In the context of a tight labor market with more jobs than workers to fill openings, and as young people increasingly seek alternatives to college, apprenticeships have become more important than ever. While the "earn and learn" model of apprenticeship seems to be the obvious choice to address labor market needs, it remains underutilized…

Despite the relative increase in early care and education (ECE) investment over recent decades, access to infant and toddler care continues to be a hurdle for countless families across the nation. While access is a multifaceted issue, main contributors include a lack of available slots and the high cost of providing care to infants and toddlers.…

Background: Maternal vaccine coverage is suboptimal, and a substantial proportion of parents have concerns about vaccines. Most parents seek out vaccine information during and immediately after their first pregnancy. No study to our knowledge has analyzed survey data to identify homogeneous groups of pregnant women based on their vaccine attitudes…

Health professions students can increase their understanding of how social determinants impact health equity through experiential learning opportunities. Using key informant interviews with faculty and staff familiar with experiential education programs in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work, we sought to…

In this study, we assessed the feasibility and social validity of an adapted approach to positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) implementation in secure juvenile facilities. The authors developed a comprehensive model of facility-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (FW-PBIS) for use in secure juvenile correctional…

In recent years, career and technical education (CTE) programs that include quality work-based learning (WBL) opportunities for students have gained significant traction among educators, policymakers, and stakeholders as an effective way to prepare students for the labor market. However, a lack of data on WBL--which many CTE students participate…

The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) created the Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services (BICS) demonstration in 2014. The goals of the demonstration were to use insights from behavioral science to develop interventions that could improve child support services and increase parent engagement, and to encourage the…

Since the early 2000s, accountability and evaluation have been regarded by policymakers as key mechanisms for "fixing" teacher education and by many teacher education leaders as vehicles for elevating the status of the profession and uniting a fragmented field. Although educational inequity has been an enduring and endemic problem during…

This brief explores the lessons learned from the 2016 Parents and Children Thriving Together: Two-Generation State Policy Network (PACTT Network), a collaboration between the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). Through this initiative, five states explored how to use the two-generation approach to…

Research across the decades has confirmed that effective school leadership is associated with better outcomes for students and schools. A high-quality school leader affects dozens of teachers and hundreds or thousands of students. It is a pivotal role. From 2011 to 2016, The Wallace Foundation, through its Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI),…

This report examines the competency-based education (CBE) efforts of the 21 Jumpstart participants and their varied journeys in developing CBE programs: the unique decisions they have made around their developing programs; the challenges that have delayed some programs or prevented others from moving to implementation; and lessons from these…

Psychological distance (PD) can be a barrier to how students perceive climate change impacts and severity. Localizing climate change using place-based approaches is one way instructors can structure their curricula to help combat students' PD, especially from a spatial and social viewpoint. We created a novel classroom intervention that…

This study investigated the prevalence of increasingly popular animal-assisted stress relief programs at higher education institutions across the United States. Although research on animal-assisted programs is increasing, there is still a lack of information documenting implementation of these programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to…

Today, nine out of 10 Americans age 65 and older depend on Social Security benefits to lead a comfortable and secure retirement. Among all Americans over age 65, Social Security makes up more than half of their household income. This brief outlines the history of Social Security benefits in the public sector, describes the safe harbor rule and how…

Evaluations of educational programs or interventions are typically conducted in nonrandomly selected samples of schools or districts. Recent research has shown that nonrandom site selection can yield biased impact estimates. To estimate the external validity bias from nonrandom site selection, we combine lists of school districts that were…