"Pathways to Implementation" highlights innovative strategies and effective models in career pathways policy, implementation, and programming, as well as challenges states encounter in this work. This seven-part series addresses the key elements of Bellwether's framework for career pathways policy implementation. Each brief defines the…

Promise programs are discussed as a policy movement that began with the 2005 launch of the Kalamazoo Promise. Since then, programs bearing the Promise label or sharing similar features have spread across the higher educational landscape, appearing in most states and across postsecondary sectors. Simultaneously, scholarly literature discussing…

"Pathways to Implementation" highlights innovative strategies and effective models in career pathways policy, implementation, and programming, as well as challenges states encounter in this work. This seven-part series addresses the key elements of Bellwether's framework for career pathways policy implementation. Each brief defines the…

In recent years, the federal Department of Education (ED), and state and local educational agencies (SEAs and LEAs, respectively) have been increasing the emphasis on the need to engage parents and families of students in their children's education. Initiatives have sprung up across the fifty states and Washington, D.C. to help officials at the…

The Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) program was designed to meet the unique needs of the State of Tennessee, while also incorporating the hallmark elements of existing merit-based aid programs in other states. This manuscript provides a snapshot of TELS recipients and their outcomes, including narrative discussion on the current…

Educators and researchers often think of program design and program evaluation as separate endeavors, even intentionally creating a firewall between them. But what if designers and evaluators worked together, combining their insights to strengthen both the program and the study of it? In the work of evaluating a statewide professional learning…

"Pathways to Implementation" highlights innovative strategies and effective models in career pathways policy, implementation, and programming, as well as challenges states encounter in this work. This seven-part series addresses the key elements of Bellwether's framework for career pathways policy implementation. Each brief defines the…

We utilize a difference-in-difference design to examine the effect of adopting a statewide promise program on the enrollment of community college students across socio-economic status. Limited by a small sample size for treated units, we find inferential evidence that the adoption of a state-wide, last-dollar promise program for community colleges…

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) offer parents a publicly funded, government-authorized savings account they can draw on for certain K-12 educational expenses. As these programs have expanded in recent years, they have become a flashpoint in education policy debates. For some, ESAs are an extension of existing private school choice programs'…