INFORMING PUBLIC POLICY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

INFORMING PUBLIC POLICY - Essay Example At first, the authors give us a ‘brief history’ of the journal and examine the role eminent personalities such as Jeremy Travis in conceiving a journal for breaching the gap between policy research and criminal justice policy. According to Clear and Frost (2007), the best thing about the journal was that it sought to â€Å"simultaneously maintain a high degree of academic credibility and inform public policy† (p.633). The journal upheld a dissemination strategy to avoid the confinement of policy-relevant research to the academic world. The American Society of Criminology (ASC), under the presidency of Lawrence Sherman, made the journal its official publication. From 2004 onwards, the journal was fully supported by the ASC. Because of this collaboration, CPP reached out to many policy framers through the organizational network of ASC. Importantly, the journal had a pan-American reach. Certainly, its widespread distribution was the result of an excellent media disse mination strategy involving U.S. Newswire and Rubenstein Associates. Criminology & Public Policy was a notable success in terms both circulation and quality. Among the newcomer journals, CPP holds its head high. The genre of ‘reaction essays’ was the major attraction of the journal, which was solicited from the writers by the editors themselves. The authors are of the view that engaging with the media is a difficult task and put forward the rather interesting statement about criminologists that they are â€Å"very reluctant to offer definitive policy recommendations and frequently include a host of caveats to any of the implications that they do raise† (p.636). They also give account of the difficulties pertaining to drawing concrete policy formulations from empirical researches. This problem arises out of the very nature of criminological empirical research, i.e. empirical

Urban Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Urban Education - Essay Example Teachers are central to the excellence of students. There are no poor students, there are bad teachers. A good teacher is able to see the potential of every student and help develop that potential. A good teacher considers intellectual, physical, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions of students’ human experience, enhancing students’ social interactions and belief in democracy and other ideas of the US. A good teacher is always a leader. Such a professional becomes a caring mother (or father) for his students, creating comfortable and favorable conditions for the development of each of them. He effectively communicates with parents and community and inspires colleagues to be flexible, to recognize talents and hidden resources of their students and adopt an individual approach. A teacher should be a leader able to encourage others to be creative. Such a leader can organize a thoughtful change process in his school, facing everybody’s needs and aims. A teacher who is a leader educates through all his life, influencing his students, colleagues, parents, and community. As we can see the reforms are to take place not in the sphere of urban education, but in the minds of educators themselves. Then one sees wonders of urban education when students from the poorest districts show results much better than those from prestigious schools when students become valuable citizens and realized personalities. There has always been needed in teachers–leaders, able to inspire and educate others. The fact is that that the profession has always been undervalued. Teachers are underpaid. They are not listened to even in cases when decisions directly concern their needs and work.