Washington view: Federal stimulus packages: Act II

As education leaders are making plans for how to use American Rescue Plan funds, Maria Ferguson considers what lessons they might learn from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009. Like the tranches of funding being provided to schools as COVID relief, the ARRA funds were meant to help schools grapple with a national crisis, in that case the Great Recession. To receive funds, states had to commit to certain reforms that aligned with President Barack Obama’s education agenda. However, the funds were not enough to enable state, district, and school leaders to accomplish the desired goals, and the political heat generated by the Common Core State Standards didn’t help. Today’s funds come with more flexibility than in the ARRA era, but, once again, money may not be enough to accomplish what’s needed.

Deporting EU national offenders from the UK after Brexit: Moving from a system that recognises individuals, to one that sees only offenders

Deportation is a core state practice for the management and control of time-served foreign national offenders. Post-Brexit law changes mean that EU national offenders in the UK will become subject to the same deportation rules which apply to non-EU national offenders. This article argues that the law that applied to EU national offenders before Brexit, derived from the EU’s Citizens’ Rights Directive, was underpinned by a focus on the offender as an individual person. In contrast, UK deportation law that applies to third-country nationals, and to EU nationals after Brexit, sees only the label of ‘offender’. This argument is made by examining two important elements of the contrasting deportation laws: the permitted justifications for deportation and the importance of rehabilitation. On permitted justifications for deportation, the Citizens’ Rights Directive requires individualised rationales for deportation and prohibits justifications based solely on the fact of past offending. This future-orientation also encouraged UK courts to focus on the foreign national offender as an individual who is capable of rehabilitation and reform, whereas the UK’s post-Brexit rules justify deportation on the basis of the status of offender: a status that is determined by prior conviction, is hard to lose and makes limited space for considering the potential for rehabilitation.

Drawing Conclusions: Analyzing Graphic Novels Alongside American Literacy Standards

<p>Research problem: This project proposes to address how graphic novels can be applied to American Common Core State Standards, aid student achievement of those standards, and how teachers can approach teaching the graphic novel format in the classroom. It also discusses the visual attributes presented by the images of graphic novels and how those attributes might aid in visual and traditional literacy acquisition. Methodology: A qualitative approach was used to analyse a selection of graphic novel adaptations of classic texts which are used in the American High School classroom. These graphic novel adaptations were analysed using visually reinterpreted criteria and attributes from the Common Core State Standards for Reading Literature. A sample of seven graphic novels were chosen for analysis for this project. Results: The results of this study illustrate how the CCSS can be applied to the images in graphic novels and still be satisfied. The visuals in graphic novel adaptations provide concrete examples of the CCSS criteria expected to be found in text-based novels, and present a way to provide access points to difficult concepts and texts in an educational setting through a visual lens. Implications: This study provides a starting point that teachers and librarians can use to apply CCSS to graphic novels and presents one, non-exhaustive, way which teachers and librarians can apply the CCSS to the classroom. It presents a set of attributes which can be used to judge the effectiveness of a graphic novel to help students achieve CCSS. Librarians and educators may be able to use the criteria presented to build their graphic novel collections so they possess the necessary qualities to aid in student literacy acquisition. Future research on this topic should be broadened to include student testing in grade levels: 9-12, in order to ascertain if the attributes and graphic novels do promote student satisfaction of the standards and aid in visual, critical, multimodal, etc., literacy acquisition. Refining the attributes created for this study is another possibility for future research, as well as developing specific questions which link to CCSS criteria, and testing a broader sample of graphic novels which include original graphic novels, as opposed to adaptations, with the attributes presented in this study.</p>

Drawing Conclusions: Analyzing Graphic Novels Alongside American Literacy Standards

<p>Research problem: This project proposes to address how graphic novels can be applied to American Common Core State Standards, aid student achievement of those standards, and how teachers can approach teaching the graphic novel format in the classroom. It also discusses the visual attributes presented by the images of graphic novels and how those attributes might aid in visual and traditional literacy acquisition. Methodology: A qualitative approach was used to analyse a selection of graphic novel adaptations of classic texts which are used in the American High School classroom. These graphic novel adaptations were analysed using visually reinterpreted criteria and attributes from the Common Core State Standards for Reading Literature. A sample of seven graphic novels were chosen for analysis for this project. Results: The results of this study illustrate how the CCSS can be applied to the images in graphic novels and still be satisfied. The visuals in graphic novel adaptations provide concrete examples of the CCSS criteria expected to be found in text-based novels, and present a way to provide access points to difficult concepts and texts in an educational setting through a visual lens. Implications: This study provides a starting point that teachers and librarians can use to apply CCSS to graphic novels and presents one, non-exhaustive, way which teachers and librarians can apply the CCSS to the classroom. It presents a set of attributes which can be used to judge the effectiveness of a graphic novel to help students achieve CCSS. Librarians and educators may be able to use the criteria presented to build their graphic novel collections so they possess the necessary qualities to aid in student literacy acquisition. Future research on this topic should be broadened to include student testing in grade levels: 9-12, in order to ascertain if the attributes and graphic novels do promote student satisfaction of the standards and aid in visual, critical, multimodal, etc., literacy acquisition. Refining the attributes created for this study is another possibility for future research, as well as developing specific questions which link to CCSS criteria, and testing a broader sample of graphic novels which include original graphic novels, as opposed to adaptations, with the attributes presented in this study.</p>

Diagnosing Student Node Mastery: Impact of Varying Item Response Modeling Approaches

An important feature of learning maps, such as Dynamic Learning Maps and Enhanced Learning Maps, is their ability to accommodate nation-wide specifications of standards, such as the Common Core State Standards, within the map nodes along with relevant instruction. These features are especially useful for remedial instruction, given that accurate diagnosis is available. The year-end achievement tests are potentially useful in this regard. Unfortunately, the current use of total score or area sub-scores are neither sufficiently precise nor sufficiently reliable to diagnose mastery at the node level especially when students vary in their patterns of mastery. The current study examines varying approaches to using the year-end test for diagnosis. Prediction at the item level was obtained using parameters from varying item response theory (IRT) models. The results support using mixture class IRT models predicting mastery in which either items or node scores vary in difficulty for students in different latent classes. Not only did the mixture models fit better but trait score reliability was also maintained for the predictions of node mastery.

REVIEW THERMOMETRIC METHODS CONTROL COMPRESSION STATOR CORE STATE OF POWERFUL TURBOGENERATORS

The article is devoted to the analysis of thermometric methods of control and diagnosis of the state of compression of the stator core of the turbogenerator (TG), which have found the greatest application. It is shown that ensuring effective and high-quality control of powerful electric machines, especially power plant generators, today is an integral part of ensuring the reliability and trouble-free operation of their work. As a result of the analysis, it is shown that ensuring high reliability of operation of the generating equipment is practically impossible without their equipping with modern means of control capable to work in real-time. Bibl. 34, fig. 4.