The research, focused on parents with children in years 5-10 in three low-socioeconomic rural and regional communities, drew on an understanding of educational aspiration as culturally and socio-spatially embedded to develop practical strategies for parents to engage with their children as they made education and career pathways choices. It draws…

This article describes a university service-learning program with preservice teachers who volunteered as tutors to teach in an adult GED program. The adult participants were involved in a local drug court program, which is a branch in the criminal justice system. Project Literacy Instruction to Further Education (Project LIFE) was developed by the…

The Office of Workforce Development (OWD) in New Orleans, Louisiana, with a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, implemented Career Pathways, an innovative program designed to increase the local talent pool and help lower-skilled, unemployed, and underemployed individuals train for work in growing fields. RAND Corporation researchers evaluated…

Lower-skilled workers in the United States face a shrinking pool of employment opportunities. To combat this, the city of New Orleans' Office of Workforce Development (OWD) developed a job training program with a grant, awarded in 2014, from the U.S. Department of Labor Workforce Innovation Fund. The program, Career Pathways, was designed to help…

The Student Achievement Initiative (SAI) is the guiding framework for the Washington state community and technical college system's goals for student success. SAI emphasizes student momentum for college success by both building college readiness (such as basic skills gains and completion of precollege education, sometimes known as developmental…

Adult learners seeking a high school equivalency degree are a highly motivated group of students that almost universally meet outreach audience goals of serving minority, low-income, and other disadvantaged populations. Despite the demonstrated need of this population, these students are not commonly served by university-sponsored science outreach…

Second chance education programs are now a well-established presence in institutions seeking to provide access and equity pathways for socio-economically disadvantaged groups. This paper focusses on the strategies used to support positive engagement in second chance equity programs, drawing upon evaluation research data from four TAFE sponsored…

In the past decade, the federal government, some states, and numerous communities have initiated programs to help couples form and sustain healthy marriages and relationships in order to increase family stability for children. Thus, the authors value the attention given to this emerging policy area by the "American Psychologist" in a recent…

This study examined how parental participation in Even Start programs contributes to family literacy engagement and parental development. More specifically, its primary aim was to develop an understanding of how parental participation in the program influences their reading behaviors and other literacy practices as well as to highlight observed…

In 2010, Congress authorized the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program by enacting section 511 of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 711, which also appropriated funding for fiscal years 2010 through 2014. Subsequently enacted laws extended funding for the program through fiscal year 2022. The program is…

The research described in this report is a companion piece of research to one conducted by AONTAS from 2009-2010 about the outcomes and impact of Department of Education and Skills (DES) funded community education. It answers a call in that research to isolate and investigate the outcomes of community education not wholly funded through DES. This…

In late 2010, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah commissioned a new Agency-wide Education Strategy to ensure that USAID's global education investments would be informed by recent Presidential policy guidance; grounded in the most current evidence-based analysis of educational effectiveness; and aimed at…

Even before the Great Recession prompted policymakers to take a closer look at public programs designed to help unemployed Americans re-enter the workforce it had long been clear that federal, state and local government workforce development programs have not always effectively prepared low-income individuals to obtain decent-paying jobs. Job…

Educational inequalities are evident even before children start school. Some educational achievement gaps widen out as individuals progress further through the education sequence and into the labour market, especially those connected to disadvantaged students. Thus, there is a significant need for careful evaluation of educational policies that…

This secondary analysis of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a randomized study of program participation of children and families in Early Head Start (that is, enrolled in programming prior to children's first birthdays) investigated sociodemographic (race and ethnicity, income level, and maternal education level) and program…