The American Community Survey (ACS), a nationwide study collected continuously every year in every county in the United States, is designed to provide communities with reliable and timely demographic, social, economic, and housing data each year. These ACS estimates are not averages of monthly or annual values, but rather an aggregation of data…

We use data from the applications North Carolina public school districts and charter schools submitted for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) to investigate the sense that educational leaders made of the pandemic as it unfolded. LEAs understood the pandemic as a multifaceted problem. Nearly all applications addressed four…

Evidence suggests that participation in high quality early childhood education supports the school readiness of young children. Therefore, it is important to understand whether children from different geographic regions, such as urban and rural neighborhoods, have comparable access to high quality programs. This study explores whether neighborhood…

A primary goal of North Carolina's Quality Rating Improvement System is to encourage early childhood education sites to maintain and improve their programmatic and educational quality. Because higher quality sites can better support young children's school readiness, it is important for education leaders to understand the complex factors that may…

This appendix accompanies the report, "Are Neighborhood Factors Associated with the Quality of Early Childhood Education in North Carolina? REL 2021-034." It describes the study's primary and supplemental sample selection procedures, how eligible postsecondary institutions for the study were identified, geocoding procedures, how counts…

This chartbook is the 14th version to be produced for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The Chartbook describes the diversity of the Appalachian Region on a host of demographic and economic measures and provides an important annual view of the area and its people. The data contained in the…

An exploratory quantitative study of professional learning communities and student achievement in the largest school system in the State of North Carolina provides evidence to support systemic implementation of professional learning community practices and activities. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to explore the impact of teachers' perceptions of…

This study evaluates how welcoming thirty American cities--the twenty-five largest and five smaller "hotspots"--are to "nontraditional" problem-solvers and solutions. It assumes that the balky bureaucracies meant to improve K-12 education and hold leaders accountable are so calcified by policies, programs, contracts, and…

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the Division of Violence Prevention in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collaborated to conduct a rigorous impact evaluation of programs aimed at improving students' behavior. For this evaluation, such programs were termed Social…

Examines the process by which real estate developers construct rural images of urban places, exploit anti-urban, pro-rural, and pro-community sentiments, and commodify and appropriate the established meanings of places. Uses Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as a case study. Contains 47 references. (SV)

"I am from a very small town in which almost the entire population is made up of White middle class society." This statement is a reoccurring theme of final Multicultural Education (MCE) papers by preservice teachers at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (UW Oshkosh). Although this sounds like an innocuous statement, over the past 12…

This study focuses on certain demographic, commercial, and social characteristics of Johnston County and its towns as they relate to the library's organization, administration, resources, and services. Recommendations are given, as is a five year plan of service which lists objectives in the following areas: (1) administration, (2) information…

An informal survey of administrative personnel at six community colleges in North Carolina elicited perceptions of the characteristics of the Southern Appalachian people, their socioeconomic condition, their cultural influences, and the importance of community college accessibility and transportation. Implications for community college governance…

Engelhard is a very isolated rural community in Hyde County, North Carolina, economically dependent on seafood, small scale agriculture, and logging. In the mid-1980s the agricultural crisis, the decline in seafood landings, and changes in timber industry technology contributed to rising unemployment. Several decades of declining population and…

Examined the extent to which preschool inclusion practices were evident in diverse communities, and identified the child, maternal, and service-provider characteristics that significantly related to such practices. Found that the paradigm shift away from intensive, segregated educational programs toward fully inclusive, community-based programs…