Food retailers are key stakeholders in the development, implementation, and effectiveness of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) nutrition pilot programs. Qualitative interviews were conducted to gather insight from food retailers regarding the feasibility of proposed strategies to improve food choices among SNAP participants. Two…

Accumulating evidence indicates that student attendance is closely tied to a range of educational outcomes, and yet millions of students are chronically absent each year. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), schools are now held accountable for their students' attendance at a scale this country has never before seen. As such, this is a…

This technical assistance guide was developed to help state policy makers develop performance-standard incentive policies that are effective tools in accomplishing state and federal goals for Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) programs. The guide is organized in three sections. The first section introduces incentive policies as tools to further…

Providing information on the issue of merit pay for teachers, this booklet covers reasons for adopting merit-pay programs, examples of such programs now operating, definitions of types of programs, indications of why some programs have failed, and steps for developing a successful program. Noting the lagging pay of teachers and inadequacies of…

This report argues for the central involvement of faculty themselves in collaborative peer review for the improvement of college teaching. An early section makes the case for formative evaluation to improve teaching and argues that collaborative peer review is well suited to the formative evaluation task. The next section examines faculty roles in…

While education accountability systems emphasize teacher quality as a prerequisite for student learning, education administrators have struggled to staff low-performing schools with effective teachers. Fueled in part by the federal Teacher Incentive Fund, compensation reforms have gained center stage status among strategies aimed at improving…

Discusses the role of teacher achievement and recognition in job satisfaction, and describes a mini-grant incentive model that offers teachers opportunities and incentives for achievement and recognition through increased responsibilities and expanded opportunities for development. The application process, implementation phase, and evaluation…

In 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Early Learning Initiative (ELI) to improve the school readiness of Washington State's children through three main strategies: (1) development of high-quality, community-wide early learning initiatives in two communities; (2) enhancement of statewide systems that support early…

Two schools in Idaho received ARRA SIG (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act School Improvement Grants) funds to enable them to implement improvement efforts. This paper describes the outcomes of these two ARRA SIG recipient schools: (1) Jefferson Middle School; and (2) Lakeside Elementary School. The experiences of this non-recipient school is…