Mental health challenges for youth continue to be a growing concern. Youth-serving organizations have the potential to play a significant role in recognizing the signs and symptoms of mental health challenges in youth. The Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) training course is widely used to equip adults working with youth with skills to support…

In this article, the authors describe two independent efforts at "flipping" introductory economics courses employing econlowodown.org resources from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. From an instructor's perspective, it is relatively simple to locate the high-quality free resources available online and assign them to students. Their…

The Families Forward Demonstration (FFD) examined new strategies to increase the earnings of parents who owe child support but are unable to fully meet their obligations due to low earnings. It also focused on "responsive" child support services that helped parents understand their support obligations, and even suspended certain…

In 2015, the city of Springfield, Ohio, finished participating in a $2.5 million federal grant program that assisted low-income families in reducing the health risks from lead paint in their homes. But because of rule changes from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that made it harder to use funds on certain properties (including…

The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) places a strong emphasis on the alignment of Career Technical Education (CTE) programs of study with state, regional and local economies. Specifically, the legislation requires Perkins-funded programs to prepare students for "high-skill, high-wage, or…

Research about organizational improvement has come from several disciplines--business management, organizational sociology, communications, and education. Across these fields, much of the research involves case studies of effective organizations (e.g., Collins, 2001; Johnson, 1996). Review of these case studies suggests several commonalities among…

Voucher and education savings account (ESA) programs fund students' private school education expenses, such as tuition. In school year 2014-15, 22 such school choice programs were operating nationwide, all but one of which was state funded. Under two federal grant programs, one for students with disabilities and one for students from disadvantaged…

The National School Lunch Program's (NSLP) original goal was to help students in need, but policy changes in the past decade have made students from middle-income and upper-income families eligible for federally funded school meals. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), an expansion of the NSLP enacted in 2010, effectively created a federal…

Out-of-school factors can significantly impact students' readiness to learn and thrive in school. Preventing dropout is a challenge because students fail to complete high school for a myriad of reasons that involve factors inside and outside of schools. This article describes City Connects, an intervention implemented in schools in Massachusetts,…

The U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) is dedicated to improving results for infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities ages birth through 21 by providing leadership and financial support to assist institutions of higher education (IHEs), states, and local districts. During a 5-year period, OSEP…

School choice is increasingly the new normal in urban education. But in cities with multiple public school options, how can civic leaders create a choice system that works for all families, whether they choose a charter or district public school? To answer this question, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) researchers surveyed 4,000…

The FBI, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Secret Service, recently released a report on violent attacks on college campuses that details ongoing security concerns at U.S. institutions of higher learning, including the nation's 1,173 community colleges. Researchers say the goal of the report, "Campus Attacks:…

The U.S. Department of Education (Education) established the Race to the Top (RTT) grant fund to encourage states to support school reform efforts. In 2010, Education awarded 12 RTT grants totaling nearly $4 billion, making RTT the largest competitive grant fund ever administered by Education. Individual grantee awards ranged from $75 million to…

States are pushing ahead with efforts to make sweeping changes to education policy through the Race to the Top program, despite some of them having seen individual schools and districts back out of the process because of concerns over the time and money required to make those plans a reality. The Obama administration has envisioned Race to the…

For as long as there have been struggling schools in America's cities, there have been efforts to turn them around. But overall, school turnaround efforts have consistently fallen far short of hopes and expectations. Quite simply, turnarounds are not a scalable strategy for fixing America's troubled urban school systems. Fortunately, findings from…