Using Administrative Data to Monitor Racial/Ethnic Disparities and Disproportionality Within Child Welfare Agencies: Process and Preliminary Outcomes

Child welfare administrative data are increasingly used to identify racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities at various levels of aggregation. However, child welfare agencies typically face challenges in harnessing administrative data to examine racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities at meaningful levels of analysis due to limited resources and/or tools for reporting. This article describes the process through which a multi-state workgroup designed and developed management reports to monitor racial/ethnic disparities and disproportionality using a web-based child welfare administrative data reporting system. The article provides an overview of the process, outcome, and challenges of the group’s work with the goal of offering a starting point for discussion to others who may be seeking to monitor racial/ethnic disparities and disproportionality, regardless of their reporting system.     

Who’s Your Daddy?

This paper provides a brief explanation and illustration of the phenomenon of semiotics. It then describes the conceptual tools of semiotics and how lawyers can use semiotics in law to create compelling arguments. Last, the paper applies the tools of semiotics to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court case Ferguson v. McKiernan, 940 A.2d 1236 (Pa. 2008), to reveal the shift in social context that made the lines of legal reasoning behind the outcome appear “self-evident.”     

Does Urban Public Housing Diminish the Social Capital and Labor Force Activity of Its Tenants?

This paper investigates the effect of urban public housing on the social capital and labor force activity of its tenants using cross‐sectional survey data from the Multi‐City Study of Urban Inequality (MSCUI). A structural equation model of the hypothesized direct and indirect effects of public housing and neighborhood disadvantage on social capital and labor force activity is specified and fitted to these data. The modeling results suggest that urban public housing is strongly associated with neighborhood disadvantage but has little or no direct effect on either social capital or labor force activity. And while public housing may have indirect effects on social capital and labor force activity through neighborhood poverty, these indirect effects appear to be small. These findings have implications for the current emphasis in urban public housing policy on moving residents into the private housing market and reducing poverty concentration. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

THE GROWNING INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AMERICAN STATES1

This article examines state responses to the changing global economy, by exploring the growth of state international economic activities, variations in these activities, factors promoting and limiting state involvement in international affairs, and implications of these trends for the implementation of state economic development policies. Global economic competition, a changing domestic political and economic landscape, the modernization of state government, and increasingly open international markets have inspired states to increase their international activities. Consequently, dramatic growth in state international activities has occurred in the fields of trade promotion and economic development. Yet, state and local involvement in international affairs has not been universally accepted nor consistently funded.