The negative impacts of starting middle school in sixth grade

Using administrative data on public school students in North Carolina, we find that sixth grade students attending middle schools are much more likely to be cited for discipline problems than those attending elementary school. That difference remains after adjusting for the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the students and their schools. Furthermore, the higher infraction rates recorded by sixth graders who are placed in middle school persist at least through ninth grade. An analysis of end‐of‐grade test scores provides complementary findings. A plausible explanation is that sixth graders are at an especially impressionable age; in middle school, the exposure to older peers and the relative freedom from supervision have deleterious consequences. These findings are relevant to the current debate over the best school configuration for incorporating the middle grades. Based on our results, we suggest that there is a strong argument for separating sixth graders from older adolescents. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Freedom of Expression and National Security

Society - The threat from terror and religious extremism has seen liberal democracies adopt a raft of measures are intended to restrict freedom of expression. Yet very little focus has been spent...     

Question Hour Activity and Party Behaviour in India

Based on a unique data set of Indian legislators and their behaviour during Question Hour over a 30-year period (1980–2009), the paper establishes that there is a substantial gap in the volume of questions asked by legislators from national and subnational parties, even after accounting for party size and other covariates. Thus, despite increasing subnational party prominence in the electoral and executive arenas, national parties dominate activities to do with legislative oversight. The paper also explores mechanisms that may explain the difference in legislative activity between national and subnational party legislators.     

Islam,Militancy, and Politics in Pakistan: Insights From a National Sample

We use data from an innovative nationally representative survey of 6,000 Pakistanis in April 2009 to study beliefs about political Islam, Sharia, the legitimacy and efficacy of jihad, and attitudes towards specific militant organizations. These issues are at the forefront of U.S. policy towards Pakistan. Four results shed new light on the politics of militancy and Islamic identity in Pakistan. First, there is no relationship between measures of personal religiosity and the likelihood a respondent expresses highly sectarian sentiments. Second, militarized jihad is widely seen as legitimate in Pakistan but there are substantial regional differences in the acceptance of militarized jihad. Third, attitudes towards militant groups vary dramatically across groups, particularly when it comes to the efficacy of their actions. Fourth, while Pakistanis express massive levels of support for Sharia law, this is driven by its perceived connection with good governance, not by sympathy with the goals of militant groups claiming to implement it.     

The impact of no Child Left Behind on student achievement

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state‐level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The impact of NCLB is identified using a comparative interrupted time series analysis that relies on comparisons of the test‐score changes across states that already had school accountability policies in place prior to NCLB and those that did not. Our results indicate that NCLB generated statistically significant increases in the average math performance of fourth graders (effect size 5 0.23 by 2007) as well as improvements at the lower and top percentiles. There is also evidence of improvements in eighth‐grade math achievement, particularly among traditionally low‐achieving groups and at the lower percentiles. However, we find no evidence that NCLB increased fourth‐grade reading achievement. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Due North? Do American Theories of Legislative Committees Apply to Canada?

Several theories of legislative organisation have been proposed to explain committee selection in American legislatures, but do these theories travel outside the United States? This paper tests whether these theories apply to data from the Canadian House of Commons. It was found that the distributive and partisan models of legislative organisation explain committee composition in Canada. In many cases, committees in the House of Commons are made up of preference outliers. As predicted by partisan models, it was also found that the governing party stacks committees with its members, but this is conditional upon the strength of the governing party.