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Background: Currently, most Latinx emergent bilingual (EB) students are educated in English-medium programs alongside English-dominant peers. Legally mandated social integration of EB students coincides with a prescriptive linguistic emphasis on content-language integration in ESL (English as a second language) programs; both integrative approaches are particularly salient in the current hyperracial climate in the United States.

Focus of study: We explore two schools' responses to Latinx EB population growth via the intersecting racial and language ideologies informing and influenced by programmatic changes, educator perceptions, and pedagogical practices.

Research design: This qualitative multiple case study spans two Texas schools selected by purposeful maximal sampling over the course of two separate academic years. Data include semistructured interviews, focus group interviews, and participant observations.

Findings: We find that institutional structures across the sites tended to promote a denial of responsibility for racial stratification and a concomitant disciplining of the school curriculum. We argue that both integrative approaches ultimately perpetuated white racial domination.

Conclusions/recommendations: We suggest that ESL research and practice would benefit from an explicit questioning of racializing discourses and boundaries of academic disciplines as part of a racially literate critical practice designed to counter the normalization of whiteness.

A stiff thin film bonded to a pre-strained, compliant substrate wrinkles into a sinusoidal form upon release of the pre-strain. Many analytical models developed for the critical pre-strain for wrinkling assume that the substrate is semi-infinite. This critical pre-strain is actually much smaller than that for a substrate with finite thickness (Ma Y et al. 2016 Adv. Funct. Mater. (doi:10.1002/adfm.201600713)). An analytical solution of the critical pre-strain for a system of a stiff film bonded to a pre-strained, finite-thickness, compliant substrate is obtained, and it agrees well with the finite-element analysis. The finite-thickness effect is significant when the substrate tensile stiffness cannot overwhelm the film tensile stiffness.

Background/context: Across the United States, secondary school curricula are intensifying as a growing proportion of students enroll in high-level academic math courses. In many districts, this intensification process occurs as early as eighth grade, where schools are effectively constraining their mathematics curricula by restricting course offerings and placing more students into Algebra I. This paper provides a quantitative single-case research study of policy-driven curricular intensification in one California school district.

Research questions: (1a) What effect did 8th eighth grade curricular intensification have on mathematics course enrollment patterns in Towering Pines Unified schools? (2b) How did the distribution of prior achievement in Towering Pines math classrooms change as the district constrained the curriculum by universalizing 8th eighth grade Algebra? (3c) Did 8th eighth grade curricular intensification improve students' mathematics achievement?

Setting: Towering Pines is an immigrant enclave in the inner-ring suburbs of a major metropolitan area. The district's 10 middle schools together enroll approximately 4,000 eighth graders each year. The districts' students are ethnically diverse and largely economically disadvantaged. The study draws upon administrative data describing 8th eighth graders in the district in the 2004-20-05 through 2007-20-08 school years.

Intervention/program/practice: During the study period, Towering Pines dramatically intensified middle school students' math curricula: In the 2004-20-05 school year 32% of the district's 8th eighth graders enrolled in Algebra or a higher- level mathematics course; by the 2007-20-08 school year that proportion had increased to 84%.

Research design: We use an interrupted time-series design, comparing students' 8th eighth grade math course enrollments, 10th grade math course enrollments, and 10th grade math test scores across the four cohorts, controlling for demographics and prior achievement.

Findings/results: We find that students' odds of taking higher level mathematics courses increased as this district implemented the state's Algebra mandate. However, even as the district implemented a constrained curriculum strategy, mathematics achievement growth between 6th sixth and 10th grade slowed and the achievement advantages associated with 8th eighth grade Algebra declined.

Conclusions/recommendations: Our analyses suggest that curricular intensification increased the inclusiveness and decreased the selectivity of the mathematics tracking regime in Towering Pines middle schools. However, the findings suggest that this constrained curriculum strategy may have may have unintended negative consequences for student achievement.

Background/context: Surprisingly little progress has been made in linking teacher effectiveness and retention to factors observable at the time of hire. The rigors of teaching, particularly in low-income school districts, suggest the importance of personal qualities that have so far been difficult to measure objectively.

Purpose/objective/research question/focus of study: In this study, we examine the predictive validity of personal qualities not typically collected by school districts during the hiring process. Specifically, we use a psychological framework to explore how biographical data on grit, a disposition toward perseverance and passion for long-term goals, explains variance in novice teachers' effectiveness and retention.

Research design: In two prospective, longitudinal samples of novice teachers assigned to schools in low-income districts (N = 154 and N = 307, respectively), raters blind to outcomes followed a 7-point rubric to rate grit from information on college activities and work experience extracted from teachers' résumés. We used independent-samples t-tests and binary logistic regression models to predict teacher effectiveness and retention from these grit ratings as well as from other information (e.g., SAT scores, college GPA, interview ratings of leadership potential) available at the time of hire.

Conclusions/recommendations: Grittier teachers outperformed their less gritty colleagues and were less likely to leave their classrooms mid-year. Notably, no other variables in our analysis predicted either effectiveness or retention. These findings contribute to a better understanding of what leads some novice teachers to outperform others and remain committed to the profession. In addition to informing policy decisions surrounding teacher recruitment and development, this investigation highlights the potential of a psychological framework to explain why some individuals are more successful than others in meeting the rigorous demands of teaching.