Background: In response to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the US Department Agriculture updated the nutrition standards for school meals to improve nutrition-related health outcomes for children. This study assesses the association between implementation of the updated nutrition standards and child weight. Methods: A quasi-experimental…

State law (Revised Code of Washington [RCW] 28A.235.290) requires the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to report annually to the Legislature on the number of schools participating in United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The report must identify barriers to participation and…

Research for Action's "Educational Opportunity Dashboard" is an interactive on-line tool to synthesize data and rank all 50 states by how well they provide students access to schools that offer 14 indicators of educational opportunity from the federal Civil Rights Data Collection. On the Dashboard the indicators are compiled into an…

In 2019, 135 million people in 55 countries were in food crises or worse, and 2 billion people did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food. COVID-19 has exacerbated these hardships and may result in an additional 121 million people facing acute food insecurity by the end of 2020. Further, since the beginning of the…

Purpose/Objectives: This paper describes the results from a Smarter Lunchroom program designed to evaluate if bundling fruit or vegetable strategies listed on the Smarter Lunchroom Scorecard increased selection of fruits and vegetables by students in school cafeterias from 2015 to 2017. Methods: Twenty-one Michigan State University (MSU) Extension…

With the nationwide school closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic, districts are seeking more technology support to connect every student online and continue teaching and learning with the help of digital devices. This data brief provides school leaders with a national picture of the E-rate program, which can help schools to decrease by as…

Ready for Kindergarten! Survey (R4K!S) is a readiness assessment of children entering kindergarten about students' knowledge and skills within the first six to ten weeks of school. There are many interpretations of what constitutes "readiness." Vermont's concept of children's readiness is multidimensional; it includes social and…

School of choice has been touted as a solution to the alleged decay of the American educational system. Every year more and more "choice schools" (charter, magnet, expeditionary, and others) open across the United States. Although these schools are subject to the same federal legal requirements as traditional public schools to provide a…

Students often have differing perceptions of their school's climate. Although these subjective perceptions can be meaningful outcome predictors, discrepancies create challenges for those seeking to globally characterize or intervene to improve the climate of a school. Trained, outside observers can provide insights on perceptible and ostensibly…

There are racial and ethnic disparities in use of out-of-school suspensions within the United States. The present study assessed for the presence of disproportionate suspension by race, special education status, and receipt of free or reduced cost meals using two separate metrics (risk ratios and raw differential representation); evaluated…

This Quick Facts document provides a snapshot of facts about Alabama school systems and public schools; Alabama students; Alabama educators; National School Lunch Program lunches served; Alabama school buses; Alabama gifted students; total personnel; average daily attendance; graduation rate; average ACT score; AMSTI schools; ACCESS virtual…

In Sweden, pupils eat tax-funded school lunches, often in the company of teachers. This article focuses on Swedish compulsory school grade (ages 7-15) teachers' (n = 823) perceptions of the school lunch in terms of intentions and daily practice. Analysis was based on written answers for an open-ended question that was part of a questionnaire…

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) can reliably grade essays at scale and reduce human effort in both classroom and commercial settings. There are currently three dominant supervised learning paradigms for building AES models: feature-based, neural, and hybrid. While feature-based models are more explainable, neural network models often outperform…

Federal policy recognizes the importance of effective educators, particularly in high-needs schools. Research has shown that the most critical school-related factor that influences student learning and achievement is teacher quality (Hanushek, 2011). The Texas Center for Educator Excellence (TxCEE) aims to address the research-based and…

This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies (LEAs) to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications.…