School choice's idealized premises and unfulfilled promises: How school markets simulate options,encourage decoupling and deception,and deepen disadvantages

In school choice systems, families choose among publicly funded schools, and schools compete for students and resources. Using neoinstitutionalist and relational inequality theories, our article reinterprets recent critical sociological and education research to show how such markets involve actors' enacting myths; these beliefs and their associated practices normalized white, privileged consumption as a basis for revamping public education as market exchanges between schools and families. Proponents argue that choice empowers individuals, focuses organizations on improving quality, and benefits society more broadly by reducing inequality and segregation. We argue that such school choice myths' excessive emphases on individual decision‐making and provider performance obscure the actual impacts of school choice systems upon people, organizations, and society. First, rather than enlarging alternatives that families can easily research, select, and (if needed) exit, school choice systems often simulate options, especially for disadvantaged populations. Second, rather than focusing schools' efforts on performance, innovation, and accountability, they can encourage organizational decoupling, homogeneity, and deception. Third, rather than reducing societal harms, they can deepen inequalities and alienation. Future research should examine both how markets are animated by bounded relationality—routines that enable them to form, maintain, and complete exchanges with organizations—and how activism can challenge marketization.     

Landscape Context Influences the Abundance and Richness of Native Lady Beetles Occupying Urban Vacant Land

Urban Ecosystems - Urban insect communities are structured by hierarchical filters including regional processes, human facilitation, and species interactions. We sought to inform future urban...     

Social Workers’ Knowledge and Attitudes About Evidence-Based Practice: Differences Between Graduate Students,Educators, and Practitioners

Clinical Social Work Journal - The implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP) is increasingly being stressed as a responsibility of social work practitioners and social work educators....     

The household inventory as urban ‘theatre’ in late medieval Burgundy

In 1413 at the death of his wife Guillemot, Jean Aubert, a group of witnesses and a clerk of the local mayoralty met to value the possessions of their residence, resulting in an inventory full of notes and values on rooms and their objects. Within the existing historiography of the Burgundian Netherlands and its northern European neighbours, inventories and their objects tend to be analysed from two perspectives: the Burgundian court and the ‘consumer revolution’. Applying insights from Erving Goffman and Bruno Latour, this article suggests a third perspective should have priority: the urban ‘theatre’ within which objects were documented and placed. Therefore it sets up an alternate methodology which begins with the inventory to build a picture of the theatre (the urban context and residence), the actors (the Aubert family) and the audience (the witnesses of the inventory) to establish new insights into the operation of Burgundian power and the dynamics of the ‘consumer revolution’.     

Intellectual disability and faith communities: perspectives of Catholic religious leaders

Faith communities create community and are important to many individuals with intellectual disability. However, relatively little is known about how intellectual disability is construed among faith leaders and the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in faith communities. To address these gaps in knowledge, we interviewed 12 Catholic priests, parochial vicars, and deacons to explore: their experiences with individuals with intellectual disability; their beliefs towards the involvement of individuals with intellectual disability within faith communities; and how religion informs their understanding of intellectual disability. We identified five religiously-anchored narratives of intellectual disability, and explore implications for individuals with intellectual disability and faith communities.     

Two Perspectives on the Language of Special Needs Computing: towards a shared view

This paper reviews and examines the language used in literature that describes the educational and therapeutic use of microcomputers with people who have special needs. In the language of special needs computing two perspectives are identified. One perspective focuses on the microcomputer technology while the other focuses on the microcomputer user. While the language of both perspectives acknowledges the value of microcomputers, each perspective moves towards an acknowledgement that microcomputer use needs to be placed in an environmental context. This move in both language sets reflects an increasing focus on the potential barriers to microcomputer use.     

Pathways to a Stable Union? Pregnancy and Childbearing Among Cohabiting and Married Couples

This study analyzes the stability of cohabiting and marital unions following a first birth. But unlike previous research, it compares the subsequent trajectories of unions that began with a pregnancy to those in which conceptions came after coresidence. The U.S. data from the 2006–2010 and 2011–2013 cross-sectional files of the National Survey of Family Growth indicate that roughly 1-in-5 first births were associated with rapid transitions from conception into either cohabitation or marriage. Moving in together following a pregnancy—especially an unintended one—is unlikely to lead to marital success or union stability. Compared with marital unions, dissolution rates following birth were particularly high for couples who entered a cohabiting union following conception. Only a small minority of these couples married (i.e., less than one-third), and these marriages experienced high dissolution rates. The results also suggest that the most committed cohabiting couples got married after finding themselves pregnant, leaving behind the most dissolution-prone cohabiting couples. The American family system is being transformed by newly emerging patterns of fertility among cohabiting couples.     

The Relationship Between Weight and Career Payoffs Among Women

The thesis that weight affects women's life chances for reaching high-status, white-collar jobs is tested with survey data gathered from a large aerospace organization (N = 306). It is hypothesized that women who are at or below their desirable weight will have higher incomes and occupational positions than women who are overweight, with human capital variables controlled. It is further hypothesized that weight will be most related to occupational position in male-dominated occupations and in occupations that involve frequent contact outside the firm. Results show that weight is related to income, but only at entry-level professional/managerial occupations. Weight is significantly related to occupational position, especially so in male-dominated occupations. Weight is not more strongly related to occupational position in jobs involving outside contact. Findings are consistent with the interpretation that discrimination based on weight in the general society extends to the inner workings of workplace organizations.