Emergency training programs aimed to prepare schools for events like Columbine are losing their funding amid budget cuts. "Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools" grants from the federal office of safe and drug-free schools, has evaporated. After paying for hundreds of school districts to prepare for a Columbine-like event, the roughly…

A pair of Ohio school districts, a short drive down Interstate 70 from each other, share similar goals. Each wants to improve student achievement by strengthening curriculum and instruction and giving teachers and principals the tools to make it happen. But the Huber Heights and Brookville school systems diverge in their approach to meeting those…

The way forward to better assessment begins with the conception of assessment not as a single test but as a coherent "system" of measures. Coherent systems must be composed of valid measures of learning and be horizontally, developmentally, and vertically aligned to serve classroom, school, and district improvement. Coherent assessment…

The article analyzes effects of borrower interest rates and student lender subsidies on federally guaranteed student loan volumes from 1988 to 1994 and from 1996 to 2006. Some have argued that lender subsidy cuts would reduce loan supply or cause lenders to exit the student loan market. If lenders get economic rents due to overly generous…

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n ˜ 6,950), a nationally representative sample of children born in 2001, we examined school readiness (academic skills and socioemotional well-being) at kindergarten entry for children who attended Head Start compared with those who experienced other types of child care…

Medicare home health care provides critical skilled nursing and therapy services to patients in their homes, generally after a period in an inpatient facility or nursing home. Disparities in access to, or outcomes of, home health care can result in patient deterioration and increased cost to the Medicare program if patient care needs intensify.…

The quality of doctoral students' academic and social experiences is a key element of their success in graduate school programs. These experiences support the completion of doctoral programs, especially for first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds. Framed by Weidman's (1989) undergraduate socialization model, the author…

The short-term emphasis engendered by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has focused research predominantly on unraveling the complexities and uncertainties in assessing short-term results, rather than developing methods and assessing results over the longer term. In this paper we focus on estimating long-term gains and address questions important to…

Many youth involved with the juvenile justice system have education-related disabilities and are eligible for special education and related services under the Federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In most cases, the rates of disabilities in the court-involved youth population are much greater than those in the general youth…

This report is the second of a series of annual reports by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) on virtual education in the U.S. The NEPC reports contribute to the existing evidence and discourse on virtual education by providing an objective analysis of the evolution and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools. This…

Preschool parent interventions may produce downstream benefits if initial intervention gains are sustained and improve later socialization experiences. This study explored associations between initial effects of the REDI (Research-based Developmentally Informed) Parent program and later benefits. A randomized trial involving 200 Head Start…

Like other states across the country, the seven states in the Midwest Region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) have been striving to meet the performance targets established under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The…

Nearly everyone in the education community agrees that the time has come to end, or seriously repair, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB); however, the process of doing so has become drawn out and contentious. With Congress not moving quickly enough to reauthorize the law, President Obama has announced a way to help states get around NCLB's…

Congress completed the fiscal year 2012 appropriations process on December 17th, 2011, finalizing annual funding for federal education programs through September 30, 2012 at $68.1 billion, down $233 million from the prior year. It is the first year since 2007 that Congress did not increase total appropriations for education programs. This issue…

Head Start, the federal government's pre-K program, is at a crossroads. The program has been used as an anti-poverty measure by the government for over 45 years. It has grown significantly since its inception and provided many children with a valuable, high-quality early education, and in FY2012 served more than 960,000 children under 5 on a $7.9…