For decades, most states have made a practice of giving citizens returning from prison or jail a small amount of money, called "gate money," to cover the cost of transportation and other immediate needs. Many legislatures have considered increasing the dollar amount of their cash assistance and offering this kind of support more widely.…

This is the supplement to the report, "Texas Takes on Transfer Grants: Interim Impacts of the Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program on Student Transfer." The Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program was created by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) to improve the transfer rates of students from two-year to four-year…

Transferring to a four-year institution is an important pathway to student success. Many students who enroll in community college intend to transfer to a four-year institution and subsequently earn a bachelor's degree. However, few students ultimately do, with low-income students transferring at lower rates than their peers. The Texas Transfer…

A quality improvement system (QIS) is an intentional effort to raise the quality of afterschool programming in an ongoing, organized fashion. There are a number of reasons the QIS is gaining popularity. The main reasons community leaders are drawn to improving quality is that they know that 1) higher quality programs will mean better experiences…

The Training Centre Infrastructure Fund (TCIF) was initially announced in Budget 2004 and represented an immediate measure of the broader Workplace Skills Strategy. TCIF was a three-year $25 million pilot project, designed to address the growing need for union-employer training centres to replace aging equipment and simulators that were not up to…

Lumina Foundation for Education created the Dreamkeepers and Angel Fund Emergency Financial Aid Programs to assist community college students who are at risk of dropping out because of unexpected financial crises. Both programs are multiyear pilot projects that began in 2005 and are administered by Scholarship America and the American Indian…

This is the fourth report of a process evaluation of Palm Beach County Prime Time, Inc., an intermediary organization dedicated to improving the quality of afterschool programs, by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. It covers the 2007-2008 program year, which was the inaugural year of Prime Time's formal Quality Improvement System (QIS)…

The Consolidated Child Care Pilot Projects were established by the Colorado General Assembly in 1997, and designed to help local communities to address critical needs for full-day, full-year child care services in partnership with welfare reform. This report describes the context for the project, details the pilot programs, and profiles the 12…

This report covers the third year of Chapin Hall's process evaluation of the Prime Time Initiative of Palm Beach County, Florida, a system-building effort to strengthen the quality of after-school programs in the county. During the past two decades, the after-school field has expanded enormously, partly in response to increasing concern about…

INTERNATIONAL MEETINGS ORGANIZED BY UNESCO, PARTICULARLY THE TEHERAN CONGRESS, HAVE PUBLICIZED THE LINK BETWEEN LITERACY WORK AND ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE NEED FOR THE REVISION OF PRIORITIES. ACTION IS NOW NEEDED. UNESCO'S EFFORT TO ERADICATE ILLITERACY ASSUMES THREE FORMS--(1) CONDUCTING PILOT EXPERIMENTAL PROJECTS…

In March 1995, the Mississippi State Department of Education implemented the Home Ties program as a 5-year pilot program at five sites, using federal funds made available through a sub-grant from the Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) and matching funds appropriated by the Mississippi legislature. The program provided intensive,…

During its three-year pilot period, Title V of the Rural Development Act of 1972 demonstrated its potential as part of a broad national rural strategy and should be carefully expanded with special attention to funding, organization, and evaluation policies. Initial funding at $20 million yearly would provide each state with $100,000 (an amount…

In September 1991 an invitational roundtable met to discuss issues in mass deacidification of books. The meeting was prompted by the significant increase in mass deacidification activities in recent years and libraries' interest in applying these processes. Contributions included: (1) "Opening Statement" (Duane Webster); (2) "The…

WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY INITIATED A PROJECT TO DETERMINE THE CULTURAL NEEDS AND INTERESTS OF THE AREA IT SERVES. IN PHASE ONE, CITY AND COUNTY REPRESENTATIVES ATTENDED A SYMPOSIUM ON ART, MUSIC, LIBRARY, LECTURE, AND THEATER RESOURCES AND FORMED A REGIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL FOR COMMUNITY ENRICHMENT. PHASE TWO WAS A WORKSHOP TO HELP COUNCIL…