The Financial Empowerment for Student Success (FESS) Initiative was a two-year initiative focused on increasing student success through the provision of financial services. Achieving the Dream, Inc. and MDC, Inc. joined together, with funding from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, to support three Achieving the Dream Leader Colleges to…

States that received federal waivers to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act were required to implement reforms in designated "Focus Schools" that contribute to achievement gaps. In this study, we examine the performance effects of such "differentiated accountability" reforms in the state of Louisiana. The Focus School reforms…

Competency-based education--also known as proficiency-based, mastery-based, and performance-based education--has received increased attention in recent years as an education approach that may help ensure that students graduate from high school with the knowledge and skills necessary for college and their careers. In competency-based education,…

Pennsylvania began scaling up high-fidelity implementation of SchoolWide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) in 2006-2007 due to converging regulatory, legal, ethical, and practical influences. The Pennsylvania Community of Practice on School-Based Behavioral Health adopted Algozzine et al.'s (2010) blueprint to describe and…

The fall of the socialist system, and of the Soviet Union as a political entity, created a situation where external assistance to the transformation of the ex-Soviet countries into market economies and multi-party democracies became a domain of "development assistance". While the attractiveness of the ex-Soviet countries to the providers…

The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in the U.S. Department of Education funded the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII, or the Center) in 2011. NCII's mission during the first five years of funding was to build the capacity of local education agencies (LEAs) to support schools, practitioners, and other stakeholders in the…

This report presents a multi-year study of how states are implementing their state college- and career-readiness standards. In this report, the Southern Regional Education Board's (SREB's) Benchmarking State Implementation of College- and Career-Readiness Standards project studied state efforts in 2014-15 and 2015-16 to foster effective…

Purpose: Malawi's current extension policy supports pluralism and advocates responsiveness to farmer demand. We investigate whether smallholder farmers' experience supports the assumption that access to multiple service providers leads to extension and advisory services that respond to the needs of farmers. Design/methodology/approach: Within a…

About five years ago, states across the country took on the huge, complex task of developing and implementing new systems to evaluate teacher and principal performance in public schools. In response to a federal mandate aimed at improving student achievement, especially in the lowest performing schools, state boards of education drafted high-level…

As Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) continue to launch and mature across states, questions emerge from stakeholders about how to design and implement effective quality improvement (QI) initiatives that accompany a QRIS. Funders, policymakers, and program developers with limited resources are looking to invest in activities that will…

This report summarizes respondent-identified facilitators and barriers to career pathways development and implementation as well as promising practices. In addition, respondent recommendations for what federal, state, tribal, and local agencies can do to support the successful development of career pathways systems are highlighted. The report…

In 2010, the National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) partnered with the West Virginia Department of Education Office of Special Programs to provide intensive technical assistance to 12 school districts to help them design and implement evidence-based programs to increase the graduation rates of students with…

In 2014, state and national leaders found many aspects of turning around America's low-performing schools even more daunting than in the previous year. These views were revealed in the Center on School Turnaround's (CST's) 2014 February/March survey of school turnaround leaders in State Education Agencies (SEA) and directors of the nation's…

There continues to be a lack of congruence in the attitudes of faculty and administrators with respect to online or distance education. The authors developed and administered a questionnaire to assess pertinent attitudes and perceptions of full and part-time faculty (n= 421) toward online instruction at their private university in a U.S. Middle…

Food insecurity is a growing concern for Eau Claire County residents in Western Wisconsin. A community-academic partnership studied food insecurity through the voices of families struggling to access food and institutions that assist with hunger related problems. Data were collected through focus groups held in urban and rural parts of the county.…