Employment and training services offered through Extension are part of and continue a long tradition of policy-focused employment and job training. This paper chronicles the successes of UT Extension's work as a third-party partner in the delivery of workforce development programming geared toward individuals receiving Supplemental Nutrition…

Identification of the problem: Coaching programs (CPs) in schools often focus on student and teacher wellness, leadership development for teachers and administrators, nutrition and physical activity, and academic achievement. However, there is limited use of CPs for the development and implementation of Local School Wellness Policy (LSWP). The…

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research…

The Maryland State Legislature enacted the Judith P. Hoyer Early Child Care and Education Enhancement Program in May of 2000 to address three important principles in Maryland's early childhood care and education programs: (1) Judy Centers -- The need for greater coordination among the providers of early childhood education and support services was…

Experts from the RAND Corporation prepared this independent report on New Jersey's Tuition Aid Grant (TAG) program for low-income college students. TAG is the nation's most generous state-funded financial aid program on a per-resident-undergraduate basis. Currently, TAG distributes around $475 million in grants per year, and an award covers about…

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation's largest domestic food and nutrition assistance program for low-income Americans. SNAP-Education, commonly referred to as SNAP-Ed, is the nutrition education arm of SNAP benefits. SNAP-Ed aims to help individuals stretch their food budgets wisely while working to make healthy…

The Indiana Choice Scholarship Program (ICSP), which began in fall 2011, is a state taxpayer-funded financial aid program that helps low and lower-middle income Hoosiers to send their children to the private K-12 school of their choice. This voucher program has been extremely popular among families, as the number of students receiving scholarships…

Absent a nationwide plan for universal public prekindergarten, states and districts have taken various approaches to increasing access to school-based educational opportunities for their youngest learners. Though some of these programs have focused on making public prekindergarten available to all families, others have targeted families most in…

The problem of social orphanhood is one of the most important among the social problems of modern Russia, it is acute for a society. In the study of the problems of social orphanage, we used the author's methods of ranking the regions of Russia according to the dynamics of indicators, an integrated index of "favorable" changes, as well…

In 2016, Maryland adopted the Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today (BOOST) voucher program that helps pay K-12 private school expenses for low-income households. BOOST vouchers target low-income families. Funds are available to public school students as well as children in private schools and homeschools who qualify for free or…

In March 2022, Child Trends contracted with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) to conduct an independent evaluation of Parent Aware, Minnesota's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for early care and education (ECE) programs. The evaluation was passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2021 and includes several…

This final brief in the series focuses on policy options that can foster more innovation and address challenges in career education (CE) program development. It is based on earlier research for a series of reports called "Career Opportunities," aimed at identifying ways that state and system policy can best support the CE mission of the…

This analytical report responds to the current policy interest in some states in offering "tuition-free college" to income-eligible students attending certain public colleges and universities. In most cases only public two-year colleges are covered, although New York State's Excelsior Scholarship program also covers public four-year…

This report documents the results to date of reforms underway from Ohio Strong Start to Finish, one of the six systems that make up the first phase of the Strong Start to Finish initiative, an initiative of Education Commission of the States. Through Ohio Strong Start to Finish, the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE), along with the Ohio…

This paper reports results from a fiscal analysis of Pennsylvania SB 299, a proposal to expand the state's two tax-credit scholarship programs. Pennsylvania currently has two programs in operation, the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) Program and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) Program. This paper is organized as follows.…