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Recent developments in particle physics have revealed deep connections between scattering amplitudes and tropical geometry. At the heart of this relationship are the chirotropical Grassmannian $\text{Trop}^\chi \text{G}(k,n)$ and chirotropical Dressian $\text{Dr}^\chi(k,n)$, polyhedral fans built from uniform realizable chirotopes that encode the combinatorial structure of generalized Feynman diagrams. We prove that $\text{Trop}^\chi \text{G}(3,n) = \text{Dr}^\chi(3,n)$ for $n = 6,7,8$, and develop algorithms to compute these objects from their rays modulo lineality. Using these algorithms, we compute all chirotropical Grassmannians $\text{Trop}^\chi \text{G}(3,n)$ for $n = 6,7,8$ across all isomorphism classes of chirotopes. We prove that each chirotopal configuration space $X^\chi(3,6)$ is diffeomorphic to a polytope with an associated canonical logarithmic differential form. Finally, we show that the equality between chirotropical Grassmannian and Dressian fails for $(k,n) = (4,8)$., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures

Research has established the vital role administrators play in the success and sustainability of high-quality early childhood care and education (ECEC) programs. However, many center-based program administrators assume their leadership roles by being promoted from a teaching position. Consequently, while they may assume their administrative role with a strong background in teaching young children, they often lack the specific education, specialized training, and experience needed to successfully lead and sustain a high-quality ECEC program. Adult learning theory, as well as research across many workforce sectors, including early childhood education highlights the need to align professional development opportunities with career development stages. This Research Brief provides an in-depth profile of the largest career development stage group: the proficient administrator. Building on the established characterization of proficient administrators as those who shift from struggling to juggling responsibilities, focus on improving their efficiency and effectiveness, and fit into the "conscious competence" learning stage, this study examines their perceived alignment between current and ideal work experiences, career origins, current role perceptions, levels of self-efficacy, and mastery of critical leadership competencies.

Home visiting connects expectant parents, new caregivers, and their young children with a support person, called a home visitor. The home visitor meets regularly with the family, develops a relationship with them, and supports them to achieve their goals and meet their needs. To reach the thousands of additional families who could benefit from home visiting, we must increase support for culturally relevant and family-centered models. A new report -- "Community-Based Home Visiting: Fidelity to Families, Commitment to Outcomes" -- delves into the unique strengths and challenges of community-based home visiting models, whose design and measures of success intentionally center the perspectives of the families and communities they serve. These models are often developed by those with experience with the unique cultures, strengths, and solutions of he community they live in and aim to serve. This report summarizes themes from listening sessions with 30+ community-based home visiting models from across the country. It offers policy and funding recommendations that would improve support for these models and therefore families' access to home visiting that best meets their goals. [Additional support was provided by the National Home Visiting Coalition Steering Committee.]

The Shaping Futures Together agenda highlights policies and investments that families and practitioners say will ensure all children thrive. This playbook provides recommended policy and research strategies that Start Early believes will help to realize those priorities. Each section includes legislative and administrative policy recommendations and research questions specific to each of the following priorities: (1) healthy births & thriving families; (2) positive early learning & development; (3) effective, valued & well-compensated workforce; and (4) strong, sustainable & equitable early childhood ecosystem.

The Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS) rewards students who strive to excel in high school and continue their education in degree and certificate programs in Alaska. This report covers the high school, postsecondary, Alaska residency, and workforce outcomes of the APS program between Fall 2011-2023. [This report was prepared by Resource Data, Inc.]

The decomposition of oceanic flow into its balanced and unbalanced motions carries theoretical and practical significance for the oceanographic community. These two motions have distinct dynamical characteristics and affect the transport of tracers differently from one another. The launch of Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite provides a prime opportunity to diagnose the surface balanced and unbalanced motions on a global scale at an unprecedented spatial resolution. Here, we apply dynamic-mode decomposition (DMD), a linear-algebraic data-driven method, to a tidally-forced numerical simulation and one-day-repeat SWOT observations of sea-surface height (SSH) in the Gulf Stream extension. DMD is able to separate out the spatial modes associated with sub-inertial periods from super-inertial periods. The sub-inertial modes of DMD can be used to extract geostrophically balanced motions from SSH fields, which have an imprint of internal tides and gravity waves. We utilize the statistical relation between relative vorticity and strain rate as the metric to gauge the extraction of geostrophy.

Expulsion and suspension (or exclusionary discipline) in early care and education (ECE) are widely recognized as harmful to children. Numerous states have developed expulsion and suspension prevention policies through legislation or administrative rules. However, there is limited research on the implementation of state policies designed to reduce exclusionary discipline and on ECE providers' use of program supports that could help reduce exclusionary discipline practices. In this report, we use survey data to investigate Arkansas ECE program leaders' and teachers' understanding of the state's expulsion prevention policy, their use of suspension and expulsion and their participation in professional development (PD) and other supports to meet the needs of children with challenging behavior. We also explore how teachers' attributions of the reasons for challenging behavior predict their use of the available PD and supports. Key findings include: (1) Publicly funded programs in Arkansas (which are subject to state policy) engaged in exclusionary discipline at lower rates than non-publicly funded programs, despite reporting a higher percentage of children with challenging behavior; (2) Many Arkansas ECE program leaders were aware of the state's expulsion prevention policy, but fewer demonstrated a strong understanding of the requirements; (3) More than three quarters of Arkansas ECE teachers reported receiving some form of PD or training on topics such as encouraging positive teacher-child interactions, promoting children's positive behavior and helping children develop skills like managing their emotions; and (4) The use of exclusionary discipline practices was related to teachers' views of families as a reason for children's challenging behavior. At the end of the report, we offer recommendations based on these findings.

A recently launched professional development initiative in Arkansas, called Array, is designed to proactively identify early care and education (ECE) programs that could benefit from social-emotional-focused (SE-focused) professional development and support, and to offer assistance tailored to a program's particular needs. Because Array is designed to initiate contact with ECE programs, it has the potential to intervene early and prevent serious escalations of teachers' frustration in response to children's challenging behavior. This report examines results from case studies in three ECE programs that participated in Array between June and December 2022. The results focus on unique features of Array, how it operates, reported benefits to programs, and recommendations for continued improvement.

Our national survey of the early intervention (EI) and early childhood special education (ECSE) workforce highlights key strengths and concerns. Workers find their roles rewarding, appreciate making a difference for children and families, and are well-qualified, with most holding at least a bachelor's degree. However, the workforce lacks diversity, which may not reflect the children served, and nearly all workers are female, while more boys receive EI and ECSE services. High-stress levels, large caseloads, inadequate support, and poor compensation are significant issues. Addressing these challenges through better training, support, and innovative solutions is essential to retain and attract qualified professionals, ensuring children and families receive the necessary services without delays. [Funding for this report was provided by Early Childhood Personnel Center at the University of Connecticut.]

One in five college students, or 22 percent, are parents. They are highly motivated students and earn grades on par with or better than their childless peers. However, child care challenges often lead student parents to leave school or workforce training without completing; shift from full-time to part-time schooling or programming; and miss, arrive late to, or leave early from school or work training. In Georgia, women, single parents, parents with an annual household income under $50,000 (particularly in South Georgia, where families' median household incomes are lower), and parents under age 30 are most likely to report long-term employment or educational disruptions due to child care issues, blocking their path to fulfilling their educational goals and pursuing economic mobility. Parents' inability to access consistent, reliable, and affordable child care is one of their biggest barriers to reaching these goals. Nearly one in five applicants to the Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) program, administered through the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL), identify as students; in May 2022, CAPS established student parents as a priority group for their program. Since then, more than 16,000 student parents have applied for CAPS. Yet only 42 percent of those applicants were approved for a subsidy. DECAL established the CAPS Student Parent 2Gen Pilot program to test a strategy to better serve their student parent priority group at three technical college sites. This brief summarizes the theory of change behind DECAL's 2Gen Pilot and Child Trends' plans for evaluating the pilot. It was created in conjunction with DECAL, using funding from DECAL.

Finite dimensional simple modules of quantum affine algebras of type A correspond to semistandard Young tableaux of rectangular shapes. In this paper, we classify all prime modules corresponding to 2-column semistandard Young tableaux. Moreover, we give a conjectural sufficient condition for a module corresponding to a tableau with more than two columns to be prime., Comment: This is a part of the original file arXiv:2303.05618v3. The original file arXiv:2303.05618v3 is splited into two parts. The other part of the original file arXiv:2303.05618v3 has the title: Tropical Geometry, Quantum Affine Algebras, and Scattering Amplitudes

We consider a rotating non-hydrostatic flow with arbitrary stratification and argue that 1) the appropriate form of potential vorticity (PV) for this system is in terms of isopycnal deviation and 2) the decomposition into energetically orthogonal solutions is fundamentally a PV-inversion. The new closed-form expression for available potential vorticity (APV) is expressed in terms of isopycnal deviation, following the ideas in Wagner & Young (2015). This form of APV linearizes to quasigeostrophic PV (QGPV) after discarding the nonlinear stretching term and a height nonlinearity, the latter of which is not present in constant stratification. This formulation leads to positive definite definitions of potential enstrophy and total energy expressed in terms of isopycnal deviation, from which the quadratic versions emerge at lowest order. It is exactly these quantities diagonalized by the linear eigenmodes. Internal-gravity waves, geostrophic motions, inertial oscillations, and a mean density anomaly form the energetically and enstrophically orthogonal constituents of flow. The complete state of the fluid can be represented in terms of these physically realizeable modes and determined from the derived projection operators using the horizontal velocity and density anomaly. The projection of the fluid state onto the non-hydrostatic wave modes, reveals that one must first account for the PV portion of the flow before recovering the wave solutions. We apply the physical insights of the decomposition to a mesoscale eddy showing how strict adherence to adiabatic rearrangement places strong constraints on the vertical structure of such eddies, including a skew towards stronger cyclonic eddies in the upper water-column. Finally, the expression for APV is shown to reproduce the height nonlinearity of shallow-water PV, a well know feature that breaks the cyclone-anticyclone symmetry in QGPV.

Leadership is important for quality improvement in center-based early care and education (ECE) settings that serve children birth to five. However, little is known about who leaders are, what leaders do, and how leadership influences quality outcomes in center-based ECE settings. Leadership can be defined by the range of staff who participate in decision-making and quality improvement and the actions they take as leaders. The Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS), funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families, has three goals: (1) fill the gaps in definitions and measurement to understand how effective leadership can improve the quality of experiences for children ages birth to five in center-based ECE settings, (2) develop a measure of ECE leadership, and (3) identify actionable leadership development initiatives and methods of evaluating them. This snapshot presents the ExCELS theory of change to show what ECE leadership looks like as well as the influences on and the influences of ECE leadership.

To better support districts and preschool program providers, the Ohio Department of Education's Office of Early Learning and School Readiness is providing answers to the following frequently asked questions pertaining to Ohio Administrative Code 3301-51-11. This document is divided into sections aligning with each section of the rule. This document will continue to be updated based on additional questions and concerns from the field. Red text indicates revisions since previous version. [For the 2021 report, see ED619735.]

Most states in the United States operate their public preschool programs in a mixed delivery system that serves children in local education agencies (LEAs) as well as non-LEA settings, such as Head Start agencies, child care centers, private schools, and family child care homes. To inform state preschool administrators and policymakers as they refine their mixed delivery systems, this report describes the mixed delivery systems of five states that have taken different approaches to supporting providers across settings. The five states discussed in this report include: (1) Alabama; (2) Michigan; (3) New Jersey; (4) New York; and (5) West Virginia. This report answers the following questions: (1) What is the landscape of mixed delivery in select states' preschool programs? (2) How are state preschool contracts awarded, and what supports are provided to non-LEAs to participate? and (3) What are quality requirements, and who monitors and is ultimately responsible for program quality?

Minimal kinematics identifies likelihood degenerations where the critical points are given by rational formulas. These rest on the Horn uniformization of Kapranov-Huh. We characterize all choices of minimal kinematics on the moduli space $\mathcal{M}_{0,n}$. These choices are motivated by the CHY model in physics and they are represented combinatorially by 2-trees. We compute 2-tree amplitudes, and we explore extensions to non-planar on-shell diagrams, here identified with the hypertrees of Castravet-Tevelev., Comment: 18 pages

We set up a unified framework to efficiently compute the shear and bulk viscosities of strongly coupled gauge theories with gravitational holographic duals involving higher derivative corrections. We consider both Weyl$^4$ corrections, encoding the finite 't Hooft coupling corrections of the boundary theory, and Riemann$^2$ corrections, responsible for non-equal central charges $c\ne a$ of the theory at the ultraviolet fixed point. Our expressions for the viscosities in higher derivative holographic models are extracted from a radially conserved current and depend only on the horizon data., Comment: 46 pages, 10 figures; v2: JHEP version

This study utilizes data gathered from a nationwide survey of preschool educators in the United States to examine the prevalence of teaching practices associated with academic-focused rather than play-based approaches. The research delves into how these practices vary across different types of preschool programs, including publicly funded, such as state and locally funded public preschools, federally funded Head Start programs, and private preschools predominantly funded through fees. The analysis also considers various program features influenced by public policies, such as teacher qualifications and classroom characteristics. While the main objective is descriptive--to understand the extent of practice differences across auspices--the study also aims to shed light on potential reasons behind these differences, albeit with a recognition of limitations in establishing causality.

Since 2011, the Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS) has awarded Alaska students who excel in high school with more than $100 million in scholarships to help cover the cost of in-state postsecondary education. This report covers: (1) APS Eligibility & Use; (2) High School Outcomes; (3) Postsecondary Outcomes; and (4) Alaska Residency and Workforce Outcomes. [This report was prepared by McKinley Research Group (MRG). For "Alaska Performance Scholarship Outcomes Report 2022. APS: Fall 2011-2021," see ED621314.]

Alaska's last literacy blueprint was written in 2011. A lot has changed in 12 years. Since then, Alaska adopted new English Language Arts standards to reflect the advanced literacy students need to be ready for college and careers. The Alaska Department of Education & Early Development (DEED) adopted the Alaska Native Cultural Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools. The State Board of Education and DEED worked with educators and community members from across the state to create Alaska's Education Challenge, which placed third-grade reading proficiency as a state priority. Region 16 Comprehensive Center and DEED created Alaska's Reading Playbook, which defines the Science of Reading and provides strategies to teach phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. DEED created the Alaska Strategic Reading Plan based on input from partners and stakeholders. Most recently, the Alaska Reads Act became law. DEED has implemented the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant, and we also have two new assessments: mCLASS by Amplify and the Alaska System of Academic Readiness (AK STAR). mCLASS by Amplify helps educators identify students K-3 who might be at risk for reading difficulties. AK STAR helps provide an accurate picture of proficiency at the end of the school year. All of this change can get hard to track -- and that's where the blueprint comes in! This document is designed to provide partners, stakeholders, and communities with one document that summarizes our collective literacy efforts statewide. Throughout the blueprint, you will find links where you can access more information on current and historical literacy work in Alaska. The blueprint also provides a snapshot of current student demographics and assessment results.

The field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) has an educator retention problem (NAEYC, 2021). While the field's administrator retention crisis is less publicized, it is arguably no less important. Administrators are the gatekeepers to program quality and the linchpin for an array of program functions that impact staff satisfaction and retention, including hiring and orienting new staff, supervising and promoting current staff, managing program finances, creating a shared mission and vision, and setting the overall tone for the organizational climate (Bloom & Abel, 2015; Doherty et al., 2015; Douglass, 2019; Sims et al., 2015; Talan et al., 2014). Moreover, research in the K-12 education sector has repeatedly found that principal turnover is tied to teacher turnover (e.g., Béteille et al., 2012; Buckman, 2021; Miller, 2013). One way in which the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership has worked to support novice ECEC administrators is through the Ready to Lead Leadership Academy (RTL). RTL was created as an intensive, four-month leadership academy to meet the needs of new and novice early childhood administrators. Additionally, the RTL curriculum was strategically aligned with competencies within the Illinois Director Credential, part of the Illinois Gateways to Opportunity professional development system. The Center has conducted seven cohorts of RTL with 119 novice administrators from across Illinois completing the academy. At the conclusion of the seventh cohort, the McCormick Center conducted an external evaluation report on the effectiveness of the RTL academy (Hadi-Tabassum & Beaudoin Ryan, 2023). This research brief focuses on two of four of the main research questions addressed in the evaluation: (1) if RTL meets the unique needs of novice administrators and (2) the potential impact of RTL on administrators' own commitment to the field, support for professional development for teaching staff, and future staff retention.

Early childhood researchers from across the U.S. came together to form the Early Learning Network (ELN) in 2016 with the mission to identify policies and practices that narrow opportunity gaps and help children maintain early learning success. Early Learning Network teams are excited to share what they have learned--and what it means for early childhood education practice and policy--in a series of research briefs. The briefs summarize impact areas that have potential to positively contribute to young children's learning and development, including key takeaways and action steps for practice, policy and research. They were developed using the teams' collective findings, along with critical input and insights shared by U.S. stakeholders during the Early Learning Network Forum. Four impact areas emerged, each with their own key takeaway: (1) Pre-K Participation; (2) Classroom Experiences and Learning Opportunities; (3) Relationships; and (4) Sustained High-Quality Experiences. Information regarding Optimizing Learning Opportunities for Students (OLOS), a classroom assessment tool developed by the ELN assessment team and field-tested by network members, is included.

On December 13, 2022, the Early Learning Network Forum, "Equitable and Effective Early Learning Opportunities: Research, Practice and Considerations," was hosted in partnership with the Institute of Education Sciences. More than 100 stakeholders joined network members for the daylong virtual event, including practitioners, policymakers, researchers, state and federal partners, and others invested in early childhood education from across the country. Participants heard the latest ELN findings and engaged in dialogue to determine how the network's contributions to the early childhood knowledge base can be translated and applied to improve practice and policy with the goal to narrow opportunity gaps and ensure early learning success of children from prekindergarten (pre-K) to third grade, especially those from marginalized groups. Based on what the network research suggested, as well as their own insights and experiences, participants offered potential actions to strengthen early childhood education systems; inform practice, policy and research focused on improving outcomes for all students; and ultimately, to help move the field forward.

Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs are an important investment in Ohio's youngest learners. Ohio has worked to increase the availability of high-quality early learning programs for preschool children by providing the Early Childhood Education grants. Funded programs deliver high-quality, comprehensive learning environments focused on healthy development and intellectual, social and emotional success. Research is clear: children who participate in high-quality early learning programs begin school better prepared for educational success. In Fiscal Year 2022 (July 1, 2021-June 30, 2022), 350 Early Childhood Education Grant-funded programs served 16,732 children because of the $72,608,000 investment in state funding. These grantees included public school districts, educational service centers, joint vocational schools, community schools, chartered nonpublic schools and community-based child care providers who earned 3-, 4- or 5-star ratings in Ohio's quality rating system, Step Up To Quality. [For the 2021 report, see ED619733.]

Conventional Time Series Classification (TSC) methods are often black boxes that obscure inherent interpretation of their decision-making processes. In this work, we leverage Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) to overcome this issue, and propose a new framework called MILLET: Multiple Instance Learning for Locally Explainable Time series classification. We apply MILLET to existing deep learning TSC models and show how they become inherently interpretable without compromising (and in some cases, even improving) predictive performance. We evaluate MILLET on 85 UCR TSC datasets and also present a novel synthetic dataset that is specially designed to facilitate interpretability evaluation. On these datasets, we show MILLET produces sparse explanations quickly that are of higher quality than other well-known interpretability methods. To the best of our knowledge, our work with MILLET, which is available on GitHub (https://github.com/JAEarly/MILTimeSeriesClassification), is the first to develop general MIL methods for TSC and apply them to an extensive variety of domains, Comment: Published at ICLR 2024. 29 pages (9 main, 3 ref, 17 appendix)

A detailed understanding of the moduli spaces $X(k,n)$ of $n$ points in projective $k-1$ space is essential to the investigation of generalized biadjoint scalar amplitudes, as discovered by Cachazo, Early, Guevara and Mizera (CEGM) in 2019. But in math, conventional wisdom says that it is completely hopeless due to the arbitrarily high complexity of realization spaces of oriented matroids. In this paper, we nonetheless find a path forward. We present a Lie-theoretic realization of color factors for color-dressed generalized biadjoint scalar amplitudes, formulated in terms of certain tilings of the real moduli space $X(k,n)$ and collections of logarithmic differential forms, resolving an important open question from recent work by Cachazo, Early and Zhang. The main idea is to replace the realization space decomposition of $X(k,n)$ with a large class of overlapping tilings whose topologies are individually relatively simple. So we obtain a collection of color-dressed amplitudes, each of which satisfies $U(1)$ decoupling separately. The essential complexity appears when they are all superposed., Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures. Fixed typos

Partnerships between the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) program and Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) program can support and improve outcomes for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and their families. Collaboration between these programs is specified in the IDEA Part C Regulations 34 CFR §303.302(c)(ii)(J) and strengthened in P.L. 115-71, EHDI Act of 2017. This document briefly discusses related federal requirements, data sharing agreements between EHDI and Part C, the bridge between EDHI and IDEA, and data sharing resources. [This document was produced with the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management (NCHAM) at Utah State University.]

Part B, Section 619 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) authorizes additional preschool formula grants to states that are eligible for grants under Section 611 of Part B. States are eligible if they make Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) available to all children ages 3-5 with disabilities. While not mandatory, all states are currently providing IDEA services to preschool-aged children. This document provides materials as part of the process of orienting those new to the role as a Part B, Section 619 Coordinator and to the TA Center Network. There are guiding questions to apply this information to state and local contexts.