(2019). The First Step Act of 2018: Risk and Needs Assessment System. US Department of Justice On December 21, 2018, President Donald J. Trump signed the First Step Act of 2018 into law. Title I of the First Step Act of 2018 (FSA or the Act) is focused on reforms to reduce recidivism among the federal prison population. Many of Title I's reforms hinge on the creation of a risk and needs assessment system. Under the FSA, the Attorney General is charged with developing and releasing a risk and needs assessment system for use in the federal prison system. With this report, Attorney General William P. Barr releases the First Step Act of 2018 Risk and Needs Assessment System. This report outlines the work of the Department of Justice to develop and implement the Risk and Needs Assessment System (System). It also introduces the new System that the Federal Bureau of Prisons will deploy in its facilities. And the report announces the Department of Justice's strategic plan to evaluate, validate, and enhance the System over time…. [PDF]
(2018). Forum: Trump and the Nation's Schools–Assessing the Administration's Early Impact on Education. Education Next, v18 n3 p58-65 Sum. Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump did not emphasize education policy during his campaign, though he proposed a $20 billion program to promote school choice, derided Common Core, and even floated the idea of eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. As for higher education, Trump expressed concern over student debt and proposed a partial loan-forgiveness program. Observers suggested that, as president, he might roll back Obama's tough enforcement guidelines on campus sexual assault. How have Trump's policies stacked up against promises in his first year as president? What effect has his administration had on the nation's schools and colleges so far? In this forum, Lindsey M. Burke of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy argues that the administration has already made some positive strides, while Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, contends that Trump's policies have only harmed children and schools…. [Direct]
(2017). Education Activism: A Moment to Stand Up. Voices in Urban Education, n45. In this article, the author asks the question: what are the real implications of living in a Trump America? He thinks as it relates to public education, people see this as a call to really stand up, and say, "Our schools will be safe places. Our schools will be sanctuaries. We will have good public schools in our communities, and we will fight for them." He thinks people are becoming sensitized to the kind of risks, the kind of momentum that we have to build in order to make sure that, at the end of these four years, we have strong public education and public schools in the communities that are most vulnerable. He discusses priorities, such as invalidating claims around the role of the private sector as it relates to education, and building infrastructure that can run strong campaigns at the local and state level. He asks questions and provides some advice for those that are concerned about the new political reality they find themselves in. He highlights some local… [PDF]
(2020). Compilation of Information about Successful State and Institutional Efforts That Promote Timely and Affordable Completion of Postsecondary Education: An Annotated Bibliography. US Department of Education On March 21, 2019, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 13864, "Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities" which, among other things, required the Secretary of Education to compile information about successful State and institutional efforts that promote students' timely and affordable completion of a postsecondary program of study. Additionally, the EO asked that the Secretary publish a compilation of research results that addresses: (1) how some States and institutions have better facilitated successful transfer of credits and degree completion by transfer students; (2) how States and institutions can increase access to dual enrollment programs; and (3) other strategies for increasing student success, especially among students at high risk of not completing a postsecondary program of study. This report presents an annotated bibliography of studies that have examined state efforts to improve postsecondary… [PDF]
(2017). The "New Racism" of K-12 Schools: Centering Critical Research on Racism. Review of Research in Education, v41 n1 p182-202 Mar. While organizing efforts by movements such as Black Lives Matter and responses to the hate-filled policies and rhetoric of President Donald Trump are heightening public discourse of racism, much less attention is paid to mechanisms of racial oppression in the field of education. Instead, conceptualizations that allude to racial difference but are disconnected from structural analyses continue to prevail in K-12 education research. In this chapter, our goal is to challenge racism-neutral and racism-evasive approaches to studying racial disparities by centering current research that makes visible the normalized facets of racism in K-12 schools. After narrowing over 4,000 articles that study racial inequity in education research, we reviewed a total of 186 U.S.-focused research studies in a K-12 school context that examine racism. As we categorized the literature, we built on a theory of the "new racism"–a more covert and hidden racism than that of the past–and grouped the… [Direct]
(2023). Cloak of Racial Oppression Theory in Education. Educational Foundations, v36 p99-114. The more immediate concern of social injustice should explore the significant barriers Black men face in society. Although White America would like you to believe that things have improved, the current climate proves otherwise. The amount of hate toward people of color has been made obvious because of the Donald Trump administration. And one can even make the argument that most whites have ignored the enormity of racial tension escalating right before their eyes. It is easier for them to ignore the reality of racism, than to address it openly and honestly. But the barriers that Black men face are pushed even further to the outskirts of the minds of society to completely devalue their existence. These barriers may be more challenging to uphold if there's a framework like the cloak of racial oppression theory to identify the systemic barriers that exist in educational institutions. The cloak of racial oppression theory will likely generate discussions to encourage White America to… [PDF]
(2017). Made You Look: Reflecting on the Trump Election and Patterns of False Response. Berkeley Review of Education, v7 n1 p95-101 Jan. Before the start of this past fall semester, a large Northern California community college, celebrated its 100th anniversary. One of the lead programs featured a panel of current faculty, staff, and students, in addition to a former Japanese American student who attended the college during World War II. Her story offered an opportunity for to contextualize the college's current role as a public institution of education. Instead, however, the panel and campus at large responded minimally to this conversation; it may have been startling or inspiring in the moment, but few actions or outcomes were attached. Most attendees returned to the normalcy of preparing for the upcoming semester and did not fully reflect on the relevancy of her story. Yet fast-forward to the middle of the fall semester, and the presidential election uncovered the beliefs and practices of the larger society, creating a crucial time for educational institutions and spaces to hold exactly these conversations about… [PDF]
(2019). Staff and Administrator Training to Promote College Completion of Undocumented Students. ProQuest LLC, D.Phil. Dissertation, Mercer University. This qualitative study investigated the experiences of staff and administrators who worked with undocumented students attending college in a southern region of the United States. Staff and administrators were unaware of the unique challenges that undocumented college students face when pursuing their college degrees. The researcher conducted a constructivist epistemological, grounded theory study and utilized the Latino/a critical race theory as the framework. Through 11 semi-structured interviews with staff and administrators who worked with undocumented college students in the southern region, the participants discussed the challenges they experienced while helping undocumented students with resources to help them complete college. The data revealed many barriers that undocumented college students face while completing college. The staff and administrators discussed how undocumented students wanted to pursue the "American Dream". However, while pursuing their college… [Direct]
(2017). Designing an Intervention to Promote Critical Thinking about Statistics in the General Public. Berkeley Review of Education, v7 n1 p113-119 Jan. "One in five American households do not have a single member in the labor force." This was a statistic heralded by President-elect Donald Trump (Appelbaum, 2016, para. 2), in a speech during the election campaign, to illustrate the apparently huge number of unemployed Americans and, thus, to expose the perilous state of the American economy. However, if considered critically, this is also a statistic that is incredibly misleading. Trump may be correct that fewer Americans, as a percentage of the total population, are engaged in traditional employment today compared to previous decades. However, the statistic above is not proof that more Americans are unemployed and, indeed, is more indicative of the fact that 20% of American households are headed by retirees (Jacobson, 2016). In this statistic, Trump is tacitly classifying retirees, 16-to-17-year-olds, and stay-at- home parents as being within the ranks of the unemployed. Although this classification may be technically… [PDF]
(2018). Research Report Critique: Moving on Up? What Groundbreaking Study Tells Us about Access, Success, and Mobility in Higher Ed. Journal of College Access, v4 n1 Article 9 p75-79 Jun. The "Moving on Up? What Groundbreaking Study Tells Us About Access, Success, and Mobility in Higher Ed" report by Stephen Burd seeks to raise awareness of the data published in a paper, "Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility." This paper was released at the same time that Donald Trump began his presidency, therefore, it may not have received as much attention as it could have, considering the findings. New America published a blog series highlighting the information from the Mobility Report Cards paper and versions of those posts have been reprinted in this report. The paper and this report gathered data from de-identified tax records from students, who attended college between the years 1999 and 2013, as well as from their parents. They also used the College Scorecard provided by the U.S. Department of Education, which supplied the information about the early adulthood earnings of the more than 30 million Americans for which… [PDF]
(2017). Perceptions in the Mind Maps of Turkish Children Living in England at Primary Education Level about Their Home Country Turkey and the World. Online Submission, International Journal of Language Education and Teaching v5 n4 p521-541 Dec. This research was conducted to determine the perceptions of Turkish children in their mind maps at the primary educational level living in the UK and parental views on these perceptions about the children's home country Turkey and the world. For this purpose, case study approach in qualitative research is preferred. The study group consists of 36 children aged 8-10 years and 17 parents living in England, Nottingham and selected through a maximum diversity sampling. As a data collection tool, students' personal information form, interviews made with parents and mind maps for children's perception of the world and Turkey were used. Content analysis is applied to analyse the data obtained from the mind maps. The data were coded for the detected themes and presented in tables with frequency values. In the analysis of the data obtained from the parental interviews, typological analysis was used. Opinions about the subject were given directly, without intervention. As a result of the… [PDF]
(2018). Higher Education and the Politics of the Radical Imagination. Prism: Casting New Light on Learning, Theory & Practice, v2 n1 p23-43. In this paper, I address the vital civic principle that democracies cannot exist without informed citizens and that education itself must be about more than training and is essential to creating critical and engaged citizens. Such an understanding is imperative at a time when democracy is under siege all over the globe. As an example of both the rise of authoritarianism and the challenge it poses to higher education, I focus on not only the election and presidency of Donald Trump but also an emboldened culture of manufactured illiteracy that exhibits a disdain for any notion of education wedded to the pursuit of the truth, science, and the public good. I argue that the Trump administration is engaged in not simply a neoliberal political project designed to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of the financial elite, but also is reworking of the very meaning of education both as an institution and as a broader cultural force. Democracy and politics itself are both in crisis and… [PDF]
(2019). North America 2.0: A Workforce Development Agenda. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars As new technology reshapes workplaces and jobs across North America, the United States, Mexico, and Canada need to reinvent the ways that they educate, train, and re-skill their workforces. With Mexico and Canada now the United States' two largest economic partners, more than ever the three countries need to work together to effectively and equitably manage the massive transformations ahead in the skills needed by tomorrow's employees. Already, employers across the continent are having difficulty filling jobs with suitable candidates: 50% of Mexican CEOs face that challenge, as do 46% and 41% of U.S. and Canadian employers respectively, a recent Manpower survey finds. Furthermore, The World Economic Forum's 2018 Future of Jobs report says that CEOs surveyed expect that up to 54% of workers will require significant "reskilling" (largely for those displaced from jobs) or "up-skilling" (largely for those still employed but whose jobs are evolving) by 2022…. [PDF]
(2018). Concientization among People in Support and Opposition of President Trump. Educational Technology & Society, v21 n1 p237-247. Civic engagement in the United States has increased since the election of President Trump. This increase is evident online as people are using Twitter to assert their digital citizenship by voicing their opinions regarding President Donald J. Trump and demonstrating solidarity with various civic movements. President Trump's election has caused many people to recognize how policies impact their daily lives and shed previous understandings as described by Freire (2005) as concientization. This study employed a Content Analysis to classify Tweets from #DisruptJ20 posted during inauguration week according to concientization and Support or Opposition of President Trump. A Sentiment Analysis revealed that supporters of President Trump were much more negative than those who oppose President Trump. Results of the Logistic Regression found that variables related to network structure (Friends, Followers, and Likes) were more likely to predict Retweets than concientization. Results of… [PDF]
(2020). A Semantic and Rhetorical Study of Manipulation in Two English and Arabic Political Speeches. Arab World English Journal, v11 n4 p426-444 Dec. Manipulation is a discursive phenomenon used by speakers to affect the thoughts ( and indirectly the actions) of the recipients. This study is concerned with manipulation in two political speeches; one in English delivered by the American President Donald J. Trump, while the other in Arabic delivered by the Iraqi President Barham Salih to be the study's data. Each one of these two speeches is divided into serial-numbered extracts( henceforth Ext.). The study aims at investigating the semantic and rhetorical devices utilized as manipulation strategies in these speeches. To this end, the qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis will be followed in this study. The significance of the study stems from how the ideological dimension based on bettering off the speaker's image and derogating others' image plays a vital role in the political speeches. This study draws on Van Dijk's ideological approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of political discourse, and accordingly, it is… [PDF]