Who Benefits from KIPP?

The nation's largest charter management organization is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). KIPP schools are emblematic of the No Excuses approach to public education, a highly standardized and widely replicated charter model that features a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms, and emphasizes traditional reading and math skills. No Excuses charter schools are sometimes said to target relatively motivated high achievers at the expense of students who are more difficult to teach, including limited English proficiency (LEP) and special education (SPED) students, as well as students with low baseline achievement levels. We use applicant lotteries to evaluate the impact of KIPP Academy Lynn, a KIPP school in Lynn, Massachusetts that typifies the KIPP approach. Our analysis focuses on special needs students that may be underserved. The results show average achievement gains of 0.36 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn, with the largest gains coming from the LEP, SPED, and low‐achievement groups. Average reading gains are driven almost entirely by SPED and LEP students, whose reading scores rise by roughly 0.35 standard deviations for each year spent at KIPP Lynn.     

Greening Constitutions with Environmental Rights: Testing the Isomorphism Thesis

Why do some countries have constitutional environmental rights while others do not? In this paper, I conduct statistical analyses to respond to this inquiry. Through studying the impact of intraregional constitutional design, I aim to understand why states adopt environmental rights. I argue that regional isomorphism—i.e., the tendency among states within a region to converge on certain policies—may explain the trend toward constitutionalization of environmental rights. In this paper I (1) define and provide historical background on environmental rights, (2) describe theories which support regional isomorphism as a means of explaining the adoption of constitutional environmental rights, and (3) conduct statistical tests to determine the validity of the regional isomorphism thesis. I find that the enactment of constitutional environmental rights within a region does not increase the likelihood that another state within the same region will include environmental rights within its constitution.     

Gender differences in the effects of prison on recidivism

Purpose

This study examines gender differences in the effectiveness of prison in reducing recidivism.

Methods

Using data on released male and female prisoners, we apply a propensity score matching methodology to compare the effects of prison on recidivism versus three counterfactual conditions—jail, intensive probation, and probation.

Results

The analyses indicated that a prison term, as compared to placement on intensive probation or traditional probation, is associated with a greater likelihood of property and drug recidivism. There was little evidence that recidivism was greater when compared to jail, that prison increased the likelihood of violent or other recidivism, or that the criminogenic effect of prison is appreciably greater for females or males.

Conclusions

The findings do not support arguments that prison is an effective alternative to non-incarcerative punishments or that it exerts a differential effect on females or males. Further research is needed on what features of the prison experience contribute to the observed effects.     

Examining the relationship between childhood animal cruelty motives and recurrent adult violent crimes toward humans

Few researchers have studied the predictive ability of childhood animal cruelty motives as they are associated with later recurrent violence toward humans. Based on a sample of 180 inmates at one medium- and one maximum-security prison in a Southern state, the present study examines the relationship among several retrospectively identified motives (fun, out of anger, hate for the animal, and imitation) for childhood animal cruelty and the later commission of violent crimes (murder, rape, assault, and robbery) against humans. Almost two thirds of the inmates reported engaging in childhood animal cruelty for fun, whereas almost one fourth reported being motivated either out of anger or imitation. Only one fifth of the respondents reported they had committed acts of animal cruelty because they hated the animal. Regression analyses revealed that recurrent animal cruelty was the only statistically significant variable in the model. Respondents who had committed recurrent childhood animal cruelty were more likely to have had committed recurrent adult violence toward humans. None of the motives for committing childhood animal cruelty had any effect on later violence against humans.     

An Overview of the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS)

We provide an overview of the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, & Erdberg, 2011). After providing a general introduction to Rorschach-based assessment, the rationale and features of R-PAS are outlined. As part of this discussion, some of the ways in which R-PAS differs from the Comprehensive System (CS) (Exner, 2003) are delineated.     

Registrants,Voters, and Turnout Variability Across Neighborhoods

Although political participation has received wide-ranging scholarly attention, little is known for certain about the effects of social and political context on turnout. A scattered set of analyses—well-known by both political scientists and campaign consultants—suggests that ones neighborhood has a relatively minor impact on the decision to vote. These analyses, however, typically rely upon data from a single location. Drawing on official lists of registered voters from sixteen major counties across seven states (including Florida) from the 2000 presidential election, we use geographic/mapping information and hierarchical models to obtain a more accurate picture of how neighborhood characteristics affect participation, especially among partisans. Our research shows that neighborhoods influence voting by interacting with partisan affiliation to dampen turnout among voters we might otherwise expect to participate. Most notably, we find Republican partisans in enemy territory tend to vote less than expected, even after accounting for socioeconomic status. Our findings have implications for campaign strategy, and lead us to suggest that campaign targeting efforts could be improved by an integration of aggregate- and individual-level information about voters.