Many schools have recently adopted food policies and replaced unhealthy products by healthy foods. Consequently, adolescents are more likely to consume a healthy meal if they stay in school for lunch to eat a meal either prepared at home or purchased in school cafeterias. However, many continue to eat in nearby fast-food restaurants. The present…

The purpose of this paper is to open the methods, construction and assumptions of a new performance benchmark to examination, critique, and improvement by technical experts. The paper begins with known technical questions about this new benchmark. In includes suggestions made by technical advisors. It then details the construction of the…

The National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) organized the Education Data Privacy Working Group to explore how state and local education agencies (SEAs and LEAs) can support best practices at the school level to protect the confidentiality of student data in day-to-day instructional and administrative tasks. Many of the best practices…

Since 1997, Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) has published the Newark Kids Count Data Book, a one-stop source for child well-being data on the state's largest city. Newark Kids Count includes the latest statistics, along with five-year trend data, in the following areas: demographics, family economic security, child health, child…

California's current school finance system is a tangled web of funding programs, restrictions, inequities and confusion. Building a stronger finance system to benefit from resources is an important step in strengthening California's K-12 education system and better meeting the needs of its students. Gov. Brown has recently proposed the Local…

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended life for students, teachers and everyone connected to public schools. The crisis has also exposed the fragilities of the economy in meeting the basic needs of all and highlighted the importance of the public sector, of community, and of care work. Schools are key public spaces of community and care. They must be…

This brief summarizes McKinney-Vento Act mandates for local educational agencies (LEAs) and schools. It includes additional explanation on two issues about which charter schools have frequently raised questions: transportation, specifically to and from the school of origin, and enrollment policies, which may create barriers for homeless students.…

In this webinar, Dr. Charles Basch, Richard March Hoe Professor of Health and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, presented the causal connections between health factors and the motivation and ability to learn. This Q&A addressed the questions participants had for Dr. Basch following the webinar. The webinar recording and…

Texas households experience food insecurity at a rate of nearly 19 percent (one of the highest in the nation). Kids without access to meals are less likely to perform well in school and more likely to be at risk of poor health. While most children have access to meals during the year through the national school lunch program, participation in…

School districts have resorted to hiring debt collectors, employing constables, and swapping out standard meals for scaled-back versions to try to coerce parents to pay off school lunch debt that, in recent years, appears to have surged as the result of a faltering economy and better record-keeping. While the average school lunch costs just about…

There are selected psychologists who have contributed much toward studying problems in teaching and learning. They have suggested plans from research, carefully conducted, which enable educational practices to be set on more secure and justifiable grounds. The writer will briefly write about ten leaders, although there are salient others.

Guam Department of Education (GDOE) is a single unified school district consisting of grades Kindergarten thru 12. Its 26 Elementary Schools, 8 Middle Schools, 6 High Schools, and 1 alternative school serves over 31,000 students, and is managed by the Superintendent who is the Executive Secretary of a 12-member Guam Education Board (GEB). In…

Guam Department of Education (GDOE) is a single unified school district consisting of grades Kindergarten through 12. Its 26 Elementary Schools, 8 Middle Schools, 5 High Schools, and one alternative school serves over 31,000 students, and is managed by the Superintendent who is the Executive Secretary of a 9-member Guam Education Board (GEB).…

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide SAT participation and performance for the 2017 graduates in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). The College Board redesigned the SAT with the goal of measuring essential skills for college and career as well as relating the test content to everyday learning in classrooms. The redesigned SAT was…

Background: The high prevalence of obesity puts children at risk for chronic diseases, increases health care costs, and threatens to reduce life expectancy. As part of the response to this epidemic, the New York City (NYC) Department of Education (DOE)--the nation's largest school district--has worked to improve the appeal and nutritional quality…