On the Extinction Time of a Continuous time Markov Branching Process

Several authors have studied and derived bounds for the mean extinction time of a discrete branching process. In this note, we obtain the mean and variance of the extinction time, given extinction of a continuous time Markov branching process. We also obtain bounds for the mean extinction time in terms of moments of the offspring distribution.     

The Role of Caring in the Teacher-Student Relationship for At-Risk Students

This study uses information from both teachers and students to explore how the perceptions of each other's investment in the relationship affects the productivity of the relationship. Using the National Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), I analyze the conditions and academic consequences of students'investment in the relationship with teachers and school. I find that teachers'perceptions that the student puts forth academic effort and students'perceptions that teachers are caring are each weakly associated with mathematics achievement for most students. For students who are judged by their teachers as at risk of dropping out of high school, however, the value for math achievement of having teachers who care is substantial and mitigates against the negative effect of having been judged as at risk. The results suggest that social capital, as defined by a relationship that facilitates action, is especially high for at-risk students who feel their teachers are interested, expect them to succeed, listen to them, praise their effort, and care.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of Contextual Exposure to Peers with College Educated Parents and Students' College Enrollment

Students with college educated parents are more likely to attain higher levels of education than students of parents with lower levels of education. Past research has explained this favorable outcome as the result of advantageous placement and greater availability of educational resources. Using data from Add Health and AHAA, we find evidence that exposure to students of college educated parents at the school level and within courses increase the likelihood of four year college enrollment even after controlling for family background, achievement, and placement. We also found that exposure to students of college educated parents has especially strong positive effects on college enrollment for students whose own parents do not have a college degree. These findings suggest that greater exposure to students of highly educated parents at the school level and within courses partially explains the favorable educational attainment of students with college educated parents.     

Jurisdiction,inscription, and state formation: administrative modernism and knowledge regimes

In seventeenth-century France, Colbert built a more effective state administration not by rationalizing state offices but by using public documents to increase the government’s intellectual capacity to exercise logistical power and engage in territorial governance. This pattern calls into question Weber’s model of the genesis of “modern officialdom,” suggesting that its source was not social rationalization, but rather the identification and management of expertise. Colbert recruited into government nascent technocrats with knowledge useful to territorial politics, using contracts and other documents to limit their independence and subordinate them to patrimonial authorities. They exercised specific duties and impersonal powers in jurisdictional areas—much like modern technocrats. Their expertise enhanced the intellectual capacity of the administration to exercise territorial power and made the state less dependent on patrimonial clienteles without challenging the patrimonial culture of power/knowledge.     

The state of things: state history and theory reconfigured

This article looks at the relationship between logistical power and the assemblages of sites that constitute modern states. Rather than treating states as centralizing institutions and singular sites of power, we treat them as multi-sited. They gain power by using logistical methods of problem solving, using infrastructures to enforce and depersonalize relations of domination and limit the autonomy of elites. But states necessarily solve diverse problems by different means in multiple locations. So, educating children is not continuous with governing colonies even though both are necessary to nineteenth-century states. For this reason, states use logistical means of coordination to link sites, and they make the power of the state seem unitary even though the exercise of state power is not.     

Socio-legal protection of minorities -- a study of Indian educational cases

Many Muslim families do not enroll their children in school. This is so because material in school syllabi sometimes goes against Islamic beliefs or adversely affects the Muslim self-image, orthodox parents will not send their daughters to coeducational academic institutions, some adults do not realize the benefits of education with regard to the welfare of their children, and many Muslim localities remain resource-deficient slums. The government, local authorities, and Muslims should band together to encourage and enable backward Muslim minorities to uplift themselves academically. Steps to that end could include adding minority representation to the bodies which approve the syllabi in order to monitor the potential inclusion of offensive material, continuing to upgrade teachers in Muslim schools, optimizing available space in Muslim educational institutions, empowering minorities commissions in states to help backward minorities to garner education, eliminating the rules of discretion to avoid corruption and nepotism, simplifying the rules and procedures governing grants to educational institutions, conducting a scientific survey to obtain accurate baseline information for use in planning the education of Muslim minorities, giving special preference to localities populated predominantly with minorities when establishing educational institutions, and providing scholarship to bright and needy minority students. Additionally, the National Minorities Commission should be empowered by the central government to collect information and report on the educational, social, and economic conditions of minorities across the country. Autonomy in management must also be respected, with regulatory measures applicable to minority institutions being reasonable and appropriate.     

Material practices of domination: Christian humanism,the built environment,and techniques of Western power

Theory and Society -     

Immigration from Mexico into the Math/Science Pipeline in American Education*

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to explore generational differences in math/science enrollment and achievement among Mexican‐American students and the role of family and school contexts in these differences. Methods. We applied survey regression techniques to data from 12,020 adolescents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Results. Native‐born Mexican‐American students had lower math/science enrollment than their peers, especially after differences in family and school contexts were taken into account. Mexican‐American immigrants had lower achievement when enrolled in such classes, but this was explained by their greater level of family and school disadvantages. Conclusions. Persistence and success in the math/science pipeline, a mechanism of social mobility in the modern economy, would likely be enhanced in the fast‐growing population of Mexican‐American students by improvements in family resources and school organization.