States increasingly need a more highly skilled workforce to meet the requirements of businesses, keep up with a rapidly changing economy and accelerate growth that leads to economic opportunity for workers and families. As a result, governors recognize that their role is to bring together education, workforce and economic development as talent…

The Opportunity Grant (OG) program is the Washington community and technical college system's dedicated financial aid program designed to help low-income students enroll in and complete programs leading to high-wage, high-demand careers. Washington's Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) program is a nationally recognized model…

The "train-the-trainer" model successfully created volunteer educators in insect identification. Intensive training programs prepared 71 individuals during 2 1/2-day (20 hour) training sessions. Trainees included university Extension faculty (13), agricultural professionals (13), and certified Master Gardeners (45). The sessions were…

The study reported here examined Extension professionals' involvement in farm-to-school program activities. Results of an online survey distributed to eight state Extension systems indicate that on average, Extension professionals are involved with one farm to school program activity, with most supporting school or community garden programs.…

Inverness Research has served as the external evaluation group for the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession (CSTP) since its inception in 2003. As evaluators, Inverness conceptualizes projects as investments in improvement, and it examines the returns on those investments. The direct services of projects and their immediate outcomes…

In 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Early Learning Initiative (ELI) to improve the school readiness of Washington State's children through three main strategies: (1) development of high-quality, community-wide early learning initiatives in two communities; (2) enhancement of statewide systems that support early…

The "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" examines what is arguably the single most powerful authority over the teaching profession: state government. This Washington edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ's) "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" is the first of what will be an annual look at the status of state…

In response to the shortage of mathematics and science teachers in Washington, this state's legislature developed a program to provide loans for students preparing to teach secondary-level mathematics or science in Washington public schools. The rationale was that these loans would encourage students majoring in mathematics or science to prepare…

This document consists of an evaluation report and a curriculum guide from a National Workplace Literacy project designed to demonstrate the process and effects of literacy classes held in work environments through the Yakima Valley (Washington) Opportunities Industrialization Center. The report notes the following results: (1) of 1,976 workers…

This report includes analysis of student enrollment behavior, employment outlook and training needs, and community needs to understand the supply and demand for postsecondary education in Washington State. The assessment will specifically respond to criteria laid out in state legislation: (1) Projections of student, employer, and community demand…

This report summarizes Washington-statewide results achieved in the most recent academic year for which statewide data are available (in most cases, the 2005-2006 academic year). Data on results for individual four-year institutions, as well as a variety of background information and contextual data is presented separately in a comprehensive…

The performance of Alaska's State Training and Employment Program (STEP) in fiscal 2000 was evaluated by matching the records of participants of the following STEP subprograms with Alaska and Washington state unemployment insurance (UI) wage records and federal military and federal civilian payroll records. Data were collected for participants of…