Background: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) is the federal nutrition education program of the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service (USDA-FNS) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP-Ed is designed to increase the likelihood that individuals with limited budgets can eat…

A leadership academy is a formal professional learning opportunity for current school leaders, focused on augmenting knowledge and skills, increasing specialization, and refreshing leadership practices. States interested in supporting leadership academies through federal or other funding sources can look to current models of leadership academies…

The CPI Mid-Term Assessment provides insights from the first two years of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF)® Career Pathways Initiative (CPI). The authors derived insights from a comprehensive view of the experience of UNCF's Institute for Capacity Building (ICB) and the network of institutions implementing the program. To facilitate continuous…

In the United States most teacher compensation issues are decided at the school district level. However, a group of states have chosen to play a role in teacher pay decisions by instituting statewide teacher salary schedules. Education Commission of the States has found that 17 states currently make use of teacher salary schedules. This education…

In 2010, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) released the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for K-12 English language arts/literacy and mathematics. CCSS are a state-led effort to define the knowledge and skills students need to graduate from high school…

This report offers state leaders key areas for action to continue progress in implementing evaluation systems, even as federal policies on teacher evaluation relax state requirements. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) offers its current best thinking for how state agencies can make the smartest use of funds, time and partners to refine…

This report presents a multi-year study of how states are implementing their state college- and career-readiness standards. In this report, the Southern Regional Education Board's (SREB's) Benchmarking State Implementation of College- and Career-Readiness Standards project studied state efforts in 2014-15 and 2015-16 to foster effective…

A quantifiable measure of teachers' intervention fidelity when delivering curriculum-based interventions allows researchers to interpret the effectiveness of the curricula under scrutiny. Fidelity measures, however, must accurately represent the critical components of an intervention to confirm that the intervention was delivered as intended and…

In 2012, five foundations launched the Credit When Its Due (CWID) initiative that was "designed to encourage partnerships of community colleges and universities to significantly expand programs that award associate degrees to transfer students when the student completes the requirements for the associate degree while pursuing a bachelor's…

Implementation of school turnaround strategies under School Improvement Grant and Race to the Top programs has provided States with a unique opportunity to rethink how to govern effectively and to organize their efforts to improve their lowest achieving schools. States have had to consider such issues as whether to provide support directly to…

The following profiles address how the state departments of education are supporting local educators in classroom implementation of the states' new college- and career-readiness standards by providing (or facilitating the development of) aligned instructional resources and materials. These resources and materials are supplementary supports that…

The following profiles address how the state departments of education are supporting local educators in classroom implementation of the Common Core by providing and/or facilitating the development of instructional resources and materials aligned to the new standards. In order for instructional resources and materials to be aligned to the Common…

In December 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), as the nation's major law governing public schools. ESSA retains the requirement that states test all students in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, as well as the requirement that…

The following profiles address how the state departments of education are helping educators prepare for and implement the Common Core and aligned assessments through professional learning. The major professional development efforts around the Common Core were examined in order to understand the overall efforts of each state. An exhaustive list of…

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) are strategies designed to improve how teachers teach and students learn. The designs encourage teacher collaboration and creativity and offer flexible frameworks for building lessons in all disciplines. Their purpose is to engage students to read challenging…