text:
We, like many of you, were excited to travel to Washington DC in March 2020 to present at the annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE). This would have been our 15th year attending or presenting at the SREE conference! We had been looking forward to learning from a variety of sessions and to sharing our own work with the SREE community, so imagine our disappointment when the conference was cancelled (rightfully) in response to the pandemic. Thankfully, SREE offered presenters the option to share their work virtually, and we are excited to have taken part in this opportunity!
Among the several accepted conference proposals, we decided to host the symposium on Social and Emotional Learning in Educational Settings & Academic Learning because it incorporated several of our major projects—three evaluations funded by the Department of Education's i3/EIR program—two of which focus on teacher professional development and one that focuses on content enhancement routines and student content knowledge. We were joined by Katie Lass who presented on another i3/EIR evaluation conducted by the Policy & Research Group and by Anne Wolf, from Abt Associates, who served as the discussant. The presentations focused on unpacking the logic model for each of the respective programs and collectively, we tried to uncover common threads and lessons learned across the four i3/EIR evaluations.
We were happy to have a turnout that was more than we had hoped for and a rich discussion about the topic. The recording of our virtual symposium is now available here. Below are materials from each presentation.
We look forward to next year!
9A. Unpacking the Logic Model: A Discussion of Mediators and Antecedents of Educational Outcomes from the Investing in Innovation (i3) Program
Symposium: September 9, 1:00-2:00 PM EDT
Section: Social and Emotional Learning in Educational Settings & Academic Learning in Education Settings
Organizer: Katie Lass, Policy & Research Group
Impact on Antecedents of Student Dropout in a Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program
Katie Lass, Policy & Research Group*; Sarah Walsh, Policy & Research Group; Eric Jenner, Policy & Research Group; and Sherry Barr, Center for Supportive Schools
Supporting Content-Area Learning in Biology and U.S. History: A Randomized Control Trial of Enhanced Units in California and Virginia
Hannah D'Apice, Empirical Education*; Adam Schellinger, Empirical Education; Jenna Zacamy, Empirical Education; Xin Wei, SRI International; and Andrew P. Jaciw, Empirical Education
The Role of Socioemotional Learning in Teacher Induction: A Longitudinal Study of the CREATE Teacher Residency Program
Audra Wingard, Empirical Education*; Andrew P. Jaciw, Empirical Education; Jenna Zacamy, Empirical Education
Uncovering the Black Box: Exploratory Mediation Analysis for a Science Teacher Professional Development Program
Thanh Nguyen, Empirical Education*; Andrew P. Jaciw, Empirical Education; and Jenna Zacamy, Empirical Education
Discussant: Anne Wolf, Abt Associates
Posted by: Robin Means & Thanh Nguyen
Tags: conference, education research, EIR, empirical education, evaluation, i3, mediation anaysis, porfessional development, RCT, research, SEL and sree
We just published on Medium an important article that traces the recent history of education research to show how an unfortunate legacy of NCLB has weakened research methods, as applied to school use of edtech, and made invisible resulting achievement gaps. This article was originally a set of four blog posts by CEO Denis Newman and Chief Scientist Andrew Jaciw. The article shows how the legacy belief that differential subgroup effects (e.g., based on poverty, prior achievement, minority status, English proficiency) found in experiments are, at best, a secondary exploration that has left serious achievement gaps unexamined. And the false belief that only studies based on data collected before program implementation are free of misleading biases has given research the warranted reputation as very slow and costly. Instead, we present a rationale for low-cost and fast-turnaround studies using cloud-based edtech usage data combined with already collected school district administrative data. Working in districts that have already implemented the program lowers the cost to the point that a dozen small studies each examining subgroup effects, which Jaciw has shown to be relatively unbiased, can be combined to produce generalizable results. These results are what school decision-makers need in order to purchase edtech that works for all their students.
Read the article on medium here.
Or read the 4-part blog series we posted this past summer.
1. Ending a Two-Decade Research Legacy
2. ESSA Evidence Tiers and Potential for Bias
3. Validating Research that Helps Reduce Achievement Gaps
4. Putting Many Small Studies Together
Tags: achievement gap, education, ESSA, evaluation, NCLB, quick-turnaround research, research and The Every Student Succeeds Act
This is the last of a four-part blog posting about changes needed to the legacy of NCLB to make research more useful to school decision makers. Here we show how lots of small studies can give better evidence to resolve achievement gaps. To read the the first 3 parts, use these links.
The NCLB-era of the single big study should be giving way to the analysis of the differential impacts for subgroups from multiple studies. This is the information that schools need in order to reduce achievement gaps. Today's technology landscape is ready for this major shift in the research paradigm. The school shutdowns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have demonstrated that the value of edtech products goes beyond just the cost reduction of eliminating expensive print materials. Over the last decade digital learning products have collected usage data which provides rich and systematic evidence of how products are being used and by whom. At the same time, schools have accumulated huge databases of digital records on demographics and achievement history, with public data at a granularity down to the grade-level. Using today's "big data" analytics, this wealth of information can be put to work for a radical reduction in the cost of showing efficacy.
Fast turnaround, low cost research studies will enable hundreds of studies to be conducted providing information to school decision-makers that answer their questions. Their questions are not just "which program, on average, produces the largest effect?" Their questions are "which program is most likely to work in my district, with my kids and teachers, and with my available resources, and which are most likely to reduce gaps of greatest concern?"
Meta-analysis is a method for combining multiple studies to increase generalizability (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). With meta-analysis, we can test for stability of effects across sites and synthesize those results, where warranted, based on specific statistical criteria. While moderator analysis is considered merely exploratory in the NCLB-era, using meta-analysis, moderator results from multiple small studies, can in combination provide confirmation of a differential impact. Meta-analysis, or other approaches to research synthesis, combined with big data present new opportunities to move beyond the NCLB-era philosophy that prizes the single big study to prove the efficacy of a program.
While addressing WWC and ESSA standards, we caution, that a single study in one school district, or even several studies in several school districts, may not provide enough useful information to generalize to other school districts. For research to be the most effective, we need studies in enough districts to represent the full diversity of relevant populations. Studies need to systematically include moderator analysis for an effective way to generalize impact for subgroups.
The definitions provided in ESSA do not address how much information is needed to generalize from a particular study for implementation in other school districts. While we accept that well-designed Tier 2 or 3 studies are necessary to establish an appropriate level of rigor, we do not believe a single study is sufficient to declare a program will be effective across varied populations. We note that the Standards for Excellence in Education Research (SEER) recently adopted by the IES, call for facilitating generalizability.
After almost two decades of exclusive focus on the design of the single study we need to more effectively address achievement gaps with the specifics that school decision-makers need. Lowering the cost and turn-around time for research studies that break out subgroup results is entirely feasible. With enough studies qualified for meta-analysis, a new wealth of information will be available to educators who want to select the products that will best serve their students. This new order will democratize learning across the country, reducing inequities and raising student achievement in K-12 schools.
Tags: education, ESSA, evaluation, NCLB, research, SEER, The Every Student Succeeds Act and WWC
This is the third of a four-part blog posting about changes needed to the legacy of NCLB to make research more useful to school decision-makers. Here we show how issues of bias affecting the NCLB-era average impact estimates are not necessarily inherited by the differential subgroup estimates. (Read the first and the second parts of the story here.)
There's a joke among researchers: "When a study is conducted in Brooklyn and in San Diego the average results should apply to Wichita."
Following the NCLB-era rules, researchers usually put all their resources for a study into the primary result, providing a report on the average effectiveness of a product or tool across all populations. This leads to disregarding subgroup differences and misses the opportunity to discover that the program studied may work better or worse for certain populations. A particularly strong example is from our own work where this philosophy led to a misleading conclusion. While the program we studied was celebrated as working on average, it turned out not to help the Black kids. It widened an existing achievement gap. Our point is that differential impacts are not just extras, they should be the essential results of school research.
In many cases we find that a program works well for some students and not so much for others. In all cases the question is whether the program increases or decreases an existing gap. Researchers call this differential impact an interaction between the characteristics of the people in the study and the program, or they call it a moderated impact as in: the program effect is moderated by the characteristic. If the goal is to narrow an achievement gap, the difference between subgroups (for example: English language learners, kids in free lunch programs, or girls versus boys) in the impact provides the most useful information.
Examining differential impacts across subgroups also turns out to be less subject to the kinds of bias that have concerned NCLB-era researchers. In a recent paper, Andrew Jaciw showed that with matched comparison designs, estimation of the differential effect of a program on contrasting subgroups of individuals can be less susceptible to bias than the researcher's estimate of the average effect. Moderator effects are less prone to certain forms of selection bias. In this work, he develops the idea that when evaluating differential effects using matched comparison studies that involve cross-site comparisons, standard selection bias is "differenced away" or negated. While a different form of bias may be introduced, he shows empirically that it is considerably smaller. This is a compelling and surprising result and speaks to the importance of making moderator effects a much greater part of impact evaluations. Jaciw finds that the differential effects for subgroups do not necessarily inherit the biases that are found in average effects, which were the core focus of the NCLB era.
Therefore, matched comparison studies, may be less biased than one might think for certain important quantities. On the other hand, RCTs, which are often believed to be without bias (thus, "gold standard") may be biased in ways that are often overlooked. For instance, results from RCTs may be limited by selection based on who chooses to participate. The teachers and schools who agree to be part of the RCT might bias results in favor of those more willing to take risks and try new things. In that case, the results wouldn't generalize to less adventurous teachers and schools.
A general advantage of RCEs (in the form of matched comparison experiments) have over RCTs is they can be conducted under more true-to-life circumstances. If using existing data, outcomes reflect results from field implementations as they happened in real life. Such RCEs can be performed more quickly and at a lower cost than RCTs. These can be used by school districts, which have paid for a pilot implementation of a product and want to know in June whether the program should be expanded in September. The key to this kind of quick turn-around, rapid-cycle evaluation is to use data from the just completed school year rather than following the NCLB-era habit of identifying schools that have never implemented the program and assigning teachers as users and non-users before implementation begins. Tools, such as the RCE Coach (now the Evidence to Insights Coach) and Evidentally's Evidence Suite, are being developed to support district-driven as well as developer-driven matched comparisons.
Commercial publishers have also come under criticism for potential bias. The Hechinger Report recently published an article entitled: Ed tech companies promise results, but their claims are often based on shoddy research. Also from the Hechinger Report, Jill Barshay offered a critique entitled The dark side of education research: widespread bias. She cites a working paper that was recently published in a well-regarded journal by a Johns Hopkins team led by Betsy Wolf, who worked with reports of studies within the WWC database (all using either RCTs or matched comparisons). Wolf compared differences in results where some studies were paid for by the program developer and others paid for through independent sources (such as IES grants to research organizations). Wolf's study found the size of the effect based on source of funding substantially favored developer sponsored studies. The most likely explanation was that developers are more prone to avoid publishing unfavorable results. This is called a "developer effect." While we don't doubt that Wolf found a real difference, the interpretation and importance of the bias can be questioned.
First while more selective reporting by developers may bias their reporting upward, other biases may lead to smaller effects for independently-funded research. Following NCLB-era rules, independently-funded researchers must convince school districts to use the new materials or programs to be studied. But many developer-driven studies are conducted where the materials or program being studied is already in use (or being considered for use and established as a good fit for adoption). The bias to the average overall effect size from a lack of inherent interest might result in a lower effect estimate.
When a developer is budgeting for an evaluation, working in a district that has already invested in the program and succeeded in its implementation is often the best way to provide the information that other districts need since it shows not just the outcomes but a case study of an implementation. Results from a district that has chosen a program for a pilot and succeeded in its implementation may not be an unfair bias. While the developer selected districts with successful pilots may score higher than districts recruited by an independently funded researcher, they are also more likely to have commonalities with districts interested in adopting the program. Recruiting schools with no experience with the program may bias the results to be lower than they should be.
Second, the fact that bias was found in the standard NCLB-era average between the user and non-user groups provides another reason to drop the primacy of the overall average and put our focus on the subgroup moderator analysis where there may be less bias. Average outcomes across all populations has little information value for school district decision-makers. Moderator effects are what they need if their goal is to reduce rather than enlarge an achievement gap.
We have no reason to assume that the information school decision-makers need has inherited the same biases that have been demonstrated in the use of developer-driven Tier 2 and 3 studies in evaluation of programs. We do see that the NCLB-era habit of ignoring subgroup differences reinforces the status quo and hides achievement gaps in K-12 schools.
Next, we advocate replacing the NCLB-era single study with meta-analyses of many studies where the focus is on the moderators.
Tags: education, ESSA, evaluation, NCLB, research and The Every Student Succeeds Act
ESSA's Evidence Tiers and Potential for Bias
This is the second of a four-part blog posting about changes needed to the legacy of NCLB to make research more useful to school decision-makers. Here we explain how ESSA introduced flexibility and how NCLB-era habits have raised issues about bias. (Read the first one here.)
The tiers of evidence defined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) give schools and researchers greater flexibility, but are not without controversy. Flexibility creates the opportunity for biased results. The ESSA law, for example, states that studies must statistically control for "selection bias", recognizing that teachers who "select" to use a program may have other characteristics that give them an advantage and the results for those teachers could be biased upward. As we trace the problem of bias it is useful to go back to the interpretation of ESSA that originated with the NCLB-era approach to research.
When we helped develop the research guidelines for the Software & Information Industry Association, we took a close look at ESSA and how it is often interpreted. Now, as research is evolving with cloud-based educational products that automatically report usage data, it is important to clarify both ESSA's useful advances and how the four tiers fail to address a critical scientific concept needed for schools to make use of research.
We've written elsewhere how the ESSA tiers of evidence form a developmental scale. The four tiers give educators as well as developers of educational materials and products an easier way to start examining effectiveness without making the commitment to the type of scientifically-based research that NCLB once required.
We think of the four tiers of evidence defined in ESSA as a pyramid as shown in this figure.
RCT. At the apex is Tier 1, defined by ESSA as a randomized control trial (RCT), considered the gold standard in the NCLB era.
Matched Comparison or "quasi-experiments". With Tier 2 the WWC also allowed for less rigorous experimental research design, such as matched comparisons or quasi-experiments (QE) where schools, teachers, and students (experimental units) independently chose to engage in the program. QEs are permitted but accepted "with reservations" because without random assignment there is the possibility of "selection bias." For example, teachers who do well at preparing kids for tests might be more likely to participate in a new program than teachers who don't excel at test preparation. With an RCT we can expect that such positive traits are equally distributed in the experiment between users and non-users.
Correlational. Tier 3 is an important and useful addition to evidence, as a weaker but readily achieved method once the developer has a product running in schools. At that point, they have an opportunity to see if critical elements of the program correlate with outcomes of interest. This provides promising evidence, which is useful for both improving the product and giving the schools some indication that it is helping. This evidence suggests that it might be worthwhile to follow up with a tier 2 study for more definitive results.
Rationale. The base level or Tier 4 is the expectation that any product should have a rationale based on learning science for why it is likely to work. Schools will want this basic rationale for why a program should work before trying it out. Our colleagues at Digital Promise have announced a service in which developers are certified as meeting Tier 4 standards.
Each subsequent tier of evidence (from number 4 to 1) improves what's considered the "rigor" of the research design. It is important to understand that the hierarchy has nothing to do with whether the results can be generalized from the setting of the study to the district where the decision-maker resides.
While the NCLB-era focus on strong design puts emphasis on the Tier 1 RCT, we see Tiers 2 and 3 as an opportunity for lower cost and faster-turn-around "rapid-cycle evaluations" (RCE.) Tier 1 RCTs have given education research a well-deserved reputation as slow and expensive. It can take one to two years to complete an RCT, with additional time needed for data collection, analysis, and reporting. This extensive work also includes recruiting districts that are willing to participate in the RCT and often puts the cost of the study in the millions of dollars. We have conducted dozens of RCTs following the NCLB-era rules, but advocate less expensive studies in order to get the volume of evidence schools need. In contrast to an RCT, an RCE can use existing data from a school system can be both faster and far less expensive.
There is some controversy about whether schools should use lower-tier evidence, which might be subject to "selection bias." Randomized control trials are protected from selection bias since users and non-user are assigned randomly, whether they like it or not. It is well known and has been recently pointed out by Robert Slavin that using a matched comparison, a study where teachers chose to participate in the pilot of a product, can result in unmeasured variables, technically "confounders" that affect outcomes. These variables are associated with the qualities that motivate a teacher to pursue pilot studies and their desire to excel in teaching. The comparison group may lack these characteristics that help the self-selected program users succeed. Studies of Tiers 2 and 3 will always have, by definition, unmeasured variables that may act as confounders.
While obviously a concern, there are ways that researchers can statistically control important characteristics associated with selection to use a program. For example, the amount of a teacher's motivation to use edtech products can be controlled by collecting information from the prior year on the amount of usage by the teacher and students of a full set of products. Past studies looking at the conditions under which there is correspondence between results of RCTs and matched comparison studies that evaluate the impact of a given program have established that it is exactly "focal" variables such as motivation, that are influential confounders. Controlling for a teacher's demonstrated motivation and students' incoming achievement may go very far in adjusting away bias. We suggest this in a design memo for a study now being undertaken. This statistical control meets the ESSA requirement for Tiers 2 and 3.
We have a more radical proposal for controlling all kinds of bias that we address in the next posting in this series.
Agile Assessment and the Impact of Formative Testing on Student Achievement in Algebra
Empirical Education contracted with Jefferson Education Accelerator (JEA) to conduct a study on the effectiveness of formative testing for improving student achievement in Algebra. We partnered with a large urban school district in the northeast U.S. to evaluate their use of Agile Assessment. Developed by experts at the Charles A Dana Center at the University of Texas and education company Agile Mind, Agile Assessment is a flexible system for developing, administering, and analyzing student assessments that are aligned by standard, reading level, and level of difficulty. The district used benchmark Agile Assessments in the fall, winter, and spring to assess student performance in Algebra along with a curriculum it had chosen independent of assessments.
We conducted a quasi-experimental comparison group study using data from the 2016-17 school year and examined the impact of Agile Assessment usage on student achievement for roughly 1,000 students using the state standardized assessment in Algebra.
There were three main findings from the study:
Algebra scores for students who used Agile Assessment were better than scores of comparison students. The result had an effect size of .30 (p = .01), which corresponds to a 12-percentile point gain, adjusting for differences in student demographics and pretest between treatment and comparison students.
The positive impact of Agile Assessment generalized across many student subgroups, including Hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students and special education students.
Outcomes on the state Algebra assessment were positively associated with the average score on the Agile Assessment benchmark tests. That said, adding the average score on Agile Assessment benchmark tests to the linear model increased its predictive power by a small amount.
These findings provide valuable evidence in favor of formative testing for the district and other stakeholders. Given disruptions in the current public school paradigm, increased frequency of formative assessment could provide visibility towards greater personalized instruction and ultimately increase student outcomes. You can read the full research report here.
Posted by: Adam Schellinger
Tags: Agile Assessment, Algebra, assessments, personalized instruction, program evaluation, QE and student achievement
Ending a Two-Decade-Old Research Legacy
This is the first of a four-part blog posting about changes needed to the legacy of NCLB to make research more useful to school decision-makers. This post focuses on research methods established in the last 20 years and the reason that much of that research hasn't been useful to schools. Subsequent posts will present an approach that works for schools.
With the COVID-19 crisis and school closures in full swing, use of edtech is predicted to not just continue, but expand when the classrooms they have replaced come back in use. There is little information available about which edtech products work for whom and under what conditions and the lack of evidence is noted. As a research organization specializing in rigorous program evaluations, Empirical Education, working with Evidentally, Inc., has been developing methods for providing schools with useful and affordable information.
The "modern" era of education research was established with No Child Left Behind, the education law passed in 2002, which established the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The declaration of "scientifically-based research" in NCLB sparked a major undertaking assigned to the IES. To meet NCLB's goals for improvement, it was essential to overthrow education research methods that lacked the practical goal of determining whether programs, products, practices, or policies moved the needle for an outcome of interest. These outcomes could be test scores or other measures, such as discipline referrals, that the schools were concerned with.
The kinds of questions that the learning sciences of the time answered were different: for example, how can we compare tests with tasks outside of the test? Or what is the structure of the classroom dialogue? Instead of these qualitative methods, IES looked to the medical field and other areas of policy like workforce training where randomization was used to assign subjects to a treatment group and a control group. Statistical summaries were then used to decide whether the researcher can reasonably conclude that a difference of the magnitude observed is big enough that it is unlikely to happen without a real effect.
In an attempt to mimic the medical field, IES set up the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), which became the arbiter of acceptable research. WWC focused on getting the research design right. Many studies would be disqualified, with very few, and sometimes just one, meeting design requirements considered acceptable to provide valid causal evidence. This led to the idea that all programs, products, practices, or policies needed at least one good study that would prove its efficacy. The focus on design (or "internal validity") was to the exclusion of generalizability (or "external validity"). Our team has conducted dozens of RCTs and appreciates the need for careful design. But we try to keep in mind the information that schools need.
Schools need to know whether the current version of the product will work, when implemented using district resources and with its specific student and teacher populations. A single acceptable study may have been conducted a decade ago with ethnicities different from the district that is looking for evidence of what will work for them. The WWC has worked hard to be fair to each intervention, especially where there are multiple studies that meet their standards. But, the key is that each separate study comes with an average conclusion. While the WWC notes the demographic composition of the subjects in the study, difference results for subgroups when tested by the study are considered secondary.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was passed with bi-partisan support in late 2015 and replaced NCLB. ESSA replaced scientifically-based research required by NCLB with four evidence tiers. While this was an important advance, ESSA retained the WWC as providing the definition of the top two tiers. The WWC, which remains the arbiter of evidence validity, gives the following explanation of the purpose of the evidence tiers.
"Evidence requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) are designed to ensure that states, districts, and schools can identify programs, practices, products, and policies that work across various populations."
The key to ESSA's failings is in the final clause: "that work across various populations." As a legacy of the NCLB-era, the WWC is only interested in the average impact across the various populations in the study. The problem is that district or school decision-makers need to know if the program will work in their schools given their specific population and resources.
The good news is that the education research community is recognizing that ignoring the population, region, product, and implementation differences is no longer necessary. Strict rules were needed to make the paradigm shift to the RCT-oriented approach. But now that NCLB's paradigm has been in place for almost two decades, and generations of educational researchers have been trained in it, we can broaden the outlook. Mark Schneider, IES's current director, defines the IES mission as being "in the business of identifying what works for whom under what conditions." This framing is a move toward a broader focus with more relevant results. Researchers are looking at how to generalize results; for example, the Generalizer tool developed by Tipton and colleagues uses demographics of a target district to generate an applicability metric. The Jefferson Education Exchange's EdTech Genome Project has focused on implementation models as an important factor in efficacy.
Our methods move away from the legacy of the last 20 years to lower the cost of program evaluations, while retaining the scientific rigor and avoiding biases that give schools misleading information. Lowering cost makes it feasible for thousands of small local studies to be conducted on the multitude of school products. Instead of one or a small handful of studies for each product, we can use a dozen small studies encompassing the variety of contexts so that we can determine for whom and under what conditions the product works.
Read the second part of this series next.
Empirical Describes Innovative Approach to Research Design for Experiment on the Value of Instructional Technology Coaching
Empirical Education (Empirical) is collaborating with Digital Promise to evaluate the impact of the Dynamic Learning Project (DLP) on student achievement. The DLP provides school-based instructional technology coaches to participating districts to increase educational equity and impactful use of technology. Empirical is working with data from prior school years, allowing us to continue this work during this extraordinary time of school closures. We are conducting quasi-experiments in three school districts across the U.S. designed to provide evidence that will be useful to DLP stakeholders, including schools and districts considering using the DLP coaching model. Today, Empirical has released its design memo outlining its innovative approach to combining teacher-level and student-level outcomes through experimental and correlational methods.
Digital Promise— through funding and partnership with Google—launched the DLP in 2017 with more than 1,000 teachers in 50 schools across 18 districts in five states. The DLP expanded in the second year of implementation (2018-2019) with more than 100 schools reached across 23 districts in seven states. Digital Promise's surveys of participating teachers have documented teachers' belief in the DLP's ability to improve instruction and increase impactful technology use (see Digital Promise's extensive postings on the DLP). Our rapid cycle evaluations will work with data from the same cohorts, while adding district administrative data and data on technology use.
Empirical's studies will establish valuable links between instructional coaching, technology use, and student achievement, all while helping to improve future iterations of the DLP coaching model. As described in our design memo, the study is guided by Digital Promise's logic model. In this model, coaching is expected to affect an intermediate outcome, measured in Empirical's research in terms of patterns of usage of edtech applications, as they implicate instructional practices. These patterns and practices are then expected to impact measurable student outcomes. The Empirical team will evaluate the impact of coaching on both the mediator (patterns and practices) and the student test outcomes. We will examine student-level outcomes by subgroup. The data are currently in the collection process. To view the final report, visit our Digital Promise page.
Tags: Digital Promise, Dynamic Learning Project, edtech, educational equity, empirical education, evaluation, evaluation, Google, impact, QE, research and student achievement


text:
Q: Skip hyphen in hive I have executed a query in HIVE CLI that should generate an External Table .
 "create EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS hassan( code int, area_name string,
    male_60_64 STRUCT,
    male_above_65 STRUCT)
    ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t';"
It works fine but if I put "-" instead of "_" I will face with error.
"create EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS hassan ( code int, area_name string, male-60-64 STRUCT< c1 : string, x-user : string>) ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t';"
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A: The answer by Addy already provided an example of how to use a hyphen in a column name. Here is an addition that describes how this works in different versions of Hive, according to the documentation:

*

*In Hive 0.12 and earlier, only
alphanumeric and underscore characters are allowed in table and
column names.

*In Hive 0.13 and later, column names can contain any
Unicode character (see HIVE-6013). Any column name that is specified
within backticks (`) is treated literally. Within a backtick string,
use double backticks (``) to represent a backtick character. Backtick
quotation also enables the use of reserved keywords for table and
column identifiers.

*To revert to pre-0.13.0 behavior and restrict
column names to alphanumeric and underscore characters, set the
configuration property hive.support.quoted.identifiers to none. In
this configuration, backticked names are interpreted as regular
expressions. For details, see Supporting Quoted Identifiers in Column
Names.

In addition to that, you can also find the syntax for STRUCT there, which should help you with the error that you mentioned in the comments:

struct_type   : STRUCT < col_name : data_type [COMMENT col_comment],
...>

Update:
Note that hyphens in complex types (so inside structs) do not appear to be supported.

A: Try Quoted Identifiers
create table hassan( code int, `area_name` string, `male-60-64` STRUCT, `male-above-65` STRUCT) ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t';
Reference:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12618321/QuotedIdentifier.html

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
<?php

namespace WobbleCode\RestBundle\DependencyInjection;

use Symfony\Component\Config\Definition\Builder\TreeBuilder;
use Symfony\Component\Config\Definition\ConfigurationInterface;

/**
 * This is the class that validates and merges configuration from your
 * app/config files
 *
 * To learn more see {@link http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/bundles/extension.html#cookbook-bundles-extension-config-class}
 */
class Configuration implements ConfigurationInterface
{
    /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     */
    public function getConfigTreeBuilder()
    {
        $treeBuilder = new TreeBuilder();

        $rootNode = $treeBuilder->root('wobble_code_rest');

        $rootNode
            ->children()
                ->booleanNode('serialize_null')->defaultTrue()->end()
            ->end();

        return $treeBuilder;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


It's soon the time of year where you're called upon to be extra nice and spoil the special someone in your life, the typical excuses won't do and trust us when you're other half says don't worry this year or they "don't do valentines" they're secretly hoping you pull it out the bag.
We may be slightly biased but we believe there is few better gifts than a timepiece, a gift that can be worn everyday so that you're never far from your loved one's mind.
Memories of the stressful Christmas dash for presents and the hour's of deliberation are still fresh in the mind. Not to mention you already used up all your creative present ideas in December and just another card with a puppy on it will not suffice.
A smart looking watch exterior with even smarter features incorporated. Nominated by Watch Pro magazine in the Smart Watch of the Year 2015 competition, for the man who loves gadgets but still prefers a traditional looking timepiece. Bluetooth compatibility allows for a variety of smart phone compatibility functions.
This is one of our favourites from the recent Accurist collection. It's a multi-functional piece that has a sleek grey metal finish, on the case, dial and bracelet. One of the few watches that can effortlessly fit the 'everyday' wear category yet would also lay stylishly under a dinner jacket. A true versatile timepiece that you're loved one would wear to all occasions.
A larger cased watch with great colourings, the Lacoste Montreal has hints of an old service watch with it's large markers however with a modern twist, it features a polished stainless steel case and is hosted on a handsome black calfskin strap. We think this is the pick of the bunch for a stylish man who wants his timepiece to make a statement without looking over flashy.
This Casio is the perfect gift if your significant other happens to be a car enthusiast. Spawned from the official partnership between Casio Edifice and Red Bull F1 racing team the time-piece is modeled on the F1 car itself featuring gold button indicators and a special blue ion plated bezel. Also comes provided with a beautiful presentation box branded with the Infiniti Red Bull Racing logo.
A tasteful G-Shock in a monochrome theme, hosting features such as world time, thermometer and compass in addition to your customary G- Shock characteristics such as 20 ATM water resistance, stopwatch and daily alarms. A faultless gift for the active, outdoorsman who would need his watch to support his activities however demanding they may be.
This watch is a classic in every sense of the word. A no frills option with simply stunning design. Subtle markers, a date window, a polished stainless-steel case and a genuine croc grain leather strap is all this timepiece needs to perfect a traditional guise – an impeccable valentines idea for any gentlemen.
Inspired by the iconic Lacoste polo shirt, the Lacoste 12.12 combines heritage and modern style. A perfect everyday wear watch for your loved one, branded with the famous crocodile at 3 o'clock this model comes washed in a hot pink colouring – perfectly on trend with the valentines theme.
Casio Baby- G Sporty, stylish and practical, the Baby – G range from Casio has been the go-to watch for the fashion conscious, fun lovers for over 2 decades. By constantly recreating the infamous model Casio have always kept the range on-trend, whilst keeping its core values and practical features such as shock and water resistance. We love the white and pink colour-way used on this BA-1100 model and we're sure you're partner will too.
Buy this for the chic lady who likes her accessories to add an element of glitz to her outfit. A stunning rose gold case and bracelet coupled with stone set markers and case results in a stand out level of elegance for your loved one.
A dress watch of the more subtle variety, the neutral dial sits gracefully amongst Swarovski crystals and a stainless steel case. We hold the quality on offer from Pulsar in high regard and with this line at almost half price it's a sure bet.
Royal London's staple timepieces, this time for the ladies. Featuring a PVD gold case and genuine brown croc grain leather strap and a slightly smaller case size than the gents. This is as inoffensive as you can get for a present and a sure fire for the classy woman.
Similar to the previous, this model characters the stainless steel and black leather combination in the smaller ladies size. Match this with the Men's model for a perfect valentines his and her set.


Apple Cider Quick Bread | Just The Right Spice!
This moist delicious apple cider loaf is filled with healthy ingredients like whole wheat flour, yogurt, grapeseed oil, apples and raisins. Like all quick bread recipes you can whip this up in no time to have a healthy treat for your family.
Directions: In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a small bowl, combine the eggs, egg white, cider, yogurt, oil and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in the apple, raisins and orange peel.
You can order your Watkins spices and other ingredients fresh from the factory in the Watkins US online store or the Watkins Canadian online store.


Is he a member of Alcoholics Anonymous or a similar organisation?
Is he open to counselling? Has this topic been addressed?
Terms and Provisions After deciding on the line of succession and identifying who will operate the trust, parents need to focus on the various purposes for which the trustee may or may not distribute income and/or principal from the trust to the beneficiary. If the beneficiary is likely to require government assistance, then the terms of the trust must contemplate that. The trust document may also give the trustee authority to withhold payments if deemed advisable. This is often preferable to asking that trustee to determine whether a beneficiary is drug-free. Those suffering from substance abuse can be clever, and making such a determination is tricky. Many parents have a sense of shame or denial, and may rightly choose not to make these troubles public, or put them in a trust document that others can access. I encourage parents to write an annual side letter to the trustee that describes their observations and offers details that they are reluctant to share while living. This letter could be placed in a sealed envelope, kept with the original estate planning documents, and updated/revised as circumstances change. It can be comforting to the trustee to understand more about the parents' goals and objectives from their own voice. Planning for the beneficiary with a substance abuse issue is complex and can have consequences that affect the entire family. Remind parents that life is a movie, not a snapshot. A plan created now should be good enough to handle today's circumstances, yet flexible enough to contemplate the unknown. Encourage parents who are dealing with this difficult situation to revisit their plan every few years as circumstances change and evolve.


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Home | Technology | How Trump can forge a new path towards diplomacy with Iran
How Trump can forge a new path towards diplomacy with Iran
| Mar 7, 2019
Tehran, Iranian exdiplomat and former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian in an article revealed the way US President Donald Trump can forge a fresh way in diplomacy towards Iran.
'Even if Washington and Tehran want to remain eternal enemies, at least they could refrain from insulting each other's people, history and culture,' Mousavian said.
The full text of Mousavian's article that originally appeared in middleeasteye.net is as follows:
In a statement issued on February 20, more than 50 prodiplomacy organizations representing millions of American voters urged US policymakers to respect the Iran nuclear deal, which verifiably blocks Iran's pathway to a nuclear weapon, supports goodfaith diplomacy and opposes war with Iran.
Earlier last month, as millions of Iranians rallied to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1979 revolution that ended 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran, US President Donald Trump tweeted in Persian and English: 40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure. The longsuffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future.
In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted: #40YearsofFailure to accept that Iranians will never return to submission. #40YearsofFailure to adjust US policy to reality. #40YearsofFailure to destabilize Iran through blood and treasure.
Nuclear fallout
Both Iranian and US leaders concur that Washington has imposed the most biting sanctions ever on Tehran. It bears noting, however, that with the exception of a brief period from 2013 to 2016, when Tehran and Washington negotiated at the highest levels to resolve one of their most complicated disagreements the nuclear issue the US policy towards Iran has been constantly focused on economic sanctions, pressure and regime change.
The question remains whether Trump wants to continue on this ineffective and costly path, or pursue a new approach with Iran to break decades of deadlock in their bilateral relations. Change and our attitude will change, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said. Trump could, in fact, end decades of USIran animosity by adopting a fivepronged strategy.
Even if Washington and Tehran want to remain eternal enemies, at least they could refrain from insulting each other's people, history and culture.
First is intention. Washington must convey to Tehran its intention to abandon its regimechange policy, something that is only attainable if Washington shows its sincerity through both words and actions. Empty words followed up by hostile actions would only demonstrate Washington's disingenuousness and lack of seriousness, likely leading to the opposite of the intended results.
Second is language. The US has always talked down to Iran, employing disrespectful and offensive language towards the country, calling it a pariah state and adding it to the axis of evil. To be fair, Iran has used the same derogatory language in reference to the US, which it brands as the Great Satan.
Even if Washington and Tehran want to remain eternal enemies, at least they could refrain from insulting each other's people, history and culture. Ayatollah Khamenei recently clarified that Iranians would chant Death to America as long as Washington's hostile policies continued, but noted that the slogan is directed at US leaders, not the American nation.
Diplomatic approach
Third is approach. A termination of hostilities will be impossible as long as Washington thinks it can coerce Iran into submission. A diplomatic approach must replace the threat of war and coercive policies but diplomacy is not about issuing maximalist demands to a sovereign state and expecting total capitulation.
Fourth is having a pragmatic plan of action. A number of reports by US think tanks have recommended a grand bargain, big for big approach, but this is not realistic. A more practical approach is to begin with small for small measures.
The existing mistrust between Iran and the US runs deep, and Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal has only exacerbated the situation. Therefore, the more realistic path forward involves smaller confidencebuilding steps, such as IranUS cooperation on counternarcotic and antipiracy operations.
Fifth is the end state. Washington and Tehran will only enter such a roadmap if they can see the end state. During nuclear negotiations, the end state for the US was to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon; for Iran, it was 'nuclear rights' under the nonproliferation treaty and the lifting of sanctions. Negotiating for the mere purpose of negotiating is not in the interests of either country.
Resolving the current animosities between Iran and the US can be based on nonintervention and a joint respect for sovereignty. There can also be winwin solutions for some of the ongoing practical issues, such as a fair regional arrangement for conventional and unconventional weapons in the Middle East.
Sustainable peace
While Iran has voluntarily limited the range of its ballistic missiles to 2,000 kilometres, Israel and Saudi Arabia both possess missiles with more than double that range. And while Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear weapons arsenal, Iran which does not have any nuclear weapons is under pressure and biting sanctions.
Repeated UN resolutions have called for establishing nuclearweaponfree zones in the Middle East. The implementation of UN resolutions, without double standards, will open the path towards sustainable peace, potentially resolving many of the disputes between Tehran and Washington.
A day after Trump's hostile remarks about Iran during his State of the Union address, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran was ready to establish 'friendly relations' with the US if it apologised for past wrongs.
A change in relations is possible, but it requires patience and the right approach. A real change a big change would take many years, requiring both sides to embrace the obligations and opportunities that come under the banner of peace.
*Hossein Mousavian is Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at Princeton University and a former spokesman for Iran's nuclear negotiators.
Source: Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA
Digital Dentistry Curriculum to be showcased at the 2019 International Dental Show
سانت كيتس ونيفيس من ضمن أفضل 30 دولة في العالم لحكم القانون – شركاء CS العالمي

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


In the run-up to the 2015 General Election, the Independent have been asking 100 people what they would do if they were Prime Minister. These people include journalists, authors, sportsmen, musicians, political campaigners, and the like. Obviously, I'm slightly surprised – and more than a little hurt – not to have been asked to contribute to this… So, with exactly one week to go until Polling Day, I'm going to write my piece about it anyway, and publish it here.
If I were Prime Minister, I would introduce on-the-spot fines for anybody who lets a set of double doors close in the wrong order. Y'know how lots of double doors have one door with an outer 'lip', and one with an inner 'lip', and they fit nicely together if closed correctly? I can't understand how anyone can let double doors close behind them in the wrong order and walk nonchalantly away with nary a backward glance, so I propose stamping out this cavalier behaviour with fines of up to £150.
That'll be 150 quid, mate.
On issues of public health, I would make it a criminal offence not to use the tongs provided at a buffet. I would also make it a criminal offence to serve buffet food without providing tongs. Either of these could elicit a jail sentence of up to six months. Further to this, it would be mandatory for all public buildings to include at least one basin with a foot-operated tap.
On education, I would ensure that university students pay twice as much for their drinks in bars and pubs as anybody else. University is a place for learning, not just a three-year-long excuse to get drunk, and students get plenty of concessions in other areas – such as clothes retailers offering student discounts, no council tax payments, and free cheeseburgers at McDonald's. I'm sure the rest of us would relish the opportunity to have a drink in a pub without a bunch of rowdy students shouting, doing 'shots' and having 'fun'.
Expanding on an idea I first proposed on this Blog several months ago, any business putting out their special Christmas-themed TV adverts or billboard advertising before the last week in November would see their corporation tax payments double as a result. There is simply no need for companies to start ramming Christmas down our throats in mid-October! While on the topic of advertising, I would ban all television adverts which anthropomorphise food.
No one would be allowed to turn right on the Ring Road; it causes far too many delays. If you want to go right, you'll have to go left, left, and left again.
I would introduce standardised flavour colours for crisp packets. It is far too confusing for some companies to make Salt'n'Vinegar packets green and Cheese'n'Onion packets blue, while other companies have Cheese'n'Onion crisps in green packets and Salt'n'Vinegar in blue ones. These guidelines will be set down by a new Minister For Crisps And Snacks, who will also be in charge of ensuring even distribution of flavours in 'Multipack' crisps (except Prawn Cocktail, because nobody likes it).
Finally, I would hold a referendum on holding a referendum on Europe. Opinion is divided on whether we should have a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union or not, and so I believe the best and most democratic way to gauge the public mood on this matter is have a referendum on whether or not we should have the referendum – however, this would not be in any way binding upon my government.
Obviously, these proposals are just a taste of the decent, common sense policies for hardworking men and women which my government would introduce. A full copy of the UKIT Manifesto (no, that doesn't stand for anything – it's just a bit like UKIP but with my name in it instead, and much better policies) is available on request.
This sandwich has suffered from a classic case of overmayonation; the quality of the beef (as good as you would expect from M&S) is sadly masked by an overpowering layer of creamy mayonnaise, making it difficult to enjoy the other ingredients. It doesn't help that this is supposed to be 'horseradish mayonnaise', but there is only the merest hint of horseradish – it is so mild, it may as well not really be there at all.
Unfortunately, this results in a sandwich which is bland and unsatisfying. Personally, I would prefer just horseradish sauce, not a specially flavoured mayonnaise, and I would like it to have a bit more bit to it.
Obviously, fans of both Aston Villa and West Ham will care. But does it really matter which team David Cameron supports – if any?
No, of course it doesn't. But the news of the Prime Minister, who says he supports Aston Villa, mistakenly claiming to be a West Ham fan in a moment he describes as 'brain fade' has gripped the nation. Labour supporters have seized upon this with glee – Cameron doesn't even know which football team he supports! Apparently, this makes the Tory leader 'a fraud' or a 'con man'.
The trouble is, when it comes to things like football, politicians in the UK are in a no-win situation. We (the electorate) supposedly insist that our politicians be 'normal' and 'everyday' enough to be football fans. Can you imagine the reaction if a Conservative party leader simply came out and said he wasn't a big football fan, and it just wasn't really his thing? Opponents would jump on this confession as evidence that he doesn't understand ordinary people; that he's out-of-touch; that he's 'posh'; that he can't be possibly be fit to be Prime Minister.
So, politicians who aren't that bothered by football have to pretend to be into it. And that is then held up as evidence that they are posh, out-of-touch, and don't understand ordinary people. And it also backfires on politicians who genuinely do like football (or Game Of Thrones, or Nandos, or any other aspect of modern popular culture) because people assume that they're being insincere charlatans who are only saying they like those things to appear 'normal' and win more votes.
Either David Cameron is not a football fan, but feels compelled to say his is because the fetishisation of 'normal' in politics won't let him be himself – or is actually is a football fan, but people still sneer at him for it because they assume he's putting it on to seem like a 'man of the people'. He can't win.
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter which football team the Prime Minister does – or does not – support. This whole episode simply serves to distract from what the real focus of an election campaign should be: policies. But it also demonstrates how our obsession with politicians being 'normal' is so much of what is wrong with politics in the UK.
Harder and harder as you go on.
Who watches the Apple Watch men?
No, I shan't be buying an Apple Watch – the latest offering from Apple, which is available in the UK today. I may have a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, an iPad and an iPod Classic, but I really can't see myself investing in Apple's latest output.
'Wearable tech' is not a good look. No matter how classy Apple try to make the Apple Watch, ultimately it is still a gadget, and a watch should not be a gadget – it should be a classic, timeless (ironically!) piece of jewellery.
My own watch was a twenty-first birthday present from my Grandmother. It is a square-faced analogue Armani watch with a black leather strap, and I wear it every day. I don't need apps and other techery on my watch – I already have that stuff on my laptop, and on my phone – and I'd rather wear a timepiece which is simple, elegant and beautiful, and which won't be obsolete within five years.
photographing watches when I took this in 2011.
Roasted vegetables with sunblushed red pepper mayonnaise, Greek Feta cheese, Kalamata olives, and spinach on red pepper bread.
This is URBANeat's 'Monthly Special' offering, and is something a little off-the-beaten-track when it comes to sandwiches. Overall, however, I enjoyed this sandwich – it is an interesting recipe, and it's been generally well-executed.
There are a variety of flavours at work, here, but they all compliment each other nicely, and the filling works well as a whole package. The only disappointing elements were the promised Kalamata olives – I didn't spot any – and the red pepper bread, which had very little flavour to it and was almost indistinguishable from ordinary bread – as is so often the case with 'speciality' breads in these kinds of situations.
Nevertheless, I did enjoy this sandwich, and I am very pleased to see established brands like URBANeat branching out, pushing the boundaries and trying new things.
I would buy this sandwich again.
Is Ed's #Milifandom a force for good?
Started up by Twitter user '@twcuddleston', and gaining momentum and breakneck speed, the 'MiliFandom' is one of those strange, left-field phenomena which no one could ever have predicted would be filling news columns just a few weeks out from a general election. Ed Miliband having his own 'fandom' of adoring teenage girls would've seemed extraordinarily unlikely even just a couple of weeks ago – but a quick search on Twitter and an article on BuzzFeed confirm that this is in fact the case.
Personally, I have always found the 'fandom' concept a little odd – it is a strangely cultish attachment to an icon whose cultural significance is transient and often quite flimsy (most likely a pop star, or television programme). Ultimately, however – although these things do sometimes have a dark side – they tend to be relatively harmless; the kind of teenage obsessions many people have felt, fuelled by the passions and the certainty of youth, which subside as we progress into ever more bewildered adulthood.
When it comes to politicians, though, I'm not sure this is actually the case. Most 'fandoms' start out as a genuine liking for that particular thing – but this quickly morphs into besotted fanaticism where the object of the fandom's adoration can do no wrong. This is why the most obsessive fans of pop singer Justin Bieber still leap to his defence even when he is caught drink-driving, or when he is seen on video spitting at his own fans.
From a rational, objective standpoint, this is disgraceful, indefensible behaviour and Bieber should be hauled over the coals for it; his 'fandom', however, make excuses for him and defend him, because their idol could never be to blame. And in doing so, members of the 'fandom' signal to each other what die-hard fans they truly are; somebody who enjoys Bieber's music, but believes drink-driving is just not on, is not enough of a 'true fan' – the more obsessive you become about your hero, the more of a real fan you are, and the more you prove your unwavering faith to the rest of your peers in the 'fandom'.
I don't believe we should see politicians this way. We should respect them for taking on a difficult, often thankless, but incredibly important job – and we should give them credit when they do it well (something we currently do nowhere near enough) – but we should also view them with a healthy scepticism, not with wide-eyed adulation, or with the dogmatic devotion of religious zealots. In despotic dictatorships, political leaders demand to be worshipped; they demand unthinking praise, and total fealty even in the face of rational criticism. The cult of personality around 'the leader' in North Korea is particularly intense. In such climates, questioning a politician – or any authority – is unthinkable.
Ed Miliband has not demanded this deification – in fact, he seems slightly embarrassed by it – but it is disturbing all the same. The blinkered hero-worship of 'fandoms' is the antithesis of rational debate and the exchange of ideas; no matter how much it might help young people to 'engage' with 'issues', when politics becomes about the former, not the latter, we are all in trouble.
The BBC's Challengers' Debate which aired last Thursday was interesting for several reasons. It was particularly strange to see Ed Miliband – remember him? 'Hopeless' or 'useless' Ed Miliband – come off surprisingly well, seeming the sanest, most serious option with the most credibility compared with the leaders of four minor, rather parochial parties.
One of the most frustrating things, however, was the evidence that the concept of a 'Progressive Alliance' – of all the parties who are even vaguely on 'the left' of British politics teaming up to work together 'for the common good' – still hasn't died the death it richly deserves.
In the UK, we live in a multi-party democratic system; something which most 'progressives' consider a good thing, and would want to increase. "Multi-party politics is here to stay!" claims the Electoral Reform Society, who say they campaign for 'a better democracy'. Why, then, do the leaders and representatives of self-professed 'progressive' parties forsake this view when push comes to shove, and instead attempt to reduce politics to a simple, binary choice between 'the Tories' and 'not the Tories'?
On the BBC debate last week, Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon made an offer to Ed Miliband, claiming she could help the Labour leader 'lock out the Tories' (a stance which is rather at odds with the SNP's earlier claims that Labour and the Conservatives are 'all the same' – if this were really the case, why would Sturgeon be happy to work with one but not with the other?). The implication of this exchange between Sturgeon and Miliband, however, is that it is actually Labour and the SNP (and the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, and anyone else who comes under the broad 'progressive' banner) who are 'the same' – simply by dint of not being the Tories.
There may be some common ground between these parties (both the SNP and Labour are advocating a 'Mansion Tax', for example), but there are fundamental differences, too. Even aside from the most obvious split between the parties – that the Labour Party is innately unionist, whilst the SNP have long campaigned for Scotland's independence – there are other issues on which the parties are divided (for example, on the renewal of the Trident Nuclear Deterrent, which Ed Miliband explicitly said he supported during last week's debate on the BBC). Add into this mix the Green Party – which might agree with the SNP on Trident, but has starkly different plans from Labour in areas such as immigration, education, and a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union – and Plaid Cymru – who oppose welfare caps and are looking for billions more funding to devolved Wales – and we can see that the concept of the 'progressive alliance' airbrushes the heterogeneity of these different parties and their diverse aims and policies, instead assuming that anybody who doesn't vote for the Conservatives automatically dream the same dream and want the same thing.
This doesn't mean that these parties could not work together in a coalition government, or in a 'supply and confidence' voting arrangement – we have been governed for the last five years by a coalition of two parties who disagree in many areas, after all. But this is different from the suggestion that these parties are all the same because they all disagree with the Conservatives.
Indeed, on some issues, a 'progressive' party may agree more with a party on 'the right' than with their fellow left-wingers. For example, the Green Party propose to hold a referendum on Britain's rôle in the EU (although they would campaign for Britain to stay in); the Conservatives have also promised an EU referendum, but Labour (much more a natural ally of the Greens, you would think) have ruled it out. The Green Party also support scrapping the costly HS2 high-speed rail infrastructure project – another area where they align with UKIP policy instead of with their 'progressive' counterparts in the SNP, Plaid Cymru or Labour. To lump all these 'progressive' parties in together as being in agreement with each other, and as opposing the Tories, consistently and across the board, is simplistic and wrong.
It is worth remembering that, in the UK, you can only vote for a party or candidate – you cannot specifically vote against a party or candidate. It is fallacious to claim that a vote for any one party is automatically a vote against another party, and a de facto rejection of that party's stance on all issues. Any attempt to turn the UK's interesting and diverse plurality of left-wing political parties and movements into one homogeneous bloc with the same views and the same aims, therefore, is extremely facile. The 'progressive alliance' remains, I am afraid, a delusion which exists only in the minds of nerdy politics wonks obsessed with strategies and polls, and naïve left-wing student 'activists'.
'Democracy', we are told, is a good thing. Unfortunately, it turns out most people no longer know what 'democracy' means.
According to Graeme Archer (writing today for the Daily Telegraph), a minority Labour government supported by the Scottish Nationalists would 'have no democratic legitimacy'. As Twitter user 'Primly Sable' points out, this must mean the last coalition government also 'lacked legitimacy'.
@TeleComment @graemearcher So the current government also lacks legitimacy?
And it's true that I did see plenty of people complaining about the coalition in 2010, claiming that the government had no mandate. Phrases like "nobody voted for this government!" were very much in evidence (despite being demonstrably false). The truth is, however, not that those people genuinely believed the coalition government 'lacked legitimacy', but more that they simply didn't like the coalition government. All too often, questioning a government's mandate is simply a tactic to damage the credibility of a government you don't support.
I do not like the SNP. Not one bit. But it is ludicrous to think that, if they win a significant number of Westminster seats on 7th May (as well they might!), any influence they end up having in a UK government is somehow 'illegitimate' – as if they took part in some sort of heist. Like MPs from any other party, SNP MPs are democratically elected to parliament, because that is who the voters in that constituency want to represent them. And although the SNP, or their supporters, have occasionally been guilty of this themselves (think 'postal votes' in the Scottish Independence Referendum last September!), being an advocate of democracy also means not crying 'foul!' and branding the whole system bankrupt just because you end up with a result you don't like.
It's fine not to like the government – in fact, it should be encouraged! But if that's the case, just say so, instead of hiding behind high-minded obfuscation about 'democratic legitimacy'.
#F1 – Why does it always Bahrain on me?
Hamilton was relatively comfortable throughout the race, and he led most of the laps. Ultimately, I don't think the win was ever in doubt, for him. However, Ferrari showed that their resurgence in Malaysia at the start of the month was not a flash in the pan – they really have got a package which can challenge Mercedes, and two drivers capable of scoring points and podium finishes. That makes them genuinely threatening.
In the first three races of this year, it has been Sebastian Vettel who has been doing the business for Ferrari, taking the fight to the Mercedes of Hamilton and Rosberg; Kimi Räikkönen, by contrast, has been a little disappointing – often through no fault of his own. It has been interesting to see Vettel in this role of 'challenger', actually, after he was so frequently criticised during his time at Red Bull as being too reliant on Adrian Newey's masterful engineering, and only being so dominant by dint of having by far the best car on the track. This theory was borne out last year when Red Bull were no longer the dominant team, and Vettel seemed to fall away as his young teammate Daniel Ricciardo was the one to cease victory from Mercedes on a few occasions.
This season, however, Vettel has definitely answered his critics – and emphatically. This year's Ferrari is a very good car, but it still plays a meek second fiddle to the might of the Mercedes. Vettel has been able to match Mercedes, and beat them, in the second-best car. The answer is that Vettel is not a race winner only when he has the best car – but he is a race winner when he has a car in which he feel comfortable. Last year's Red Bull was not a car Vettel enjoyed driving, and his performances demonstrated that; at Ferrari, Vettel feels happier, and so he is driving better.
Räikkönen, too, feels much better in this year's Ferrari than he did in last year's car – and this time out, he showed that he is also a threat to the pace-setters at Mercedes. Räikkönen was his usual, laconic self – but I expect that he will secretly be quite pleased to be back on the podium, and to seem more on level terms with a multiple World Championship-winning teammate in a way he never managed when he was paired with Fernando Alonso at Ferrari last season.
Further down the order, Williams' race was compromised by Felipe Massa's failure to launch for the formation lap, but Valteri Bottas drove an excellent race to keep Vettel behind him and finish fourth. Daniel Ricciardo is still the real deal, hauling the Red Bull into sixth place where its Renault engine doesn't really deserve to be. However, his teammate Daniil Kvyat has had a troubled start to this season, with the Bahrain Grand Prix being no exception, which leads me to question Red Bull's strategy of promoting young drivers from their junior programme so soon – I'm not sure whether Kvyat wouldn't have benefited more from a second season at Toro Rosso, rather than being fast-tracked into the senior team, with all the added pressure that entails, at just twenty years old.
For Lotus, a vastly improved car and a switch from Renault engines to Mercedes engines has brought more consistent points finishes – but only from one driver. Romain Grosjean has brought home all the team's points so far, while Pastor Maldonado has failed to finish a single race this year. Now that Lotus have a competitive car again, they need two competitive drivers if they are to amass points and realise their potential – there is only so long that Maldonado's erratic ways can be tolerated by a team fighting in a packed midfield.
If engineers are being required by the rules of the sport to design and create cars which look good, it starts to become theatre, not racing. Racing cars should be designed to go as quickly as possible (within the rules), and however they look is how they look. All that matters is the performance. If designers have to consider aesthetics as well, this could impact negatively on the performance and therefore on the quality of the racing, and this would not be a good thing.
The 'look' of the race should always be secondary to the actual competition of racing; if sparking and other excitement is genuine, that's great – but if it isn't, we shouldn't try to add it in artificially.
Nick Clegg must have become fairly accustomed to being given a hard time in the media over the past five years (not always deservedly), but even so I was surprised to hear that Newsnight's Evan Davis had interviewed Clegg recently and brought up the Liberal Democrat leader's European heritage (his mother is Dutch) and multilingualism as evidence that he might be 'out-of-touch' with the 'British working class'. Of course, 'out-of-touch' is a spectacularly vapid and meaningless accusation to level at any politician – but these comments by a presenter on one of the BBC's flagship political programmes strike me as particularly stupid.
What, exactly, does Mr Davis feel is bad about Clegg being able to speak more than one language? The idea that if a politician has at least some level of intelligence and decent communication skills, that should somehow count against them is one I find completely baffling. In matters of trade, of diplomacy, or of foreign policy, multilingual Clegg – who speaks five languages fluently – is surely an asset to the British government when it comes to communicating with foreign diplomats and politicians, and forging relationships with other nations?
And think about those photographs you see in the press sometimes – more frequently than ever, now, as we approach a general election – of politicians desperately trying to look at ease as they meet people in a mosque or a gurdwara, but clearly not feeling comfortable… It might be fun to make amusing posts about it on Tumblr, but integration is a real issue which politicians often don't do enough to address. Maybe the sons and daughters of immigrants in government – who have an innate understanding of other cultures – would be able to reach out to other communities (both in Britain and abroad) with more success, and help to improve relationships between them?
To dismiss Nick Clegg as 'out-of-touch' or 'élitist' is foolish – to do so because he possesses skills which are actively useful and beneficial in the day-to-day work of government is just staggering.
If I were the leader of a political party ("ohh, if only!" I hear you say), the only thing I would 'rule out' at this stage of my campaign is ruling anything out.
I can't, for the life of me, understand our premature obsession with 'deals' and 'red lines' in the run-up to this year's General Election. It's like we all got bitten by the coalition government bug five years ago, and now we want to skip the actual business of campaigning and voting altogether so we can get straight down to the good stuff – the coalition negotiations.
The trouble is, it's very difficult to negotiate 'blind' like this. Which is why I think it so incredibly foolish for party leaders to be ruling out dealing with certain other parties already – and so irresponsible of journalists and others to try and hustle them into doing so.
You (as the leader of a political party) might well say you would never deal with party x in the event of a hung parliament – and you might very well mean it, too – but it's all a little meaningless when you don't know how many seats they're going to have after the vote, or even how many seats you're going to have! If a deal with party x then becomes your best (or only!) option, you're going to regret that you backed yourself into a corner during the campaign in order to win a cheap round of applause during a television appearance.
Increasingly, it seems that this is exactly what our political leaders are doing – laying the groundwork for coalition talks before they have any facts to deal with. And that, to me, seems rather daft.
What if Norwich don't go up?
With three games left in the Championship this season, Norwich sit second in the table, one point off Bournemouth (who are top); promotion is entirely within our grasp, and our fate is in our own hands. Things are looking good.
So, ever the gloomy realist, my mind has turned to thoughts of what will happen if, from this position of strength, we fail to win promotion to the Premier League. If we stay in the Top Two, where we currently are, automatic promotion will be ours and everything will be straightforward – but if we slip only a small way into third (which, in a league as tight as this, is eminently possible), we are faced with the unpredictability of the Play-Offs, where anything can happen and where there are no second chances. Even now, it's not impossible that we will still be in the Championship next season. So, what happens then?
Well, hopefully: nothing. We've got a good thing going here – even if we don't achieve our stated aim of promotion to the Premier League, we must do everything we can not to mess that up!
Alex Neil has done a fantastic job since taking over at Norwich in January, and almost all Norwich fans are now giving him the credit he fully deserves for our recent good form. Despite this, I fully expect to see a slew of 'sack the manager!' posts on social media if, for whatever reason, we don't go up this year.
Neil's record at Norwich currently is: Played 19; Won 14; Drawn 3; Lost 2. That's a 73.68% win percentage – and 89.47% of games unbeaten. Those are some pretty remarkable statistics.
On top of that, we have an excellent squad who – bar a few blips across the season – have worked brilliantly together, shown true team spirit, and played some excellent football.
Overall, we're doing a lot of things right, and should we fail to be promoted this season the call should not be for radical change, but to try and preserve what we already have, and everything that is good about it.
Today's Chinese Grand Prix may have been described as 'unremarkable' or even 'dull' by many fans, but it has added some interesting new details to the overall narrative of this 2015 Formula 1 season. Following a somewhat unexpected challenge from a resurgent Ferrari team who ended up taking victory in Malaysia two weekends ago, Mercedes were back on top in Shanghai, and it was more or less 'business as usual' for Lewis Hamilton, with the World Champion Qualifying on Pole, leading every lap of the Grand Prix and taking the win at the end.
However, the continually shifting dynamics of Hamilton's relationship with his teammate Nico Rosberg have been fascinating to follow so far this season, and this weekend was no exception. As I wrote after the race in Malaysia, Rosberg has seemed cowed and timid compared to last year, seeming still to be suffering the psychological effects of losing the Championship to his teammate last year – Hamilton, by contrast, has been confident and self-assured. I think the Mercedes team have noticed this too, and there have been plenty of reports that Rosberg was told to 'toughen up' and be 'more aggressive' for the race in China. He certainly changed his approach in response to this – but it was a disaster for him.
I think Hamilton and Rosberg are intrinsically different characters. Of course, this is no bad thing – and it doesn't mean that either man's mindset is empirically 'better' or 'worse' than the other's. Last year, stable, unflappable Rosberg often seemed to have a psychological edge over the more emotional Hamilton; his calm, steely demeanour meant he was better able to deal with setbacks, and the pressures of fighting a close title battle with his teammate and friend, than Hamilton, whose volatility often left him vulnerable and exposed. To put it simply, Rosberg raced with his head while Hamilton raced with his heart.
Unfortunately for Rosberg, now that Hamilton has beaten him to the title once, he is struggling to come to terms with that. He feels like a Number 2 driver – and so, he acts like one, and he races like one.
I mentioned after Malaysia about how 'jittery' Rosberg seemed – especially in the way that he seemed to be always on the radio to his team asking for more information about what was going on in the race. In trying to be 'more aggressive' this time out, he simply came over as surly and sulky. I think Rosberg has (mistakenly) interpreted the team's instructions to be more aggressive as telling him to be more like Hamilton – and, not being cut from the same cloth as his teammate, this approach isn't working for him.
Rosberg needs to be his own man, and race his own way. He needs to return to the mindset he had last year – that although they are very different in many ways, he is Hamilton's equal, and is capable of beating him on merit. At the moment, Rosberg doesn't seem to be able to believe he is capable of beating his teammate, and that lack of belief is manifesting itself either in a strange timidity which we have been unused to seeing from the German, or in a morose demeanour which may make people want to stay well clear of him on track, but certainly isn't helping him go any faster.
Nico Rosberg is a very good racing driver, with plenty of strengths of his own. It may be difficult for him to keep faith in his own way of doing things, having been (as he will no doubt see it) bested last season by Hamilton's 'heart-on-his-sleeve' approach. But at the moment, he is not comfortable in his own skin, and that translates to being uncomfortable in the car; he is still pulling in the results at the moment, because the Mercedes is still the best overall package in the paddock, but the team won't put up with a sulky, malcontent, underperforming driver forever.
Rosberg has the potential to be a World Champion, but he needs to stop comparing himself to Hamilton and rediscover his belief in himself as a driver if he is ever to realise that potential. The longer this saga goes on, the less likely it becomes that he will achieve that goal this season – and the affects of losing out to Hamilton two years running could finish him off. Is it 'now or never' for Nico?
Obviously, this is an unnecessarily rude and personal attack on any politician, as anyone but a less-than-halfwit can see. But it also makes very little sense. Eton is the school David Cameron went to; this chap is telling the Prime Minister – who is almost fifty years old – to go back to school. Why? It is a vapid, meaningless slur against the Prime Minister, singling out one of least important things about him – something over which he almost certainly had no control himself (how many children choose for themselves which school to go to, independent of their parents' influence?).
Why the Daily Mirror (amongst others) feels the need to give the inane babblings of this busking buffoon the oxygen of publicity is completely beyond me. Aren't there any actual news stories they could be reporting?
White bread with oat and barley, Ham Hock, West Country extra mature cheddar cheese, onion and ale chutney, free range egg mayonnaise and mixed leaf.
Tesco have really pulled off something special here. The balance of flavours and the quality of the ingredients is very impressive. The strength of the cheese in sandwiches has been a particular bugbear of mine recently, as I always feel companies err on the side of caution and make their cheeses too mild – thankfully, Tesco are using extra mature cheddar here, and the flavour does actually come through in the sandwich. The mix of the cheddar and the 'tangy onion and ale chutney' is perfect.
Overall, this is fantastic sandwich – the concept is a simple, elegant recipe, but it has been extremely well executed, and I can't commend Tesco enough on this effort.
It shouldn't matter what politicians wear, should it? Sadly, in the modern age, such image-related issues have become the main focus of election coverage; the politics of personality – of identity – has superseded the politics of ideas in a quite alarming fashion. Which is why the BBC News website today is running a story about what shirts David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have been wearing on the campaign trail.
It shouldn't matter. And yet, for some reason, it does. It matters because the strangely homogenous garb of political leaders (all three leaders have favoured a dark blue V-neck jumper over a light blue shirt, with dark jeans or trousers) is indicative of the 'no-win' situation many politicians find themselves in. What I mean by that is that politicians are always being told that we (the electorate) want to see politicians who are 'normal', and who act just like 'ordinary people' (whatever that means); they can't go out and about campaigning in a suit and tie, because 'normal people' don't go out in a suit and tie, and they need to look like they're 'one of us'. And yet when they try to look like 'one of us', we lambast them for trying to look 'normal'. Which is pretty mean of us, really.
It's also pretty stupid. This shallow vapidity distracts from the serious side of politics, and while everyone's busy laughing at the Prime Minister trying to be one of 'the kids', or the leader of the Opposition looking silly while eating a bacon sandwich, their policies – which may well be pretty ghastly – go unnoticed.
'How the leaders would dress if they weren't tied to focus groups' would be an interesting feature. I reckon Ed would untuck his shirt.
The fetishisation of 'normal' is not good for British politics. The more we force politicians to behave in the way they think we want them to, ever fearful of putting a toe wrong lest they be laughed out of office by the court of public opinion, the more homogenous and consensual politics becomes, and the less choice there is (or, at least, appears to be) between the different parties and their different leaders. And then we have the temerity to complain that all politicians are 'the same'! Maybe you think politicians are all the same – but as I have remarked before, the incessant whining of the electorate has made politics that way.
Obviously, there are plenty of valid reasons not to vote Liberal Democrat – for example, if you don't agree with any of their policies, or you prefer another party and think they'd do a better job in government – but there are also a good many people around in the run-up to the 2015 General Election claiming they won't vote Lib Dem for reasons which are, to put it politely, utterly daft. Of course, people are free to vote for whoever they want, and for whatever reasons they want – but I think it's probably worth explaining why a couple of the reasons people have for not voting Lib Dem are daft.
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats betrayed their voters by going into coalition.
Let's ask a very simple question first: why do people vote for a particular political party? There can be plenty of reasons, but I would imagine that one of the main reasons for voting for a party is that you like their policies. People who voted Lib Dem in 2010, therefore, presumably wanted Nick Clegg and his party to be in government. And that is what they got.
By going into coalition, the party were not able to enact all of their manifesto pledges (more on that later), but at least some distinctive Liberal Democrat policies (a referendum on a more proportional voting system, raising the personal tax allowance threshold, equality of marriage, etc.) have become law during this parliament. If you are a supporter of the party, and believe their policies to be good for the country, even just one of their policies coming to fruition is better than none; the real 'betrayal' would've been if Clegg had had an opportunity to give his party's voters what they said (via the ballot box) they wanted, and had turned his back on it.
Image by Mark Pack (www.markpack.org.uk).
There is an argument that saddling Liberal Democrat voters with Tory policies which they didn't want was not worth the opportunity to deliver a few of the Liberal Democrat policies they did want, but this is based on a spurious assumption – ie. that a vote for the Lib Dems automatically counts as a vote against the Conservatives. In a two-party system, this is a more-or-less true; in the American Presidential elections, for example, where there is a straight choice between Candidate A and Candidate B it could be said that a vote for A is a vote which says 'no, I don't want B'. In the UK, where multi-party politics is on the up, this is not the case.
Our voting system only allows you to cast a vote for a candidate or party – not against a candidate or party. It is therefore disingenuous to say voting Liberal Democrat is an empirical rejection of Conservative policy. The hung parliament which was the result of the 2010 general election was a democratic result – no major party managed to convince enough of the electorate that their ideas were best for the country. The coalition government which followed was, necessarily, a compromise – but one which ensured that 59% of the electorate (36% Conservative, 23% Lib Dem) got at least some of what they had voted for.
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats broke their promise(s).
Tuition fees. The thorn in the side of the Lib Dems for the past five years. During the 2010 election campaign, Nick Clegg promised that he would not raise tuition fees for university students (which at that time were capped at £3,000 per year). In government, the Tory-Lib Dem coalition raised the maximum figure to £9,000 per year. As a result, the Liberal Democrats have suffered hugely, having been seen to break their promises on the subject. However, this is false logic.
The promise – the pledge – was null and void the moment the coalition agreement was signed. When a politician promises to do something in the run-up to an election, that promise comes with a caveat – ie. that that politician is actually elected. The small print of every manifesto pledge is '…if we win a majority'. Nick Clegg didn't promise not to raise tuition fees; he promised not to raise tuition fees if the Liberal Democrats won a majority. And they didn't win a majority.
You may as well get all stroppy with the Labour party for not introducing 'legally binding guarantees for patients including the right to cancer test results within one week of referral, and a maximum eighteen weeks' wait for treatment or the offer of going private', as promised in their 2010 manifesto, as well. But Labour didn't win the 2010 election, so how could we expect them to uphold all the promises they made before it?
So even if the tuition fees increase were a bad thing (and there is plenty of evidence to show it may not be, considering that it also entailed a significant change in the way repayments are worked out after students graduate), it simply does not follow that the Lib Dems broke their promise here. A coalition government requires compromise – that much should be fairly obvious. Raising the tuition fee limit was not Liberal Democrat policy before the 2010 election, but it was Conservative party policy; in order to enact Liberal Democrat policy in other areas, Clegg must've ceded ground to the Tories on the issue of tuition fees (possibly after being shown the arithmetic in the Blog posts I have linked to above, and realising that the rise in fees would not be so bad after all). You can't expect a junior coalition partner to have things all their own way – there were always going to be areas in which Lib Dem policy would lose out to the Conservatives.
As I've said, there are perfectly valid reasons to vote for a party other than the Liberal Democrats. And that's fine. But personally, I think a General Election is too big and too important to vote for a party – or not to vote for a party – based on spite or grudges.


13. Victoria and her sisters: 1830–1910. As the Victorian era began, the massive advance of technology and industrialisation was rapidly reshaping both the landscape and the social structure of the whole country. To a much greater extent than ever before women would take a center-stage role in shaping society.


text:
.. Imanee documentation master file, created by
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   You can adapt this file completely to your liking, but it should at least
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Imanee documentation
====================
Imanee is a simple image manipulation library for PHP. It provides an easy flow for editing images and performing tasks such as creating thumbnails, watermarks, text writing and animated gifs.

For live demos, please visit our main website: `imanee.io <http://imanee.io>`_.

Contents:

.. toctree::
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   gettingstarted.rst
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   animatedgifs.rst
   constants.rst


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