The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides supplemental foods, nutrition education, and referrals to healthcare and other social services to low-income, nutritionally at-risk women, infants, and children up to 5 years of age. About 40 percent of all infants and 22…

A system-based approach to expert assessment work presupposes collaboration between the Educational Psychological Service (EPS) and key stakeholders to capture students' needs. Nevertheless, few studies have explored what challenges to collaboration exist and how they can be resolved. The purpose of this study was therefore to fill this knowledge…

Research examining the administration, evaluation, and continued implementation of technology-based nutrition education interventions for low-income populations is lacking. This dissertation evaluated the implementation of Food eTalk, a statewide online, self-paced nutrition education program. Implementation occurred in various community- and…

Educators shape the quality of early education programs and are essential to children's learning and healthy development. However, the early childhood education field is often challenged in retaining educational staff. Using a descriptive research design this study explores turnover and retention through the voices of Head Start and Early Head…

The purpose of this study was to explore parents' common experiences with healthy eating and physical activity-focused (HE-PA) programming in one Head Start (HS) program (two centers) in eastern North Carolina (NC). Researchers conducted 13 in-depth semi-structured telephone interviews November 2017-May 2018. Participants were parents of preschool…

This study explored the experiences of Head Start parents who were becoming involved in their pre-school-age children's Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. Seven participants from the rural Midwest engaged in focus group (n = 2) or interview (n = 1) format discussions regarding barriers to involvement in the IEP process and…

State law (Revised Code of Washington [RCW] 28A.235.290) requires the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to report annually to the Legislature on the number of schools participating in United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The report must identify barriers to participation and…

Play is essential to children's growth and development. For many years, theorists have defined play as active, engaging, and interactive. Play has been identified as a way in which children communicate and learn. Such skills are important as children interact and communicate with their family members, teachers, peers, and the community at large.…

Today, free public kindergarten for five-year-old children is available in every state and community throughout the United States, and public education is routinely referred to as K-12. But kindergarten did not start out this way. Kindergartens in the United States once served children as young as three and four years old. In fact, today's…

Awareness that educational equity and health care equity are intrinsically linked is becoming more commonplace, but because a significant share of states are providing much less school funding than they were a decade ago, there are fewer local education dollars allocated to addressing the health care issues of children in school. In December 2018,…

A school's primary responsibility is to provide students with a high-quality education. However, children cannot learn to their fullest potential with unmet health needs. For over thirty years, Medicaid has helped cover the costs for certain medically necessary services provided in school-based settings to children eligible for special education…

Research Findings: Family child care providers widely participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), yet their participation experiences have not been studied. To fill this gap, we used a mixed methods approach that combined survey data collected from a random sample of 224 CACFP-participating licensed family child care providers…

The federal work-study program is one of the earliest forms of federal financial aid for higher education in the United States and has come under close scrutiny for its debatable impact on low-income students' college success and persistence. However, federal work-study surprisingly remains one of the least-studied financial aid programs. This has…

FNS Research Corner provides a continuing series to summarize recently completed and current research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in the area of Child Nutrition Programs (CNPs). Summaries of recently completed research projects and in-progress research are provided in this article.

This report focuses on the progress made and challenges faced by the nine states in achieving the first three objectives for which they were held accountable for use of their Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTTELC) funds. It discusses discrete findings related to these objectives in relevant chapters of the report: Tiered Quality Rating…