In 2021, California committed to providing universal prekindergarten (UPK) for all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025-26. UPK includes several early learning programs, including transitional kindergarten (TK), the California State Preschool Program (CSPP), Head Start, and expanded learning opportunities to provide full-day early…

"Aid Like A Paycheck" is a large-scale pilot evaluation of whether an innovative approach to disbursing financial aid can improve academic and financial outcomes for low-income community college students. Lessons from the pilot evaluation were used to create and fine-tune a logic model depicting activities, outputs, mediators, and…

In the United States, health insurance coverage for autism spectrum disorder treatments has been historically limited. In response, as of 2015, 40 states and Washington, DC, have passed state autism insurance mandates requiring many health plans in the private insurance market to cover autism diagnostic and treatment services. This study examined…

The California Children and Families Act of 1998 led to creation of the Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern) to support early childhood service programs in Kern County, the third largest county in California that spread a land area as large as the state of New Jersey. In Fiscal Year 2014-15, First 5 Kern administered more…

This article explores the application of Whitaker, King, and Vogel's (2004) best practices for the implementation of partnerships regarding school leadership preparation programs in 3 school district-university collaboratives located in urban settings with large minority student populations. The 3 partnerships studied include the Nashville…

The Prevention Initiative Demonstration Project, funded by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), is a community-specific strategy delivered through eight regional networks designed to address the full spectrum of community-based prevention. This article summarizes a strong and meaningful pattern of improvements…

Differential response (DR), also referred to as alternative response (AR), family assessment response (FAR), or multiple track response, was developed to incorporate family-centered, strengths-based practices into child protective services (CPS), primarily by diverting lower risk families into an assessment track rather than requiring the…

Teaching entrepreneurship--how to create, grow and run a business or organization--is one potential means to increase college and career readiness skills. Learning how to start a business can improve critical thinking, communication and collaboration (Gallagher, Stepien, & Rosenthal, 1992; Hmelo, 1998), which are key qualities for academic as…

This article identifies factors that promoted the successful implementation of an International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in an urban high school. The study draws on data from an in-depth case study at a large high school serving an urban community in a Western state. The study investigates seven implementation mechanisms that research…

This report focuses on the seven original Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) projects selected for funding in 2003. Three of the original seven projects were selected for a national random assignment evaluation in 2005; however, this report only focuses on program operations prior to joining the random assignment evaluation for the three…

Special education service delivery is often the source of disputes between parents and districts and an issue in special education class-action lawsuits. Despite these controversies, there has been little large-scale research on the delivery of services. This study represents a large-scale assessment of the delivery of special education services…

This report presents an assessment of Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW) services delivery to American Samoans residing in California, Hawaii, and American Samoa. The evaluation includes analyses of human services needs, resources, and delivery. The effectiveness of human services delivery was assessed using interviews with Samoan…

The study was designed to develop an information base on education services to handicapped children and youth in California who are also limited in English proficiency (LEP) and to identify promising practices in their education. The first of three documents collected here is a report of the statewide questionnaire survey of a random sample of 145…

The report summarizes a 2-year project to train personnel in California agencies, facilities, schools and state hospitals in the principles of Try Another Way, a normalization-geared approach using systematic task analysis to teach moderately to profoundly retarded and severely developmentally disabled persons. The report's first three sections…

This report is a case study of a technical evaluation assistance project in each of four states: Alabama, California, Colorado, and Maine. (The project activities in each state included the following: becoming acquainted with the vocational education delivery system and methods of evaluation; identifying problems associated with the evaluation…