The effect of attending full‐day kindergarten on English learner students

A significant and growing English learner (EL) population attends public schools in the United States. Evidence suggests they are at a disadvantage when entering school and their achievement lags behind non‐EL students. Some educators have promoted full‐day kindergarten programs as especially helpful for EL students. We take advantage of the large EL population and variation in full‐day kindergarten implementation in the Los Angeles Unified School District to examine the impact of full‐day kindergarten on academic achievement, retention, and English language fluency using difference‐in‐differences models. We do not find signficant effects of full‐day kindergarten on most academic outcomes and English fluency through second grade. However, we find that EL students attending full‐day kindergarten were 5 percentage points less likely to be retained before second grade and there are differential effects for several outcomes by student and school characteristics. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Physical and emotional sibling violence and policy: An examination of Fox-Harding's child care value perspectives

Physical and emotional sibling violence has received minimal attention compared with other forms of familial violence. Policy related to addressing physical and emotional sibling violence is scant, whereas the occurrence of violence between siblings is rampant in many families. An overview of the knowledge base regarding this social problem is provided as a backdrop for understanding the current sociopolitical status of sibling violence. Understanding current policy and societal discourse related to addressing sibling violence is possible through Lorraine Fox-Harding's values perspective on childcare policy. The four value perspectives of laissez-faire and patriarchy, state paternalism and child protection, the modern defense of the birth family and parents' rights, and children's rights and child liberation allow insight into how sibling violence is currently viewed and the policy implications of those perspectives. Regardless of one's value perspective, actions around policy and family interventions for sibling violence is warranted. Alternatives to the current situation and consequences of not addressing violent behavior between siblings are discussed along with roles the government, parents, and children can take in addressing this oftentimes underrecognized social justice issue.     

Fingermark Evidence Evaluation Based on Automated Fingerprint Identification System Matching Scores: The Effect of Different Types of Conditioning on Likelihood Ratios

In recent studies, the evidential value of the similarity of minutiae configurations of fingermarks and fingerprints, for example expressed by automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS), is determined by likelihood ratios (LRs). The paper explores whether there is an effect on LRs if conditioning takes place on specified fingers, fingerprints, or fingermarks under competing hypotheses: In addition, an approach is explored where conditioning is asymmetric. Comparisons between fingerprints and simulated fingermarks with eight minutiae are performed to produce similarity score distributions for each type of conditioning, given a fixed AFIS matching algorithm. Both similarity scores and LRs are significantly different if the conditioning changes. Given a common‐source scenario, “LRs” resulting from asymmetric conditioning are on average higher. The difference may reach a factor of 2000. As conditioning on a suspect's finger(print) is labor‐intensive and requires a cooperating suspect, it is recommended to just condition on the number of minutiae in the fingermark.     

A New Kind of Competition: How American Producers Respond to Incoming Foreign Direct Investment

Domestic producers in the U.S. have not lobbied for formal restrictions on incoming foreign direct investment in the same way that they have for import barriers, even though both types of foreign competition depress profits. At the same time, many U.S.-based multinational corporations, despite their global orientation, have put forth demands for government policies that favor American ownership. Domestically based producers have conflicting economic interests; they want protection against foreign competitors, against the possibility of retaliation, and against the perceived injuries sustained from investment restrictions abroad. Economic interests, then, lead to indeterminate predictions of how firms will respond to IFDI. Firms will only demand policies that they see as feasible (which depends on the presence of domestic institutions to channel demands and supply the policy output) and legitimate (which depends on how the policy accords with widely held norms regarding the proper role of the state). Understanding the domestic responses to globalization requires more research on the political, as well as economic, origins of policy demands.     

Review Symposium: Interdisciplinary Readings of Ari Z. Bryen's Violence in Roman Egypt: Where Law,Violence, and Culture Collide: A Sociolegal Reading of Violence in Everyday Life

Bryen, Ari Z. 2013 . Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study of Legal Interpretation . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. 376. $75.00 cloth; $75.00 eBook. This comment considers Ari Bryen's Violence in Roman Egypt (2013) from sociological and sociolegal perspectives. Although Bryen is a historian, and his site of inquiry is second‐century Roman Egypt, he turns to contemporary sociologists and law and society scholars to highlight the interplay between law and the social world in the construction of violence. In doing so, he finds a new way to analyze the role of law as a cultural resource for nonelites to make sense of their social world but also to change it (albeit with limits) through law.     

A Pilot Study Examining the Reduction of Trauma Symptomatology in Families to Prevent Child Abuse And Neglect: Trauma Adapted Family Connections

This article presents the preliminary outcomes of a 6-month, in-home trauma-adapted neglect prevention program intended to reduce trauma-related risk factors in families and increase caregiver, child, and family well-being. Standardized measures were administered via a computer assisted self-interview (CASI) at intake and case closure. At the time of the analyses 72 caregivers and 105 children completed both an intake and closing CASI. Significant differences were found over time in the reduction of caregiver and child related post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptomatology. Outcomes in overall caregiver, child, and family well-being and safety significantly improved over time. Evidence suggests that trauma adaptation of the empirically supported neglect prevention program shows great promise in filling a service gap and in helping families who are chronically traumatized and struggling to meet their children's basic needs.     

Framing Contests and Policy Conflicts over Gas Pipelines

This paper compares and contrasts high‐conflict policy debates over the siting of three natural gas pipeline projects at different decision stages of the siting process. This paper draws on over 600 newspaper articles spanning 3 years, analyzed through Discourse Network Analysis. Drawing from the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Policy Conflict framework, this paper finds that actor framing of opposing policy beliefs involves more indirect than direct confrontations, with statements in the media waxing and waning over time. Opponents of the pipelines more often explicitly argue against pipelines, while also using a broad range of conceptual arguments, whereas proponents more often couch their arguments around the economic benefits of pipelines and use fewer conceptual frames overall. We also find evidence that opposing coalitions use similar framing across different decision contexts. This paper concludes with a commentary on the status and contributions of this paper to the study of policy conflicts and next steps in advancing similar research agendas.