Friday, January 24, 2020

Same Day Voter Registration :: essays research papers

Same day voter registration, as the name implies, is the process of registering to vote on the day elections are held. Because of the way this would and does affect the results of elections, it is a â€Å"hot topic† among many in the government.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Proponents of the issue use the argument that same day voter registration would increase voter turnout, which in fact, it has been proven to do. The three states that have currently adopted same day registration, Maine, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, have seen voter turnout increase by about 5%. This is due to the reduction in the cost of voting to the voter. Pre- registration requires time and effort, something so many Americans seem unwilling to spend. By allowing same day registration, the voter no longer has to have the foresight to register, nor take the time to find the registration place and then actually send in the registration card.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Same day registration also places less of a premium on permanent residence. Many lower class Americans who have no stable residence, along with those people who just move a lot, would find same day registration very convenient, and it might be the difference as to weather or not they vote.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Despite the many up-sides to same day registration, many feel it would be detrimental to the voting process. Along with same day registration comes a higher possibility of voting fraud. It would be easier for a voter to vote multiple times at different precincts.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Republicans are more likely to be against same day registration. They feel as if the people who take advantage of it, those who didn’t get around to registering, would probably not be republicans. Many, republican or not, feel as if same day registration would also lead to â€Å"snap-decision† voting, voting for a cartoon character or a wrestler, or, god forbid, a third party candidate. Many opposed to same day registration feel that the people who are voting now without it are the people that need to be voting, and we don’t need to involve anyone else.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Despite my initial feeling of indifference, I am for same day voter registration. I think that the more people that get involved and cast a vote, the more the elected official can properly represent those he or she serves.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Hostile Mint Case Study

Case – 1 Hostile Mint it’s probably the last place you might expect to find a hostile work environment. First of all, it’s a federal workplace. And even more surprising, it’s heavily guarded against intrusion. But the situation inside the U. S. Mint in Denver was anything but a safe place for 71 women who brought a complaint to the facility’s equal employment opportunity (EEO) officer in 2003. When the organizers of the complaint began to fear that they were the investigation targets instead of the complaints, 32 of the women decided to take the matter to the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Their contention: The Denver Mint was a hostile work environment. These allegations were the culmination of a number of incidents that had occurred over a long period of time. The Denver Mint, which opened in 1863, has 414 employees, of which 93 are women. One woman who started working at the Denver Mint in 1997 said, â€Å"She found the atmosphere completely hostile toward females. † When she filed an EEO charge claiming discrimination, she was retaliated against by having most of her job duties reassigned and being required to work at home. Events leading to the current complaint started in 2001, when another female employee who was inspecting a men’s room for cleanliness saw a loose ceiling tile, removed it, and found 40 to 50 sex magazines. Some months later, this same employee was checking for rats in an attic and found a stash of pornographic magazines. Both times she made these discoveries, she was with a male colleague. Later, she would say in a statement given to the main office of the U. S. Mint that to her knowledge no action was every taken to address the situations. Another female employee filed a claim of retaliation and sexual harassment with the facility’s EEO officer in 2000. It was 2003 before she got a hearing with the EEOC and an administrative judge ruled in favor of the Mint. However, when she filed her claims in federal court in 2005, a jury found that she â€Å"worked in an environment hostile to women and awarded her $80,000. † In 2001, the facility’s new superintendent held a women’s forum attended by the then-director of the U. S. Mint. However, the highest-ranking woman at the Denver Mint—the administrative services chief, Beverly Mandigo Milne—said, â€Å"Nothing changed. † The final straw that triggered the complaint was the demotion of the mint’s acting EEO manager in February 2003. The month after the demotion, the 71 women filed the petition alleging a hostile work environment. An individual from the San Francisco Mint was assigned to investigate; however, the women claimed that the investigation never focused on the facts, but on Milne. One of the women said, â€Å"They believed that Beverly coerced everyone into filing the petition. † That was when 32 of the women took the matter to the EEOC. Despite the filed petition, hostile situations still continued. One woman said that in 2004, a male co-worker offered to pay her for sex. Another woman said that after she returned after a short bereavement leave following her husband’s death in 2005, a male supervisor propositioned her. On March 31, 2006, the U. S. Mint and the female employees who had filed the class complaint reached a proposed settlement. The terms of the settlement included a payment of $8. 9 million for damages, fees, and costs. The joint press release of the United States Mint and Class Couns

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Tips for Creating and Scoring Essay Tests

Essay tests are useful for teachers when they want students to select, organize, analyze, synthesize, and/or evaluate information. In other words, they rely on the upper levels of Blooms Taxonomy. There are two types of essay questions: restricted and extended response. Restricted Response - These essay questions limit what the student will discuss in the essay based on the wording of the question. For example, State the main differences between John Adams and Thomas Jeffersons beliefs about federalism, is a restricted response. What the student is to write about has been expressed to them within the question.Extended Response - These allow students to select what they wish to include in order to answer the question. For example, In Of Mice and Men, was Georges killing of Lennie justified? Explain your answer. The student is given the overall topic, but they are free to use their own judgment and integrate outside information to help support their opinion. Student Skills Required for Essay Tests Before expecting students to perform well on either type of essay question, we must make sure that they have the required skills to excel. Following are four skills that students should have learned and practiced before taking essay exams: The ability to select appropriate material from the information learned in order to best answer the question.The ability to organize that material in an effective manner.The ability to show how ideas relate and interact in a specific context.The ability to write effectively in both sentences and paragraphs. Constructing an Effective Essay Question Following are a few tips to help in the construction of effective essay questions: Begin with the lesson objectives in mind. Make sure to know what you wish the student to show by answering the essay question.Decide if your goal requires a restricted or extended response. In general, if you wish to see if the student can synthesize and organize the information that they learned, then restricted response is the way to go. However, if you wish them to judge or evaluate something using the information taught during class, then you will want to use the extended response.If you are including more than one essay, be cognizant of time constraints. You do not want to punish students because they ran out of time on the test.Write the question in a novel or interesting manner to help motivate the student.State the number of points that the essay is worth. You can also provide them with a time guideline to help them as they work through the exam.If your essay item is part of a larger objective test, make sure that it is the last item on the exam. Scoring the Essay Item One of the downfalls of essay tests is that they lack in reliability. Even when teachers grade essays with a well-constructed rubric, subjective decisions are made. Therefore, it is important to try and be as reliable as possible when scoring your essay items. Here are a few tips to help improve reliability in grading: Determine whether you will use a holistic or analytic scoring system before you write your rubric. With the holistic grading system, you evaluate the answer as a whole, rating papers against each other. With the analytic system, you list specific pieces of information and award points for their inclusion.Prepare the essay rubric in advance. Determine what you are looking for and how many points you will be assigning for each aspect of the question.Avoid looking at names. Some teachers have students put numbers on their essays to try and help with this.Score one item at a time. This helps ensure that you use the same thinking and standards for all students.Avoid interruptions when scoring a specific question. Again, consistency will be increased if you grade the same item on all the papers in one sitting.If an important decision like an award or scholarship is based on the score for the essay, obtain two or more independent readers.Beware of negative influences that can affect essay s coring. These include handwriting and writing style bias, the length of the response, and the inclusion of irrelevant material.Review papers that are on the borderline a second time before assigning a final grade.