Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was a significant court case fought to provide equal educational opportunities for African-American students. Though the case was fought with good intentions, there may have been unintended consequences that occurred due to the policy implementation. The purpose of this research was to explore the policy, its implementation, and assess the extent to which the goals of the original policy were met. This study used a mixed-methods approach and was set within one large urban school district. The qualitative portion of the study included interviews with a small group of educators who were directly impacted by Brown and its implementation. The data from both the interviews and the selected focus schools indicated that the initial goals of Brown, equal educational opportunities and integrated schooling, were not met. This research provided information from key areas that may serve as a guide to help make future policy implementation successful.

The focus of this study is the significant and widespread overrepresentation of blacks in the child welfare system. The study specifically addresses the issue in the context of its association with decision-making practice of child welfare workers in the County of Los Angeles.

This study compares the effect of the objectives-based test collections of the Instructional Objectives Exchange on reading comprehension and word-attack skills of fifth-grade students in a basal reader program. The IOX, a non-profit educational organization, was established in the late 1960's to provide educators with instructional materials such as criterion-referenced tests to allow realistic assessment of students in reference to specific instructional objectives. IOX Director James Popham states the Exchange's purpose as encouraging educators throughout the country to use criterion-referenced instructional procedures. The study compares gains in reading comprehension and word-attack skills of a research group with the gains of a control group, using the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test for both pre-test and post-test. The IOX criterion-referenced tests were added to the reading program for the research group but were not given the control group.

This thesis is an analysis of the extensive transformation of the Olympic movement, which occurred at the end of the 20th century. The main focus is on the importance of the XXIII Olympiad in Los Angeles, regarded as a major milestone in the history of the modern Olympic movement. The introductory chapter deals with the 1970s' crisis of the Olympic movement. The second chapter describes the complications related to the allocation of the Olympic Games to Los Angeles. Based on the XXIII Olympiad, the third and the fourth chapter analyse the revolution in Olympic marketing. The objective of the fifth chapter is to demonstrate the need for the financial independence of the Olympic movement in the context of the Cold War, the Soviet boycott in particular. The last two chapters deal with the commercialization of the Olympic movement, the reform of the IOC and the discussion regarding the timeliness of the Olympic values.

This thesis examines the ways in which Frank Gehry’s architectural contributions to Los Angeles’ social and built environment have shaped the region’s “postmodern geographies” throughout the 20th and 21st century. Through a focused exploration of three of Gehry’s postmodernist structures in Greater Los Angeles—a house, a library, and a concert hall—this thesis analyses how Gehry and his designs reflected and affected the artistic and socio-spatial development of Los Angeles’ “decidedly postmodern landscape.”

The transit shelter, the space where riders make the transition from open space to more controlled buses and trains, is in many cases the site of a public-private transaction. Here, government agencies contract private companies to build and maintain shelters in exchange for governmental allowance of advertising in these locations. This dual purpose—the shelter serves concurrently as protection for transit users and as a moneymaker—means the space is contested, with economic and social needs often at odds. Bus shelter advertising contracts (BSACs), increasingly operated by large corporations, have resulted in widespread networks of bus shelters; observing these renders processes of globalization—generally not visible at the street level—more legible. Drawing from case studies of Lyon, France, and Los Angeles and New Orleans, United States, this thesis describes successes and failures both in the implementation of bus shelter contracts and in the provision of public amenities via shelters.

According to the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment created by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there are more than 33,000 gangs in the United States, cited as being responsible for nearly 48% of the violent crime in the country. Using information drawn from gang-related court cases, this study examines the nature of inter- and intra-gang violence occurring between January 1, 2002-December 31, 2011. An innovative application of network analysis will be used to hone in on rivalries, the existence of possible hierarchy, and the relational and structural characteristics of Blood and Crip gangs in Los Angeles County. Results show that the majority of gang-on-gang violence originates and targets individuals in the city of Los Angeles. Furthermore, more than two-thirds of the violence committed at the hands of Blood and Crip gangs is upon individuals that are not affiliated with a gang. Strategies are offered on how to improve the effectiveness of existing community-based policing or hot-spot policing in areas known to have violent gang-related incidents (Los Angeles City). Furthermore, the implementation of programs designed to assist and deter the formation and proliferation of gangs will result in less gang violence and therefore more time to be spent on creating law enforcement strategies aimed at quelling the more troublesome gang rivalries.

Childhood obesity is a major national and worldwide public health crisis. The occurrence of childhood obesity, caused to large extent by an imbalance between caloric intake and caloric expenditure, has increased in the last 30 years. Although the prevalence of obesity has stabilized in recent years, it remains a top public health concern in the United States, especially in urban centers. The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between diet, physical activity, and the built environment in relation to the mean body mass index (BMI) of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years living in South Los Angeles, California. The research design, methods, and data analysis were based on the California Health Interview Survey 2007-2013 dataset. This database was mined for the independent variables: physical security, food insecurity, parental education and income, and availability of recreational facilities necessary for a healthy lifestyle; the dependent variable was BMI. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were used in analyzing for the association between the dependent variable and the independent variables. The outcomes of this study showed no associations between neighborhood physical security, recreational facilities, adolescent's physical activity, parents' education level, parents' income level, and BMI. However, the results did show a significant correlation between adolescent's dietary intake, food security, and BMI. This study will contribute to positive social change by informing public health officials and policy makers of the benefits of food security to healthier eating habits and BMI among the adolescents studied. Resulting actions could result in collaborative efforts toward reduction and prevention of childhood obesity.

In this dissertation, I argue that Douglas Sirk was attempting to dissolve the boundaries of the cinematic medium by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into the colour, composition and settings of many of his most popular studio produced films. While the exaggerated artifice of this director�s formal style has often been remarked upon, it has yet to be interpreted in the light of his detailed cognisance of the major art and architectural movements of the period, which include German Expressionist painting and Machine Age Modernist design. This is a lacuna that my thesis should at least partially fill, since I have shown that Sirk�s highly self conscious visual approach was deeply influenced by the artistic debates that were taking place in Europe during the 1920s and �30s and in America after World War II. To my mind, there is no doubt that this director�s syncretic mise-en-scène was the result of an interdisciplinary, transnational dialogue, and I have sought to illuminate some of the social, philosophical and political meanings that it seems to convey.

This paper addresses the impact of the federal estate tax on a family-run business as well as the optimal estate planning techniques that can be implemented to ease the estate tax burden.