The purpose of this study was to determine whether the matching requirement of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) grant is an arbitrary administrative stipulation of the grant or whether it adds meaningful value to the program. If the GEAR UP grant's matching requirement is a detriment to the program,…

The COVID-19 pandemic was a unique phenomenon that significantly impacted higher education. Programmatic grants were an important source of funding at community colleges during this unusual time, helping to provide vital resources and support services to institutions and their students. This study is one of the first of its kind to explore the…

The flexibility federal block grants provide recipients poses challenges for evaluation. These challenges include aggregating data on wide-ranging activities grant recipients implement and the outcomes they achieve. In 2014, we began designing an evaluation to address the challenges of assessing outcomes and to improve outcome accountability for…

When a community loses its Head Start provider, the Office of Head Start (OHS) deploys its interim manager to temporarily operate this federally funded early childhood education program. Since 2000, OHS has placed more than 200 programs under interim management. As of September 2024, 18 of 1,600 Head Start programs nationwide were under interim…

The Maine Department of Education (MDOE) leveraged the U.S. Department of Education's Rethink K-12 Education Models grant to provide significant funding to districts to support innovative solutions to persistent problems of practice--particularly those heightened by the pandemic. MDOE's grant began in fall 2020. It prioritized innovations focused…

The state of Michigan has set a goal to increase the percentage of residents with a postsecondary degree or credential to 60 percent by 2030. Achieving that goal will require a concerted, strategic, and multipronged effort. Today, less than 50 percent of residents have attained a postsecondary degree or credential. While making college more…

This paper builds on student-instructor partnerships by describing how an instructor, students, program coordinator, and members of a research team were involved in the co-design of an open educational resource in a graduate program in education. A four-part open learning design framework was used to guide the course design: (a) clarifying the…

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) Office of Inspector General (OIG) annual plan identifies the audits, inspections, and other activities that the OIG intends to undertake to assist the Department in fulfilling its responsibilities to America's citizens and students. OIG's FY 2022 Annual Plan details the assignment areas and resources…

Research on Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) has primarily focused on student-level experiences and outcomes. The current study shifts the gaze from the impact of programs on students to the execution of those programs by focusing on practitioners--program directors (PDs)--that manage the…

The purpose of the study was to address the Adult TESOL leadership concern of insecure grant funding. It focused on two key performance indicators: Student retention and academic skill level gains. Students dropping out of the program and scoring poorly on assessments are an ongoing concern for leadership. The study used an intervention and…