American Schools Are Failing For Minority Students

The idea that American schools are failing is not a new one, but it is an idea that is extremely widespread. There are constant news reports claiming that our schools are worse than ever and Congress has passed extensive legislation such as No Child Left behind in an attempt to fix the American educational system. Some people believe that American schools are not completely failing, but only failing for minority students. Reforms like mandatory busing, vouchers, charter schools, accountability, and high-stakes testing have been proposed to address these social inequalities. Despite the intentions of these policies, they have not always helped close the social inequality gap. Mandatory busing was a reform started in the 1970s to desegregate†¦show more content†¦Mandatory busing helped push out students that were more likely to succeed from public schools leaving behind the students that struggled the most. A more recent educational reform program is the concept of school choice. Instead of being forced to attend the school chosen by the local district students would receive vouchers. Students would be able to take their voucher and apply the funds normally allocated to them at any school. Parents would be able to decide which school is the best for their children and students that would normally be trapped in a low-performing school could instead attend a different school. A problem with vouchers is that private schools are allowed to approve if a student can attend. The students that could benefit the most from moving to a private school could be refused admittance. Another issue is that higher income families would be more likely to use this program than lower income families that do not have the same values in education. Finally school vouchers would be taking money away from the public school system which would reduce the quality of education that the public schools could provide. Charter schools are another approaching in allow parents and students to have a choice in where their children go to school. Charter schools are approved by a

The Allocation Of Funds Is An Ongoing Debate - 1673 Words

The allocation of funds is an ongoing debate when administering all aspects of fiscal policy. Policy makers around the world routinely debate what should take precedence when it comes to government spending. In general, lawmakers fall into one of two categories. They either believe and support that more government funds should be spent on social services, or the opposing view is that more should be allocated toward defense spending. Despite what elected officials might think, there is a finite amount of funds, therefore, without continuing to increase the national debt, an increase in spending in one category should cause a decrease in another. In 2016, the United States spent $615 billion on defense, $914 billion towards social security,†¦show more content†¦Military spending for Benoit contributed to improved productivity and infrastructure. For countries who have a higher production capacity, military spending increases, as well as, aggregate demand, investment, and util ization of production. As a result, output is stimulated. In summary, despite the diverse set of countries observed, there was a 3.33 percent mean increase found in GDP growth. (Dicle and Dicle 2017). One country examined specifically is China. As a rising dominant military and economic power, China’s military and economic correlation holds significant relevance on a global perspective. Our findings confirmed a positive relationship between China’s economy and military spending. One source approaches our research question from a unique angle. Atesoglu focuses on the relationship between the two variables from a global viewpoint. Given that the world is globally anarchic, there is no supreme authority that controls all aspects of international relations (Atesoglu 2013). Thus, each state must maximize their military power to survive as a sovereign state. Sonmez concludes, â€Å"Economic growth relaxes the wealth constraint and allows for more military power. This theory implies that by increasing a country’s wealth, economic growth results in an increase in military spending.† proving an undeniable relationship (Atesoglu 2013). Furthermore, in light of Ch ina’sShow MoreRelatedEssay On Application Of Machine Learning In Finance970 Words   |  4 Pagesresearch interests are in (1) investments, (2) hedge funds and mutual funds, and (3) applications of machine learning in finance. My experience at Villanova, both as a research fellow and a student was formative of my fascination with investments, hedge funds, and mutual funds. My original interest sparked while working with Dr. Velthuis and performing literature reviews on effects of corporate activism on stock prices, and size effects on hedge fund returns. Since then, classes in Portfolio TheoryRead MoreUnequal Distribution of Wealth Essay1487 Words   |  6 Pagessince the great depression. 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High School Compared with Collge Free Essays

A good education is an important part of life. To achieve a good education a person must graduate from high school and then college. High school prepares students for college, but each student must define his or herself to succeed in college. We will write a custom essay sample on High School Compared with Collge or any similar topic only for you Order Now The many similarities and differences between high school and college can help and hinder each student in his or her goals to achieve a good education. Some of these similarities and differences between high school and college are the type of students, the difficulty of the classes, and the differences in class scheduling. The differences of students in high school and college begin with high school being a world where a person attends school with most of the same classmates that he or she has grown up with. No one has a true identity except the reputation or image that a person has built for themselves over the years. Most of the people in each grade are around the same age and live in the same community and are friends inside and outside of class. College is usually a new world to students. Many students move to different parts of the country to attend college and move away from their friends and community. This gives each person an opportunity to create a new identity for his or herself and make new friends. Also, students in college are various ages including some right out of high school and some being older adults continuing their education later in life. A common theme in high school and college is bringing a group of students together to learn. Students are all attending classes to achieve a piece of paper that will help them in their future. Most students attend classes in high school and college because they want to be there, but the difficulty of the classes determines each student’s success. The difficulty of high school contrasted with college can be hard on students. Many high schools work to pass students through the various grade levels and onto graduation without the students having to work very hard to complete tasks and assignments. On the contrary, college is a place where students must work to achieve their grades and pass classes. Professors expect students to complete tasks, homework, and exams to achieve a grade and pass the college class. Classes in college are usually harder on students because they require more work, studying, and dedication. Many students goof off and do not take high school classes seriously. Often students copy each other’s work and tests in high school, but college students must work hard to make sure that their work is individualized and not plagiarized. Some high schools do offer college level classes to students that are more difficult and prepare students for the difficulty of college courses. Each student determines how the difficult the class really is by taking the time to study and complete the work in both high school and college. One of the biggest differences between high school and college is the schedule. Both high school and college offer schedules for students to sign up for. Students are able to take courses that interest them and will help them achieve a diploma or degree. In high school students become accustomed to a strict daily schedule. School begins and ends at the same time each day and classes are held during this time and each class is the same length. College classes are very different. Classes are spread throughout the week and each class can be a different length. Students must learn to take advantage of down time in between classes to study and complete assignments. On the contrary, in high school, students are given time during class and study periods to do work. The transition between a strict high school schedule into a more lenient college schedule can be very hard on many students. Many times the scheduling difference between high school and college is the reason why students to do excel their first year of college. Students were not taught how to plan and make good use of their time with the too strict high school schedule. Even though students in high school are given an opportunity to choose certain classes to take each semester, scheduling in the biggest difference there is between high school and college. In conclusion, high school and college are very different, but they do share a few similarities. High school prepares students for college, and college is a mature version of high school. The types of students, difficulty in classes, and differences in schedules can be very alike and very different in high school and college. Success in high school and college depends on the effort each student applies in accepting the similarities and differences. How to cite High School Compared with Collge, Essay examples

Supply Chain Responsiveness and Efficiency free essay sample

The research strives for a better understanding of these aspects: what are the structural consequences of implementing strategies striving for efficiency or responsiveness in the real world, and how can they be represented in a System Dynamics model? Furthermore, simulations will be used to assess the dynamic consequences of these different strategic alternatives. Future research will then focus on identifying policies to balance responsiveness and efficiency in a specific industry and by that resolve the trade-off between the two. Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Responsiveness, Supply Chain Efficiency, System Dynamics 1. Introduction The responsiveness of supply chains to changing market requirements and their overall efficiency are important issues in supply chain design and management and therefore currently receive wide attention in the scientific community as well as in practice. Responsiveness can be defined as the â€Å"ability to react purposefully and within an appropriate time-scale to customer demand or changes in the marketplace, to bring about or maintain competitive advantage† (Holweg, 2005, p. 05). In contrast, a supply chain would be considered efficient if the focus is on cost reduction and no resources are wasted on non-value added activities (Naylor, Naim and Berry, 1999, p. 108). Dennis Minnich, MSc, is Research and Teaching Associate at the Department of Operations Management at the International University in Germany, Bruchsal, and PhD student at the Industrieseminar of the University of Mannheim. 2 Prof. Dr. Frank Maier is Professor of Operations Management and Dean of the School of Business Administration at the International University in Germany, Bruchsal. 2 Companies have three principal means to buffer against changes in quantity demanded for specific products, namely inventory, capacity and time. Safety stocks, excess capacity and safety lead times all provide a time buffer to be able to react to demand variability (Hopp and Spearman, 2004, p. 145). One could argue that one sensible approach to increase responsiveness could be to raise the inventory levels of finished goods or components, which would allow more flexibility for reactions to changes in customer demand. Increased inventory levels do, however, reduce the efficiency of the supply chain since they are costly, both in terms of storage cost and cost of capital. This suggests that such an increase in inventory may not be the optimal approach to increase responsiveness – or, as Hopp and Spearman phrased it: â€Å"inventory is the flower of all evil, and variability is its root† (2004, p. 146), i. e. high inventory levels are a sign that something is suboptimal in the supply chain, and other strategies such as variability reductions may be more beneficial than inventory increases. In an efficient supply chain, suppliers, manufacturers and retailers manage – implicitly through independent ordering processes between tiers or through explicit coordination of ordering decisions of the different supply chain elements – their activities in order to meet predictable demand at the lowest cost. A responsive supply chain, in contrast, requires an information flow and policies from the market place to supply chain members in order to hedge inventory and available production capacity against uncertain demand (Fisher, 1997, p. 08). Improving responsiveness in a supply chain, however, incurs costs for two primary reasons: (1) excess buffer capacity and inventories need to be maintained, (2) investments to reduce lead times need to be made. Boeing, for example, at the end of the 1990s failed to achieve sufficient buffer capacity or inventory levels by pursuing a lean manufacturing strategy without considering the variability of demand in the aerospace industry (Naylor, Naim and Berry, 1999, p. 108 and p. 112). Airplanes fulfil most of the criteria for functional products as identified by Fisher, except long-term demand predictability (1997, p. 106). If, as in this example, end-user demand is subject to sudden, unpredictable variations, it is not sensible to implement lean manufacturing at the interface with the end-user (Naylor, Naim and Berry, 1999, p. 112). In general, the cost resulting from investments in responsiveness needs to be compared to the opportunity cost of lost sales resulting from stockouts (Thonemann, Behrenbeck, Kupper and Magnus, 2005, p. 18). These stockouts are most likely to occur with products that are subject to demand fluctuations. Responsive supply chains aim to avoid such stockouts and therefore prioritise the ability to react to changing customer requirements (Alicke, 2003, p. 145). Providing the right degree of responsiveness and having an efficient supply chain at the same time is a goal that is hard to achieve and that typically involves trade-off decisions by management, since increased responsiveness can be perceived to come at the expense of reduced efficiency, and vice versa. However, there may be strategies, such as revised planning approaches, that restructure supply chain processes to achieve both goals at the same time and enable a supply chain to be responsive and efficient simultaneously. Identifying strategies that achieve responsiveness and efficiency simultaneously is the goal of the research presented in this paper. Many authors see responsiveness and efficiency as distinct strategies that are strongly linked to different types of products. Fisher, for example, distinguishes innovative products with short product life cycles and functional, more commodity-like products (1997, p. 06). It appears to be sensible to think of products as being positioned on a continuum between functionality and innovativeness. Functional products â€Å"satisfy 3 basic needs, which don’t change much over time†¦, have a stable, predictable demand and long life cycles† (p. 106). They are also characterised by relatively low contribution margins, low p roduct variety and long order lead times (Childerhouse and Towill, 2000, p. 339). Innovative products, in contrast, are characterised by short product life cycles, high contribution margins, high product variety and unpredictable demand. Electronic products and fashion goods are examples for this category (p. 344). Linked to this Fisher then provides recommendations for the strategic alignment of supply chains and suggests that functional products require a focus on efficient processes, while innovative products require a focus on responsive processes (p. 109). The requirements for supply chain management are different for these distinguished types of products – for products that are innovative and reflect new trends, demand is less predictable than for products that fulfil basic needs, such as sugar3 (Fisher, 1997, p. 106). The uncertainty of demand for innovative products makes supply chain responsiveness a critical capability, since stockouts should be avoided in particular if the products have high contribution margins. For functional products aspects of efficiency, i. e. focusing on the elimination of waste or non-value added activities across the chain, prevail management’s attention (Huang, Uppal and Shi, 2002, p. 193). Some functional products may, however, also have quick response requirements of the supply chain – for example, milk and other dairy products are perishables with relatively stable demand patterns but limited shelf life. Also, companies often carry out promotions that can drastically change the otherwise stable and predictable demand patterns of products such as generic food. In such cases, pipeline stock is often â€Å"drained to no-one’s real advantage† (Childerhouse and Towill, 2000, p. 338; Fuller, O’Conor and Rawlinson, 1993, p. 91). Demand uncertainty is an important aspect that is linked to the classification of innovative or functional products. Innovative products are often characterized by a high degree of unpredictable demand uncertainty, whereas functional, commodity-like products face a high degree of demand stability. This point needs to be seen critically, since many commodities are confronted with the typical bullwhip effects – one of the major concerns in supply chain management – upstream in the supply chain, with order batching, speculative buying, delays and suboptimal planning being the major reasons. Therefore, upstream supply chain members can be confronted with rather unpredictable demand, even for commodities. Consequently, the required responsiveness in a supply chain depends on the anticipated uncertainty of demand. This means hat the required responsiveness depends on both the inherent deviations in demand and on the planning capabilities of the company (Baiker, 2002, p. 64). This relates not only to estimating the quantities demanded of certain products, but more generally to using market knowledge to exploit profitable opportunities in a volatile market place (Naylor, Naim and Berry, 1999, p. 108). A company’s ability to forecast and serve the demand for its pr oducts changes during a product’s life cycle – during ramp-up and phase-out, demand is less predictable than during maturity (Alicke, 2003, p. 46). This means that the supply chain requirements also change over the product life cycle, which is a factor many companies do not consider. A survey of consumer packaged goods companies in 2005 indicates that of the companies that tailor their supply chain approach to the product, those that consider changes in volatility of demand over time for the segmentation of their product portfolio are 3 Note that every product initially is innovative – even sugar was at one point in time an innovation. 4 ore successful – 50 percent of the best performing companies in supply chain management4 used volatility as a segmentation criterion, compared to only 27 percent of the other companies, which use simpler criteria such as volume (Alldredge, Allen, Howe and Kelly, 2005, p. 21). This indicates that many companies do not real ise the importance of tailoring the supply chain to the requirements a particular product has during the various stages of its life cycle. Criteria used to segment product portfolio Percent of respondents 55 50 50 33 27 17 9 Winners Others 14 Volatility/ variability Customer volume Replenishment/ order frequency Order-fulfillment lead-time requirements Figure 1 – Criteria used to segment product portfolio (adapted from Alldredge et al, 2005, p. 21) Management of supply chain responsiveness is particularly important when operating in a competitive market where short lead times might be critical and inventory – which can allow fast response – is risky (e. g. , due to product obsolescence), costly and therefore reduces efficiency. These aspects become even more important for innovative products with short product life cycles, where management of supply chain responsiveness is seen as a crucial capability. At the same time, more commodity-like, functional products generally require more efficient supply chains, combined with minimisation of the bullwhip effect. When supply chains are more able to react to changing market requirements than necessary – i. e. , having achieved a higher than necessary degree of responsiveness – customers will have to carry the additional cost, which is also problematic (Fisher, 1997, p. 10). The goal is to design the supply chain such that the â€Å"products may flow as required by the customer throughout the life cycle† (Aitken, Childerhouse and Towill, 2003, p. 127). Clearly, there is no â€Å"one fits all† approach for successful management of the supply chain, but different strategies are appropriate for different products at different stages of thei r product life cycles. 2. Feedback Structure Linking Responsiveness and Efficiency In this paper, responsiveness and efficiency are seen as interrelated, which is visualised in Figure 2. Responsiveness and efficiency are directly and indirectly linked and even involve feedback. In supply chains, the interrelationships between key parts of the Winners for the Supply Chain Management area of the survey are defined based on a combination of ACNielsen data and PL results (Alldredge, Allen, Howe and Kelly, 2005, p. 5). 4 5 system are complex. There are various players in the supply chain, and each of them addresses aspects of demand, production, and supply management, distribution, planning etc. Each of these aspects also interacts with the others.