This article documents narrative experiences from alumni who participated in the GEAR UP program. The San Jose State University GEAR UP program, based on an intensive counseling model, is grounded in social capital and resilience theories, and is designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in…

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 study evaluated variables associated with academic preparation and student demographics as predictors of academic achievement through participation in supplemental instruction (SI) programs for community college students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. The findings suggest a differential impact of SI outcome for…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a scholarship program that provides $5,000 per year toward college tuition for public high school graduates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned a 2.5 GPA and a 90% attendance record. This study used a difference-in-difference design to assess whether the introduction of the Promise scholarship program directly…

Performance-based scholarships have two main goals: (1) to give students more money for college; and (2) to provide incentives for academic progress. MDRC launched the Performance-Based Scholarship (PBS) Demonstration in 2008 to evaluate the effectiveness of these scholarships in a diverse set of states, institutions, and low-income student…

The Early Learning Challenge (ELC) program awarded more than $1 billion in four-year grants to 20 States to implement comprehensive and cohesive high-quality early learning systems that support young children with high needs and their families. A key lever in making these improvements was the enhancement of States' Quality Rating and Improvement…

A range of sources support science learning, including the formal education system, libraries, museums, nature and Science Centers, aquariums and zoos, botanical gardens and arboretums, television programs, film and video, newspapers, radio, books and magazines, the Internet, community and health organizations, environmental organizations, and…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this study is to report the impact of the three-year middle school-based HEALTHY study on intervention school vending machine offerings. There were two goals for the vending machines: serve only dessert/snack foods with 200 kilocalories or less per single serving package, and eliminate 100% fruit juice and…

The U.S. Department of Education's Policy to Performance project was funded in 2009 to build the capacity of state adult basic education (ABE) staff to develop and implement policies and practices that would support an ABE transition system. Policy to Performance states were selected though a competitive process. State adult education directors…

This report is a longitudinal examination of "Preschool for All" (PFA) participants, tracking students' experiences across their first four years in elementary school. It builds upon a 2009 study that found that PFA graduates in San Mateo County were better prepared for kindergarten than their classmates who had not attended preschool…

California legislature made a policy change with Senate Bill (SB) 1644 (2000), shifting Cal Grant Programs to focus on entitlement; counter to the national trend of merit based grant programs. This article describes a study examining effectiveness and extent to which SB 1644 is meeting its legislative objectives: increase in higher education…

The Concurrent Courses Initiative (CCI), supported by The James Irvine Foundation from 2008 to 2011, funded a selection of secondary-postsecondary partnerships in California to implement or enhance career-focused dual enrollment programs. These programs specifically targeted youth who were low-income, struggling academically, or within populations…

Principals are expected to use data to develop a clear vision, stimulate meaningful dialogue among stakeholders, create interventions for struggling students, and improve school programs. The purpose of this three-phase, sequential, mixed-methods study was to examine how principals use summative and formative assessment data to improve academic…

The purpose of this study was to find out which assessment data are used by elementary principals who are currently practicing in Title One California elementary schools with populations of at least 600 students, API scores of 700 or higher, and 40% or more English Learners (ELs) to inform instructional efforts at the school site level to improve…

A new study by a public and labor economist suggests that "value added" methods for determining the effectiveness of classroom teachers are built on some shaky assumptions and may be misleading. The study, due to be published in February in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics," is the first of a handful of papers now in the…