Since A Nation at Risk (1983), high schools across the United States have searched for answers to address increasing drop out rates and low student achievement. In urban areas, the large comprehensive high school is no longer addressing the diverse needs of the students it serves. The high school reform movement, beginning in 1984, set out to find solutions to solve the problems that these large urban high schools face each day. One reform is the creation of small learning communities within a large secondary school. Small learning communities are groups of teachers sharing and serving small numbers of students centered on a common theme, curriculum, and vision. These small learning communities create personalized learning environments among teachers, students, and parents to mitigate the effects of the large school on student outcomes. The purpose of this research was to investigate one of these small learning communities in a large urban high school in Los Angeles. The study explored how this small learning community set out to implement five identified factors of small schools including: personalization, leadership, authentic curriculum, innovative pedagogy, and accountability. The results show the impact of the small learning community model on student outcomes. Through the examination of quantitative data, the study correlated improved student outcomes with the level of implementation of these five identified factors. Additionally, the study used qualitative date to reinforce the quantitative findings. This research presents a model of an alternative for large urban secondary schools' dilemma in addressing low student academic performance and success.

This master's thesis investigates the economic factors that are affecting the financial decision-making of educated, middle to upper class Millennials in Los Angeles, California. This thesis explores how economic factors, preferences, and self-efficacy interact to determine housing pathways. This thesis also asks whether Millennials in Los Angeles will be able to afford homes and how the cultural narrative of the American Dream affects preferences. In order to answer these questions, twenty in person interviews are conducted with residents of Los Angeles in which they are asked about their values and preferences regarding housing, and the economic factors they are currently facing. This thesis finds that participants are struggling to navigate through economic factors such as student loans, a changing labor market, urbanization, high cost of living, stagnating wages, and high housing prices. This thesis finds that participants are experiencing low self-efficacy when it comes to finances, which seems to be a proportional reaction to the current economic climate. This thesis also finds that most participants want to own homes, however, in reality very few will be able to afford to buy homes in Los Angeles and will have to rent indefinitely. Lastly, this thesis finds that participants are rejecting the old American dream and that their preferences and values are different from baby boomers', however the housing market has not yet evolved to meet the demand of those changing preferences.

The recognition that women are not in a fixed position but are dynamic and active in any of the processes of migration and post-migration adjustment helps us to see the complexity of women's participation in migration. Using life history interviews, three Sri-Lankan womens' migration experiences are examined for the ways in which personal networks were utilized in various phases of the migration process and how social and human capital was transformed in the post-migration adjustment process. Though in some instances the data did not fully support Boyd's (1989) predictions of the ways in which personal networks affect migration, overall, both Boyd's and Kopijn's (1998) statements that social capital is transmitted and transformed in the migration process are supported. The analysis indicates that all three women were successful in their post migration adjustment in that they were able to retain a strong sense of identity while adopting new practices in the United States. / Graduation date: 2004

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A content analysis was conducted to determine the amount and type of causal explanation included in coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. The data were analyzed to determine whether causal explanations were primarily societal or individual/situational. The primary purpose was to examine whether the press has altered its reporting techniques since the Kerner Commission report criticized the narrow, descriptive-based reporting of the 1960s riots. Study results indicate riot coverage was predominantly descriptive and similar in content to that detailed by the Kerner Commission. The most frequently cited cause was the triggering event, the Rodney King acquittal verdict.

This study recounts the events surrounding the Federal Radio Commision's (FRC) 1931 decision to remove radio station KGEF. Robert Shuler, minister of Los Angeles' Trinity Methodist Church, South, used KGEF to attack city officials and organizations whom he felt were corrupt. Chapters explore Shuler's background and acquisition of KGEF, his use of KGEF, and FRC and Court hearings and appeals. The study concludes that the action against Shuler, resulting in deletion of KGEF, may have resulted from political pressures. In spite of the "landmark" status of the Shuler case, his First Amendment rights may have been violated.

This inquiry examined the practice of instructional coaching in a large, low-performing, high-poverty urban high school. The participation of instructional coaches was examined in light of the school's attempt to construct a culture of social justice in a long-marginalized community. This research examined at instructional coaching through the framework of social reproduction theory in order to ascertain specific instructional coaching practices that may substantiate or validate the existence of legitimation, deskilling of teachers, and cultural hegemony, in an urban secondary school. Among key findings were 1) the disconnect between the intended purpose of instructional coaching and the actual interactions between the coach and teachers have the resultant effect of legitimation through the deskilling of teachers; 2) documentary evidence revealed that the curricula promoted by the instructional coaches at the Education Complex results in a cultural hegemony, having the reductionist effect of narrowing the curriculum to only the most basic levels of cognition, and proffering only what is deemed "legitimate" knowledge. Methods included interviews with instructional coaches, examination of documentary evidence, and observations of instructional coaching activities.

This dissertation uses quantitative data on city cinematography and the morphological study of filming locations to identify how differences in ways of seeing cities, as shaped by cinematographic choices, are anchored both in differences in what is physically present as well as in differences in frameworks and expectations about what might be interesting or important to see. Four films are evaluated that are set in Los Angeles and New York, two cities recognized as paradigms in American urbanism: The Naked City (1948), The Long Goodbye (1970), Goodfellas (1990), and Pulp Fiction (1994). In general, the New York movies suggest the embeddedness of the individual in the city and its social life in ways tied closely to urban form, with the visual presentation of the street acting as an index to the position of the individual within the narrative. Los Angeles, by contrast, presents the city as a series of enclaves linked by infrastructure. The street as a sociologically relevant entity hardly exists, with the exception of a handful of chase scenes, as though only crisis can catalyze direct encounters with the streets of Los Angeles. Within individual movies, the depiction of city form reveals directorial idioms in the presentation of the narrative. The Naked City exploits corner shots to impart greater visual interest to the presentation of activity in the streets. The Long Goodbye shows the degradation of the distinction between public and private space as concurrent with a city form and culture that resists decoding. Goodfellas develops a grammar of views on the street that corresponds to the relationships of individual characters to overlapping social groups over time. Pulp Fiction mainly presents city locations as decontextualized to focus on dialogue and relationships, to sculpt urban form to meet the exigencies of the narrative, and to all the more powerfully introduce surprise. In the concluding chapter, the qualities of the city as presented in Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction and both of the cities are diagrammed and discussed relative to architectural precedents and ideas that might inform architectural design.

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Corrosion of concrete sewer crowns will cost the County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County approximately $150 million for repairs to their deteriorating sewage system. Other parts of the country are experiencing similar problems. Crown corrosion is induced by microbial oxidation of reduced sulfur to sulfuric acid, which attacks the concrete. Bacteria, of the genus Thiobacillus are generally responsible for catalyzing these reactions. Thiobacillicollected from sewers were used to establish stoichiometry and biochemical aspects of sulfide oxidation. Metals inhibition was studied among the same cultures. Thiobacilli collected from extremely corroded sewers possess a greater tolerance for metals than those from lightly corroded areas. Acidophilic isolates grow at greater rates and oxidize sulfide more efficiently than non-acidophiles. Chemical inhibitor studies indicated that S(-II) oxidation is tightly linked to respiration by T. thiooxidans. It is doubtful that initial steps in bacterially catalyzed S(-II) oxidation are linked to oxidative phosphorylation.