schumpeterian perspective, we relate the temporal trend of the price of a representative painting with waves of artistic innovations, whose peacks were in the 1500s and in the 1700s with a dark Baroque age in the intermediate century.     

Neuromuscular control during stepping down in continuous gait in individuals with and without ankle instability

Abstract

Ankle sprains are a common injury and those affected are at a risk of developing chronic ankle instability (CAI). Complications of an acute sprain include increased risk of re-injury and persistent disability; however, the exact link between ankle sprains and chronic instability has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of this study was to investigate neuromuscular control (including kinematics, kinetics and EMG) during stepping down from a curb, a common yet challenging daily activity, in persons with ankle instability (n = 11), those with a history of ankle sprain without persistent instability, called ankle sprain “copers” (CPRs) (n = 9) and uninjured controls (CTLs) (n = 13). A significant group difference was noted as the CPR group demonstrated increased tibialis anterior activity in both the preparatory (pre-touchdown) and reactive (post-touchdown) phases when compared to healthy and unstable groups (P < 0.05). It follows that the CPR group also demonstrated a significantly less plantar-flexed position at touchdown than the other two groups (P < 0.05). This is a more stable position to load the ankle and this strategy differed from that used by participants with CAI and uninjured CTLs. These findings provide insight into the neuromuscular control strategies of CPRs, which may allow them to more appropriately control ankle stability following sprains.     

Statistical Models for Monolingual and Bilingual Information Retrieval

This work reviews information retrieval systems developed at ITC-irst which were evaluated through several tracks of CLEF, during the last three years. The presentation tries to follow the progress made over time in developing new statistical models first for monolingual information retrieval, then for cross-language information retrieval. Besides describing the underlying theory, performance of monolingual and bilingual information retrieval models are reported, respectively, on Italian monolingual tracks and Italian-English bilingual tracks of CLEF. Monolingual systems by ITC-irst performed consistently well in all the official evaluations, while the bilingual system ranked in CLEF 2002 just behind competitors using commercial machine translation engines. However, by experimentally comparing our statistical topic translation model against a state-of-the-art commercial system, no statistically significant difference in retrieval performance could be measured on a larger set of queries.     

A theoretical framework for productive education

having held various posts specializing in educational administration in different private institutions in California. Author of several articles dealing with the issue of productive work combined with academic study.     

How knowledge brokers emerge and evolve: The role of actors’ behaviour

This article investigates how actors positioned in a network can evolve as knowledge brokers, as well as how they act to develop new brokerage roles. Our focus is on actor's behaviour while previous studies concentrate more on the structural and positional determinants of brokerage roles. This research combines brokerage roles with a broker's functions in an exploratory study of a small Italian comics publishing house. Over 20 years, the firm played different brokerage roles involving different actors at national and international levels. We find that if all brokerage roles involve transcoding functions, the ability to overcome transcoding obstacles, through the use of shared imprinting with receiving partners, could be useful for developing any brokerage role. Moreover, heterogeneity in the competences and industry experience of hired members of the management team could support the development of new brokerage roles, with differentiated effects on various brokers’ functions. If a brokerage role involves new actors with no previous allegiance, the status of the broker, signalled through network relations, can have significant impacts by indirectly communicating its superior knowledge. The proposed, emerging theoretical framework has direct implications for studies of knowledge brokers and innovation in social networks, as well as for entrepreneurship research.     

Young refugees’ and asylum seekers’ career choices: a qualitative investigation

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - A major challenge for refugees and asylum seekers is social and professional integration. Using constructivist and capability...