Is full better than half? Examining the longitudinal effects of full‐day kindergarten attendance

Kindergarten policy varies widely both across and within states. Over the past decade, a number of states have instituted a full‐day kindergarten requirement and others are considering it as a way to increase educational achievement. Many parents also support full‐day kindergarten as a source of child care. This paper uses the Early Child Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 to evaluate the efficacy of this policy. In ordinary least squares, probit, county fixed effects, and instrumental variables models, we find that there are initial benefits for students and the mothers of students who attend full‐day kindergarten, but that these differences largely evaporate by third grade. Contrary to claims by some advocates, attending full‐day kindergarten is found to have no additional benefit for students in families with income below the poverty threshold. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

The use of either the nose or outer ear as a means of determining the postmortem period of a human corpse.

Presented in this paper are the initial results involving the use of the nose or outer ear as temperature measurement sites to determine the postmortem period of the human corpse. Simple mathematical models for both sites are developed based on cooling curves of five corpses. Analysis of errors between actual and calculated postmortem intervals suggest that in its present form, the described methods would not be suitable for use in accurately determining the time since death of human corpses.     

Homegrown Violent Extremism in Trinidad and Tobago: Local Patterns,Global Trends

The article examines the subject of homegrown violent extremism related to militant Islamism in the dual-Island Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago (T & T). It employs original research drawn from a series of semi-structured interviews and focus groups conducted between November 2015 and January 2016. Tracing the evolution of endogenous forms of radicalism and extremism the article considers how globalized-exogenous forms of militant Islamism associated with Al Qaeda and its offshoots, such as the so-called Islamic State, have impacted local patterns of violent extremism. The case study draws attention to a state and a region that have received scant attention in terrorism studies. As demonstrated by the article, this oversight is imprudent. There are a number of noteworthy findings from this case study for terrorism studies scholars: the unique historical legacy of radicalism, extremism and insurrection among T & T's Islamists; the country's markedly high levels of extremist travelers on a per capita basis and the high rate of religious converts among those travelers; the inter-linkages between criminality and political violence; and the potential threat posed by Trinidadian and Tobagonian militancy regionally.     

State,Society, and Informality in Cities of the Global South

Contemporary urbanization in the Global South merits greater attention from scholars of comparative politics. Governance, associational life, and political behavior take distinctive forms in the social and institutional environments created by rapid urbanization, particularly within informal settlements and labor markets. In this special issue, we examine forms of collective action and claims-making in these spaces. We also consider how the state assesses, maps, and responds to the demands of informal sector actors. Tackling questions of citizen and state behavior in these informal urban contexts requires innovative research strategies due to data scarcity and social and institutional complexity. Contributors to this symposium offer novel strategies for addressing these challenges, including the use of informal archives, worksite-based sampling, ethnographic survey design, enforcement process-tracing, and crowd-sourced data.     

Consent,Fraud and Family Law

In two recent cases the Supreme Court unanimously clarified that one party's fraudulent non-disclosure of material facts 'unravels' any agreement made in their absence. Because the parties' agreement is a sine qua non of a consent order, the order may be set aside, despite the desirability in family law of clean break and certainty. Victims of fraud in matrimonial proceedings should not be left in a worse position than victims in other civil proceedings. However, while consistency across different areas of civil law was important here, are there any circumstances in which inconsistency may be justified?     

A Prospective Study of Mexican American Adolescents’ Academic Success: Considering Family and Individual Factors

Mexican American youth are at greater risk of school failure than their peers. To identify factors that may contribute to academic success in this population, this study examined the prospective relationships from 5th grade to 7th grade of family (i.e., human capital [a parent with at least a high school education], residential stability, academically and occupationally positive family role models, and family structure) and individual characteristics (i.e., externalizing symptoms, bilingualism, gender, and immigrant status) to the academic performance of 749 Mexican American early adolescents (average age = 10.4 years and 48.7% were girls in 5th grade) from economically and culturally diverse families as these youth made the transition to junior high school. Results indicated that while controlling for prior academic performance, human capital and positive family role models assessed when adolescents were in 5th grade positively related to academic performance in 7th grade. Further, being a girl also was related to greater 7th grade academic success, whereas externalizing symptoms were negatively related to 7th grade academic performance. No other variables in the model were significantly and prospectively related to 7th grade academic performance. Implications for future research and interventions are discussed.     

It Takes a Coalition: The Community Impacts of Collaboration

Members of Congress frequently collaborate on policy initiatives, reaching out to colleagues in both parties to find common ground on solutions for the problems faced by their constituents. Using a novel dataset of over 30,000 “Dear Colleague” letters sent by members of the 111th Congress, I use the collaborative relationships that exist in the earliest stages of the policy process to measure the social influence of legislators. I demonstrate that districts represented by members of Congress who are better connected to their colleagues receive a greater share of federal grant money. I argue that this is because collaborative legislators are well‐positioned to be influential allies to strategic bureaucrats who want to maintain a broad base of support for their programs in Congress. Thus, devoting resources to building relationships with their colleagues is one way members of Congress can more effectively support the communities they represent.