Maps are used to track diseases and illustrate the social context of health problems. However, commercial mapping software requires special training. This article illustrates how nonspecialists used Google Earth, a free program, to create community maps. The Bronx, New York, is characterized by high levels of obesity and diabetes. Residents and medical students measured the variety and quality ...

Since the early 1970s, ballot initiatives and court rulings have sought to equalize funding across California schools. Yet 30 years later, variations in funding remain both across and within school districts. Moreover, although “funding per pupil” provides a readily available and understandable measure of school resources within a district, it provides little insight into how individual schools...

Are regulations on the payday loan effective? Do people switch to other forms of expensive credit such as pawnshop loans because of such regulations? In this study, we aim to find the answers to these two questions through exploring state-level variations in regulations on payday loans and other alternative financial services. Using FDIC’s panel survey data and Google Trends data, we find that ...

Student wastage in higher education is a problem of great importance in our society. The time has come to try to start a service to give specialised help for redeployment in continued education or in suitable employment that carries further training prospects. This would be not only a humane social service, but a real component of the educational and economic system. At present, wastage in the ...

Early retirement incentives (ERIs) are increasingly prevalent in education as districts seek to close budget gaps by replacing expensive experienced teachers with lower-cost newer teachers. Combined with the aging of the teacher workforce, these ERIs are likely to change the composition of teachers dramatically in the coming years. We use exogenous variation from an ERI program in Illinois in t...

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University researchers and teacher facilitators implemented a state-funded professional development project during the 2005-06 academic year to help county middle school teachers improve student achievement in mathematics. In this paper, we discuss lessons and results from this innovative model, whose iterative cycle includes teacher content knowledge, item analysis from a high-stakes test, ped...

Background—The Iowa Department of Education undertook a study to determine district characteristics that are associated with success on statewide-standardized tests. A district profile was created for each Iowa public school district to determine if any association exists between a particular district’s characteristics and the test scores of 11th grade students. Contextual variables such as soc...

BACKGROUND The number of medical undergraduates taking part in Student Scientific Activities (SSA) at Jessenius Faculty of Medicine Comenius University in Slovakia remains low. The aim of this study was to discover some of the factors responsible and suggest improvements. METHODS An anonymous 30-item questionnaire was devised and sent to 245 medical undergraduates (UG) of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd an...