Aid Like A Paycheck is based on a simple idea that is gaining national attention: after tuition and fees have been paid to a college, disburse the remaining financial aid to students evenly throughout the term--like a paycheck. The goals of the program are to help students achieve a good balance between time in work and school, and think about…

Accelerated transitional nursing programs (ATNPs) designed specifically for licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) to transition to become registered nurses (RNs) are graduating novice nurses who need critical thinking skills to solve patient problems. The health care industry and patient outcomes depend on graduate nurses to be proficient with quality…

This evaluation reports findings from a study of a UCLA teacher education program called IMPACT, Inspiring Minds through a Professional Alliance of Community Teachers. To measure program quality and goal attainment, the evaluation team used a comprehensive, multiple measures approach which included instructional artifacts, classroom logs, measures…

The study utilizes an inductive, qualitative approach to program evaluation to understand the nature of an afterschool literacy tutoring program for students with Down syndrome. Two research questions guide this study: (a) What are the curricular and instructional elements of the Let's Read Now (LRN) literacy tutoring program for students…

When students do not score well on standardized tests, their school can suffer. In an attempt to improve standardized test scores, a district placed students into a program called Seminar to help them work on weak areas of content through personalized instruction. The purpose of this project study was to assess if the Seminar program had a…

This brief describes an evaluation of the "Online Pathway to Graduation" (OPTG) program in Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools (MCPS) during the 2012-2013 school year. The OPTG program provides students who participate in an alternative learning opportunity to earn course credits and graduate from high school. The purposes of the…

This study interrogates how federal policy discursively shapes Latino educational opportunity and equity. The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics (WHIEEH) represents the pre-eminent federal discourse on Latino educational opportunity, and sets the parameters by which institutions are able to be informed and respond to…

As the number of students living in poverty increases, schools need to employ proactive measures to ensure student success and reduce dropout rates. The freshman year of high school is a pivotal year for the success of the students, as ninth grade students are more likely to have low grades, be absent from school, and be suspended or expelled.…

Student Study Teams (SSTs), a type of collaborative pre-referral team comprised of multidisciplinary members, are used to exhaust all potential interventions within the general education setting and resolve a student's academic or behavior issue prior to suggesting and/or initiating a referral for special education assessment. Current…

Access to Head Start has been shown to improve children's preschool experiences and school readiness on selected factors through the end of 1st grade. Two more years of follow-up, through the end of 3rd grade, can now be examined to determine whether these effects continue into the middle elementary grades. The statistical design and impact…

School belonging is a construct that describes student connections to school via a student's social and emotional attachments to others at school, commitment to adhering to school rules, involvement in school activities, and belief systems related to how much school is valued (Hirschi, 1969; Wehlage et al, 1989). Research has consistently found…

This qualitative study examines a model of instructional coaching in a middle school using interviews and observations of both teachers and their coaches. During the 2012-2013 school year, Creekside Middle School implemented a new model of instructional coaching that differed from the traditional model of coaching; it focused on student learning…

Concerns about the value and quality of higher education have led to increased scrutiny of the U.S. system of peer accreditation. Public policy-makers have begun to question the extent to which accrediting agencies achieve their quality assurance and quality improvement objectives in the colleges and universities they accredit. Some have begun to…

The European credit system for vocational education and training (ECVET) is one of the European instruments designed to make VET systems more transparent. It aims to make it easier for vocational students to move between learning institutions, whether in the same country or abroad. ECVET, which concerns qualifications at all levels of the European…

Policy makers and educators across the nation are incorporating new standards and assessments into evaluation systems, designed to impact teacher effectiveness and student achievement. New York is one of the states that have developed a teacher evaluation system, now fully implemented in all of its 697 public school districts. As the results from…