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Achieving the elimination of racial differences in test performance, as set forth in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), requires education policies that engage the reality that African American test performances are not only about race but also about gender and residential status. In an effort to inform education policymaking with research that explores race–gender and residential inequality, I assess the growth of reading gaps in school and non-school contexts using a national and city sample of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal, Kindergarten Cohort 1998–1999. I found that inequality in test performances was greater in the city than elsewhere, and African American boys shoulder a disproportionate educational burden related to city residency and enrollment in city schools. Additionally, children in city neighborhoods – where drugs and burglary are big problems – experience large shortfalls in reading in school and non-school contexts. I conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications for future educational policy, practice, and research, especially NCLB, which mandates that public schools achieve parity among racial groups by the end of the 2013–2014 academic year.

There is a peculiar problem in the US that is proving to challenge core values that undergird our laws, interpersonal interactions, and challenge the civil rights of many. American society believes in harsh sentences for committing crimes without a system for rehabilitation from crime and absent from resources from a community level to prevent crimes. As crime has declined since the 1990s, policing behavior has grown to a level that reflects a disregard for humanity resulting in police-involved shootings, also known as “justifiable homicides” or deaths by legal intervention. This peculiar problem reifies old notions of racial inferiority and racial profiling that stem from a long history of lynchings in America, and highlights a broken legal system that shows bias toward poor communities and communities not of the racial and ethnic majority. When laws support one racial or ethnic group and those with resources, other communities become invisible and subjected to state-sanctioned violence that allows some police agencies and police officers to engage in behaviors that do not reflect their training foster an overwhelming sense of fear in these communities. We have observed that when communities fear the police and the larger society disbelieves the negative interactions with police, residents have begun to capture police encounters with community members on social media. Despite the video footage that has been collected documenting abuse of power, some police have been granted impunity for their actions, which further fuels fear in these communities. What we propose are ways to frame and solve negative police encounters with communities through an understanding of: (1) racial biases; (2) racial and gender consciousness; (3) ways to provide more equitable policing practices; (4) the enforcement of legal remedies for those who abuse power; and (5) the prevention of acts of discrimination by holding individuals culpable who informally police Black males. We believe these strategies aid in addressing the historical legacy of these behaviors and moves multiple systems and disciplines toward integrated solutions to eliminate “justifiable homicides.”

This paper aims to discuss the roles of social protection in reducing and facilitating climate-induced migration. Social protection gained attention in the international climate negotiations with the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. Yet, its potential to address migration, considered as a key issue in the loss and damage debate, has not been sufficiently explored. This paper aims at identifying key characteristics of social protection schemes which could effectively address climate-induced migration and attempts to derive recommendations for policy design.

Based on the existing literature, the paper links empirical evidence on the effects of social protection to climate-related drivers of migration and the needs of vulnerable populations. This approach allows conceptually identifying characteristics of effective social protection policies.

Findings indicate that social protection can be part of a proactive approach to managing climate-induced migration both in rural and urban areas. In particular, public work programmes offer solutions to different migration outcomes, from no to permanent migration. Benefits are achieved when programmes explicitly integrate climate change impacts into their design. Social protection can provide temporary support to facilitate migration, in situ adaptation or integration and adaptation in destination areas. It is no substitution for but can help trigger sustainable adaptation solutions.

The paper helps close research gaps regarding the potential roles and channels of social protection for addressing and facilitating climate-induced migration and providing public support in destination, mostly in urban areas.

For many, quality circles have been a struggle, total quality management has been something to “get around to one day” and continuous improvement has just been another expression meaning total quality management, which, of course is something that we will “get around to one day”. Worse, the acronyms used ‐ QC, TQM, CI ‐ have joined such exotic practices as JIT (Just‐in‐Time inventory), CAD‐CAM (computer‐aided development and manufacturing) and more recently BPR (business process re‐engineering) in an alphabet soup of consultant‐led packages, available to the discerning manager ‐ at a price.

For many, quality circles have been a struggle, total quality management has been something to “get around to one day” and continuous improvement has just been another expression meaning total quality management, which, of course is something that we will “get around to one day”. Worse, the acronyms used ‐ QC, TQM, CI ‐ have joined such exotic practices as JIT (just‐in‐time inventory), CAD‐CAM (computer‐aided development and manufacturing) and more recently BPR (business process re‐engineering) in an alphabet soup of consultant‐led packages, available to the discerning manager ‐ at a price.