Browsing by Author "Adair, Bill"

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Open Access
How Should the Tennessee Department of Education Encourage Data-Driven Communication Across Districts to Promote Regional Best Practice Sharing?
(2014-04-18) Bryant, Anna
Executive Summary Project Question How should the Tennessee Department of Education encourage data driven communication across districts to promote regional best practice sharing? Client: The Tennessee Department of Education Background Information The education policy landscape in Tennessee is changing in many ways. Amidst ambitious goals outlined in Tennessee’s Race to the Top Grant, the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, and the implementation of a more comprehensive teacher evaluation system, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) rests in an ambiguous role as a state education agency. While it enforces compliance for procedural issues, the majority of the TDOE’s efforts revolve around providing district support without enforcement authority. Thus, the materials, training, and supplements provided by the TDOE must be transparent, of high quality, and usable in order for districts to perceive their state education agency as a credible source of management and support that will aid in improving educational outcomes for Tennessee students. The goal of this project is to not only support districts in purposeful data analysis but also to build trust across districts through data transparency in order to foster idea exchanges throughout the state. This project will achieve these goals through the creation of a user-friendly tool that incorporates publicly available district demographic and achievement data. The tool will identify demographically similar districts and subsequently note which of the comparable districts are particularly high achievers. Superintendents will be able to use the tool to choose which districts to visit for professional development credit. Within the context of both the goals outlined in Tennessee’s Race to the Top application and a thorough literature review to provide legitimacy for the tool’s direction, this tool will identify district matches, provide users with the data from which the matches were created, and show differences in achievement outcomes with the ultimate goal of state-wide data-driven conversations around student achievement. Bright Spot Matching Tool in its Original Form Modeled after the DART tool set from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the first iteration of the Bright Spot Matching Tool (BSMT) in Microsoft Excel enabled regional and district staff to review the demographic and achievement data from their own district; it then provided a list of comparable districts to their own based on demographic indicators. Within the list of comparable districts, the tool subsequently identified the district with the highest level of academic achievement in each subject area and student subgroup with available testing data for all students and subgroups. TDOE staff could then use the comparable groups to pair high performing districts with those districts struggling in certain subject or subgroup areas in order to facilitate sharing of best practices across districts and better student achievement outcomes. Superintendents and other TDOE staff received professional development credit for participating in a site visit designed by the tool. Feedback from Tool Users Interviews with TDOE staff, data analysts, and regional directors revealed several strengths, areas for growth, and suggested changes to the BSMT. Areas of Strength • Organization and labeling of information • Quick identification of subject area and/or achievement gap concerns • Comprehensive overview of comparable districts Areas for Growth • Confusing portrayal of percentages • Ambiguous interpretation of color coding • Inflexible and unintuitive general navigation • Slow performance speed • Miscellaneous formula, spelling, and other general presentation errors Suggested Changes • Add additional data • Incorporate additional features for comparison BSMT in its New Form The second version of the tool incorporates all subject area, grade, and subgroup data available for download from the Tennessee Department of Education website. Additionally, it includes more explicit directions for moving throughout the different tabs of the tool, with an introductory tab that explains the purpose of the tool and how to navigate it. Because all elements of the user manual have now been incorporated into the tool itself, the user manual will no longer be distributed with the tool. Additionally, each tab is numbered by the order of suggested use. The tool also employs a more consistent display, with all “actionable items” colored in orange. This trains users’ eyes to assume that orange sections require action from the user in order for the user to receive feedback. Each tab also links to other tabs within the tool to make navigation more intuitive and flexible. Each tab now displays a side bar with directions and other explanations that orient the user to each tab’s function. Additionally, users must down distinctly define the data they desire the tool to display through a series of drop down menus. The tool now incorporates an additional tab that enables users to select three districts of their choice for a deeper look at achievement levels of a smaller group. Similar to the tools offered by Consumer Reports, this tab trades a wide view of one subject area across many different districts for a more holistic view of achievement of three comparable districts. Limitations of the BSMT The BSMT’s greatest limitation is the amount of unavailable data that was not included within the tool. The district files available for download from the TDOE website are inconsistent from year to year regarding subject areas, grades, and subgroups, resulting in an incomplete data set across all subject areas, grades, and subgroups in the BSMT. Sustainability Recommendations • Update the BSMT twice per year • Incorporate TVAAS data into the BSMT • Expand the data set to include school-level data transition to a web based version.
Open Access
Policy Proposals and Pinky Promises: Framing Print Media Coverage of Female Presidential Candidates
(2021-12) Towfighi, Michaela
On the stage of the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hillary Clinton made history on July 26, 2016. For the first time, a major political party nominated a female candidate for President. “If there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch,” she told the crowd, “let me just say, I may become the first woman president, but one of you is next.” Yet, her promise fell short, and the glass ceiling she intended to crack, still remained intact. Following her historic feat, six Democratic women entered the 2020 primary in hopes to be the first female President – again, to no success. Although the press is thought to serve as the fourth pillar of democracy in the United States – informing citizens, encouraging political participation and facilitating discourse – does coverage of these historic campaigns contribute to female candidates’ sequential losses? Can coverage from news organizations serve as one explanation as to why the United States has yet to see a female leader at the helm? This paper examines how local and national news organizations frame media coverage of female Presidential campaigns in the 2016 election and 2020 Democratic primary. Coverage favored discussing a candidate’s qualifications and policy plans, as opposed to gendered tropes or comments on emotion and appearance.
Open Access
The Adjudicatory Audible: The Impact of Social Media on the Punishments of NFL Athletes
(2016-01-31) Lazarus, Danielle
Under its Collective Bargaining Agreement, the National Football League (NFL) has the ability to punish players who have been charged with a crime or arrested. Individual teams have the ability to punish players for off-field conduct, most commonly by releasing them to free agency; however, their authority is extremely limited. Thus, the power to discipline players is bestowed overwhelmingly to the commissioner’s office, which has assigned league discipline to 28.6% of arrests between 2000 and 2014. The severity of these punishments only increased slightly between 2000 and 2014; however, there exists a statistically significant, positive relationship between the number of Tweets about a crime and the severity of punishment of the resulting NFL punishment. Most disquieting, more-valuable players are punished less severely than less-valuable players, measured in terms of both better fantasy football rankings and in higher salaries. The results of this study clearly demonstrate that league punishment of NFL players is determined by the public response to the crime, and that the commissioner’s office allows for better players to escape more-severe punishments—or punishments at all—more frequently than their worse-performing counterparts. An impartial, independent arbiter, as opposed to an all-powerful commissioner’s office, would more effectively grant punishments that fit the crime as opposed to the degree of public outrage.
Open Access
The Use of Children as Props in Political Campaign Advertising
(2018-02-03) Scandura, Kate
This project explores the ways in which children are used in political campaign advertising. Analyzing 97 videos from the 2016 presidential and congressional elections, I coded for the types of children that appeared in campaign advertisements, in what ways they appear, and what messages they are used to convey. I then determined how this differed based on candidate characteristics. I found that girls tend to appear more often than boys, that advertisements feature white children more often than they feature non-white children, that blonde children are disproportionately represented in ads, and that this all varies by candidate and by candidate’s party. I also found that young children and adolescents appear more frequently than babies and teenagers, that the children featured are most often not related to the candidate, that children are generally featured with their parents more often than they are featured with the candidate, and that children very rarely speak in ads, which lends support to the idea that they are used as props.