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This paper describes a class activity based on real data about COVID-19 death rates in California. The activity helps students learn about exponential functions while providing an opportunity to integrate social justice concerns into the mathematics classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous Vehicles (AV) technology is emerging. Field tests on public roads have been on going in several states in the US as well as in Europe and Asia. During the US public road tests, crashes with AV involved happened, which becomes a concern to the public. Most previous studies on AV safety relied heavily on assessing drivers’ performance and behaviors in a simulation environment and developing automated driving system performance in a closed field environment. However, contributing factors and the mechanism of AV-related crashes have not been comprehensively and quantitatively investigated due to the lack of field AV crash data. By harnessing California’s Report of Traffic Collision Involving an Autonomous Vehicle Database, which includes the AV crash data from 2014 to 2018, this paper investigates by far the most current and complete AV crash database in the US using statistical modeling approaches that involve both ordinal logistic regression and CART classification tree. The quantitative analysis based on ordinal logistic regression and CART models has successfully explored the mechanism of AV-related crash, via both perspectives of crash severity and collision types. Particularly, the CART model reveals and visualize the hierarchical structure of the AV crash mechanism with knowledge of how these traffic, roadway, and environmental contributing factors can lead to crashes of various serveries and collision types. Statistical analysis results indicate that crash severity significantly increases if the AV is responsible for the crash. The highway is identified as the location where severe injuries are likely to happen. AV collision types are affected by whether the vehicle is on automated driving mode, whether the crashes involve pedestrians/cyclists, as well as the roadway environment. The method used in this research provides a proven approach to statistically analyze and understand AV safety issues. And this benefit is potential be even enhanced with an increasing sample size of AV-related crashes records in the future. The comprehensive knowledge obtained ultimately facilitates assessing and improving safety performance of automated vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from a qualitative approach and through individual pláticas (processes of co-constructing knowledge through dialogue) as a linguistic and cultural framework, this work explored informal contextual factors valued by Spanish-speaking Latina mothers of children, three to five years of age and enrolled in a nonprofit California preschool. Results revealed that Latina mothers have cultural forms of knowledge which impact their children's educational experiences and engage in direct and indirect numeracy environments. While personal math experiences and home practices differed, Latina mothers experience and navigate their children's learning based on sociocultural aspects, influencing how they support their children's math learning. This study drew from sociocultural learning theories that value learning embedded within meaningful learning experiences. Patterns of family learning have several implications for educational practice, especially for Latine families whose parent participation is typically not as visible as White American English-speaking parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to present value-added calculation methods that were applied to determine whether online schools performed at the same or different levels relative to standardized testing. This study includes information on how we approached our value added model development and the results for 32 online public high schools in California. Student level California Standards Test results in English Language Arts and Mathematics for over 5,000 online students were analyzed. Mean value added metrics for each school were calculated for 8 courses held during the 2010-2011 academic year. We found that schools of distinction existed in 7 of the 8 course categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses California's controversial proposed math curriculum framework, which emphasizes a conceptual approach over memorization, raising concerns about students falling behind. Topics include the history of math curriculum debates, the framework's stance on math facts and standard algorithms, and the research cited to support its approach.

If the pattern of fertility, mortality and interregional migration exhibited by the United States population during 1950-60 were to continue in the future, the proportions of persons in the various age groups and regions would fluctuate from decade to decade. These fluctuations would become less marked with time, however, and eventually all the proportions would stabilize at certain fixed values. This collection of values may be called a stable age by region composition corresponding to the given schedule of fertility, mortality and migration. The same phenomenon may be observed when individuals move between socioeconomic categories as, for example, socioeconomic status or educational attainment levels. The substantial differences between these various situations conceal remarkable similarities. In each case the continued operation of schedules of fertility, mortality and mobility between categories may result in a stable composition. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the nature of these stable compositions, on the interrelation between their various components, and on their relation to the patterns of fertility, mortality and mobility which generate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To examine the role of numeracy, or comfort with numbers, as a potential risk factor for financial elder exploitation in a community sample. Method: Individually administered surveys were given to 201 independent, community-dwelling adults aged 60 and older. Risk for financial elder exploitation was assessed using the Older Adult Financial Exploitation Measure (OAFEM). Other variables of interest included numeracy, executive functioning, and other risk factors identified from the literature. Assessments were completed individually at the Wood Lab at Scripps College in Claremont, CA and neighboring community centers. Results: After controlling for other variables, including education, lower numeracy was related to higher scores on the OAFEM consistent with higher risk for financial exploitation. Self-reported physical and mental health, male gender, and younger age were also related to increased risk. Conclusions: Results indicated that numeracy is a significant risk factor for elder financial exploitation after controlling for other commonly reported variables. These findings are consistent with the broader literature relating numeracy to wealth and debt levels and extend them to the area of elder financial exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerical knowledge is critical to global public health, but numbers often emerge from contexts that require serious attention to historical and contextual factors shaped by race and place-based marginalisations. Without such attention, even progressive anti-racist public health projects can cause harm in neighbourhoods like Bayview Hunters Point in San Francisco. The central role of numbers in governance has received substantial scholarly attention and ethnographic studies often foreground the subjective stakes and selective erasures that result from privileging numerical ways of knowing. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research conducted in 2003–2004, we track different interpretations around the closure of an HIV/AIDS medication adherence program in San Francisco's only majority Black neighbourhood. Drawing on Du Bois' double consciousness, we show the entanglement of numbers, race and place through the story of how a program's closure was interpreted by clients in terms of racialised neglect and experimental violence. Twenty years later, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the quest for numbers continues to evoke community tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 1978, I interviewed George Pólya about his views on mathematical abilities. I was in California for the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in San Diego and arranged to stop by Pólya's house in Palo Alto after the meeting to discuss his views on mathematical abilities as well as the articles on mathematics education to be included in his collected papers (Rota, Reynolds, & Shortt, 1984). The following article is abridged from that interview and focuses on mathematical abilities. For me, the most unexpected feature of the interview was that although Pólya had obviously reflected throughout his long life on the question of how he and others do mathematics, he had apparently not given much thought previously to the abilities they were drawing on when they did it. Nonetheless, Pólya's wit and charm come through clearly as he patiently struggles with his former student's awkward questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using information theory, we measure innovation systemness as synergy among size‐classes, ZIP Codes, and technological classes (NACE‐codes) for 8.5 million American companies. The synergy at the national level is decomposed at the level of states, Core‐Based Statistical Areas (CBSA), and Combined Statistical Areas (CSA). We zoom in to the state of California and in more detail to Silicon Valley. Our results do not support the assumption of a national system of innovations in the U.S.A. Innovation systems appear to operate at the level of the states; the CBSA are too small, so that systemness spills across their borders. Decomposition of the sample in terms of high‐tech manufacturing (HTM), medium‐high‐tech manufacturing (MHTM), knowledge‐intensive services (KIS), and high‐tech services (HTKIS) does not change this pattern, but refines it. The East Coast—New Jersey, Boston, and New York—and California are the major players, with Texas a third one in the case of HTKIS. Chicago and industrial centers in the Midwest also contribute synergy. Within California, Los Angeles contributes synergy in the sectors of manufacturing, the San Francisco area in KIS. KIS in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area—a CSA composed of seven CBSA—spill over to other regions and even globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As more attention is placed on designing digital educational games to align with schools' academic aims (e.g., Common Core), questions arise regarding how professional development (PD) may support teachers' using games for instruction and how such integration might impact students' achievement. This study seeks to (a) understand how teachers use PD resources (e.g., technology personnel and game‐use workshops) for integration; (b) determine how teachers integrate games into their instruction; and (c) examine how those teaching practices are associated with student achievement. This mixed method study used survey and interview responses from elementary school teachers (n = 863) with access to PD resources for implementing a math game intervention and standardized math‐test scores from their second‐ through sixth‐grade students (n = 10,715). Findings showed few teachers sought PD assistance for integration, but many desired such support. Some reported using integrative practices (i.e., referencing game and using game‐generated progress reports) to identify struggling students, whereas several found integration challenging. Teachers' reordering of game objectives to align with lessons and viewing of game‐based PD videos were associated with increased student math achievement in our OLS‐analysis. However, this result was no longer statistically significant within a school fixed‐effects model, suggesting school differences may influence how strongly teachers' practices are associated with student achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With growing demand and highly variable inter-annual water supplies, California’s water use future is fraught with uncertainty. Climate change projections, anticipated population growth, and continued agricultural intensification, will likely stress existing water supplies in coming decades. Using a state-and-transition simulation modeling approach, we examine a broad suite of spatially explicit future land use scenarios and their associated county-level water use demand out to 2062. We examined a range of potential water demand futures sampled from a 20-year record of historical (1992–2012) data to develop a suite of potential future land change scenarios, including low/high change scenarios for urbanization and agriculture as well as “lowest of the low” and “highest of the high” anthropogenic use. Future water demand decreased 8.3 billion cubic meters (Bm3) in the lowest of the low scenario and decreased 0.8 Bm3 in the low agriculture scenario. The greatest increased water demand was projected for the highest of the high land use scenario (+9.4 Bm3), high agricultural expansion (+4.6 Bm3), and high urbanization (+2.1 Bm3) scenarios. Overall, these scenarios show agricultural land use decisions will likely drive future demand more than increasing municipal and industrial uses, yet improved efficiencies across all sectors could lead to potential water use savings. Results provide water managers with information on diverging land use and water use futures, based on historical, observed land change trends and water use histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed-methods study couples large-scale analyses of student course-taking with case study data to explore what blocks the gate to enrollment in and successful completion of secondary math courses for students ever classified as English learners (ever ELs). Initial quantitative findings indicate that half of all students across six California districts, including ever ELs, repeated a math course between 8th and 10th grades, with limited evidence of additional learning during students’ second time in the course. Ever EL case study findings indicate that interactions between institutional (course placement policies), classroom (ways of knowing), and individual (student motivation) factors shaped students’ math course-taking trajectories, suggesting that opportunity to learn is necessary but not sufficient for educational success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To improve the quality, quantity, and speed of implementation, careful monitoring of the implementation process is required. However, some health organizations have such limited capacity to collect, organize, and synthesize information relevant to its decision to implement an evidence-based program, the preparation steps necessary for successful program adoption, the fidelity of program delivery, and the sustainment of this program over time. When a large health system implements an evidence-based program across multiple sites, a trained intermediary or broker may provide such monitoring and feedback, but this task is labor intensive and not easily scaled up for large numbers of sites. We present a novel approach to producing an automated system of monitoring implementation stage entrances and exits based on a computational analysis of communication log notes generated by implementation brokers. Potentially discriminating keywords are identified using the definitions of the stages and experts' coding of a portion of the log notes. A machine learning algorithm produces a decision rule to classify remaining, unclassified log notes.Results: We applied this procedure to log notes in the implementation trial of multidimensional treatment foster care in the California 40-county implementation trial (CAL-40) project, using the stages of implementation completion (SIC) measure. We found that a semi-supervised non-negative matrix factorization method accurately identified most stage transitions. Another computational model was built for determining the start and the end of each stage.Conclusions: This automated system demonstrated feasibility in this proof of concept challenge. We provide suggestions on how such a system can be used to improve the speed, quality, quantity, and sustainment of implementation. The innovative methods presented here are not intended to replace the expertise and judgement of an expert rater already in place. Rather, these can be used when human monitoring and feedback is too expensive to use or maintain. These methods rely on digitized text that already exists or can be collected with minimal to no intrusiveness and can signal when additional attention or remediation is required during implementation. Thus, resources can be allocated according to need rather than universally applied, or worse, not applied at all due to their cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minority students at risk for math difficulties (MD) struggle with word problems for various reasons beyond procedural or calculation challenges. As a result, these students require support in reading and language development in addition to math. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a math comprehension strategy based on a dynamic assessment (DA) framework, which provided scaffolding support based on the student's reading and language levels. A multiple baseline design was used to assess eight third-grade minority students at risk for MD. As compared with the baseline phase, the strategy increased problem-solving ability for all participants. All students maintained performance levels during follow-up sessions. Results suggest that the intervention facilitated word-problem-solving performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite reports of mathematical talent in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), little is known about basic number processing abilities in affected children. We investigated number sense, the ability to rapidly assess quantity information, in 36 children with ASD and 61 typically developing controls. Numerical acuity was assessed using symbolic (Arabic numerals) as well as non-symbolic (dot array) formats. We found significant impairments in non-symbolic acuity in children with ASD, but symbolic acuity was intact. Symbolic acuity mediated the relationship between non-symbolic acuity and mathematical abilities only in children with ASD, indicating a distinctive role for symbolic number sense in the acquisition of mathematical proficiency in this group. Our findings suggest that symbolic systems may help children with ASD organize imprecise information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stereotype threat occurs when people who belong to socially devalued groups experience a fear of negative evaluation, which interferes with the goal of staying task focused. The current study was designed to examine whether priming socially devalued individuals with an implemental (vs. a deliberative) mindset, characterized by forming a priori goal-directed plans, would help these individuals to overcome threat-induced distracting states. Participants from low and high socioeconomic status backgrounds (measured by maternal education; SESm) completed a speeded mental arithmetic test, an intellectually threatening task. Low-SESm individuals performed comparably and exhibited similar confidence levels to high-SESm counterparts only when induced with an implemental mindset, suggesting that implemental mindset priming may help to create equity in the face of stereotype threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examined the effects of teacher caring, teacher content explanations, and teacher interest promotion on Latino students’ interest, self-efficacy, and achievement in mathematics. Participants in the year-long study were 326 Latino 9th- and 10th-grade students attending a large urban high school in southern California. Teacher variables made unique contributions to students’ interest, self-efficacy, and achievement after controlling for demographics and initial levels of interest and self-efficacy. In addition, the author found the 2 instructional practices—content explanations and interest promotion—to mediate the relation between teacher caring and interest, self-efficacy, and achievement. The author did not detect any moderating effects with respect to gender, grade level, English language proficiency, or initial motivation. Implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The variability of the California Current System (CCS) is primarily driven by variability in regional wind forcing. In particular, the timing of the spring transition, i.e., the onset of upwelling-favorable winds, varies considerably in the CCS with changes in the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. Using a coupled physical-biogeochemical model, this study examines the sensitivity of the ecosystem functioning in the CCS to a lead or lag in the spring transition. An early spring transition results in an increased vertical nutrient flux at the coast, with the largest ecosystem consequences, both in relative amplitude and persistence, hundreds of kilometers offshore and at the highest trophic level of the modeled food web. A budget analysis reveals that the propagation of the perturbation offshore and up the food web is driven by remineralization and grazing/predation involving both large and small plankton species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In California, an increasing number of 8th graders have taken algebra courses since 2003. This study examines students’ California Standards Test (CST) results in grades 7 through 11, aiming to reveal who took the CST for Algebra I in 8th grade and whether the increase has led to a rise in students’ taking higher-level mathematics CSTs and an improved performance in following years. Results show that the pipeline of 8th-grade algebra and following years’ higher-level mathematics CSTs has a significant leak in it. Furthermore, the longitudinal analysis reveals that 9th-grade students have a 69% greater chance of succeeding in algebra if they passed the CST for General Mathematics in 8th grade compared to those who failed the CST for Algebra I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between school segregation and neighborhood segregation across school districts in Los Angeles County, and are school district outcomes on reading and mathematics scores related to levels of school segregation across these districts? We compute segregation scores using US tract level data for 2000 and use reading and mathematics scores from California State tests. Data from the Los Angeles family and neighborhood survey are used to track individual residential changes and differences in the associated Woodcock Johnson scores. We show that there is a close link between levels of school segregation and neighborhood segregation and that many suburban school districts are relatively integrated across both neighborhoods and schools. When we examine average school district outcomes on reading and mathematics scores we do not find any relationship with levels of segregation. At the same time there is clear evidence of spatial sorting with poorer and lower scoring children moving into school districts (or zones with poorer achieving schools). The multi-level models of segregation and achievement show that the variance in achievement levels across districts is significantly greater than across schools within districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibition "2010 Joint Mathematics Meeting Exhibition of Mathematical Art" in San Francisco, California in January 2010.

The article focuses on the policy implementation of education in California. California's new Mathematics Framework is an element of one of the most ambitious curriculum reforms of any state in the nation. As an answer to the calls for school reform throughout the 1980s, the new California frameworks in several subject areas constitute both practically and conceptually a more sweeping approach than most-including changes in textbooks and, ultimately, testing instruments along with changes in commonly held conceptions of subject areas. Rather than viewing the disciplines as embodying information to be transmitted by teachers and acquired by students, the frameworks seek to present subject areas as providing ways of thinking that will foster knowledge and understandings to be constructed by students themselves. More than any other state curriculum effort to date, California's experiment aims explicitly at the goals urged by many recent reform reports: instruction that helps students think critically, express themselves proficiently, construct and solve problems, synthesize information, invent, and create.

Determines the factors influencing the formation of attitudes towards mathematics in California. Evaluation of the psychological distance of student-father relationship; Emphasis on the existence of distant relationships; Accounts on the ratings of the attitude of fathers toward mathematics.