For some time, the United States has been engaged in a national debate over affirmative action policy. A policy that began with the idea of creating a level playing field for minorities has sparked ...controversy in the workplace, in higher education, and elsewhere. After forty years, the debate still continues and the issues are as complex as ever. While most Americans are familiar with the term, they may not fully understand what affirmative action is and why it has become such a divisive issue.With this concise and up-to-date introduction, J. Edward Kellough brings together historical, philosophical, and legal analyses to fully inform participants and observers of this debate. Aiming to promote a more thorough knowledge of the issues involved, this book covers the history, legal status, controversies, and impact of affirmative action in both the private and public sectors-and in education as well as employment.In addition, Kellough shows how the development and implementation of affirmative action policies have been significantly influenced by the nature and operation of our political institutions. Highlighting key landmarks in legislation and court decisions, he explains such concepts as "disparate impact," "diversity management," "strict scrutiny," and "representative bureaucracy." Understanding Affirmative Action probes the rationale for affirmative action, the different arguments against it, and the known impact it has had. Kellough concludes with a consideration of whether or not affirmative action will remain a useful tool for combating discrimination in the years to come.Not just for students in public administration and public policy, this handy volume will be a valuable resource for public administrators, human resource managers, and ordinary citizens looking for a balanced treatment of a controversial policy.
ASCD Bestseller! Wiggins and McTighe provide an expanded array of practical tools and strategies for designing curriculum, instruction, and assessments that lead students at all grade levels to ...genuine understanding. How do you know when students understand? Can you design learning experiences that make it much more likely that students understand content and apply it in meaningful ways? Thousands of educators have used the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework to answer these questions and create more rigorous, engaging curriculums. Now, this expanded 2nd edition gives you even more tools and strategies for results-oriented teaching: * An improved template for creating curriculum units based on the breakthrough "backward design" method. * More specific guidelines on how to frame the "big ideas" you want students to understand. * Better ways to develop the "essential questions" that form the foundation of high-quality curriculum and assessment. * An expanded toolbox of instructional approaches for obtaining the desired results of a lesson. * More examples, across all grade levels and subjects, of how schools and districts have used the UbD framework to maximize student understanding. Educators from kindergarten through college can get everything they need—guidelines, stages, templates, and tips—to start designing lessons, units, and courses that lead to improved student performance and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.
Motivation
Urban areas are growing as is urban poverty, yet few countries have developed comprehensive programmes for social assistance in urban areas. Those programmes that exist, moreover, are ...often extensions or duplicates of rural schemes. Urban social protection needs to reflect the distinct characteristics and vulnerabilities of the urban poor, especially that they usually work in informal activities and they face higher living costs than rural dwellers.
Purpose
This article addresses two questions: what is the current evidence on effective social assistance programmes in urban areas? How can such programmes be designed and implemented in practice? The article surveys the challenges of designing social assistance programmes in urban areas, focusing on specific urban vulnerabilities, targeting the urban poor, and setting appropriate payments.
Approach and methods
Existing evidence on programmes for urban social assistance, including cases from seven countries, are reviewed. Issues are examined in detail for Ghana, a rapidly urbanizing country.
Findings
Ghana’s flagship social assistance programme, Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), that operates largely in rural areas, can and should be adjusted to urban areas. Registration by using community leaders is less effective in urban than rural areas. Instead, advertising, (social) media, direct text messaging, and identification through local non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) would be better options. Targeting can be improved by developing an urban‐specific proxy means test. Cash benefits should be increased, then adjusted regularly to counter inflation. These benefits should possibly be accompanied by subsidies for utilities and services.
Policy implications
Several principles to consider when designing urban social assistance emerge. Benefit levels should reflect higher living costs in urban areas and respond to inflation, especially for food and other necessities. Urban social assistance should go beyond cash transfers to focus on generating jobs (especially for young people and women), and to ensure basic services such as health care reach the urban poor, through subsidies, vouchers, or case management. Urban contexts also offer more opportunities to deliver and target social assistance through digital technologies such as mobile phones and automatic teller machines (ATM).
This article considers some of the changes and continuities in social protection in Latin America through a focus on the ways in which motherhood is positioned as key to the success of the new ...anti‐poverty programmes that have followed structural reform. It examines a flagship cash transfer programme known as Progresa/Oportunidades (Opportunities) established in Mexico in 1997 and now being widely adopted in the region. Characterized by some commentators as a quintessentially neo‐liberal programme, it is argued that Oportunidades represents a novel combination of earlier maternalist social policy approaches with the conditional, co‐responsibility models associated with the recent approaches to social welfare and poverty relief endorsed by international policy actors. In the first section, the gendered assumptions that have governed Latin American social policy are described; the second outlines social policy provision in Latin America and identifies the key elements of the new approaches to poverty; and the third critically examines the broader implications of the Mexican programme's selective and gendered construction of social need premised, as it is, on re‐traditionalizing gendered roles and responsibilities.
Needle and syringe programmes (NSP) aim to reduce the risk of HIV by providing people who inject drugs (PWID) with sterile injecting equipment. A recent review of reviews (ROR) concluded that there ...was only tentative evidence to support the effectiveness of NSP in reducing HIV. We carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the association between NSP and HIV transmission.
Relevant primary articles presenting data on the risk of HIV transmission associated with NSP were identified in two stages: (i) from reviews identified in two published RORs (covering the period 1980-2008); and (ii) a literature search of CINAHL, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, MEDLINE and PsychINFO for primary articles published since the most recent high quality review (covering the period 2008-12). Study results were synthesized using random-effects meta-analysis.
There were 12 studies comprising at least 12 000 person-years of follow-up. Exposure to NSP was associated with a reduction in HIV transmission: pooled effect size 0·66 95% confidence interval (CI) 0·43, 1·01 across all studies, and 0·42 (95% CI 0·22, 0·81) across six higher quality studies (according to the Newcastle-Ottawa tool).
There is evidence to support the effectiveness of NSP in reducing the transmission of HIV among PWID, although it is likely that other harm reduction interventions have also contributed to the observed reduction in HIV risk. NSP should be considered as just one component of a programme of interventions to reduce both injecting risk and other types of HIV risk behaviour.
We undertook a synthesis of existing studies to re-evaluate the evidence on program mechanisms of intimate partner violence (IPV) universal screening and disclosure within a health care context by ...addressing how, for whom, and in what circumstances these programs work. Our review is informed by a realist review approach, which focuses on program mechanisms. Systematic, realist reviews can help reveal why and how interventions work and can yield information to inform policies and programs. A review of the scholarly literature from January 1990 to July 2010 identified 5046 articles, 23 of which were included in our study. We identified studies on 17 programs that evaluated IPV screening. We found that programs that took a comprehensive approach (i.e., incorporated multiple program components, including institutional support) were successful in increasing IPV screening and disclosure/identification rates. Four program components appeared to increase provider self-efficacy for screening, including institutional support, effective screening protocols, thorough initial and ongoing training, and immediate access/referrals to onsite and/or offsite support services. These findings support a multi-component comprehensive IPV screening program approach that seeks to build provider self-efficacy for screening. Further implications for IPV screening intervention planning and implementation in health care settings are discussed.
► Screening for and identification of intimate partner violence can facilitate victims’ access to services and resources. ► This realist-informed systematic review evaluated universal screening programs for IPV within health care settings. ► This study differs from prior reviews in this area by evaluating
how screening programs work as well as
whether they work. ► More successful screening programs incorporated multiple program components and had support at the institutional level.
Firms implement proactive environmental practices (PEPs), and governments in developing countries such as China implement environmental policies such as pilot and demonstration programs to promote ...these PEPs. However, it remains unclear whether and when firms recognized by such governmental programs improve financial performance. Using a sample of 233 firms recognized by a national Chinese government environmental program, event study is employed to estimate stock market reaction of recognized firms. The Heckman two‐stage procedure is followed to examine the moderating effects. We find that the average stock market reaction is not significant. Cross‐sectional analyses indicate that firms with earlier recognitions, recognized for demonstration projects (compared with pilot ones), and operating in more‐polluting industries have greater market reactions, while types of PEPs (internal versus external), export intensity and government ownership (state‐owned or not) do not moderate the market reaction. This paper provides implications for firms about whether and when they should participate in a government environmental program.
As local governments and organizations assume more responsibility for ensuring the public health, identity politics play an increasing yet largely unexamined role in public and policy attitudes ...toward local problems. InGoverning How We Care, medical anthropologist Susan Shaw examines the relationship between government and citizens using case studies of needle exchange and Welfare-to-Work programs to illustrate the meanings of cultural difference, ethnicity, and inequality in health care.Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over six years in a small New England city, Shaw presents critical perspectives on public health intervention efforts. She looks at online developments in health care and makes important correlations between poverty and health care in the urban United States. Shaw also highlights the new concepts of community and forms of identity that emerge in our efforts to provide effective health care.Governing How We Careshows how government-sponsored community health and health care programs operate in an age of neoliberalism.
A "must read" for practitioners, policy makers and researchers interested in the detail and the theory underpinning this important family literacy initiative′ - Neil McClelland OBE, Director, ...National Literacy Trust `The REAL Project is one of the best conceptualized, most intensively documented and successful British family literacy initiatives and the book provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of this powerful project. It is essential reading for anyone working alongside families to promote children′s early development′ - Professor Nigel Hall, Institute of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University Anyone involved in the field of early-childhood literacy should be familiar with the work of the REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy) Project. Here, leading members of the project team Cathy Nutbrown, Peter Hannon and Anne Morgan, discuss the research. An essential guide to the subject, this book will be of great practical use to all in the field of early childhood literacy: students, practitioners and course leaders on literacy and early childhood courses. The authors discuss the policy contexts of early-childhood and literacy today and use their experience of the REAL project to discuss and illustrate practical research and evaluation strategies for family literacy workers. They examine the issues from all perspectives: teachers, parents and young children. The book concludes with examples of how the theoretical framework of the REAL Project (ORIM) has been used by other practitioners and an examination of the implications of such work for the future of early-childhood and literacy policy development.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a leading candidate for developing empirically based prevention and early intervention programmes because it is common in clinical practice, it is among the ...most functionally disabling of all mental disorders, it is often associated with help-seeking, and it has been shown to respond to intervention, even in those with established disorder. Moreover, it can be reliably diagnosed in its early stages and it demarcates a group with high levels of current and future morbidity and mortality. Data also suggest considerable flexibility and malleability of BPD traits in youth, making this a key developmental period during which to intervene. Novel indicated prevention and early intervention programmes have shown that BPD in young people responds to intervention. Further work is required to develop appropriate universal and selective preventive interventions.
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