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Area-based Responses to Educational Disadvantage
Summary and Keywords
Countries across the world struggle to break the relationship between socio-economic disadvantage and educational outcomes. Even in otherwise affluent countries, children and young people from poor and marginalized families tend to do badly in education, and their lack of educational success makes it more likely that they will remain in poverty as adults. Moreover, socio-economic disadvantage and educational failure in these countries tend to be concentrated in particular places, such as the poor neighborhoods of large cities or of post-industrial towns. This has led policy-makers and practitioners in many administrations to favor area-based initiatives (ABIs), which target such places, as one set of responses to social and educational disadvantage. Some ABIs are limited to funding schools more generously in disadvantaged areas or giving them additional support and flexibilities. The more ambitious initiatives, however, seek to develop multistrand interventions to tackle both the educational and the social and economic problems of areas simultaneously.
The evaluation evidence suggests that these initiatives have so far met with limited success at best. This has led some critics to conclude that there is a fundamental contradiction in their use of purely local interventions to tackle problems that originate outside ABIs' target areas, in macro-level social and economic processes. However, it is possible to construct a convincing rationale for these initiatives by understanding the social ecologies that shape children's outcomes, and by formulating holistic interventions aimed at reducing the risks in those ecologies and enhancing children's resilience in the face of those risks. There is, moreover, evidence of a new generation of ABIs that has begun to emerge recently. These new ABIs are able to operate strategically and over the long-term, rather than being bound by the short-term nature of policy-making. These newer initiatives may offer a better prospect of tackling the link between social and educational disadvantage, even in unpromising economic circumstances, and even within the context of "politics as usual."
Keywords: disadvantage, poverty, children's outcomes, area-based initiative (ABI), intervention, social ecology, risk and resilience, education
Disadvantage, Place, and Area-Based Initiatives
Countries across the world struggle to come to terms with a paradox: Education is seen as a means of lifting individuals, communities and nations out of poverty, yet educational outcomes are strongly linked to the socio-economic circumstances of learners. This is clearly the case in countries where large numbers of children experience chronic poverty and where an absolute lack of resources limits effective access to education (UNICEF, 2014). However, the elimination of chronic poverty is no guarantee of entirely equal—or, more modestly, of fairer and more equitable—outcomes for children regardless of background. Even in middle- and high-income countries, children from economically poorer homes tend to do markedly less well than their more advantaged peers (see, for instance, OECD, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2016; Ballas et al., 2012; DG EAC, 2015).
There have been many attempts to break the link between social background and educational outcomes (see, for instance, Demeuse, Frandji, Greger, & Rochex, 2012). Some of these attempts have focused on what might be called systemic approaches. These seek to embed structures and practices for tackling educational disadvantage within the education system so that they operate routinely in all contexts. In particular, many countries have opted for so-called standards-based reforms that seek to ensure that all schools perform at a high standard, regardless of the characteristics and backgrounds of the students they educate. Other attempts, by contrast, have focused on targeted interventions, seeking to identify groups of disadvantaged learners and/or schools where such learners are concentrated, in order to provide them with additional resources or to develop more appropriate practices and forms of provision.
There is also a third group of interventions that overlaps to some extent with systemic and targeted approaches, but also has important distinctive features. These approaches are targeted in the sense that they introduce practices and forms of provision that are not available throughout the education system. However, their targeting is shaped to a greater or lesser extent by the identification of particular places where some distinctive approach appears to be called for. In most—though not quite all—cases, these places are characterized by high levels of disadvantage in the populations who live there and therefore by high concentrations of educational disadvantage in the populations of local schools. As Smith (1999, p. 49) argues,
. . . the key reason [for area approaches] is that some areas suffer disproportionately high levels of economic and social deprivation, including very high levels of worklessness, poverty, poor health, high crime, and fear of crime, and need special attention. Although some issues can only be addressed through national level mainstream policies it is the case that some problems occur because of local area related factors and it is therefore appropriate to address them at the local level.
There is no internationally-agreed term to label such approaches. In England, however, where these kinds of approach have, at times, been particularly common, they are often labelled as "area-based initiatives," or "ABIs" (Kerr, Dyson, & Raffo, 2014), and that is the term we use in this article.
A glance at developments in Europe and the USA will illustrate the extent to which initiatives of this kind have proliferated in the education systems of affluent countries. In Europe, initiatives such as the Zones d'Education Prioritaires (ZEPs) in France and (for a limited time) in Belgium, and Territórios Educativos de Intervenção Prioritária (TEIPs) in Portugal are well-known examples of ABIs (Dyson, Raffo, & Rochex, 2012), while a study of cross-sectoral interventions found 16 major initiatives in Europe to address educational disadvantage, most of which have some area-based elements (Edwards & Downes, 2013). In England particularly, education-focused ABIs go back at least as far as the Educational Priority Areas of the 1960s and 1970s (Halsey, 1972; Smith, 1987; Smith, Smith, & Smith, 2007) and embrace a series of more recent initiatives in the 1990s and 2000s (Kerr et al., 2014).
There is a similar proliferation in the USA, where there has been considerable interest in recent times in the proposition that deeply ingrained education (and, indeed, other social) problems can only be solved effectively through the "collective impact" (Kania & Kramer, 2011) of stakeholders working together within targeted locales. Organizations such as StriveTogether, for instance, encourage local actors to work together to develop strategies for tackling local educational problems. At the federal level, under the Obama administration, the Promise Neighborhoods initiative supported disadvantaged communities in developing strategies for improving educational and other outcomes for children and young people. Similarly, some universities and other public institutions have committed themselves to becoming "anchor institutions" for the areas in which they are physically located, which typically means bringing a range of partners together and using their collective resources variously to support economic and physical regeneration, and to improve the educational and life chances of local residents—both children and adults (see, for instance, Harkavy, Hartley, Axelroth Hodges, & Weeks, 2013).
All these ABIs have three core principles in common which identify them as a distinct type of response to educational disadvantage. First, their efforts are located in particular places; second, they seek to do things differently in those places; and third, they seek to improve education outcomes for children and young people. Beyond that, though, they are characterized by considerable diversity. StriveTogether, for instance, might best be described as a model for "cradle-to-career" system development, while Promise Neighborhoods appear to be focused more specifically on addressing the disadvantages underlying poor outcomes. More generally, ABIs differ, amongst many other things, in terms of: whether they are instigated by central government, or by not-for-profit organizations, or by local leaders; whether they work across large geographical areas (for instance, city regions) or smaller neighborhoods; whether they have substantial additional resources or simply use the resources that are already available in their areas; whether they focus narrowly on educational attainment, or on a wider range of outcomes for children, families, and communities; and whether they are short-term, free-standing initiatives, or are part of more large-scale efforts to reform education and other services for children and families, and/or are seen as establishing new ways of working for the long term.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, given this diversity, the research literature on ABIs lacks a shared way of describing, categorizing, or theorizing these initiatives. This, in turn, raises questions about whether, as a policy approach, ABIs represent (or might potentially represent) a coherent and theoretically well-grounded response to educational disadvantage—or whether, in practice, "ABI" serves more as a catch-all term for a somewhat random collection of poorly thought-through, largely short-term projects, which simply happen to take place in disadvantaged areas. Indeed, it may be that to meaningfully address these questions, it is necessary to make distinctions between ABIs with different characteristics, rather than to treat them as a homogenous policy approach. Historically, in England and beyond, ABIs can most commonly be characterized as government-led, short-term, school-focused initiatives. In a critical review of such ABIs, Lupton (2010) reflects the argument that these initiatives are area-based simply because they happen to have taken place in defined areas. In doing so, she usefully draws attention to the somewhat thin conceptualization of place on which most ABIs have tended to be based. Essentially, she argues, these types of ABIs have focused largely on schools and have used "area" simply as a convenient administrative vehicle through which to allocate resources and stimulate small-scale interventions. They have, however, failed to explore precisely what is happening in these areas to create poor outcomes for children and young people and how they might work to change these underlying processes:
The first striking feature of these policies as a set is that they failed to make it clear whether it was really places that they were targeting, individuals, or schools . . . One could argue that these are genuinely only area-based initiatives; that is they take place in particular areas, rather than being motivated by any concern with spatial processes per se.
(Lupton, 2010, p. 117)
Lupton is somewhat skeptical of the possibility that a different kind of ABI might emerge. However, it is clear that not all ABIs take the form of government-led, short-term, school-focused initiatives that have been the preferred approach of policy-makers in England. To take two examples, the Harlem Children's Zone in the USA, which has acted as the prototype for the federal Promise Neighborhoods initiative, is a long-term effort to provide coordinated education, health, social care, and community development services to children in a disadvantaged area. The aim is to bring about a fundamental change in the community's capacity to support the development of its children and, in particular, to enhance postsecondary education and career access and readiness (see, for instance, Nauffts, 2002; Tough, 2008).
Similarly, the One Square Kilometer of Education Initiative in Berlin and other German cities,
. . . strives to merge the efforts of local educational institutions in an educational alliance, in which the institutions jointly assume responsibility for the learning success of the children and adolescents and which involves everyone who can help ensure that no child is lost. This also includes the urban planning and development agency, health agency, and local associations. No single institution, no single person alone can solve the complex task of achieving educational equality for children and adolescents. The point . . . is to support an educational chain within a selected community, i.e. a continuous chain of support extending over a period of 10 years, in which the children and adolescents are accompanied through the different school levels.
(Freudenberg, n.d.)
Initiatives of this kind seem to be something more than simply an alternative way of targeting additional resources. They appear to have some sense that distinctive approaches are needed in the most disadvantaged places, that the processes generating disadvantage in those places go beyond schooling, that educational outcomes are inextricably bound up with outcomes in other domains, and that the total resources of those places need to be brought to bear in a holistic and systematic manner. It may be, therefore, that we need to think in terms of successive "generations" of ABIs (Kerr et al., 2014; Lawson, 2013) differentiated not so much by their surface features as by their capacity to engage with the underlying processes which shape outcomes in their target areas.
With this in mind, the remainder of this article sets itself three tasks. The first is to survey what can be learned from ABIs as they have emerged over recent decades. The types of ABIs that have dominated policy efforts and that have been best evaluated are arguably the kind of "first-generation" ABIs that Lupton's critical account has in mind. In learning from their apparent strengths and weaknesses, the second task is to consider how ABIs might be conceptualized differently so that they can engage with the complexities of place, and to explore the theoretical resources that can be drawn upon for this task. The third task is to outline briefly some examples of what might well be a newly emerging generation of ABIs that embody aspects of this new conceptualization. In approaching these tasks, we consider that the apparent failings of previous ABIs may have more to do with how they have hitherto been conceptualized and operationalized, than with any fundamental difficulty with Smith's basic rationale that local problems, relating to local area factors, may require a local response (Smith, 1999).
Evidence for the Effectiveness of Area-Based Initiatives
Given the diversity of ABIs in form and conceptualization, it is difficult to synthesize the evaluation evidence as to their effectiveness. The problem is compounded by the inherent difficulties in evaluating what are often complex initiatives in very open environments (Dyson & Todd, 2010) and by the failure of many initiatives to commission sufficiently robust evaluations. The Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), for instance, is probably the longest-established and best-funded example of such an initiative in the world, yet it has not (at the time of writing) reported a robust, comprehensive evaluation. In the absence of such an evaluation, there are contradictions between its own claims to effectiveness (see, for instance, HCZ, 2015) and such narrowly-focused evaluations as have been undertaken. In the latter, evaluators have indeed found that there have been striking improvements in educational outcomes in schools serving the HCZ, but those outcomes appear to be attributable simply to changes in the organization and practice of the schools themselves rather than to the wider efforts of HCZ to support children and families (Dobbie & Fryer, 2009, 2011; Whitehurst & Croft, 2010).
There are similar ambiguities in the evidence from elsewhere. For instance, the ZEPs in France are long established (though they have been through multiple iterations and designations) and have attracted a degree of research attention. Yet there is little evidence that they have had a significant impact in reducing the effects of disadvantage on children's educational outcomes (Bénabou, Kramarz, & Prost, 2005; Rochex, 2012). The case of England is particularly interesting in this respect, given that ABIs have formed a major plank of education and other social policy for many years—most notably during the period of Labour governments between 1997 and 2010 (Kerr et al., 2014)—and that many of them have been robustly evaluated. Overall, however, the tenor of this evaluation evidence is not encouraging. As one review of non-educational ABIs concludes,
. . . the widespread academic and professional consensus seems to be that in terms of their stated or implicit aims, they have all been rather unsuccessful. In Britain, for example, it has been concluded that they have neither significantly improved the social and economic position of those living in the inner cities and peripheral estates nor have they succeeded in delivering the hoped for economic revival.
(Cochrane, 2007, p. 4)
The picture within education is much the same. A study of the Education Action Zone (EAZ) initiative, which directed additional resources and flexibilities at groups of schools serving disadvantaged areas, argued that,
. . . the evidence to date suggests that ABIs continue to have limited impact and any benefits are, at best, patchy. With reference to education-focused ABIs, research on England's EAZs, for example, shows that relatively few of the program's original objectives were realized . . . Even in terms of attainment targets, there was little measurable improvement and in some EAZs there was even a negative zone effect.
(Rees, Power, & Taylor, 2007, p. 265)
However, the EAZ initiative was also notably under-specified; beyond the additional funding, there was little guidance as to what, precisely, might be done to tackle deep-seated problems of educational disadvantage.
By contrast, the Excellence in Cities initiative, which followed EAZs, was much more focused on ensuring that a number of particular, often single-issue, interventions (for instance, one to improve boys' literacy skills) were put in place in targeted areas. It also appeared to achieve outcomes which were somewhat more promising; as its evaluators concluded,
. . . the effect of Excellence in Cities on the educational outcomes considered here suggests that educational policy can have an impact on students in their teenage years; such programs can be cost-effective; and resource-based policies can show positive results, even when the resources expended are relatively modest.
(Machin, McNally, & Meghir, 2006, p. 34)
There are a number of reasons that might be advanced to explain why the findings from different evaluations present a somewhat ambiguous pattern. Some relate to the strengths and weaknesses of particular initiatives—for instance, the lack of specificity in Education Action Zones as opposed to the clearer focus of Excellence in Cities. However, even the best-constructed initiatives, as they have operated in the past, seem to have failed to bring about transformational change for disadvantaged children. After all the area initiatives of the Labour period, for instance, the situation for such children in England was much the same as it had been a quarter of a century earlier (Wilshaw, 2012). It seems likely, therefore, that there are fundamental problems with ABIs as traditionally conceived. Regardless of how well-designed and -implemented particular initiatives might be, these problems persist if they nonetheless treat areas effectively as administrative "containers" for problems, into which resources can be dropped.
Two such problems can be identified. First, there is an evident mismatch between the strategies and resources available to ABIs and the challenges they are expected to face. As some critics have pointed out (Smith, 1987; Smith et al., 2007; Foden, Grimsley, Lawless, & Wilson, 2010), ABIs typically bring to bear relatively small amounts of additional resource, and in situations where far greater resources are already being deployed in existing services. As a result, they often deploy their resources in support of small-scale, single-issue interventions, and as an addition to service provision that remains essentially unreconstructed.
Moreover, they operate in situations where the macro-level forces and processes outside the area are far more powerful than those within the area in shaping outcomes. To take an example from the USA, Chicago is a city that has experienced multiple interventions to try to tackle its deep-seated educational inequalities, including school reform efforts and the development of community schools aimed at impacting on their local areas. These have had some successes (Bryk, Bender Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010; Whalen, 2007). However, at the same time, researchers—most notably, Pauline Lipman—have documented the ways in which global economic and ideological movements have exacerbated social inequalities in the city and have produced an education system that is grossly inequitable in its provision and outcomes (see, for instance, Lipman, 2004, 2011, 2013, 2015).
Not surprisingly, considerations of this kind have led some critics of ABIs to conclude that they are fundamentally misconceived:
In effect, ABIs are based on the view that social and economic disadvantage is a "residual" category, which can therefore be defined in terms of remaining 'pockets' of disadvantage in a wider context of increasing affluence. They do not acknowledge that, in reality, local disadvantage is a particular manifestation of the wider social inequalities which are endemic to societies such as the U.K. Far from being an exceptional feature of British society, which can be tackled by special state initiatives such as ABIs, areas of social disadvantage are complex, but normal manifestations of the characteristic patterns of social differentiation and inequality in the U.K. (and elsewhere).
(Rees et al., 2007, p. 271)
This misconception is closely related to a second problem. To reiterate, ABIs, even in the same country and initiated by the same government, can be designed in very different ways and look very different from one another. This may indicate appropriate flexibility to respond to local circumstances. However, it may also indicate the absence of any well-thought-through theory of action as to how, in a given context and in the face of overwhelming social forces, a necessarily limited area initiative expects to bring about meaningful changes in the lives of significant numbers of disadvantaged children. As the evaluators of the New Deal for Communities—a wide-ranging ABI in England with an important educational strand—observed,
. . .theories of change were often non-existent, or ill defined. Partnerships did not generally identify a set of evidence-based interventions which might plausibly change existing levels of disadvantage to desired outcomes over 10 years. Rather, projects were approved because of locally contingent factors: community demands, attitudes of agencies, and available match-funding. It was widely assumed that projects would help to achieve outcomes, even if the processes through which this was to occur remained blurred.
(Batty, 2013, p. 4)
In many cases, therefore, ABIs take the form of atheoretical assemblages of small-scale interventions. They are typically dependent on short-term innovation grants that take no account of the lengthy process of development that may be needed, and which make initiatives extremely difficult to sustain over time. They have, therefore, little real prospect of making sustained differences to children's lives. Indeed, at their worst they may function simply as "displacement activities," creating an illusion that the problem of disadvantage is being tackled, whilst in reality allowing inequitable social and educational systems to function unchallenged (Power, Rees, & Taylor, 2005).
Towards a Theoretical Rationale for Area-Based Initiatives
Despite the unsatisfactory nature of the conceptualization of many ABIs historically, there exist a number of well-established (and often empirically verified) theoretical resources which seem capable of putting them on a sounder footing and from which basis a new generation of ABIs can continue to develop. In this section, we will review some of those resources with a view to constructing a plausible theory of change on which future ABIs might be built.
Place Matters
Many past ABIs can be criticized because, in Lupton's (2010) terms, they have been simply "area-based" without engaging fully with the spatial processes through which disadvantage is generated. In fact, theories of space and place have been given considerable attention across the social sciences in recent years. Indeed, there is talk of a "spatial turn" (Warf & Arias, 2009), and this has been accompanied by attempts to develop a "geography of education" (Butler & Hamnett, 2007; Taylor, 2009; Brock, 2013) which takes matters of (social) space and (physical) place seriously.
Perhaps the key conceptual shift in this development has been in the conceptualization of space. Hubbard et al. (2004) characterize this as a shift away from a view of space as,
. . . a neutral container, a blank canvas that is filled by human activity . . . this absolute or "empirico-physical" conception suggest[s] that space can be conceived as outside human existence; rather than playing an active role in shaping social life, it is regarded as a backdrop against which human behavior is played out.
(Hubbard et al., 2004, p. 4)
Instead, space can now be seen as " . . . inherently caught up in social relations, both socially produced and consumed" (Hubbard et al., 2004, pp. 4–5). Drawing together concepts of space and place, it follows that places are not defined by more-or-less arbitrary boundaries drawn on maps, but by the social dynamics—people's experiences, interactions, opportunities, constraints—that operate differently in different places. One way to think of this is to see different places as having different "social ecologies" (Kerr et al., 2014) in which people are shaped by the places where they live, and where those places in turn are shaped by people's activities.
This new way of thinking about place—as physical and social, and as shaping people's lives while being shaped by how people live—is important for ABIs for two reasons. First, it suggests that place cannot be ignored in essentially social enterprises such as education. Place matters for education in multiple ways—by having impacts on the people (including the families and children) who live in particular places, by giving students access to particular schools which then shape their opportunities and outcomes, and by channeling particular students to schools in ways which, in turn, shape those schools (Lupton, 2006). "Place blind" policies, therefore, which overlook the distinctive ecologies of particular places, will fail to understand how outcomes are generated or inhibited in particular places, and what kinds of interventions might change this state of affairs. This failure will include those ABIs that are devised without regard to the dynamics within places and differences between places.
Second, the notion of distinctive social ecologies offers an illuminating perspective on what can—and cannot—be achieved through local action. Because places are understood in terms of social process, there is no question of imposing an arbitrary boundary around a particular place, which is intended to define something entirely separate from its surroundings. The social processes at work within a particular place may well originate beyond that place, but they will nonetheless interact with and be shaped by other processes in that place. Similarly, locally originating processes will interact with wider social processes. The binary distinction between a targeted place and the rest of the world, therefore, makes little sense.
Instead, we need to think in terms of what is sometimes called "glocalization" (Roudometof, 2015), that is of the global being present in the local but of the local shaping the way the global is manifested. In terms of education, as Taylor (2009) points out, this means that educational phenomena can only properly be understood by employing simultaneously perspectives that focus both on particular places and on national, regional, and global processes. This notion of glocalization necessarily involves giving some ground to those critics of ABIs who argue that such local initiatives fail to acknowledge the power of the national and global forces that they would need to overcome in order to make a real difference to children's outcomes. However, it equally involves acknowledging that, while the global may be present everywhere, it is not the same everywhere, that the local makes a difference, and that it might, in principle, be possible to intervene locally in ways which make a difference to how global forces manifest themselves.
All of this helps to explain why ABIs in the past have had mixed success, and what might need to be done to improve their effectiveness. ABIs are only likely to be effective if they define "place" in non-arbitrary ways, if they set about understanding the ecologies of the places where they seek to intervene, and if they understand how the global and the local interact in those places and what they may, therefore, be able to change. It is not enough for them to focus just on the presenting problems of particular places—poor attainment, or unequal outcomes, or high rates of school dropout. In addition, they need to understand and intervene in the underlying conditions—the "ecologies"—which generate those problems. From a policy point of view, it is also important that ABIs are not seen as the solution to problems that originate well beyond their target areas. Instead, efforts to tackle educational disadvantage and inequality need to take place at a range of systemic and spatial levels, from the institutional to the local, the national and, ultimately, the transnational (Ballas et al., 2012). ABIs are therefore best seen as potentially powerful interventions in local ecologies, nested within and supported by equivalent interventions at other levels.
Children's Ecologies and Malleable Outcomes
The notion of ecology is important for understanding not just how places "work" but how, if at all, place-based interventions might make a difference to children's outcomes. The challenge facing education systems (at least in the affluent world) is not simply that children's outcomes are unequal, but that those inequalities have proved extremely difficult to reduce. Despite decades of sustained school reform in some countries, whatever improvements there have been have failed to overturn established hierarchies of achievement. As the European Commission notes:
Educational poverty, or the share of young people failing to reach minimum standards in education, is one of the greatest challenges in Europe today. Although education should level the playing field for all, opportunities and outcomes are still very much determined by people's socio-economic and immigration background. As a result, no EU Member State has managed to bring underachievement amongst 15-year-olds with low socio-economic status below 15%. And in [some countries] over half of those with low socio-economic status are unable to solve very basic maths problems.
One explanation for this state of affairs might be that most reform efforts in recent years have focused somewhat narrowly on improving the perceived quality of classroom practice and school organization. Yet such a focus seems inadequate to addressing the wide range of factors beyond the classroom that shape outcomes (Strand, 2014, 2016; Muijs, 2010). As Muijs argues:
Even if we found all the factors that make schools more or less effective, we would still not be able to affect more than 30% of the variance in pupils' outcomes. It has therefore become increasingly clear that a narrow focus on the school as an institution will not be sufficient to enable work on more equitable educational outcomes to progress . . ..Interventions will need to impact more directly on pupils' environment and life chances.
(Muijs, 2010, p. 89)
However, this begs the question as to how it is possible to impact on children's "environment and life chances" when education, which is probably the most powerful intervention in children's lives by the state, has so far proved inadequate to the job. Ultimately, this resolves itself into something like the argument deployed by critics of ABIs: the forces acting to reproduce inequalities are far more powerful than the "puny" interventions that education systems are able to deploy against them.
It is at this point where the notion of ecology is once again helpful. Bronfenbrenner's well-known ecological systems theory, for instance, sees children as developing within a set of interacting systems and sub-systems, an "ecological environment [which can be] conceived as a set of nested structures, each inside the next, like a set of Russian dolls" (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 3). Whilst Bronfenbrenner's ideas are more complex and fluid than is often realized (Tudge, Mokrova, Hatfield, & Karnik, 2009), the concept of ecological systems usefully draws attention to the wide range of factors involved in shaping outcomes. While classrooms and schools are certainly important in this respect, they operate in interaction with a wide range of other factors—including family, neighborhood, and wider national contexts—which themselves interact with and shape each other. The causes of outcomes, therefore, are multiple and recursive rather than simple and linear, and it matters how the systems and sub-systems are characterized and configured within the ecology of each individual child (Lee, 2012).
The implication for ABIs is that interventions in children's ecologies might, in principle, produce different outcomes. Interventions in schools have been tried extensively, with, as we have seen, mixed results. However, interventions in other parts of children's ecologies are clearly possible. Parents and caregivers can be supported to parent more effectively, local economies can be developed to offer more and higher-quality employment, housing stock and the material infrastructure of areas can be improved. Not least, Bronfenbrenner's notion of ecology assumes that the child is not a passive product of the processes about her/him, but is an active participant both shaping and being shaped by those processes. It is important, therefore, that children can be supported in exercising their agencies in ways that are ultimately more productive.
Intervention in children's ecologies is, of course, very different from the simpler interventions that have tended to dominate educational policy and practice. This is not a matter of finding a single cause of poor outcomes (such as poor teaching) and acting to change that cause (for instance, by re-training teachers or making them more highly accountable). It is more a case of understanding the complex, recursive causal processes in children's ecologies and acting to change them.
In the field of public health, this is sometimes characterized as a broadening of focus beyond presenting problems and their immediate causes in order to be able to intervene also in the "causes of the causes" of those problems (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014; CSDH, 2008; Marmot, Allen, Bell, Bloomer, & Goldblatt, 2012). This is, of course, precisely analogous to intervening in ecologies of place, particularly since the ecologies of individual children and the ecologies of the places where they live are necessarily intertwined. The implication is that what are needed are forms of intervention which can span these intertwined ecologies, addressing determinants of outcomes within the child, in the child's family, in the schools and other services and institutions which support the child's development, in the neighborhood, and in wider societal processes. The need for such interventions seems to offer a powerful rationale for the continued development of ABIs, particularly if they can be nested appropriately within a range of interventions at different spatial and systemic levels.
Risk and Resilience
Considering how interventions might be designed in the future to support learning in "non-dominant" communities, Gutiérrez (2016) links the concept of ecology to that of resilience. Learning, she argues, takes place within complex ecologies, and for many learners, these ecologies face multiple social, political, and environmental threats that place learning at risk. Enabling learners to do well, therefore, means finding ways of building the resilience of their ecologies—specifically, of their communities—in the face of these risks. At their simplest, the notions of risk and resilience used here start from the observation that certain factors in children's backgrounds (we might say, their ecologies) are associated with increased risks of poor outcomes, yet despite these factors, some children go on and do well (Bartley, 2006; Schoon, 2006; Jenson & Fraser, 2006). Such children are labelled as "resilient."
However, resilience in this sense is not simply, nor even primarily, a psychological characteristic. It is a mistake to see it, as Ungar points out, "as something individuals have rather than as a process that families, schools, communities, and governments facilitate" (2012, p. 1) (emphases in original). Even where children are subject to significant risks for poor outcomes, other factors in their ecologies may act to protect them from those risks. Therefore, if poverty is a risk for poor educational outcomes, positive parenting, access to an appropriate role model, and effective teaching, for instance, may be enough to protect against the risk. This provides an explanation for why it is that not all children from at-risk groups go on to do badly.
Even in this simple form, notions of risk and resilience have much to offer to the theoretical foundations of ABIs. They suggest that ABIs might focus on reducing the risks for inadequate outcomes to which children are subject, and on building the protective factors that will enable them to become resilient in the face of whatever risks remain. This is important because it gives a clear purpose to the interventions which ABIs might marshal, but also because it focuses those interventions on building positive factors in children's ecologies—what some might call their "assets" (Foot & Hopkins, 2010; Mathie & Cunningham, 2003)—rather than on the deficits which inevitably tend to be emphasized by problem-oriented interventions.
A Coherent Theoretical Basis for Future ABIs
Taking these theoretical resources together, it is possible to set out some robust theoretical foundations for ABIs. These initiatives are not—or need not be—unfocused, short-term interventions in arbitrarily defined areas, inherently incapable of making a real difference to children's outcomes. Instead, they can be understood as interventions in the ecologies of places, where place is understood as a set of interacting social processes rather than as a point on a map. Since the ecologies of place interact with the ecologies of individuals within that place, ABIs are also interventions in children's ecologies.
In order to intervene successfully, ABIs need to be able to range across all of the factors in those ecologies, which lead children to do better or worse. They need to be multistrand rather than focusing on one or another factor, such as the perceived quality of the school. They need, therefore, to develop a robust understanding of how the ecologies in which they are intervening work to produce better or worse outcomes, and their interventions need to be guided by these understandings—focusing not just on the presenting problems, nor even just on the causes of those problems, but on these together with the "causes of the causes." Moreover, their interventions can be guided by the aim of reducing the risks to which children are subject and building their resilience. This is not only in the psychological sense of resilience but in an ecological sense where the focus is on developing those factors in children's ecologies which protect them from risk.
ABIs of this kind are not immune from the operation of macro-level factors, which lie beyond their control and originate outside the areas in which they seek to intervene. However, they do not see such factors as overwhelmingly determining of children's outcomes. Instead, those factors are seen as mediated by other factors in the ecologies of places and children so that poor outcomes are not inevitable provided that the protective factors in children's ecologies can be strengthened. That said, ABIs alone cannot do everything, and they need therefore to be nested within interventions at other spatial and systemic levels if they are to be maximally effective.
From Theory to Practice
Whilst it is useful to have a theoretical basis for the ABIs of the future, our earlier brief survey of current and historical ABIs suggested that few have been grounded in this way. Nonetheless, there are indications that some more recent ABIs are beginning to work in ways that are consonant with the foundations we have attempted to set out.
We earlier offered the Harlem Children's Zone as an example of a current ABI. Whilst, as we have seen, the outcomes of the HCZ are disputed, and whilst there is controversy regarding some of its methods (see, for instance, Fertig, 2011; Matthews, 2010; Otterman, 2010), there are aspects of the HCZ that hold out some promise. It is undeniably a multistrand intervention capable of intervening across a wide range of factors in children's ecologies—schools, health provision, families, and community development. It is a long-term intervention, operating in something like its current form since the 1990s and with no evident end-date in mind (HCZ, n.d.). Moreover, it operates on the basis of a more-or-less explicit theory of action, which itself arises out of an analysis of the ecology of the place it serves. As articulated by Geoffrey Canada, the former CEO, the assumption is that improving outcomes depends on rebuilding the community, adopting evidence-based practices, and succeeding with increasing numbers of children so that a "critical tipping point" is reached (Nauffts, 2002). Although, moreover, no end-point is specified, the assumption is that "we will need to do less and less over time as other institutions and stakeholders in the community step forward" (Nauffts, 2002).
Something similar might be said about some of the attempts to develop an anchor role on the part of universities and other public bodies in the USA and elsewhere. Anchor institutions in this sense tend to be located in areas of high disadvantage, to see themselves as committed to those areas in the long term, and to regard themselves as capable of "anchoring" the development of those areas—which typically includes the improvement of educational outcomes (Community Wealth, n.d.). In what is probably the best known of these, led by the Netter Center at the University of Pennsylvania, we can again see all the elements of long-term ecological intervention, based on a more-or-less explicit theory of action:
Essentially, this idea extends and updates John Dewey's theory that the neighborhood school can and should function as the core neighborhood institution—one that provides comprehensive services and galvanizes community institutions and organizations to help solve the myriad problems individuals and communities confront in a rapidly changing world.
(Harkavy et al., 2013, p. 526)
To this end, the university puts considerable effort into supporting local schools so that they can take on this extended role. This is not simply a matter of directing funding or personnel to the schools, but of putting the human and intellectual resources of the university to some extent at the disposal of the schools, and refocusing the university's teaching and research efforts on "solving real-world problems in [its] local communities" (Harkavy et al., 2013, p. 527). Local schools, therefore, become the principal vehicle through which the university can become engaged in its area.
A final example can be taken from England, where the authors have been involved in the development of what have become known as "children's communities." Loosely modelled on the Harlem Children's Zone and Promise Neighborhoods in the USA, these take the form of groups of services and institutions coming together to develop a long-term strategy for improving children's outcomes in disadvantaged areas (Dyson, Kerr, Raffo, & Wigelsworth, 2012; Dyson, Kerr, & Wellings, 2013, 2015). The communities are based on a set of principles that derive from the theoretical foundations set out above—a long-term commitment, interventions across a wide range of factors, and a strategic approach based on a robust analysis of the ecologies of particular places. The result is innovative practices and forms of organization which look very different from the short-term, scattergun approaches of many previous ABIs (see, for instance, Dyson, Kerr, Heath, & Hodson, 2016; Kerr & Dyson, 2016).
There is, of course, much work to be done to evaluate examples such as these. It is one thing to develop initiatives on the basis of a robust rationale, and quite another to ensure that the initiative in practice realizes fully the potential of that rationale. Nonetheless, these examples indicate that ABIs are not inevitably tied to their past. Educational disadvantage continues to be a stubborn problem for education systems in the affluent world. There is no doubt that many kinds of policy approaches have something to offer in tackling this problem.
In reviewing the field, this article has sought to make a conceptual contribution in articulating a new, robust rationale for ABIs as they continue to evolve. While it has shown that the current evidence for ABIs' effectiveness is ambiguous at best, it has also shown that weaknesses in implementation and conceptualization may be as much to blame, as any more fundamental inability of local action to tackle educational problems. There are indeed powerful theoretical resources that can be drawn upon to construct a robust rationale for a new generation of ABIs. ABI leaders need to understand the processes that produce disadvantage within their target areas, and how to intervene in children's social ecologies to reduce risks and build resilience. It may well be that ABIs cannot be—and should not aim to be—transformative in the sense of addressing the root causes of disadvantage at national and global level. Other policies and strategies are ultimately needed for this. Yet, this does not mean that ABIs cannot make a distinctive contribution as one element within a wider, nested, policy response to educational disadvantage.
At the time of writing, there are encouraging signs that a new generation of ABIs is emerging that is, in principle, capable of making this distinctive contribution. What is much less well understood is how, precisely, that contribution might be realized in practice. ABIs are complex, evolving, and subject to all kinds of political whims and changing contexts—and even when they are stable and well thought through and well-funded, they require complex evaluation designs in order to understand their impacts. Such designs, in turn, require significant funding and longevity, both of which may be hard to achieve. Quite simply, such complex evaluations of newly emerging ABIs have yet to be undertaken or publicly reported. Undertaking such evaluations presents an important future challenge for researchers in the field.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
lr necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 229 diseños de 31 diseñadores freelance.
A while ago we came up with the idea of creating a space for long distance couples to come together, and have since been trying to create that space. We spent 3 years in a long distance relationship before one of us moved to the partner's city... so, we know the pain, independence, loneliness, surprises, pleasure, and quirks of that long distance can bring. Our blog about long distance relationships can be found at http://www.coupledtogether.com/blog.
All long distance relationship couples.
This includes couples who are newly dating and those who are in established relationships. They could be regularly separated for days at a time (e.g. one partner does consulting work 4 days a week), separated for months at a time (e.g. military) or separated indefinitely (e.g. students who met while traveling).
We assume that our members will be more tech savvy than the general public.
We are looking for a logo for a website that provides a virtual place for long distance couples to share.
Ideally the logo will be:
- simple
- inviting
- distinct
- not lovey-dovey cheesy (yet still maintaining a 'couple' focus)
- more than just text
Feel free to play around with colors - we expect our color scheme will fall out of the logo.
In general, we like the photorealism look (e.g. http://www.patagonia.com/web/us/tin…jsp?ln=241 but are aware that it takes us away from simple, and is thus most likely not possible in a logo. We also like the handdrawn look (http://www.hellosoursally.com/).
These logos are great:
And are trying to stay away from these ones:
Please do not use any stock images or clip art in the logo.
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text:
T-VEC Vector Generation System
The T-VEC Vector Generation System (VGS) is the engine that supports:
- Model analysis
- Test vector generation
- Test driver
- Test results analysis
- Project status and measurement
The T-VEC VGS has a number of advanced features and reports - see VGS Advanced Topics.
Recent Changes
The Test Vector Generator System (VGS) 3.6.0 is now generally available.
New and improved functionality includes:
- New Project Explorer tab area - The Scenario View - This provides customer configuration of test vector generation on a DCP by DCP, or sets of DCPs, basis.
- Ability to specify ranges of DCP in Domain Convergence Paths options. ("DCP Numbers" and "Skip DCPs")
- Added the ability to set minimum domain boundaries for Float32 and Float64 variables
- Improved VGS to Simulink block navigation
- Improved VGS to TTM navigation
- 1-Dimensional array support in test vector generator, in support of TTM
- Vector generation performance enhancements.
- Updated the Consult Subordinate Vectors vector generation heuristic to support TTM tables with structured outputs.
- Removed obsolete VGS menu items, renamed other menu items for additional clarity.
- Added new material to VGS Reference Guide in the section on VGS GUI.
Please see the Release Notes for more details on the changes in this release.
The VGS was first used in the FAA certification of the Traffic and Collision Avoidance (TCAS) system in 1990. T-VEC was applied to the entire MD90 (McDonnell Douglas) Electrical Power System Variable Speed Constant Frequency (VSCF) system that was FAA-certified in January of 1995.
In 1998 VGS was integrated with the original SCR tool. Since that time it has continued to evolve and support other integrations with various modeling tools such as MATRIXx and more recently Simulink/Stateflow.
VGS has a wide array of test vector generation options, but the default vector generation functions are accessible to user through a single menu option called Build that performs the build process based on the dependencies, much like make. The Build process perform a number of steps to support Test Vector Generation.
There is a second option call Build with Test Drivers that performs both Test Vector Generation and Test Driver Generation.
This function is also provide through a command or console function to permit batch-oriented test generation.
Test Vector Generation
The test vector generation produces a set of test vectors that include the inputs, expected outputs, and requirement traceability link. These vectors are generic in that the inputs and expected outputs are based on the names from the model. Users often visualize the vectors in a html table matrix to examine and assess the values produced in the process.
The resulting vectors can be applied to unit, integration, or system testing. The applicability of the vectors to theses various layers of testing is based on the model.
Test Driver Generation
Test drivers generation transforms generic test vectors into environment and programming language-specific test drivers.
The test driver generator and associated support tools use programmable schemas and user object mappings that relate the model variable to the implementation (or simulation) interfaces that are required to automatically execute the test driver in some target test environment.
Test drivers have been produced in many languages, such as C, C++, Java, SQL/ODBC/JDBC, XML, SOAP WinRunner, JCL, Perl, Python, Ada, Basis and VB, Custom (graphics),Assembler, shell, command languages, emulators, proprietary, more . . .
Test Harness
A Test Harness is often constructed manually to support a standard way to inject test inputs, control the execution, retrieve test output (or outcomes), and potentially to support other reporting. The Test Driver Generator produces the test harness as a byproduct of the generation process. It is based on a test driver schema.
Test Driver Schema
The test driver generator processes two user-defined schemas. One specifies the format of the expected outputs file and the other specifies the format of the target-specific test driver. These are referred to as the expected outputs and test driver schemas, respectively. Once at test driver schema is created, it can be reused to produce test drivers (and the associated harness or harness interfaces) for all testing associated with a specific test environment.
Test Execution
This is the process step where the user must cause the execution of the generated test driver against the test environment. The test driver causes the inject of test inputs and captures the actual output produced by the execution. These results are then compared with the expected outputs. VGS provides a test results comparison function to automate this activity.
In the Simulink Tester for T-VEC (SL2TVEC), test execution is done automatically as part of the Generate and Test function executed in the SL2TVEC GUI. Test execution is performed against the manually generated code, auto-generated code, or Matlab Simulation.
For tests derived from TTM models, these test might be executed in a variety of ways (see Examples). One handy mechanism is to use the VGS Toolbox to link to a mechanism for quickly performing the test execution.
Code Coverage
T-VEC tools integrate with code coverage tools such as LDRA TBrun to provide a means to assess test code coverage such as MC/DC test coverage. The T-VEC Testers for Simulink provides users selectable options to generate test drivers in the form of LDRA TBrun .tcf files. These input/output value sets are used by TBrun when it creates test driver wrappers for the code from the input and output values, and other configuration information, that make up the .tcf files. TBrun provide measurement and reports such as MC/DC test coverage achieved by the test vectors generated by T-VEC.
Similar test driver configurations have been created for test drivers generated from TTM to leverage LRDA's TBrun test coverage information, and other code-based test coverage tools.
See other T-VEC Tool Integrations.
See also Extended MC/DC Coverage.
Reports, Status and Measures
There are various reports produced by the VGS that are also hyperlinked to reports produced by TTM. Such reports provide status information, model defect summaries, with links to the detailed reports that hyperlink back to the TTM model or Simulink model. The reports include (all reports are in HTML and/or XML format):
- Model report - representation of TTM model
- Requirement report - representation of TTM requirements
- Project status report - Hyperlink to all other reports, with project measures
- Test vectors - representation of vectors
- Coverage analysis report - model defect status, with hyperlink to model defects
- Test results report - summary of test execution pass/fail for each vector
- Detailed defect report - provide model defect details


text:
I have been an avid Greg Noll collector for years and its time I share my collection with the public. I am always looking for anything Noll related. Surfboards, kneeboards, decals, patches, artwork, magazines, or anything else related to Greg Noll. So if you would like to part with it please email me here. Please see the last page of my website for items I have for sale. If you have any Noll boards or old photos of you surfing a Noll board please email them to us and we will add them to the website.
I am in search of a few items for my Noll collection. Please email me if you have them
An original Greg Noll Surf Team jacket. The Surfing Funnies by Greg Noll, and a poster called Surfing Highlights by Greg Noll.
If you have any Greg Noll surfboards that you would like to display or sell just email us and we would be more than happy to list them in our for sale section.
Thanks for checking out my website!
The above image is a comic (super hero??) portrait of Greg Circa �67 or so. The stories that Greg told me to inspire it were about how at that point he felt like he owned Waimea Bay and could handle anything that the wave could throw at him: a condition that my Dad would call in his WWII vernacular "having the world by the ass". The black eyes are because Greg explained that the Hawaiians stories were so good that it was worth getting his ass kicked once in a while.12'' X 16� Acrylic on board �liberated� from a construction site. http://www.bigtoeart.com


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text: Today's 'Thursday Styles' section of the New York Times tries to convince readers that heterosexual, 20-something guys are into fragrance. They say such men belong to "Generation Axe" — in other words, "20-something urban men who... do not think that wearing fragrance is somehow unmanly." The story begins at a New York fragrance boutique called Le Labo, where a scent called Rose 31 — a men's fragrance! — is the bestseller. So! The question is this: Are these 20-something urban men with a penchant for synthetic scents actually straight? Cause honestly, the straight men we know emanate a scent derived not from roses but from armpit sweat and beer. (Not that we have a problem with that!) Take our poll, after the jump.


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The future of America's global homo promo
Unstoppable, if Obama is re-elected, says leader of pro-family organization
By Michael F. Haverluck
One month after the World Congress of Families' unsuccessfully tried to block the U.S. Embassy's unprecedented support of the Prague Pride homosexual festival, a key member of the pro-family coalition admits that such "gay" activism by the U.S. government will only grow if Barack Obama wins a second term.
"If Obama is elected, there won't be any way to block it unless the House defunds the embassy," Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver told WND in an interview Thursday. "But it is not just the embassy that is involved; it is all the agencies in the Obama administration."
One month ago, the U.S. Embassy took part in the Prague "Gay Pride" event, despite a letter by the World Congress of Families in protest. The capital of the Czech Republic is now dubbed "the most liberal city of the former Eastern Bloc" and is working to promote "gay rights" along with the Obama administration.
How did the U.S. Embassy end up supporting and participating in the Prague Pride Parade this year?
"President Obama has pushed the radical homosexual agenda down through all of his agencies," said Staver, who also serves as vice president, dean and professor of law at Liberty University School of Law. "He has appointed particular people who make sure that every agency promotes the LGBT agenda. This action is a direct result of President Obama's radical anti-family, pro-homosexual agenda."
This year's Prague Pride Parade is reported to have had attractions including: iBoys Party; Gay Speed Dating; Where Do Ethics End and Rights Start?; Tango Banana; 4Boys Party; Leather Zone and Children's Day with Picnic.
Despite the event's graphic nature, popular media outlets such as the BBC poured out euphemisms to depict various displays, such as "fancy dress" to denote garments yielding indecent exposure and "colorful events" to portray sexually explicit displays.
For a detailed account of how the homosexual agenda has infiltrated virtually aspect of American society, check out A Queer Thing Happened to America.
Some 25,000 participants and spectators are said to have indulged in the week of activities, which were condemned by Czech President Vaclav Klaus and his top aide, Deputy Chancellor Petr Hajek, who chided Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda for advocating "deviant" behavior.
Opposition had come from more than 120 pro-family and pro-life leaders from 11 nations, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, as well as Paige Patterson, who is a former majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
"There is nobody as ideologically driven as President Obama," Staver contends, referring to the commander-in-chief's homosexual promotions.
Staver believes GOP candidate Mitt Romney will reverse much of what Obama has done.
But Staver emphasizes that ousting the incumbent president in November is just the first step of many to mitigate years of damaging LGBT-friendly policy.
"It will be important for the people to actively participate under a Romney administration in order to halt the Obama agenda," he said. "Obama has infiltrated every area of the government, and it will be a significant undertaking to undo much of what he has done. He has totally revamped the agencies with his radical agenda."
According to Staver, the major surgery needed to extract the spreading homosexual agenda planted under the Obama administration will have to be preceded by a thorough examination.
"It is going to take some effort to make sure that the new administration is aware of these matters in order to address them. The problem is that Obama hasn't been focusing on jobs or other matters of significance, but he has been driven by his ideological agenda."
Obama's perspective already is reflected by the ambassadors and others from 11 nations who supported the U.S. Embassy's actions in Prague.
On the other side was the leader of the Czech Republic-based conservative initiative known as DOST (Trust-Objectivity-Freedom-Tradition), which targeted Israel's ambassador.
"Legitimizing the homosexual way of life is an effort to cover up the fact that same-sex cohabitation cannot produce a family," stated Michal Semin in an editorial published by the liberal "Lidové noviny" newspaper after Israel's embassy marched in the parade. "Public officials who support the homosexual lifestyle and place it on the same level as marriage are acting against the fundamental interests of the society they are supposed to serve."
But Semin's criticism was not reserved solely for the Israeli embassy, as he also condemned the U.S. and the Netherlands for their destructive policies supporting same-sex marriage and the homosexual lifestyle.
"They should be ashamed of themselves," said Semin, who sent protest notes to the three nations' embassies over the events.
The letter from the World Congress of Families said Obama's influence is corrupting Europe by forcing the promotion of homosexuality on societies that previously embraced traditional Christian values.
WCF Founder Allan C. Carlson, former U.N. Ambassador to UNSECO Alan C. Keyes, Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights President Bill Donohue, King for America Founder Alveda C. King and Staver are just some of the notable pro-family figures who signed the letter.
Those on the left joining in the support of Prague Pride were ambassadors from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Israel, Denmark and the U.K.
WCF said: "The United Nations has never affirmed homosexual marriage or rights." In fact, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that only, "men and women … have a right to marry and found a family," with "family" defined as "the natural and fundamental group unit of society [which] is entitled to protection by society and the state."
Just a few months ago, more than 3,200 delegates from 72 nations unanimously adopted the Madrid Declaration of World Congress of Families VI, which states, "We affirm the natural family to be the union of a man and a woman through marriage for the purposes of sharing love and joy, propagating children, providing their moral education, building a vital home economy, offering security in times of trouble, and binding the generations."
In June, WND reported the Pentagon launched a celebration of homosexual behavior. Previously, WND covered the progression of the case, when firefighters were forced to participate in a "gay" parade.
Jim Hartline, a former homosexual who took part in a San Diego Pride Parade some 15 years ago and is now a staunch Christian pro-family advocate in the city's homosexual district, sees the events as anything but benign.
"At least [five] registered sex offenders were hired to fill salaried and voluntary supervisory positions for the festivities," he said of the Pride events he attended in recent years.
Participants included transvestites, women flashers, pornographers, male strippers and indecently exposed adults acting out homosexual practices. Promotions were for sex toys, male escort services and pornographers.
Candy was handed out to entice young children, he said, including by a man riding a bicycle while wearing nothing but a thong.


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Gordon Brown given UN education role
BBC |July 13, 2012
Former prime minister Gordon Brown is to become a global education envoy for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Mr Brown's aim is to see 61 million more children enrolled into education across the world by 2015.
Since leaving office in 2010, the former UK prime minister has produced a series of reports on education in developing countries.
Earlier this year he launched a campaign for an international fund to bring education to all children.
Mr Brown said his new role would be a "great privilege".
"Ensuring that every child in the world has the opportunity to go to school and to learn is a longstanding passion of mine," said Mr Brown.
"Education breaks the cycle of poverty and unlocks better health and better job prospects."
The announcement, made in New York, means Mr Brown becomes a UN envoy – supporting UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.
But it does not mean that he will be leaving domestic politics.
His office told the BBC that Mr Brown definitely remained the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.
That could lead to further criticism from those who have attacked him for attending few debates and voting in Parliament on only a handful of occasions.
He joins the likes of the former US President, Bill Clinton, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Mr Brown has been campaigning in support of the millennium development goal that by 2015 all children should have access to at least a primary school education.
While it seems increasingly likely that some of the millennium goals will be missed, Mr Brown has called on the international community to try to keep its pledge on primary education.
Mr Brown earlier this year published a report warning of the "silent emergency" of millions of children not receiving any education – and called for an urgent investment to change this.
He reported that in South Sudan, girls were more likely to die in childbirth than complete a primary school education.
Mr Brown says he wants to support the UN secretary-general's initiative, Education First, which aims to prioritise education within development projects.
"Enrolling an additional 61 million children and ensuring a quality education for all by the end of 2015 will not be easy – but it is a goal which, working together, we can achieve," says Mr Brown.
Mr Brown has worked with his wife Sarah on a number of international education projects, including promoting the cause of children in conflict zones who miss out on education.
In a report on South Sudan published in April, he said that more than 40% of the world's children missing out on education lived in "fragile states" or those affected by violence.
He warned that at present, only 2% of humanitarian aid goes into education.
Mr Brown has said he will continue to serve as MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.
Filed under: Categories, Education, In Case You Missed It - 14th July 2012, Other News | Tagged: Gordon Brown, Millenium Development Goal, UN Education Envoy | 1 Comment »


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One of our biggest roles in the Career Development Center is to educate our students on the entire career development process. We believe that students cannot make effective career decisions unless they are fully informed about their choices, options, and possibilities within the world of work.
Additionally, we feel that the best way to educate our students is to let them hear this information directly from employers (especially alumni!) from their field or fields of interest.
The Career Development Center encourages employers and alumni from all industries and organizations to speak on campus.
We provide educational events on: potential major and career paths, graduate/professional school programs, professional success habits, business etiquette, how to find internships/jobs, how to perform well in an internship/job, qualities employers look for in college students/graduates, and much more. Our best method for teaching students this information is to bring professional guest speakers from a variety of professions, industries, and organizations to deliver the information.
Examples of Guest Speaker Events for employers to become involved with:
Careers In… Series: This speaker series brings professionals from specific occupations to campus to speak directly with students about the "ins and outs" of a profession. This series is designed to educate students on the nature of specific professions, what a typical day looks like, the good, the bad, and the ugly, as well as tips and pointers for students interested in such a career.
The Insider Series: The Insider Series is designed to give students an inside look at the recruiting and hiring process from an employer's point of view. Topics can include resume/cover letters, networking tips, interviewing, salary negotiation, skills employers look for, how to market oneself to an employer, maximizing an internship opportunity, and more.
In-Class Presentations: The Career Development Center can help connect employers/professionals with academic departments for in-class presentations on specific topics. This may include speaking to a class about major issues in your area (i.e. Accounting, Court Systems, Laboratories, etc).
If interested in speaking on campus, we can work with you to develop a program, schedule and market the event, and connect you with students, faculty, and staff. To discuss speaking on campus, contact us at 203-479-4858


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September 13, 2011
Vintage Paper Dolls- Ballet Dancers
I recently acquired Irena and the rest of her ballet crew from an auction. I didn't know how cute they would be until I actually held them and immediately fell in love. They are an awesome 7.5 inches tall and each one has three to four different outfits to dress them in.
If you would like to see more ballet dancers (there are actually 8 total), I've painstakingly scanned them, color corrected them and put them into a PDF document so that you can print them at home to play with and use. Just visit the link here.
14 comments:
- Lynn said...
Thanks for the paper dolls. I still LOVE paperdolls
- September 13, 2011 at 6:41 PM
- goddessandmagick said...
Love paper dolls. I use to have a shoe box full of them, makes me dream. Thanks
- September 13, 2011 at 8:36 PM
- Tarnished Rose said...
I have a lot of paper dolls that I would love to scan to use in my altered art projects. I know it was a painstaking process, but could you share how long it to complete?
Thank you!
- September 15, 2011 at 5:02 AM
- Sarah said...
Hi Marilyn,
First of all, thanks for following my blog! The scanning and fixing process for the ballet dolls took about three days. I scanned each of the dolls and their outfits separately and my scanner is really slow when scanning at 300 dpi. I chose to scan each one separately so that I could "cut them out" in photoshop and then "paste" them onto another blank sheet so I could color correct them individually. The entire project took somewhere about 7-8 hours to complete.
- September 15, 2011 at 6:42 AM
- Sheila A. said...
That was a lot of work for you! I ordered them, and I printed them within the hour! I was not disappointed!
Thank you much.
- September 17, 2011 at 2:37 PM
- Tiffany said...
I love your diligence. My daughter and I are enjoying these so so so so soooo much.
- November 9, 2012 at 7:39 AM
- Ann Van Doren said...
I was so excited to find these paper dolls because I had this same set as a child and played with them for hours on end. Unfortunately I let my daughter play with them and they are damaged and pieces are missing. However, the link doesn't work!!! Have you moved them? Are they still available? I'd love to be able to share a full set with my granddaughter!
- January 25, 2013 at 10:47 PM
- Ashley Ann said...
I fel in love with these paper dolls when searching for some for my daughter. I was so excited to print them...but your link doesn't work any more. :[ Any chance they are in another spot? I would LOVE to have these for her. Thanks so much for offering these beauties!!
- March 8, 2013 at 8:59 AM
- joy said...
Be proud of what you have and be sports in whatever you do. Visit my site for more information.
- May 30, 2015 at 12:26 AM
- joy said...
We are all like flowers that blooms or withered in the garden depending on how we take good care of our self. So do not let negativity pass through. Enjoy and be confident. Have a good day and visit my site for more information.
- January 19, 2016 at 7:11 PM
- jeni_turner said...
Thank you so much for your time spent doing this. I can't wait to use these in my art journal!! :)
- January 31, 2016 at 1:45 PM
- Heather McDougall said...
I would love to purchase the pdf file from you. I can be reached at email@example.com
- November 21, 2016 at 5:50 PM
- bassoon said...
I got these paper dolls as a present from my uncle in the US in the early 50s. I played a lot with them and my mother made more dresses for them inspired from ballets she saw on stage. I still love them and they are carefully mended when ancles and arms bent or broke.
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VIDEO: Tony Parker on the words of wisdom he had for his longtime friend Boris Diaw earlier in his career
MIAMI — The first nervous steps of Boris Diaw's NBA career were tough to watch.
The talent was obvious: A 6-foot-8 basketball savant with point guard skills and the size, length and ability to play as many as four positions. What was also clear is that Diaw's understanding of the game was beyond that of a normal rookie. The Atlanta Hawks' front office knew it, which is one of the main reasons they selected the young French prospect with the 21st pick in the 2003 Draft.
But there was glitch in the system. Diaw's coaches had no idea how to use him. The Hawks, at the time, hadn't figured out how to use a player with Diaw's hybrid skill set. They couldn't figure out if he was a point guard or a center or whatever was in between. So they tried him everywhere, from point guard to center … and sometimes all in the same half of the same game.
"Well, I did a little bit of everything," Diaw said with a smile Wednesday at AmericanAirlines Arena, the day after helping his San Antonio Spurs to a 2-1 lead over the Miami Heat with a huge Game 3 win in The Finals. "It was helping me to learn pretty much every position. I remember starting the game at the five and going out to do the [opening] tip and then playing point guard during the same game."
It was a testament to his polish and professionalism at such a young age that the Hawks leaned on him that way, not to mention their sheer desperation, what with a roster that was being rebuilt from the ground up at the time. Diaw, however, wasn't necessarily ready for a role like that. He'd played at the highest level professionally in France but needed time to adjust his game to the NBA, time he didn't get in Atlanta.
Back then his teammates whispered about how long he'd last, whether or not he was truly cut out for the NBA and if and when he'd scurry back to Europe.
It wasn't until much later in his career, after he left Atlanta via the controversial Joe Johnson sign-and-trade deal with Phoenix in the summer of 2005, that Diaw's best was revealed. He earned the league's Most Improved Player Award in 2006 the with the Suns, thriving in Mike D'Antoni's free-flowing system.
He opened some eyes around the league as the NBA game was evolving into its current form, with floor spacers and a global style that has been the trademark of the top international leagues for years.
San Antonio has proved to be the ideal fit, complete with playing alongside his friend since childhood Tony Parker and in a system that prizes ball-sharing and versatility like no other system in the league. That would explain Spurs coach Gregg Popovich inserting Diaw into the starting lineup before Game 3. His presence forces the Heat into some uncomfortable matchups, specifically for Chris Bosh, who cannot take advantage of Diaw on the perimeter the way he can Tiago Splitter or even Tim Duncan.
In fact, Diaw ends up with the advantage because he can play inside and out while also serving as an extra ballhandler and facilitator and rebounding like a power forward and guarding both in the paint and on the perimeter. He's one of the best and most creative passers in the league, big man or not. And he's unselfish to a fault, making him the ideal teammate in today's NBA.
Again, the Spurs' system (impact over stats and detail over flash) and Pop's methods, are the perfect fit.
"Every coach is different, everybody has a different philosophy," Diaw said. "I've had a lot of teams and a lot of coaches in my career. So it's definitely gratifying when you get a coach like Pop recognizing a little bit of the background and the way we play in Europe, the way we share the ball and not so much the one-on-one basketball. It's just a lot of fun to play on this team."
The best part, for both Diaw and Parker, is the chance to realize their hoop dreams together. They won gold at EuroBasket last year as leaders of the French national team and are two games away from winning a Larry O'Brien trophy together with the Spurs.
"For me it's a little bit different," Parker said of Diaw's career renaissance with the Spurs. "Everything that you see him do today I've seen him do it the last four or five years doing that. He was playing great basketball in Phoenix and had some rough years with the Bobcats. When the Spurs asked me about Boris and should we take him, I was like 'he'll be a great fit for our team.' I'm so happy for him, to see him blossom at the big stage. And everybody can see what he's doing and what he's capable of.
Diaw's work with the French national team should not be overlooked. Parker said it was a career-changing time for Diaw, who has made adjustments to his game and lifestyle in the wake of that huge summer.
"It was a big thing for us and I think it made Boris keep improving and keep getting better," Parker said. "Since he's been with us we have high expectations every game. We want to win a championship. So it made him be even more focused and take care of his body. He's got a chef and he's being very healthy and is playing his best basketball right now. As his friend since I'm 14 years old, it's like a dream to win a gold medal with the national team and this year have another opportunity to win a championship. You have to put it in perspective … when we grew up there were not a lot of European guys in the NBA. I never thought I'd be with him on the same team and being two wins away from winning a championship."
If Parker didn't, no one did.


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