States and districts across the country are implementing new principal evaluation systems that include measures of the quality of principals' school leadership practices and measures of student achievement growth. Because these evaluation systems will be used for high-stakes decisions, it is important that the component measures of the evaluation…

The Colorado Department of Education recently received state funding to implement a Student Re-Engagement Grant Program (SRGP). The goal of this project is to inform the administration of the SRGP by looking back at data from a previously administered grant program, called Colorado Graduation Pathways (CGP). The CGP program was a federally funded…

Many states have implemented or expanded state-funded prekindergarten programs in the last decade, encouraged by claims about the benefits that can be expected and the importance of early experiences for children's development, especially for economically disadvantaged children. However, there is remarkably little methodologically adequate…

Many Californians face difficulties connecting to good jobs because of limited education. This is especially true for poor families who receive cash assistance from the state's CalWORKs (California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids) program. Few CalWORKs parents have more than a high school degree, and many struggle to balance family and…

Asthma is the leading chronic health condition among children in the United States and a major cause of childhood disability. It also disproportionately affects low-income and racial and ethnic minorities. Although a wide range of interventions have been implemented to improve asthma-related outcomes among socioeconomically disadvantaged and…

Interdistrict open enrollment is the nation's largest and most widespread school choice program, but our knowledge of these programs is limited. Drawing on 5 years of student-level data from the universe of public school attendees in Colorado, we perform a three-stage analysis to examine the dynamics of student participation in the state's…

A longitudinal research study was conducted at a public university in Pennsylvania on a sample of 129 at-risk students from a state-funded program (Act 101) designed to provide support services for economically and educationally disadvantaged students. This research employed a non-experimental, ex post facto methodology to assess the impact of…

This research investigated the effects of two contrasting pre-k curricula, relative to practice as usual, on subsequent academic achievement. One curriculum had a strong literacy focus, the other was a less didactic "developmentally appropriate" curriculum that allowed children to have more influence on classroom activities. The purpose…

The Task Force on Early Intervention was designed to describe services for preschool handicapped children in Minnesota. The Task Force had three major objectives: to discover basic information about the preschool handicapped population in Minnesota; to discover whether poor and minority children have equal access to preschool handicapped programs;…

This volume reports findings of a field network study of how the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) was implemented in 20 states and 40 Service Delivery Areas (SDAs). Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 describes the changing organizational and programmatic dimensions of state-level JTPA activities. Variations in the roles played by the…

The Center for Rural Pennsylvania analyzed data from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare concerning rural homelessness for fiscal years 1997 through 1999. Findings indicate that rural Pennsylvania has a homeless population and it is growing. In 1999, more than 21,700 clients received homeless assistance in rural areas, 44 percent of whom…

States where a large proportion of the poor are rural residents or racial/ethnic minorities provided less welfare support per poor child under Aid to Families with Dependent Children than did other states. No corresponding rural or racial/ethnic disadvantage was observed for the Food Stamp program, which has nationwide eligibility criteria and…

This report examines time-limited welfare beginning at the broadest level, tracing the rapid emergence of time-limited welfare as a policy approach in part I. Chapter 1 examines the history of time-limited welfare and the key challenges posed by this policy. Part II begins to focus on the three participating states--Florida, Vermont, and…

Researchers assembled a database of current and projected information on the following: welfare recipients; other female participants in the labor market; employment, occupational availability, and job openings; and occupational characteristics. The database was used in a multistep process to project the number of women forced to leave welfare…

If Congress passes legislation consolidating federal funding for vocational education, job training, and adult education, states will be free to combine federal funding with state programs to create more coherent and effective systems. If such legislation is stalled, states have the power to reform the patchwork that now exists, but doing so…