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California voters decided to collect a 50 cent-per-pack tax on cigarette and other tobacco products and use the money to fund early childhood services under Proposition 10, California Children and Families First Act of 1998. In compliance to the legislative requirement of Result-Based Accountability (RBA) on the revenue spending, this report delineates evaluation findings from 39 programs that received over $8.8 million of the annual state investment in Kern County, the third largest county in California by land area. Following the RBA model, this report incorporates qualitative and quantitative analyses to present in-depth success stories and statistical results from extensive assessments of program effectiveness and service integration. A five-chapter structure is adopted to support dissemination of the multilevel findings in Fiscal Year 2021-2022 -- Built on description of the Commission leadership in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 contains assessment findings to address the results-based accountability across programs in Child Health, Family Functioning, and Child Development. Chapter 3 clarifies service partnership building in Systems of Care. Improvement of child wellbeing and family functioning is summarized in Chapter 4 to document the turning the curve process on important indicators of child wellbeing and parent support. The report concludes in Chapter 5 with a review of past recommendations and an introduction to new recommendations for next year. Netdraw, Quanteda in R, SAS and SPSS packages are employed to support data visualization, text analytics, and statistical computing. The report includes two appendices, 33 figures, 77 tables, and 151 reference items. [For "First 5 Kern Annual Report 2020-2021," see ED618879.]

For more than two decades, California has been charging a 50 cent-per-pack tax on cigarette and other tobacco products and using the money to fund early childhood services under Proposition 10, California Children and Families First Act of 1998. In response to the legislative requirement of Result-Based Accountability (RBA), this report delineates evaluation findings from 39 programs that received $9.2 million of the annual state investment in Kern County, the third largest county in California by land area. Following the RBA model, this report incorporates qualitative and quantitative analyses to present in-depth success stories and statistical results from extensive assessments of program effectiveness and service integration. A five-chapter structure is adopted to support dissemination of the multilevel findings in Fiscal Year 2020-2021. More specifically, built on description of the Commission leadership in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 contains assessment findings to address the results-based accountability across programs in Child Health, Family Functioning, and Child Development. Chapter 3 clarifies service partnership building in Systems of Care. Improvement of child wellbeing and family functioning is summarized in Chapter 4 to document the turning the curve process on important indicators of child wellbeing and parent support. Despite the extensive impact of COVID-19 on young children and their families, positive results are summarized in Chapter 5 to conclude the report with a review of past recommendations and an introduction to new recommendations for next year. Netdraw, Quanteda in R, SAS and SPSS packages are employed to support data visualization, text analytics, and statistical computing. The report includes two appendices, 35 figures, 73 tables, and 141 reference items. [For "First 5 Kern Annual Report 2019-2020," see ED610410.]

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) was awarded a two-year NSF grant, "ADVANCE Catalyst: Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions", that began in Fall 2022 to examine potential systemic barriers against female faculty of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in recruitment, retention, and promotion. In the first year, the grant team has made satisfactory progress in the preparation of an organizational self-assessment for identifying STEM faculty inequities. More specifically, the team modeled after the best practice in the instrument design and worked with the Fresno State colleague on dashboard creation. Accompanied by the external partnership building, the grant team made internal adjustments to minimize the impact of an unexpected personnel change. The report concludes with three recommendations for project improvement. The overall evaluation design is guided by a well-established model of Results-Based Accountability and conforms to the utility, feasibility, propriety, and accuracy standards of program evaluation.

California ranks on top of the nation for supporting health and wellbeing of young children with statewide comprehensive programs. As part of the backbone support, voters passed Proposition 10 in 1998 to fund early childhood services with a 50 cent-per-pack tax on cigarette and other tobacco products. This report delineates evaluation findings from 39 programs that received over $10 million of state investment through Proposition 10 in Kern County, California during Fiscal Year 2019-2020. To address results-based accountability of the state funding, this report incorporates qualitative and quantitative analyses to present in-depth success stories and statistical results from extensive assessments of program effectiveness and service integration. A five-chapter structure is adopted to support dissemination of the multilevel findings. More specifically, built on description of the Commission leadership in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 contains assessment findings to address the results-based accountability across programs in Child Health, Family Functioning, and Child Development. Chapter 3 clarifies service partnership building in Systems of Care. Improvement of child wellbeing and family functioning is summarized in Chapter 4 to document the turning the curve process on 26 indicators. Chapter 5 includes the result aggregation to conclude the report with a review of past recommendations and an introduction to new recommendations for next year. Netdraw, Quanteda in R, SAS and SPSS packages are employed to support data visualization, text analytics, and statistical computing. The report includes two appendices, 33 figures, 82 tables, and 157 reference items. [For "First 5 Kern Annual Report: Fiscal Year 2018-2019," see ED602896.]

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) has been implementing a Title Vb grant, "Promoting Excellence in Graduate Education and Increasing Hispanic STEM Related Degree Completion," to continue "strengthening the STEM program support" for students of Latino origin and "developing a Graduate School-Going culture" across the campus. In Year 3, the grant team has completed five tasks: (1) Assessing the quality and capacity of the faculty mentoring program; (2) Maintaining weekly management meetings to sustain program operation; (3) Hosting another annual Grad Slam to showcase student research; (4) Participating in 50 Virtual Grad Fairs to promote the graduate programs; and (5) Delivering effective workshops to strengthen student support. In addition, the grant funded a Graduate Student-Faculty Collaborative Research program and supported 12 Faculty Fellows to enhance STEM mentorship for 15 students, of which seven had Hispanic ethnicity. At the institutional level, partnerships have been established between CSUB and two universities to expand education pathways for graduate studies. Guided by the project logic model and a well-established Results-Based Accountability framework, quantitative and qualitative data have been gathered to triangulate evaluation results across different components of the grant support. The report ends with a "Conclusion" section to review the past recommendations and adduce new recommendations for project improvement.

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) was awarded a five-year grant, "An Equitable Pathway to In-Demand STEM Careers", that began in Fall 2021 to create and expand a streamlined pathway for Hispanic students to pursue their educational and career goals with servingness culture support. In the first year, the grant team has completed six tasks assured by the grant proposal: (1) Establishing a budget in alignment with federal and district protocols; (2) Pursuing recruitment of key personnel to lead K-12 and community college engagement in strengthening on-ramps into CSUB's STEM programs; (3) Securing campus space to maintain workflow for cross-functional teams; (4) Finalizing internal/external evaluation service agreements and data collection procedures; (5) Launching STEM Careers Council for local partnership building; and (6) Purchasing instructional equipment and supplies in STEM lab building. In addition, quantitative and qualitative data have been gathered to assess the effectiveness of a research program in Summer 2022 and guest speaker presentations in regular semesters. To track the outcome of student learning, an indicator of the "Rate of Progress" is configured to monitor the status of student achievement across milestones of the STEM program pipeline. In the conclusion section, evaluation findings are reviewed to support three recommendations for project improvement. The entire evaluation framework incorporates a "participatory," "utilization-focused," and "program theory-driven" mechanism that conforms to the "utility," "feasibility," "propriety," and "accuracy" standards of program evaluation.

This report delineates evaluation findings from 43 programs that received over $8 million of state investment through Proposition 10 to support early childhood services in Kern County, California during Fiscal Year 2018-2019. To address results-based accountability of the state investment from a 50 cent-per-pack tax on cigarette and other tobacco products, this report incorporates qualitative analyses of in-depth success stories and statistical reports of quantitative data from extensive assessments of program effectiveness and service integration. A five-chapter structure is adopted to support dissemination of the multilevel findings: Chapter 1 highlights features of the impact of grant administration at the Commission level; Chapter 2 provides program-specific findings in Child Health, Family Functioning, and Child Development; Chapter 3 describes results of partnership collaboration to strengthen the system building for service integration; Chapter 4 includes longitudinal results from the Core Data Elements (CDE) survey and Family Stability Rubric (FSR) to summarize the ongoing service improvements. This report ends with Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Directions to review past recommendations and introduce new recommendations for next year. Netdraw, Quanteda in R, SAS and SPSS packages are employed to support data visualization, text analytics, and statistical computing. The report includes two appendices, 31 figures, 78 tables, and 129 reference items. [For "First 5 Kern Annual Report: Fiscal Year 2017-2018," see ED593233.]

This report contains evaluation findings from 43 programs that received a total of around $10 million state investment through Proposition 10 to support early childhood services in Kern County, California during Fiscal Year 2017-2018. The Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern) was established on December 15, 1998 by Ordinance G-6565 of the Kern County Board of Supervisors to administer the state trust funds from a 50 cent-per-pack tax on cigarette and other tobacco products. For justification of Outcome-Based Accountability, First 5 Kern is expected to provide an annual report on the return to state investment in Child Health, Family Functioning, Child Development, and Systems of Care. A five-chapter structure has been incorporated in this report to evaluate the funding impact on child well-being this year: Chapter 1 highlights features of First 5 Kern support at the Commission level; Chapter 2 provides program-specific findings that impact children ages 0-5 and their families; Chapter 3 describes results of partnership collaboration to strengthen the system building for service integration; Chapter 4 includes longitudinal results from the Core Data Elements (CDE) survey and Family Stability Rubric (FSR) to describe sustainable accomplishments through the ongoing service improvements. This report ends with Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Directions to review past recommendations and introduce new recommendations for next year. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were taken to address three key questions: (1) How much has been done in local child support; (2) How well did the programs perform this year? (3) Are any children and families better off? The report includes two appendices, 31 figures, 78 tables, and 129 reference items. [For "First 5 Kern Annual Report: Fiscal Year 2016-2017," see ED582032.]

Early childhood education programs play an important role in child family-to-school transition. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10, the California Children and Families Act, which levied a 50-cent tax on each pack of cigarettes and other tobacco products to finance programs for children ages 0-5. In less than two decades, First 5 Kern has administered more than $180 million from Proposition 10 to support early childhood services. Following the state statute to "use outcome-based accountability to determine future expenditures", this Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) includes three components: (1) configuration of the trend in program costs and benefits during 2010-2017; (2) review of comparable programs to support the transfer of long-term benefits from well-documented projects to First 5 Kern-funded programs; and (3) bootstrapping and value-added assessments of CBA outcomes across the adjacent funding cycles. Five research questions have been examined extensively in this trend data analyses across 39 programs: (1) How many programs have reached a status to pay for themselves with First 5 Kern funding? (2) What is the contribution of First 5 Kern, through partnership building, in improving the programs' financial conditions? (3) What programs would have been otherwise unavailable without First 5 Kern funding? (4) What programs became more sustainable, due to First 5 Kern's support for external fund leveraging, between the adjacent funding cycles? (5) What is the long-term return of First 5 Kern-funded programs and services? Value-added assessments have been conducted to discount the service benefit and cost in the 2018 dollar value. Bootstrapping methods were adopted to construct 95% confidence intervals for the benefit-cost ratio estimation. The result showed service benefits at least double Proposition 10 investments in Kern County during the seven-year period.

Since 1998, early childhood education and support services were funded by 50-cents-per-pack tobacco tax through Proposition 10 funding in California. In November, 2016, another proposal was endorsed by voters to add $2.00-per-pack tobacco tax for purposes unrelated to early childhood services, yet the decline of cigarette consumption will inevitably impact the existing programs funded by Proposition 10. In Fiscal Year 2016-17, First 5 Kern administered over $9 million of the state funding to support 42 programs in Child Health, Family Functioning, and Child Development across Kern County. This report is grounded on a model of result-based accountability to document outcomes of the local service delivery with less per-capital funding from the state. Despite the seemingly equal fund distribution based on the rate of live birth in each county, Kern County is the third largest county in California by land area, and more spending is needed to fund program outreach across a region as large as the state of New Jersey. To justify the state investment and sustain the service improvement, a five-chapter structure has been incorporated in this report to evaluate the funding impact on child well-being this year: Chapter 1 highlights features of First 5 Kern support at the Commission level; Chapter 2 provides program-specific findings that impact children ages 0-5 and their families; Chapter 3 describes results of partnership collaboration to strengthen the system building for service integration; Chapter 4 includes longitudinal results from the Core Data Elements (CDE) survey and Family Stability Rubric (FSR) to describe sustainable accomplishments through the ongoing service improvements. This report ends with Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Directions to review past recommendations and introduce new recommendations for next year. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were taken to address three key questions: (1) How much has been done in local child support; (2) How well did the programs perform this year? (3) Are any children and families better off? The report includes two appendices, 26 figures, 78 tables, and 116 reference items.

As the largest higher education system across the nation, California State University (CSU) has been championing advancements in instructional technology and teaching innovations across face-to-face, interactive television, hybrid, and online platforms. This report focuses on needs pertinent to the southern San Joaquin Valley and Antelope Valley. Thus, the report begins with an "Introduction" section describing the service region of CSU, Bakersfield (CSUB) in support of the Quality Assurance (QA) training for instructors and course certification for the institution. Recent CSUB initiatives are addressed in the "Campus QA Background" section to examine indicators of the ongoing capacity building in Academic Year (AY) 2016-17. In addition, "QA Professional Development" results are articulated with an overview of course certification status to facilitate analyses of student learning outcomes. Furthermore, contextual information is incorporated from the institutional research office to assess the impact of online and hybrid course offerings on students from diversified demographic backgrounds. The university transcript records are extracted to confirm the comparison of student performance in online, hybrid, and other course settings. Survey data are analyzed from 103 students who enrolled in online and/or hybrid courses taught by 10 instructors in AY 2016-17. The report concludes with recommendations for sustaining ongoing progress of the SQuAIR project at CSUB and beyond. [This report is an update of the report submitted to the Chancellor's Office of California State University on August 26, 2017.]

The California Children and Families Act of 1998 led to creation of the Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern) to support early childhood service programs in Kern County, the third largest county in California that spread a land area as large as the state of New Jersey. In Fiscal Year 2014-15, First 5 Kern administered more than $10 million to fund 39 programs in four focus areas, Child Health, Family Functioning, Child Development, and Systems of Care. The local investment came from a state trust fund established by a $0.50 per pack tax on cigarettes or equivalent tobacco products. Following a model of results-based accountability, multilevel evaluation findings are summarized in this report to assess the annual impact of the program funding and provide recommendations for service improvement. Five chapters are included in this report. Chapter 1 highlights features of First 5 Kern support; Chapter 2 provides program-specific findings that impact children ages 0-5 and their families; Chapter 3 describes results of partnership building to strengthen the capacity of service integration; Chapter 4 includes longitudinal results from the Core Data Elements (CDE) survey and Family Stability Rubric (FSR) to describe sustainable accomplishments through ongoing improvements. This report ends with Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Directions to review past recommendations and introduce new recommendations for next year. Quantitative and qualitative approaches have been taken to describe service outcomes in different communities, including the city of Bakersfield that has surpassed St. Louis in population size. The report includes two appendices: (1) Index of Program Acronyms; and (2) Technical Advisory Committee served in FY 2014-15.

Over the past three years, California State University, Bakersfield received NSF funding to support hands-on explorations in "network security" and "cryptography" through Research Experience Vitalizing Science-University Program (REVS-UP). In addition to the summer bridge component, the grant included development of "Multidisciplinary Information Assurance Curriculum" at the undergraduate level and offered Information Assurance (IA) education for community members. In this summative report, a Results-Based Accountability (RBA) model is employed to examine six research questions: (1) How much has been done in the delivery of REVS-UP learning opportunities for high school students during the four-week summer sessions? (2) What strengths did the project demonstrate to support IA education? (3) What is the program impact on key stakeholders? (4) How much has been done through the Dissemination Workshop for K-12 teachers? (5) How well did the program perform in the service delivery? (6) Is anyone better off due to this outreach effort? To sustain the program improvement, qualitative and quantitative data are triangulated to assess "what works," "for whom," and "in which context" under a Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) paradigm. The report concludes with a "Future Direction" section to examine the program setting on the REVS-UP platform. An appendix contains: Poster Presentations of Four IA Research Projects.

Proposition 10, also known as the California Children and Families Act of 1998, is the legislation for creating Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern). Over the past 15 years, First 5 Kern administered a trust fund from a $.50 per pack tax on cigarettes or equivalent tobacco products to support children ages 0-5 and their families in Kern County. Guided by its strategic plan, First 5 Kern has allocated more than $160 million since its inception to support early childhood services in local communities. In Fiscal Year 2013-14, First 5 Kern spent over $10 million to fund 40 programs in Child Health, Family Functioning, and Child Development. Approximate 7.5% of the annual budget was devoted to strengthening systems of care through service integration. Following a model of results-based accountability, this report summarizes multilevel evaluation findings to show what works, for whom, and in which context of early childhood development in Kern County. The report includes five chapters: Chapter 1: highlights features of First 5 Kern support; Chapter 2: provides program-specific findings that impact children ages 0-5 and their families; Chapter 3: describes results of partnership building to strengthen the capacity of service integration; Chapter 4: includes longitudinal results from the Core Data Elements (CDE) survey and Family Stability Rubric (FSR) to describe sustainable accomplishments through ongoing improvements. This report ends with Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Directions to clarify recommendations for stakeholders across a region as large as the state of New Jersey. Quantitative and qualitative approaches have been taken to describe service outcomes in different communities, including the city of Bakersfield that has surpassed St. Louis in population size. The report follows the Statewide Evaluation Framework for Proposition 10 and conforms to the Utility, Feasibility, Propriety, and Accuracy standards for program evaluation. The report also includes appendices: (1) Index of Program Acronyms; and (2) Technical Advisory Committee served in FY 2013-14 and Current Year.

"Models for Information Assurance Education and Outreach" (MIAEO) is an NSF-funded, three-year project to support hands-on explorations in "network security" and "cryptography" through Research Experience Vitalizing Science-University Program (REVS-UP) at California State University, Bakersfield. In addition, the program incorporates components of curriculum development for undergraduate students and public forums for community members. During the second year of grant operation, MIAEO supported completion of five research projects in the "Information Assurance" domain. The hands-on exploration occurred during a four-week summer section and involved two professors, two university student assistants, two K-12 teachers, and 18 high school students. Besides evaluating the REVS-UP impact, this report includes assessment of compelling evidence in program development across the levels of "Intended Curriculum", "Implemented Curriculum", and "Attained Curriculum". Feedback from the community outreach events has been gathered to show significant improvement of service outcome over last year. The report concludes with four recommendations to sustain the program effectiveness in the third year. The following are appended: (1) Poster Presentations of Five IA Research Projects; and (2) ISPS Speaker Event.

Over the past five years, California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) recruited 39 Noyce Scholars for STEM teacher preparation in high-needs schools. As of April 1, 2014, the program has saved approximate $150,000 of NSF funding for this grant. In this summative report, program effectiveness has been examined in three aspects, "Noyce Scholar recruitment," "institutional support for teacher preparation," and "the concurrent impact on high-needs schools." The evaluation design conforms to a well-established model of Results-Based Accountability to address nine questions: (1) How much has been done in student recruitment? (2) How well did the program perform in student recruitment? (3) Did high-needs schools benefit from the Noyce Scholar recruitment? (4) How much has been done to meet STEM teacher requirements? (5) How well did the program do to enrich STEM learning opportunities? (6) Did the program benefit teacher preparation in high-needs schools? (7) How much has been accomplished in program support? (8) How well did the program do in grant administration? (9) Did the program benefit student learning in high-needs schools? Professional standards in teacher education have been incorporated to facilitate the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data from Noyce Scholar surveys, interviews, and transcript analyses. Three recommendations are adduced to support teacher preparation during the no cost extension.

On September 22, 2012, NSF announced its decision to fund a three-year project, "Models for Information Assurance Education and Outreach" (MIAEO). In the first year of grant operation, MIAEO has invited 18 high school students, two K-12 teachers, and two CSUB student assistants to conduct research explorations in the fields of "network security" and "cryptography." The hands-on investigation was led by the PI and Co-PI in 2013 summer, and produced five poster presentations through "Research Experience Vitalizing Science-University Program" (REVS-UP) at California State University, Bakersfield. In addition, MIAEO faculty worked on curriculum developments in "Information Assurance" (IA) across multiple departments, and organized a public symposium to expand IA education for approximate 120 community members. Methods employed in this evaluation report include document examinations, participant surveys, and social network analyses. The qualitative and quantitative findings lead to four recommendations to sustain the ongoing progress. An appendix includes: Poster Presentations of Five IA Research Projects.

Since 2007, Chevron has funded the Research Experience Vitalizing Science -- University Program (REVS-UP), which lasts four weeks each summer to develop Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) projects at CSUB [California State University, Bakersfield]. Over the past six years, a total of 26 STEM professors have led the completion of 113 research projects with the support of 90 CSUB student assistants, 384 high school students, and 84 teachers from K-12 schools. The hands-on research experience has rejuvenated student interest in STEM discoveries and enhanced subject competency for K-12 teachers. In addition, professors received the team support to fulfill their research agendas, and CSUB student assistants gained service-learning experiences. This report concludes with five recommendations to sustain the trend of program enhancement. (Contains 30 footnotes and 23 figures.)

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) received funding from National Science Foundation's (NSF) Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program to recruit Noyce Scholars from upper-division science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, graduate students, and professionals switched to STEM teaching from other fields (NSF DUE-0934944). The program purpose is to increase the number of highly qualified science and math teachers at high-needs schools. This report is based on multilevel quantitative and qualitative data from university records, program minutes, as well as individual-level information gatherings from Noyce Scholars and Advisors. In addition, the report design is grounded on a thorough review of updated literature to ensure its conformation to best professional practices. The results show that the program quality is supported involvement of a group of award-winning faculty in STEM education, and significant GPA improvement has been observed among Noyce Scholars since last year. The program is also enriched by more research or internship experiences led by faculty of STEM education. Besides improvement of overall student experiences at CSUB, Noyce Scholars graduated from the program have demonstrated their success in supporting student learning at high-needs schools. Two appendixes include: (1) Questionnaire for Noyce Recipients Before Program Completion; and (2) Questionnaire for Noyce Recipients After Program Completion. (Contains 6 figures, 1 table, and 3 footnotes.)