The Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS) program has helped thousands of families afford postsecondary education, and is reported to have helped motivate students to set higher goals for themselves, and to pursue postsecondary education in Alaska. Evidence indicates APS recipients are better prepared for college. However, the reach of these…

The purpose of this report is to provide readers with a comparative analysis of the Massachusetts workforce "system" structures and performance reporting processes compared to other states. Though the federal workforce development system is often examined in its entirety and individual state systems are at times examined independently,…

If community colleges are to remain relevant, they must be future-oriented, and responsive to demographic and labor force shifts. The Get Skilled, Get a Job, Give Back initiative (G3) was implemented during the 2021-22 academic year to retain economically disadvantaged students, improve community college completion, and help students graduate into…

Experts from the RAND Corporation prepared this independent report on New Jersey's Tuition Aid Grant (TAG) program for low-income college students. TAG is the nation's most generous state-funded financial aid program on a per-resident-undergraduate basis. Currently, TAG distributes around $475 million in grants per year, and an award covers about…

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation's largest domestic food and nutrition assistance program for low-income Americans. SNAP-Education, commonly referred to as SNAP-Ed, is the nutrition education arm of SNAP benefits. SNAP-Ed aims to help individuals stretch their food budgets wisely while working to make healthy…

College tuition at public institutions across the country rose by 36.2 percent on average over the decade 2008-09 to 2018-19. The average total cost of college, accounting for all expenses such as room and board, across all institutions public and private grew by 22.4 percent. Students and their families are borrowing an enormous amount of money…

State need-based financial aid programs are a key driver of college access and completion for lower-income students and racially marginalized students in California, most of whom attend public two- and four-year colleges and universities and come from families with annual incomes of less than $40,000. As the state's largest need-based financial…

As the early education coordinator for Prince George's County Public Schools, Judith P. Hoyer recognized the gaps in available services for low-income families. In the 1990s, she created a central location in Adelphi, Maryland, for early childhood services, thus fostering cooperation of governmental and private agencies around the needs of local…

Free college, or "Promise" programs--a model of student aid that covers at least full tuition costs for a subset of a given state's residents--have received a significant boost in the past few years. A central question has been whether the model benefits from more consistent political support over time as compared to other forms of…

This document synthesizes the findings from the evaluations of four statewide programs designed to provide support for underperforming schools and districts in California as part of the state accountability system: (1) Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP); (2) High Priority Schools Grant (HPSG) Program; (3) School…

The use of the Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) to improve early childhood education program quality is based in part on assumptions that the quality of programs can be measured and that quality ratings are associated with meaningful differences in learning outcomes for children. This report reviews all of the state QRIS validation…

In February 2016, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) pulled together stakeholders from across the state and set an ambitious goal--that at least 75 percent of third graders would be proficient readers by 2025. The goal originated from both stagnant third grade reading scores in the state and national research indicating that third grade…

Effective teacher evaluations serve the dual function of being both summative and formative (Danielson & McGreal, 2000). The current evaluation tool in Virginia uses a traditional approach of incorporating standardized test scores as forty percent of a measure of teacher effectiveness. By way of a literature review, this article applies a…

California's new Statewide System of Support is grounded in the fundamental principles of the Local Control Funding Formula, especially its emphasis on the central role of local educators in determining the best approaches to improvement. This report examines the early implementation of the System of Support, with a focus on the work of the county…

The Worker Retraining (WRT) program is a key strategy in meeting the economic and workforce needs of Washington's workers and employers. Funded through the state legislature, the aim of WRT is to ensure dislocated and other unemployed workers have access to education and training that will help them reattach to the labor market in jobs and careers…