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High-quality decodable books enhance literacy by providing children with focused practice opportunities to break down sounds they have learned and apply their decoding skills. Just Right Reader (JRR) hired LXD Research to measure its impact during a pilot study in the Spring of 2024 to determine the effect of their decodable books on literacy outcomes. Conducted in four schools in an urban Texas school district, the six-week study included 93 JRR and 111 non-JRR students, with 69 students submitting implementation logs that were used to track dosage. Key findings reveal meaningful progress for JRR students from the mid-year to end-of-year assessments, outperforming Non-JRR students. JRR students showed a MAP Growth Percentile improvement of 33 points (34 to 67), compared to 23 points in Non-JRR students (31 to 54). Additionally, JRR students excelled in DIBELS ORF accuracy, with the median percentile rising from 46 to 62, while Non-JRR improved from 42 to 44. Due to the small sample, these changes were not statistically significant. Notably, the 45% of JRR students who read for 3+ hours at home (i.e., High Dosage implementation) demonstrated remarkable growth, improving from below the 14th percentile to above the 72nd percentile. Overall, the JRR program meaningfully boosted literacy development.

Job Corps is the largest and most comprehensive education and job training program in the United States for young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school or working. Most students live at and take classes at its approximately 120 residential centers. To explore ways to improve student outcomes and reduce per-student costs, Job Corps pilot tested two nonresidential models where students received education and training at colleges, supported by intensive personal and career counseling, instead of at a center. The two pilot programs were: (1) The Job Corps Scholars (JCS) pilot program consisted of 26 colleges each delivering its own version of the Job Corps program to eligible young people; and (2) In the Idaho Job Corps (IJC) pilot program, Idaho paired its Boise Job Corps center with a nearby community college and opened three addition fully nonresidential programs at other colleges. The two pilot programs together offered 30 diverse examples of college-partnered Job Corps programs to study. The implementation and outcomes study focused on: (1) The types of students who enrolled in these programs; (2) The ability of colleges to serve young people eligible for Job Corps, who typically face more barriers than other students; and (3) The outcomes achieved by students in the pilot programs.

Math fact fluency--the ability to quickly and accurately recall basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts--is a foundational mathematical skill. "Zaner-Bloser Building Fact Fluency (BFF)" was designed to build students' conceptual understanding of arithmetic operations and increase procedural fluency among elementary school students, with the goal of strengthening math learning. LXD Research conducted a study to examine Grade 3 students' math proficiency levels on the standardized Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) across five "Building Fact Fluency" participating schools and 20 similar Iowa comparison schools from spring 2021-spring 2023. One "Building Fact Fluency" pilot school began the program in fall 2021, and four additional schools began the program in fall of 2022. The pilot "Building Fact Fluency" school, Year 2-only "Building Fact Fluency" schools, and comparison schools had a similar percentage of students on grade level at baseline. However, Grade 3 students in "Building Fact Fluency" schools showed consistently greater improvements in the percentage of Grade 3 students on grade level in math.

Teacher shortages are a persistent challenge in the United States. I evaluate the effectiveness of an innovative pilot program that allowed principals to hand-select experienced staff members and paraeducators already working in schools to lead classrooms. Pilot educators are predominantly Black or African American. Districts reported randomly assigning students to teachers, and my analysis cannot reject randomization. Controlling for demographics and baseline scores, I find that students assigned to these pilot teachers perform just as well as those assigned to traditionally licensed teachers on average and outperform their peers in math. My results point to an untapped resource of potential teachers and underscore the value of principals' local knowledge to identify capable candidates for teaching positions.

Student achievement in California has not rebounded after the precipitous declines of the COVID-19 pandemic, with English language arts (ELA) and math scores remaining well below prepandemic levels. Student attendance has declined dramatically, and trauma and time away from school have led to mental health challenges, delays in social development, and behavioral issues among students. It is in this context that the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) has launched the Intensive Assistance Model (IAM) pilot school-improvement project, which is designed to build new approaches for teacher collaboration and student support. The IAM pilot's goal is to support schools in implementing the Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work model, which uses an intensive support and coaching process to empower teachers as instructional leaders through developing processes, structures, and culture that support collaborative planning, data analysis, and targeted interventions. The PLC at Work model has led to measurable impacts in student achievement. Realizing the model's potential requires the active engagement of district offices to align resources, remove barriers, and support effective teaching and learning systems.

Basic needs insecurity -- including housing and food insecurity, as well as lack of access to healthcare, childcare, transportation, and other basic needs -- is a critical barrier that can undermine persistence and completion rates for postsecondary students. The gaps in covering critical costs such as housing and food are pervasive among students in both two-year and four-year institutions, and they disproportionately impact certain groups of students. The Supporting Students Experiencing Homelessness (SSEH) pilot program was launched in fiscal year 2019-20 to address basic needs insecurity among postsecondary students experiencing homelessness and those who were former foster youth. This first legislative report for the program was developed collaboratively. It provides state-level, cross-sector information about the students supported by SSEH, strategies employed by the institutions to serve them, institutional infrastructure changes made to strengthen access to the program, and participating institutions' collective reflections and recommendations. The aim is to provide important state-level insights across all institutions while highlighting some distinctions that may be unique between community and technical colleges and public baccalaureate institutions.

This pilot study examines digital SAT® score relationships with first-year college performance. Results show that digital SAT scores predict college performance as well as paper and pencil SAT scores, and that digital SAT scores meaningfully improve our understanding of a student's readiness for college above high school grade point average (HSGPA) alone. In this study, there was a 22% improvement in the prediction of college performance when the SAT and HSGPA were used together, instead of using the HSGPA alone. For STEM majors, the added SAT value was 38%. Similar results were found when the outcome examined was course credits earned in the first year, a metric for understanding student progress toward degree completion. Findings from this study show that the SAT remains a powerful tool for understanding students' readiness for college, for course placement and academic major field decisions, scholarship and honors program decisions, and identifying students who may need academic support.

Schools are increasingly engaging in career-connected learning to increase career exposure and skill development. But focusing on skills alone will fall short, particularly if schools hope to address long-standing opportunity gaps. Awareness of possible careers and access to jobs depends not only on learning and achievement, but on personal and professional relationships that serve as gateways to career opportunities. Opportunity sits at the intersection of students' human capital--what they know and can do--and their social capital--who they know and can depend on for support and access. To launch a career, students need more than skills--they also need people willing to take a bet on their potential. With the aim of helping leaders implement effective, equitable strategies for building students' social capital, this report offers field-tested considerations for piloting social capital building within existing career pathways initiatives. The observations draw from an 18-month pilot during which the authors leveraged their social capital playbook to provide direct support to a group of three intermediary organizations--Education Strategy Group, Generation Schools Network, and Hawai'i P-20--collectively supporting 20 sites in the K-12 career pathways space. In the course of the pilot, the authors sought to understand how schools and nonprofits can make social capital building an explicit, effective, and equitable component of existing career-connected learning models.

The primary goal of this evaluation report is to effectively communicate the value and impact of the Leading from the Middle (LFM) Academy to a diverse set of community college stakeholders and to provide valuable insights into the program's effectiveness. This report presents the findings from the 2021-2022 LFM Academy pilot evaluation, assessing the value of new program components and improvements in participants' leadership development and project application. The report is divided into five sections, each focusing on specific aspects of the academy. The sections include: (1) Effectiveness of the 2021-2022 LFM Academy Pilot; (2) Developing and Deepening Leadership Identity; (3) Collaboration and Collective Learning; (4) Utilization of Tools and Strategies for Equity-Centered Initiatives; and (5) Coaches' Continued Leadership Development.

The Content Proximity Project was designed to improve the content validity of the MAP® Growth™ assessments while retaining the ability for the test to adapt off-grade and meet students wherever they are in their learning. Two main features of the project were the development of an enhanced item selection algorithm, and a spring pilot study conducted in volunteer school districts. The purpose of the pilot study was to evaluate the new algorithm during live testing, study the comparability of scores with traditional MAP Growth assessments, and produce evidence of test content validity and score reliability. The pilot study began in spring 2022 with a group of NWEA Partners who volunteered to participate. The Content Proximity Project was initiated with several benefits in mind. The primary benefits are enhanced content validity, improved perceptions of test quality, and greater test taking engagement. The test will continue to adapt off grade when needed to deliver items of suitable difficulty for a student. However, this adaptation will be done in such a way that test events will be more closely aligned with grade-level content, especially for students exhibiting typical performance for a grade. The stronger preference for grade-level content means that the test more closely matches the subject matter students have an opportunity to learn in school. Subsequently, MAP Growth scores should allow for better connections to curriculum materials and resources, and produce scores that are more highly correlated with end-of-year summative tests.

The National Assessment Governing Board (the Board) contracted with Pearson to design and implement a review of the achievement level descriptions (ALDs) for National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Grade 8 assessments in Science, U.S. History, and Civics. This document describes the procedural and technical aspects and outcomes of the operational ALD Review study. This study commenced after Pearson had completed an ALD Review study for Mathematics and Reading in 2022, which itself was undertaken on behalf of the Board for the reasons noted in the Background section of this report. In particular, this report addresses the Board's updated achievement levels policy that called for the development of Reporting ALDs, which state what student performance associated with each NAEP achievement level likely can demonstrate related to the assessment content, and how these align with the existing content ALDs included in the frameworks and achievement level policy definitions. [For the 2022 report, "Achievement Level Description Review for the National Assessment of Educational Progress Mathematics and Reading Assessments. Final Process Documentation and Technical Report," see ED627620.]

In 2022-23, SRI Education conducted an evaluation of a pilot implementation of the Maine Early Childhood Consultation Partnership® (ECCP®) for Maine's Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services. Created and developed by Advanced Behavioral Health, Inc., ECCP® is an evidence-based, manualized model of infant and early childhood mental health consultation (IECMHC) that builds capacity of the early care and education workforce to address young children's social-emotional and behavioral needs through intensive, time-limited consultation with a trained mental health consultant. SRI Education collected and analyzed data from state leaders, consultants, trainers, supervisors, teachers and parents/guardians in five counties to assess the pilot implementation and provide recommendations for statewide scale up and sustainability of the model. [This report was prepared for Office of Child & Family Services, Maine Department of Health and Human Services.]

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 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 institutions in Texas. The pilot program offered $5,000 grants to community college students who performed well academically, came from low-income backgrounds, and transferred to a public four-year institution. MDRC's evaluation of the program, conducted in partnership with the THECB, used Texas statewide administrative data to identify and randomly assign about 90,000 eligible students. Students were assigned to either a program group (whose members were notified they were eligible to receive the grant for the fall 2022 semester) or a control group (whose members did not receive a Texas Transfer Grant offer but who could seek business-as-usual financial aid resources). Students assigned to the program group were informed of the opportunity to receive a grant via email and hard-copy letters. This brief answers the following two primary questions: (1) Does offering the Texas Transfer Grant to community college students affect their enrollment rates at four-year higher education institutions in Texas? and (2) What do community college students think--and how do they feel--about the Texas Transfer Grant offer, particularly with respect to their decision to transfer to a four-year institution? Although additional research is needed to fully understand the impact of the grant offer, early findings indicate that the pilot program increased the proportion of students who enrolled in Texas public four-year institutions. [For the supplement, "Differential Impacts on Fall 2022 Enrollment at Any Four-Year Institution. A Supplement to Texas Takes on Transfer Grants," see ED627376.]

The population of adult learners with Some College, No Credential (SCNC) has risen over the years to over 40 million individuals. A smaller subset of this population has debt that they owe their institutions directly in addition to state, federal, or private loans. As of 2020, approximately 6.6 million students owed more than $15 billion in institutional balances, preventing them from re-enrolling or accessing their transcripts. Institutional debt and transcript withholding can present several obstacles for adult learners who wish to return to higher education. It becomes difficult to register for classes, transfer to another college, pursue specialized career paths, or even apply for scholarship opportunities. To help inform the Compact implementation efforts in real time, Ithaka S+R undertook a mixed-methods evaluation. A primary reason for conducting this evaluation was to facilitate the implementation team's ability to make adjustments based on evidence during the pilot year to improve the Compact's approach going forward and to guide future initiatives outside of Ohio. In this report, the authors synthesize findings from a qualitative evaluation conducted during the Compact's pilot year. The evaluation was based on student interviews, a short student questionnaire, and administrator focus groups centered on three topics: (1) Students' experiences prior to enrolling in the Compact; (2) Students' and administrators' experiences with Compact advising and the re-enrollment process; and (3) Successes and challenges of the Compact's implementation.

Research data services--support offerings which enable and improve data-intensive research--have garnered sustained attention from library research support service providers for nearly two decades. Because of the critical role they play in supporting research on college and university campuses across the country, particularly at research intensive universities, research data services have more recently become a central area of concern for an increased number of stakeholders, including offices of research, campus IT, and other units involved in the research enterprise. Despite the widespread recognition of their importance, however, the development of research data services has been largely ad hoc, lacking cohesive cross-campus collaborations or strategic frameworks. As a result, many data-related services are siloed, difficult to locate, and available informally or by word of mouth, leaving researchers and administrators confused about the availability of data research support offerings, where they are located, and who can access them. The resulting opacity is a major barrier to better coordinating these offerings to minimize inefficiencies while continuing to offer services that are ready to adapt to researchers' evolving support needs. Ithaka S+R has been following trends in research data services for several years as part of their research into the support needs associated with data-intensive research methodologies. In 2020, Ithaka S+R conducted a pilot project to inventory research data support services in the United States. This study revealed broad patterns and trends in the distribution and provision of research data services at US higher education institutions and marked an important first step toward understanding the quality, relevance, and capacity of university-based research data services. Since the publication of the 2020 inventory, foundations and the federal governments in both the US and Canada have increased requirements around data management and sharing. As a result, the need for universities to develop an efficient infrastructure of research data services is an even more urgent strategic priority now than it was in 2020. Yet even as the pressure on universities has grown, provisioning such services remains a challenge. While many universities have made substantial investments in research data services and are likely to continue to make further investments, obstacles such as decentralization and inefficiency, insufficient staffing, lack of technical expertise, and ambiguity about the needs of researchers continue to limit the impact of these investments. In light of these persistent challenges, and in the interest of providing up-to-date data to inform university decision making, Ithaka S+R revisited the inventory and expanded the scope to include Canadian universities. The new inventory findings are part of a larger collaboration with 29 research universities focused on coordinating research data services offered across campus and aligning them with the evolving needs of their research communities. These findings are based on a comprehensive review of data services offered at a representative sample of 120 US institutions (including R1, R2, and liberal arts colleges), and eight institutional members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL).

One in five college students, or 22 percent, are parents. They are highly motivated students and earn grades on par with or better than their childless peers. However, child care challenges often lead student parents to leave school or workforce training without completing; shift from full-time to part-time schooling or programming; and miss, arrive late to, or leave early from school or work training. In Georgia, women, single parents, parents with an annual household income under $50,000 (particularly in South Georgia, where families' median household incomes are lower), and parents under age 30 are most likely to report long-term employment or educational disruptions due to child care issues, blocking their path to fulfilling their educational goals and pursuing economic mobility. Parents' inability to access consistent, reliable, and affordable child care is one of their biggest barriers to reaching these goals. Nearly one in five applicants to the Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) program, administered through the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL), identify as students; in May 2022, CAPS established student parents as a priority group for their program. Since then, more than 16,000 student parents have applied for CAPS. Yet only 42 percent of those applicants were approved for a subsidy. DECAL established the CAPS Student Parent 2Gen Pilot program to test a strategy to better serve their student parent priority group at three technical college sites. This brief summarizes the theory of change behind DECAL's 2Gen Pilot and Child Trends' plans for evaluating the pilot. It was created in conjunction with DECAL, using funding from DECAL.

More than half of community college students nationwide intend to pursue a four-year degree; however, in Texas only one in four community college students transfer to four-year institutions successfully. Among students who do transfer to a Texas four-year institution, roughly 60 percent go on to graduate with a bachelor's degree. The result is that only about 15 percent of Texans who start at a community college end up graduating from a four-year institution. To improve transfer rates and, ultimately, bachelor's degree attainment, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) launched the Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program with money provided by the U.S. Department of Education's Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund. MDRC evaluated the pilot program to build evidence about its efficacy and help inform future THECB decisions about the program. This policy brief follows up with additional findings about the pilot program's impact on students' enrollment and academic outcomes at Texas four-year institutions during the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters--two semesters after students initially received the fall 2022 transfer grant.

This report profiles five public PreK-12 learning education agencies across the U.S. that participated in the Digital Promise Center for Inclusive Innovation Teacher of Color Recruitment and Retention cohort and utilized the Inclusive Innovation model to create and launch locally contextualized programs designed by teachers of color.

Indiana continues to experience significant challenges in filling vacancies in its teacher workforce. Fewer students are enrolling in educator preparation programs; and, among those who do enroll, only 16% are actually teaching in an Indiana classroom. In a 2021 survey, 96% of Indiana districts reported teacher shortages--with significant shortages in special education, elementary education, science, and math. A lack of diversity also impacts this education environment as teachers of color represent only 7% of the workforce even though 34% of students are non-White. With capacity-building services from the Region 8 Comprehensive Center (R8CC), the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) responded to this challenge through a new Indiana Grow Your Own (GYO) program to build the teacher pipeline by working with students as early as their high school years. Through a pilot initiative as well as ongoing support and resource development since 2019, the R8CC has helped the department establish the foundation for a teacher pipeline program. In addition, as a result of this project, the department has fostered new and stronger relationships between public schools and colleges and universities to work in tandem to address future challenges. This article examines the pilot program and its future endeavors.

In 2019, the President of the European Commission announced the creation of the European Child Guarantee, an initiative that aimed to combat child poverty by making sure that every child who lives in poverty has access to free healthcare, free education, free childcare, decent housing and adequate nutrition. With "Delivering the EU Child Guarantee: Practical lessons for effective interventions," UNICEF Innocenti provides a synthesis of findings of operational research on 15 pilot models of intervention for children and families in Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece and Italy. The goal of the report is to learn from the experiences in these four countries to inform the rollout of the Child Guarantee programme throughout Europe. The study provides lessons learned in three themes: laying the foundations for the Child Guarantee work at the national level; developing interventions at the local level; supporting the Child Guarantee at the EU level.

Education Development Trust collaborated with the Ministry of Education Jordan, INJAZ and Education for Employment (EFE) to co-develop and pilot a whole-school careers education and guidance intervention in Jordan, called Future Ready. The pilot took place over 12 weeks (February to June 2022) with grade 9 students in Amman and Zarqa. The model integrated the following components of effective careers education and guidance: (1) careers guidance and counselling (one-to-one, or with peer groups); (2) a whole-school approach to careers education (enriching careers learning with subject curriculums); (3) experiential learning (co- and extra-curricular activities); and (4) information (labour market information and education pathways options). Surveys and interviews were conducted throughout with participants on process and programme impact, with key findings reported in relation to student development of career management skills and working towards social, economic and educational impact. The pilot was found to have a positive impact on students across all metrics, from increasing motivation for learning to starting to shift gender limiting stereotypes about appropriate jobs.

The National Assessment Governing Board has a legislatively mandated responsibility to develop National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) achievement levels. The Board Policy Statement on Developing Student Achievement Levels for the National Assessment of Educational Progress provides policy definitions of "NAEP Basic," "NAEP Proficient," and "NAEP Advanced" -- and describes the principles for setting achievement levels. The policy definitions are general, high-level expectations of what students should know and be able to do and consistent across all NAEP assessments. Content achievement level descriptions (ALDs) are specific descriptions of what students at each level should know and be able to do for each individual assessment as specified in the frameworks. The National Assessment Governing Board contracted with Pearson to design and implement a review of the achievement level descriptions (ALDs) for NAEP Reading and Mathematics assessments for grades 4, 8, and 12. This document describes the procedural and technical aspects and outcomes of the operational ALD Review study. In particular, this report addresses the Board's updated achievement levels policy that called for the development of Reporting ALDs to state how the assessment content (defined by the Reporting ALDs) aligns with the existing content ALDs and achievement level policy definitions.

The goal of the current pilot study was to examine the effects of bystander intervention training on a sample of 27 high school students who were selected by their peers as opinion leaders. Measures of bystander intervention knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors were included in the within-subjects design. Sixteen of the students also participated in focus groups to provide feedback about their experiences with the training. Results showed that participating students reported increases in knowledge about bullying and sexual harassment, confidence in intervening, acceptance of responsibility, knowing what to do, and acting to intervene (including direct intervention, providing support, and reporting to an adult) from pre-to posttest. Themes from focus groups indicated that students found the training relevant and helpful, particularly for focusing on both bullying and sexual harassment and for providing opportunities to learn and practice multiple intervention strategies. Barriers to intervening based on the type of violence (e.g., physical vs. relational or verbal) and relationship with the people involved were also themes. Directions for future research and implications for practice, such as focusing on dissemination to the larger student body and implementing bystander intervention training within the context of a positive school climate that emphasizes social and emotional competencies, are discussed. [This paper will be published in "Journal of Prevention and Health Promotion."]

The purpose of this systematic observation study was to improve our understanding of small-group reading instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties (RDs). We aimed to observe and document activity types addressed as well as instructional practices and materials employed during small-group instruction, with a particular interest in text reading instruction. We conducted 31 observations of 11 kindergarten teachers' typical small-group reading instruction for students at risk for RDs. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with a subsample of the teachers to learn more about their instructional practices. Results revealed that teachers' small group reading instruction often reflected research-based recommendations regarding instruction for students at risk for RDs, but also included practices associated with less evidence of effectiveness for such students. Findings suggest there is a need to provide teachers with professional learning opportunities that build knowledge of evidence-based practices for providing reading instruction to students at risk for RDs. [This is the online first version of an article published in "Reading & Writing Quarterly."]

In accordance with the Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness (PWR) Act, the Illinois State Board of Education conducted an evaluation of the Competency-Based Education Pilot Program during the 2021-22 school year using external evaluators who analyzed data collected from school districts participating in the program. This report includes a summary of the evaluation and the Superintendent's recommendation to continue the pilot program for a minimum of three years.

In response to research raising concerns about developmental placement, new placement systems and curricular models designed to increase the number of students placed into entry-level college courses have emerged in recent years. These systems aim to more accurately identify students who may benefit from some type of developmental instruction and those who are ready for entry-level college courses. This brief presents the findings of CAPR's exploratory study of informed self-placement (ISP), a placement system in which colleges provide information about placement policies, available courses, and other relevant topics to engage students as active participants in their own placement. ISP, which is also called guided self-placement or directed self-placement, is of interest because it does not rely solely, if at all, on standardized test scores, which research shows are not reliable predictors of performance in college. Moreover, many colleges adopted ISP during the COVID-19 pandemic, when this study began, because they experienced difficulty administering standardized tests and were seeking placement methods that could be easily used in a virtual setting. The study examined course enrollment and completion trends among students placed using ISP practices and sought to document varied approaches to ISP. The researchers collected demographic and outcome data on students' math and English course enrollments and completions over the last five academic years at three Nevada colleges offering associate and bachelor's degrees. They also interviewed assessment and placement scholars and representatives of higher education systems and institutions currently implementing some form of ISP. This brief provides a taxonomy of various placement systems, shares descriptive data on course enrollment and completion, and identifies important equity and access considerations for states and institutions interested in implementing ISP. Although more research is needed to understand the causal impacts of ISP on student outcomes, the data suggest that ISP has the potential to improve students' access to college-level coursework.

This technical supplement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training (E&T) evaluation final reports presents details of the technical approach used for creating analysis variables and estimating impacts of treatment group services on outcomes, including employment, earnings, and SNAP participation. It also describes the statistical approach used to measure participants' receipt of services and the costs grantees incurred when planning the pilots and providing services. The supplement begins with an overview of the evaluation design and data sources. Next, it discusses imputation procedures used when constructing the analysis data files (Chapter II). It then explains the construction of analysis weights (Chapter III), followed by the approaches used to estimate statistics measuring individuals' participation in services and activities (Chapter IV). The supplement then describes the approach used to estimate impacts for all individuals enrolled in the pilot and for subgroups of individuals (Chapter V). Finally, it discusses the approach used to measure and analyze pilots' planning and implementation costs and estimating the pilot benefits relative to their costs (Chapter VI). This supplement describes the technical approach used to produce findings presented in the 10 pilot-specific final evaluation reports and cross-pilot summary report. [Title cover varies: "Expanding Opportunities & Reducing Barriers to Work: Final Report Technical Supplement. (Evaluation of USDA, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training Pilots)." For the Final Summary Report, see ED620374.]

The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorized $200 million for the development, implementation, and evaluation of pilot projects to test innovative strategies to reduce dependency on and increase employment among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, Vermont, Virginia and Washington received grants in March 2015 and began implementing their pilots between January and April 2016. All grantees concluded pilot services by April 2019. The final summary report presents employment, earnings, SNAP participation, and other outcome findings that cover a 36-month period for individuals enrolled in the pilots by December 2017. It also presents findings from the implementation evaluation and cost-benefit analysis. The report summarizes findings from the 10 pilot-specific final reports. Key findings include: (1) Earnings increased in three pilots and employment increased in five pilots for the treatment group compared to the control group; (2) An increase in employment did not mean that earnings increased; (3) Pilots generally did not decrease SNAP participation or improve food security; and (4) The cost of pilot services outweighed benefits in most pilots. [Cover title varies: "Expanding Opportunities & Reducing Barriers to Work: Final Summary Report. (Evaluation of USDA, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training Pilots)." Staff from the following organizations assisted with this study: MDRC; Insight Policy Research; Decision Information Resources; and Food and Nutrition Service's Office of Employment and Training (OET). For the summary of the Final Summary Report, see ED620373. For the Final Report Technical Supplement, see ED620381. For the Interim Summary Report, see ED620376.]

Before the pandemic, millions of college students eligible for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) did not access the benefit. This gap between eligibility for SNAP benefits and the use of those benefits is often a result of confusion around federal eligibility requirements. Even when eligibility guidelines were temporarily changed to include new exemptions during the pandemic to make it easier for more students to access SNAP, many had no idea they were now eligible to receive benefits. College staff around the country are working diligently to inform students of these changes and connect them to SNAP benefits. With support from the Michelson 20MM Foundation, The Hope Center partnered with Compton College to pilot a low-cost intervention that used text-based nudging to provide timely and relevant information about CalFresh, the California SNAP benefits program. In this brief, the authors share lessons from the pilot intervention at Compton College. In addition, they review findings from focus groups with other community college students throughout California and meetings with community organizations that help connect students to SNAP benefits.

Data from past economic downturns show that "recession graduates"--those graduating from high school or college during a recession--may have worse outcomes in earnings and health for years or even decades to come. MDRC sought to work with stakeholders to better understand the challenges recent graduates are facing in the current context and to plan initiatives to help them succeed. MDRC was able to set up an initiative with partners in Bridgeport. This brief highlights the following lessons from the implementation of the initiative in Bridgeport that may be useful for other communities that are interested in launching similar initiatives: (1) Building Partnerships Requires Identifying Win-Win Opportunities; (2) Recruiting Young People Requires Persistence and the Use of a Variety of Strategies; (3) The Choice of the Message and the Messenger Affects Recruitment Success; (4) Developing Relationships Between Staff Members and Participants Is a Prerequisite for Career Planning; and (5) Support from Staff Should Persist After Participants Are Referred to and Enroll in College or a Program, or Take a Job.

In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) began exploratory data collection for the School Pension Survey (SPS). The SPS is a new data collection of elementary/secondary school teacher pension data collected at the school district level. The SPS was developed primarily in response to public demand for data on teacher and other school district employee pension costs--costs that are largely not included in education spending data released by NCES through its annual National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) and School District Finance Survey (F-33) collections. The pilot SPS, collected for fiscal year (FY) 2017 (school year 2016-17), was designed to assess whether the SPS is a viable, efficient method of collecting school pension data. This report provides comprehensive detail on the pilot collection--including survey background, data collection methodology, availability of SPS data, analysis of data collected, data editing procedures, assessments of data quality, and factors supporting and limiting the collection of pension data through the SPS. Key observations and findings from this report include the following: (1) Within the states selected for the SPS, comprehensive pension data were able to be collected for a high percentage of school districts; (2) There are notable limitations to collecting pension data though the SPS; and (3) The SPS represents a significant step toward achieving more complete reporting of school spending.

Ecopedagogy demands we identify non-orthodox educational practices, under the assumption that only by valuing marginal or unconventional experiences we could face the educational challenges emerging from globalization. My dissertation opens with a theoretical study that is dedicated to the establishment of the best epistemological categories to tackle the above issue. In doing so, it assesses different investigative approaches and eventually sides with Lave and Wenger's 'communities of practice.' Furthermore, the research establishes criteria for the operationalization of the above framework by identifying two specific epistemological concepts--situatedness and practice--and their related operationalizations: 'negotiability continuum' and 'apparatus complexity.' These operationalizations are furtherly identified as the key to detect 'peripheral participation,' which is key to well-functioning communities of practice. In doing so, it demonstrates compliance with genealogical research. After the establishment of such theoretical baseline, research unfolded in three stages: desk research and early Rapid Assessment, participatory activity with a team of four native assistants for the production of a scholarly outcome, and revision of such outcome in light of further fieldwork research to validate intermediate results. This main study, which lies at the core of the project, was undertaken in Terceira Island, belonging to the Azores Autonomous Region of Portugal. Desk research shows that Terceira Island is an outermost European territory with a long-standing cultural heritage that resisted commodification on behalf of different market actors. Moreover, owing to the idiographic singularity constituted by its Carnival with regards to its European counterparts, it qualified for fieldwork activities. Fieldwork results were reinterpreted by native assistants and another hermeneutical iteration was accomplished following thematic analysis drawn on further fieldwork activities. The latter entailed non-structured interviews with 'culture experts.' In sum, research outcomes show that Terceira's Carnival is a good case of cultural heritage for ecopedagogy, as it features a healthy management of peripheral participation, which had been previously identified as paramount to educational success. Thus, Terceira's Carnival is theorized to be a permanent workshop that simulates total social phenomena to foster the negotiation of identity for different groups of islanders according to historical contingencies. Consequently, it appears as a flexible heritage apparatus that could be deployed by different strategic dispositifs.

The purpose of this article is to examine the pilot program, STRIKE (Sustaining Technology-and Reading-Infused Kid-Friendly Education) at Night Literacy Camp, a week-long bedtime read-aloud camp held virtually on Facebook and YouTube Live platforms. The online program aims to increase access to culturally relevant, high-quality literature, include multiliteracies via read-alouds and address potential summer loss while children are typically away from their structured academic settings. STRIKE at Night is founded upon five pillars: the science of reading, family involvement, read-alouds, combating summer reading loss, and culturally responsive literature. The purpose of this article is to discuss how grant writing, community partnerships, and strategic online marketing led to increased viewership, total registrations, and ultimately, program impact outside of the target market in Florida. Further, the authors consider the challenges faced when launching a grassroots literacy campaign. [This is the online first article that was published in "Journal of Literacy Innovation" v7 n1 2022.]