The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care, requires states to use information about the provider cost of child care to inform the setting of payment rates under the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) program. This requirement is consistent with the growing recognition that…

The affordability of licensed early childhood education and care (ECCE) remains a perennial policy issue in Oklahoma as well as in other states. Stakeholders in the public and private sectors aim for an adequate supply of quality ECCE providers that is accessible to the families who need care. At the same time, these stakeholders recognize that…

The purpose of my study was to examine how a site reform leader implements the "Native Star" questionnaire at a school for American Indian students and how he describes and experiences school reform efforts at a Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) school in New Mexico. This was accomplished through a qualitative review of how the site…

This report describes common and unique approaches that Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest Region states have adopted in developing and implementing their quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs). A QRIS is a method for assessing, improving, and communicating the quality of early childhood education and care providers. The study…

These appendices describe the matching process used to identify an appropriate set of comparison schools for use in the report evaluating Year 2 of the Expanded Success Initiative, "Changing How High Schools Serve Black and Latino Young Men." As described in Chapter 2 of the report, selecting schools similar to ESI schools to serve as a…

Much attention during the past decade has been given to the need to develop a well-trained early childhood education workforce. In order to address this need, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) awarded Early Childhood Educator Preparation Program Innovation (EPPI) grants to institutions of higher learning. The IBHE funded partnerships,…

One objective of the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) School Improvement Grants (SIG) and Race to the Top (RTT) program is to help states enhance their capacity to support the turnaround of low-performing schools. This capacity may be important, given how difficult it is to produce substantial and sustained achievement gains in low-performing…

Beginning in 2002, The Chicago Community Trust embarked on an ambitious grant- making strategy to improve education outcomes primarily in the city of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Known as The Education Initiative, this effort focused on three priority grant areas: literacy, professional development, and alternative models of schools. In…

This brief and accompanying Funder's Sustainability Assessment Tool is intended to help foundation leaders address the challenges of sustainability. The brief begins with a framework for thinking about sustainability, introduces an assessment tool funders can use in a variety of ways to support sustainability in their grantmaking, and concludes…

This paper presents the evaluation results of the "Exploring with Technology" grant funded during the 1992-1993 school year by the Florida Department of Education. The grant proposed to integrate a variety of technological applications with the social studies curriculum. The main purpose of the paper is to discuss the process evaluation…

The Voluntary Public School Choice (VPSC) Program supports the emergence and growth of choice initiatives across the country, by assisting states and local school districts in developing innovative strategies to expand public school choice options for students. This report contains the final assessment of the first five years of the VPSC Program…

Designed to assist both grantmaking agencies and applicants for funding, this proposal format describes and provides examples of the components of program planning and proposal writing. Each of the components is followed by a checklist. The first component clearly and concisely summarizes the request. The proposal introduction describes the…

As interest in expanding the number of high quality charter schools available to parents and students has grown, policy makers have increased their focus on identifying and providing support to new charter programs that have the potential to improve student outcomes and satisfy parent and student needs. Since 1994, the U.S. Department of Education…

The types of written information that the largest foundations in the United States voluntarily make available to the public were studied. Of the 208 foundations contacted, 150 were the largest grant-making foundations, 30 were the largest community foundations, and 28 were the largest corporate foundations. The response rate to written and…

A review by the General Accounting Office of various aspects of indirect costs associated with federal health research grants is presented. After an introduction detailing the scope of the review and defining indirect costs and federal participation, the report focuses on the causes of the rapid increase of indirect costs. Among findings was that…