The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) requires states to reserve at least 15 percent of their total State Vocational Rehabilitation Services program funds to provide pre-employment transition services to help students with disabilities transition from school to work. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to review…

Promising findings from controlled research studies often fail to be transferred to and implemented in schools successfully. This problem is particularly apparent when considering implementation of evidence-based practices related to complex systems such as response to intervention (RTI) and other multitiered intervention frameworks in…

Based on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates, weakened climate/culture, decreased academic scores, and endangered job security, the implementation of a successful behavioral intervention program within the school setting was a necessity (Homer & Sugai, 2000). Quantitative data were obtained from two assessment…

Employing concepts of place and space, we consider the implementation of Early College initiatives in two small school districts in Ohio, situated in very different regions of the state. One is a rural district near the foothills of Appalachia, and the other is a small town district on the shores of Lake Erie. The paper examines data collected…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represent an historic shift in K-12 curricular policy. Yet,few have explicitly traced the lineage of the CCSS and linked them to the decades-old standards-based reform movement. This essay situates the CCSS within the larger historical context of standards-based reform. It concludes with a discussion of…

The objective of the audit presented in this report was to evaluate the Office of Special Education Programs' (OSEP) implementation of its differentiated monitoring and support component under the results driven accountability initiative. The audit covered differentiated monitoring and support (DMS) that OSEP conducted under Part B of the…

This is the "42nd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2020." Section 664(d) of the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" ("IDEA"), as reauthorized in 2004, requires that the Department of Education report annually on the progress made toward the…

The Head Start Act mandates that each Head Start recipient receive a monitoring review at least once every 3 years; each newly designated recipient be reviewed after the completion of its first year (and then at least once every 3 years thereafter); and all recipients that "fail to meet the standards" receive Follow-up reviews. Reviewers…

This policy brief summarizes and critiques the findings of the US Department of Education's Section 5005 Report on Rural Education. In September of 2018, the Department of Education released the "Section 5005 Report on Rural Education: Final Report." The report was written in response to a provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act of…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has generated considerable buzz in education circles and the general media. But how much has really changed, and what does this mean for states as they begin the process of implementing a new federal education law? In this article, we apply principal-agent theory to explore intergovernmental relations under…

The Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grants program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), aimed to increase the number of high quality early learning and development programs. RTT-ELC awarded $520 million in the first of three rounds of grants to help states…

The Pathways for Academic Career and Employment (PACE) program is established to provide funding to community colleges for the development of programs that will lead to gainful, quality, in-state employment for members of target populations by providing them with both effective academic training to ensure gainful employment and customized support…

In response to requirements of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Maine enacted a rule requiring all schools to have a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) in place by 2012 for a general education, pre-referral system of student support. The purpose of this system, generally termed Response to Intervention (RtI) by…

Pathblazer is a supplemental, online intervention program that helps struggling learners in grades K-8 achieve grade-level proficiency in mathematics and reading. It offers students individualized learning progression paths with fun, motivating content that addresses skill and concept gaps. Using existing student data or results from a screener,…

One of the broad intents of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is to encourage evidence-based decision-making as a way of doing business. Nonregulatory guidance issued in September 2016 by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) clarifies and expands on both the nature of…