The provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) include (1) the requirement for states to periodically review resource allocation in local education agencies (LEAs) serving a significant number of schools identified for comprehensive support and improvement (CSI),…

The Region 15 Comprehensive Center (R15CC) is federally funded to provide high-impact, customized, and responsive capacity-building technical assistance to state educational agencies (SEAs) in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. In 2022, R15CC established a regional Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Collaborative for SEA leaders in…

Due to the nature of Extension, work across counties differs because efforts are grounded in the needs of a community and intentional programming helps address these needs. A common competency required for entry-stage Extension professionals is program development, which includes planning, design, implementation, and evaluation. Understanding a…

Children face increased demands for interpersonal as well as learning-related social skills, especially by the vulnerable stage of school entry, due to the more structured setting, new academic requirements, and the fact that children are supposed to interact successfully within a larger and heterogeneous peer group. Although a plethora of…

After-school programs (ASP) are a long-standing activity historically facilitated by organizations such as the YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, social service/community centers and, in the past decade, an increasing number of municipal park districts. Staffing usually consist of recreation professionals, social and youth workers, and volunteers. In…

Effective mentoring programs help to recruit new teachers and improve teacher retention rates (e.g. Ingersoll & Strong, 2011, Rideout & Windle, 2010). Many school districts require mentoring programs for new teachers; however, they do not always have the resources to prepare their teachers to mentor beginning teachers. Clinical faculty…

Extension programs based on identified needs, relevant theory, and solid research too often fail to realize their objectives. Program implementation is acknowledged to contribute to program effectiveness, yet systematic attention has not been paid to the array of implementation issues that can complicate achieving program goals. We developed the…

This paper examines the key aspects of stakeholder engagement that can strengthen the design, implementation and sustainability of outcomes-based funding policies. We seek to help policymakers understand the prevailing starting-point attitudes of institutional stakeholders, primarily college and university administrators, faculty and staff, and…

At the heart of the effort to enact and scale up successful school reforms is the need for more robust links between research and practice. One promising approach is design development, a methodology widely used in other fields and only recently adapted to education, which offers a disciplined process for identifying practical problems, assessing…

A hallmark of Extension includes the involvement of stakeholders in research and program needs assessment, design, implementation, evaluation, and reporting. A data party can be used to enhance this stakeholder involvement specifically in data analysis. This type of event can not only increase client participation in Extension programming and…

A place-based learning community called "Klamath Connection" was designed to improve the academic performance of freshman in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) majors at Humboldt State University, a midsize public institution in a location geographically and culturally unfamiliar to the majority of its students. The…

A professional learning plan is the navigation system for the comprehensive professional learning system. Professional learning plans establish short- and long-term guidance for professional learning and its implementation. This workbook offers information and tools to walk educators through seven planning steps--from data analysis, to setting…

A considerable amount of time, effort, and other resources go into the development and implementation of education projects. Quite obviously, the goal is to create effective projects that can serve as models of excellence. Whether the project is an hour-long endangered species talk, a family festival, a severe weather awareness workshop, marine…

This idea book addresses key concepts in two earlier Peace Corps' publications, "Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) Manual" [ICE No. M0053], and the "Gender and Development Training Manual" [ICE No. M0054]. These previous resources were large training manuals that introduced PACA to staff and Volunteers in the context of the Peace…

Professional development that improves teaching and student learning meets research-based standards to ensure high-quality educator learning experiences. Since the quality of professional learning affects its results, many states, districts, and schools want to measure the effectiveness of their professional development to make targeted…