Employment and training services offered through Extension are part of and continue a long tradition of policy-focused employment and job training. This paper chronicles the successes of UT Extension's work as a third-party partner in the delivery of workforce development programming geared toward individuals receiving Supplemental Nutrition…

BACKGROUND: Participation in the US Department of Agriculture's summer meals program is consistently lower compared to National School Lunch Program (NSLP) participation, even though the programs target the same population of children. The purpose of this study was to elucidate reasons for participation and nonparticipation in the summer meals…

As roughly 7.3 million students in rural school districts head back to school this fall, they remain largely unaware that the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill) is due to expire on September 30, 2024 (Hartman et al., 2023). Enacted on December 20, 2018, and temporarily renewed in September 2023, this critical piece of legislation…

Direct certification has been described by policymakers and academics as a tool which may replace National School Lunch Program (NSLP) eligibility data (Douglas Geverdt, National Center for Education Statistics, personal communication, August 28, 2023). It suggests a policy future in which we change the metric of how we identify disadvantage. On…

This study evaluates the Dual Language Program (DLP) implemented at a Title I public school in Baltimore City during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. Building on previous research, the DLP's implementation, sustainability, and effects on students' learning outcomes were examined. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the study's second…

Purpose: We used data from the National Survey of Children's Health to (1) examine differences in economic hardship and safety net program use after the implementation of federal relief efforts, and (2) assess whether the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated autism-based disparities in hardship and program use. Methods: We examined five dimensions of…

Background: The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) is a federally funded program that serves free, nutritious meals during the summer months. In 2019, 6 federal waivers that previously helped sponsors serve meals were rescinded. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to assess the impact of the waiver rescission on the experiences of SFSP…

Multi-site randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide unbiased estimates of the average impact in the study sample. However, their ability to accurately predict the impact for individual sites outside the study sample, to inform local policy decisions, is largely unknown. To extend prior research on this question, we analyzed six multi-site RCTs…

The Australian Government's Endeavour international scholarship program had strategic interests in international education at its core, but uneven and strategically incompatible outcomes emerged over the 16 years of its existence. An unexpected outcome was the dominance of the small Himalayan nation of Bhutan as a substantial beneficiary of the…

To examine the impact of developmental monitoring on child referrals, a retrospective data review, comparing seven pilot programs with seven matched controls in Special Supplemental Nutrition Programs for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) was completed. Pilot programs were trained on developmental monitoring and how to refer families to their…

Little is known about how the expansion of state pre-kindergarten (pre-k) programs affects low-income children with disabilities in Head Start. Using almost 30 years of administrative data of all Head Start programs and a differences-in-differences design, this study tests the possibility that, as state pre-k differentially draws relatively more…

Food insecurity is the leading indicator of well-being for vulnerable children in the United States due to the magnitude of the problem (9.3 million in 2021) and the associated numerous negative health and other consequences. Given the magnitude of food insecurity and its health consequences, food insecurity is a leading contributor to health…

For workers employed in the public and nonprofit sectors, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program offers the potential for full forgiveness of federal student loans for those with 10 years of full-time work experience. A year-long waiver issued by the Department of Education in 2021 to address administrative problems in program access…

Field-based practicum experiences are essential in connecting classroom theory to the real world. In this mixed methods study, we analyzed principal candidates' perceptions of their summer residency practicum experiences via a self-assessment principal leadership competency instrument and virtual semi-structured interviews. We found that principal…

A randomized experiment that measures the impact of a social policy in a sample of the population reveals whether the policy will work on average with universal application. An experiment that includes only the subset of the population that volunteers for the intervention generates narrower "proof-of-concept" evidence of whether the…