Since its inception, NASA's Science Activation program has demonstrated considerable success in leveraging the agency's strong public reputation and resources to engage a diversity of audiences in science education projects nationwide. As the program nears the end of this second five-year funding cycle, NASA tasked the National Academies with…

This report illustrates the statewide implementation and effectiveness of school breakfast in Ohio. In the 2024-2025 school year, approximately 94% of Ohio schools with USDA nutrition programs serve breakfast. In the 2023-2024 school year, 27.2% of enrolled children participated in the School Breakfast Program and 54.5% participated in the…

Even in good economic times, many adults in the United States have trouble finding jobs that pay enough to support their families. One policy response has been to help these workers build more skills, with promising findings from some sector-based programs that train individuals to work in specific high-demand industries. The Pay for Success Clean…

As roughly 7.3 million students in rural school districts head back to school this fall, they remain largely unaware that the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill) is due to expire on September 30, 2024 (Hartman et al., 2023). Enacted on December 20, 2018, and temporarily renewed in September 2023, this critical piece of legislation…

Outstanding federal student loan debt exceeds $1.6 trillion and is owed by about 45 million borrowers. Since taking office, the Biden Administration has taken various actions to address student loan debt. These actions have ranged in scope (both in terms of borrower populations affected and associated modification costs), rationales, and the…

The Learning While Leading (LWL) professional development program motivates and further prepares administratively certified educators to become principals or assistant principals and offers continuous support to new principals during induction. The LWL program addresses a clear need for transitional support to motivate, fully prepare, and support…

Direct certification has been described by policymakers and academics as a tool which may replace National School Lunch Program (NSLP) eligibility data (Douglas Geverdt, National Center for Education Statistics, personal communication, August 28, 2023). It suggests a policy future in which we change the metric of how we identify disadvantage. On…

Head Start programs in many of the states with higher rates of children living in poverty have received less per-child funding allocations than programs in states with lower rates of children living in poverty for years. Further, the educators who teach these children are vastly underpaid, and their pay is also inequitable among states and…

This study evaluates the Dual Language Program (DLP) implemented at a Title I public school in Baltimore City during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. Building on previous research, the DLP's implementation, sustainability, and effects on students' learning outcomes were examined. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the study's second…

Government agencies collect vast amounts of administrative data in their day-to-day activities, primarily for program operations. But the information is less often used as a research tool or fully harnessed for its evidence-building potential. This brief is the fourth in a series of publications from MDRC about the Temporary Assistance for Needy…

The federal government has prescribed nutritional requirements for school meals since the authorization of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in 1946. Such requirements have changed throughout the course of history. Current law requires the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe "minimum nutritional requirements" based on…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) serves as a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education. The WWC designs its resources to help educators, administrators, families, researchers, and policymakers make evidence-based decisions. In fall 2023, the WWC convened the Small Working Group of Experienced Education…

Purpose: We used data from the National Survey of Children's Health to (1) examine differences in economic hardship and safety net program use after the implementation of federal relief efforts, and (2) assess whether the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated autism-based disparities in hardship and program use. Methods: We examined five dimensions of…

With the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather disasters, it is essential for Office of Head Start staff and Early Head Start/Head Start (EHS/HS) program leaders to prepare for and respond effectively to these challenges. This brief presents data on the number and percentage of EHS/HS sites located in extreme weather affected areas…

Multi-site randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide unbiased estimates of the average impact in the study sample. However, their ability to accurately predict the impact for individual sites outside the study sample, to inform local policy decisions, is largely unknown. To extend prior research on this question, we analyzed six multi-site RCTs…