School tip lines, which are structured systems that allow students, parents, school staff, or community members to report information about potential threats, are a promising approach to school safety. Tip lines, which focus on preventing incidents that are threats to school safety or student well-being, come in various forms, including computer…

Early educators are the key to quality early care and education (ECE) services, and there is broad consensus that high-quality care and learning environments for young children depend on educators who are skilled at nurturing children's development and learning. Yet, inadequate working conditions and low pay routinely hamper educators in their…

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has analyzed college common readings since 2010. Common reading selections partly reflect the constraints on their selection committees. Each year colleges admit large number of students who have not yet read a college-level book and some of whom have never read a full-length adult book at all. Faculty…

This report is a follow-up to a 2012-2013 study (see ED611342), which found that 77 of 100 large U.S. cities were coordinating the work of out-of-school-time providers, government agencies, private funders, and others to provide high-quality afterschool programs to the children who stand to benefit most. The report provides a look at the state of…

Head Start is an essential part of the programs and funding streams that provide early care and education (ECE) services to young children in the U.S. Head Start focuses on supporting children and families with low incomes, but also contributes to the broader effort to expand access to high quality ECE for all young children. Programs and…

Higher education IT governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs are in the development stage. Few institutions have all three programs in place, and many institutions are unclear where they should start when instituting or maturing their IT GRC programs. In addition, they are often uncertain as to whether GRC programs should be developed in…

This study began with a readily understandable impulse: to enumerate the nation's outdoor arts festivals and to identify their shared and divergent traits, considering factors such as event programming, staffing, finances, and audience demographics. The reason for this query is also straightforward. To date, no single report or database carries…

Each week, nearly 11 million children under age 5 are in some type of child care setting for an average of 35 hours. Parents, as consumers of child care, equate a child care license with state approval--a gold seal for those businesses to which a state grants a license. Child Care Aware® of America reviews state licensing policies, which include…

Distressed urban neighborhoods face challenges on multiple fronts, but most efforts to confront these problems work in isolation of one another. The New Communities Program (NCP) is an exception, helping selected Chicago neighborhoods develop partnerships to address challenges involving employment, education, housing, and safety in a…

Historically, afterschool programs have functioned independently with little coordination among provider organizations or agencies, and public and private funders operating in isolation. Research conducted by the National League of Cities for The Wallace Foundation profiled 27 cities that were known to be taking steps to improve coordination among…

How well do youth offending teams (YOT) work? In which areas of their work is their performance excellent and where is improvement needed? This research examined annual performance assessments of services for children and young people undertaken by Ofsted in 57 local authorities from January 2006 to April 2009, together with relevant data relating…

This report is the forth in the series of evaluations of the National School Lunch Program. The findings presented here are the result of an analysis of pilot project operations and costs for two alternatives to the current application-based certification process--Up-Front Documentation and Graduated Verification--that were tested in 12 public…

The purpose of this report is to provide descriptive information about educational technology practices related to the core objectives of the U.S. Department of Education's Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. The EETT program is part of the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" ("NCLB") and, like other elements…

The results of a survey of pension plans in 17 Ontario, Canada, universities are presented in terms of: type of plan; eligibility; member contributions; university contributions; benefits on normal retirement (age 65) and on early retirement (age 55); trustee and investment manager; and pension committee composition, responsibilities, and status.…

This report, the fifth in a serious of reports about the evaluation of the National School Lunch Program focuses on issues relating to applications for free or reduced-price meals. In particular, it presents (1) an impact analysis of the effects of the pilot policies on the number of applications submitted, and (2) a descriptive analysis of the…