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School leaders, specifically principals, play a pivotal role in shaping student learning outcomes. The benefits of strong leaders extend beyond academic achievement, such as reductions in absenteeism and exclusionary discipline. While quality principals are critical for creating and sustaining quality schools, the staffing pipeline is facing significant challenges. In the context of these challenges, and recognizing the critical influence of effective leadership on student success, many states have recently enacted policies to better recruit, support and retain principals and other school leaders. This Policy Snapshot reviews trends in recent state legislation from 2022 to 2024 and highlights examples of both proposed and enacted laws in four key areas: (1) Certification and preparation; (2) Professional development; (3) Evaluation; and (4) Financial incentives and compensation.

As school systems work to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, states continue to grapple with persistent teacher shortages, a lack of teachers of color in the workforce, and high turnover rates undermining recruitment efforts. Teachers' effectiveness and their likelihood of staying in teaching are strongly influenced by the quality of preparation they receive, and well-designed teacher residencies have been found to support both of these outcomes. Research suggests that teacher candidates who receive their preparation through teacher residencies--which combine comprehensive, financially supported preparation with a post-program service requirement--tend to be retained in their districts longer than other candidates, on average, thereby lowering rates of new teacher attrition and reducing the need to hire more new teachers. This research is based on the initial designs for residencies that guided the federal legislation on residencies and several early state adoptions. States and the federal government are seeking policy strategies to better recruit, prepare, and retain a qualified teacher workforce. To understand the growing evidence and policy landscape, this report begins with an overview of research on the teacher residency model and then describes state and federal policy trends and opportunities supporting teacher residencies. This includes a look across recent efforts in 12 states to fund and grow high-quality, research-aligned residencies: Arizona, California, Delaware, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia.

Unlike vouchers and tax credit scholarships that do not allow parents to customize their children's education, Education savings accounts (ESAs) provide funding to pay for part-time classes at public and private schools, tutoring, curricula, services for special needs, and more. As navigating the opportunities that come with ESAs can be difficult, there is a growing movement to include "choice navigators" as an eligible expense in ESA programs, which can inform parents what educational opportunities are available and help tailor an education program for their children. This paper examines several key elements, including determining the types of navigation services that parents need in the changing education landscape; identifying best practices that states can adopt to simplify ESA navigation; tapping into the experiences of current ESA users and traditional homeschoolers; and deciding whether there are policies that can encourage an adequate supply of navigators without creating counterproductive rules.

This chartbook is the 14th version to be produced for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The Chartbook describes the diversity of the Appalachian Region on a host of demographic and economic measures and provides an important annual view of the area and its people. The data contained in the 2018-2022 Chartbook describe how residents in the Appalachian Region were faring before and during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020. Nearly half of the years during this time period were pre-pandemic and half were during the pandemic era. Thus, this Chartbook is a blend of these two eras. As future data releases reflect the post-pandemic era, data users will have additional insights on the long-term changes that the pandemic brought to Appalachia's social and economic dynamics. Most of the data shown here come from the 2018-2022 American Community Survey (ACS), a nationwide study collected continuously every year in every county in the United States by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ACS is designed to provide communities with reliable and timely demographic, social, economic, and housing data each year. To provide as much county-level data as possible, we use ACS 5-year data files which provide reliable estimates for geographic areas with fewer than 20,000 people. Since many counties in the Appalachian Region have fewer than 20,000 residents, these data permit comparable statistics for all 423 counties in the Region. The primary purpose of the ACS is to measure the changing characteristics of the U.S. population in a way that is continually updated. The estimates in this Chartbook, therefore, are data collected over the five-year (or 60-month) period from January 2018 through December 2022. These ACS estimates are not averages of monthly or annual values, but rather an aggregation of data collected continuously over that time period.

The purpose of this document is to provide the reader with a general understanding regarding the roles and responsibilities of professional student support personnel in West Virginia schools and how, through a collaborative partnership, they can work together to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for WV students. Research confirms that students do better in school when they receive social-emotional and mental health support. They miss fewer classes, concentrate more, are less likely to engage in risky or antisocial behavior, and achieve higher test scores. The most effective way to implement integrated services that support school safety and student learning is through a school-wide multitiered system of support (MTSS). Effective MTSS requires: (1) adequate access to school-employed professional student support personnel and community-based services; (2) integration of services (social-emotional learning, mental health, medical health, behavioral supports, academic supports, school-based services, and community services); (3) adequate staff time for planning and problem-solving; (4) effective collection, evaluation, interpretation, and use of data; (5) patience, commitment, collaborations, and strong leadership; and (6) understanding the various roles of the many student support personnel and how they work together for the benefit of every child. The West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) recognizes the effectiveness of a multi-tiered system of support and is committed to ensuring equitable education opportunities through the West Virginia Tiered System of Support (WVTSS), a multi-tiered systems framework. WVTSS emphasizes the integration of academics, behavior, and mental health as uniformly critical to student success and focuses on the cohesive system of support rather than interventions alone.

Home visiting connects expectant parents, new caregivers, and their young children with a support person, called a home visitor. The home visitor meets regularly with the family, develops a relationship with them, and supports them to achieve their goals and meet their needs. To reach the thousands of additional families who could benefit from home visiting, we must increase support for culturally relevant and family-centered models. A new report -- "Community-Based Home Visiting: Fidelity to Families, Commitment to Outcomes" -- delves into the unique strengths and challenges of community-based home visiting models, whose design and measures of success intentionally center the perspectives of the families and communities they serve. These models are often developed by those with experience with the unique cultures, strengths, and solutions of he community they live in and aim to serve. This report summarizes themes from listening sessions with 30+ community-based home visiting models from across the country. It offers policy and funding recommendations that would improve support for these models and therefore families' access to home visiting that best meets their goals. [Additional support was provided by the National Home Visiting Coalition Steering Committee.]

Funding for community colleges varies significantly, even within the same state. Several factors account for these differences, including more generous funding for smaller institutions to compensate for their higher costs per student, unequal local funding from property tax revenues, and political forces. In theory, this variation could lead to systemic inequities in funding levels by race, ethnicity, and economic status. Such inequities could arise if students from historically underserved groups are concentrated in community colleges that receive the lowest levels of funding from state and local appropriations. This analysis finds no such consistent patterns across the nation but does find concerning patterns in a few states. Significant differences in funding levels across states are likely to be the result of differences in state and local postsecondary support at all levels, priorities attached to two-year versus four-year institutions, and methods of allocating resources among eligible institutions. In addition, allocation systems, combined with demographic differences among community college students, can create sizeable differences in funding levels among the institutions within a state. This analysis focuses on these funding differences across community colleges within states, investigating the prevalence of differences in state and local funding levels between Black students and all other students, Hispanic students and all other students, and low-income students (proxied by the receipt of Pell grants) and higher-income students.

Implementation of ESA programs will not be easy. The ESA model is novel and foreign to most state education agencies, which have little to no experience with helping families purchase a wide variety of educational goods and services using government funds. Even if agencies had the relevant experience, ESA programs are complex, involving millions of individual transactions as thousands of families make purchases from thousands of schools and other education providers. EdChoice developed this guide to help state agencies succeed as they roll out ESA programs. EdChoice's goal is to ensure that ESA programs achieve their purpose: to empower families to choose the best education for their children.

The growth of homeschooling from a somewhat fringe movement during the 1970s and 1980s to a more widespread and socially accepted approach in recent decades has provided a strong foundation of flexible learning models. When Florida's school choice expansion, House Bill 1, was introduced in January 2023, one of its goals was to allow more homeschoolers to participate in the education savings account (ESA) program. But many homeschoolers and homeschool advocacy groups balked at the proposal. Having worked hard to achieve independence, they were loath to be linked to government funding. Even if the program were optional, they feared that associated regulations would eventually extend to traditional homeschoolers. In the end, the bill passed with new language that satisfied traditional homeschoolers by creating a new option for parents to educate their children at home. As states continue to enact and expand education savings accounts, Colleen Hroncich argues that it is crucial that policymakers craft bills in a way that maximizes freedom and minimizes roadblocks.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps people with low incomes avoid hunger and afford food. It stimulates the economy, improves individuals' success at school and work, and promotes better health. SNAP's Employment and Training (E&T) program is designed to assist participants in gaining skills, training, or work experience that helps them obtain regular employment. States operate these programs and have flexibility in the services they provide, who receives them, and the entities that deliver these services. However, SNAP E&T has onerous restrictions and entrenched biases that most hurt communities of color. Several policies are rooted in racism and classism. By perpetuating systems of oppression, SNAP E&T pushes critical nutrition aid out of reach. These obstacles keep the program from serving as a supportive pathway to opportunity. In this report, we analyze these challenges and offer recommendations to advance racial equity within SNAP E&T and make it function more effectively.

The West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) Office of Federal Programs conducted a routine monitoring of Upshur County in December of 2022. This resulted in a report of findings which was completed February 10, 2023. Per Federal Program protocols, counties are provided 60 days to respond to findings; establishing Upshur County's deadline for response as May 8, 2023. The State Superintendent of Schools notified the Office of Accountability the week of May 8, 2023, of his intent to commence a Special Circumstance Review of Upshur County Schools. This put into motion planning phases inclusive of team members from the Offices of Accountability, Federal Programs, and Finance. The team began its Special Circumstance Review of Upshur County Schools on May 22, 2023. The review process, consisting of interviews and document review, is being conducted as outlined in West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) Policy 2322: West Virginia System of Support and Accountability. The review team compiled the information gathered thus far during the onsite review. This report will be presented to the West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) at the June 2023 meeting. The Review is on-going.

Most states in the United States operate their public preschool programs in a mixed delivery system that serves children in local education agencies (LEAs) as well as non-LEA settings, such as Head Start agencies, child care centers, private schools, and family child care homes. To inform state preschool administrators and policymakers as they refine their mixed delivery systems, this report describes the mixed delivery systems of five states that have taken different approaches to supporting providers across settings. The five states discussed in this report include: (1) Alabama; (2) Michigan; (3) New Jersey; (4) New York; and (5) West Virginia. This report answers the following questions: (1) What is the landscape of mixed delivery in select states' preschool programs? (2) How are state preschool contracts awarded, and what supports are provided to non-LEAs to participate? and (3) What are quality requirements, and who monitors and is ultimately responsible for program quality?

Much attention has been focused on the importance of providing physical and mental health services to students in educational environments in recent years. Millions of students receive school-based health services, and for many students, schools are their first and only option to receive health care. State policymakers have a lot to consider in this policy area, including funding, workforce needs and coordination of efforts across agencies. State leaders are not only enabling health services to be offered in schools but working to ensure equitable access to those services for students who may otherwise struggle to receive them. This Policy Brief outlines how some states have been using school-based health services in K-12 environments -- particularly through the school-based health center (SBHC) and community school models -- to pursue equitable access to both physical and mental health services for all students.

The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) is the nation's first federal nutrition education program for low-income populations. Without question, accelerating equity in programming has long been a priority of EFNEP. Historically underserved populations with limited financial resources are often people of color and at increased risk for diet-related diseases. EFNEP contributes to nutrition security as program families and youths gained knowledge and skills for healthier food and physical activity choices, increased food resource management (shopping and food preparation), food safety, and improved food security practices to keep healthy in challenging times. Consistent with previous years, adult and youth participants in FY 2022 reported improved behaviors following program involvement. More than 90% of adult EFNEP participants reported improvement in what they ate. National EFNEP priorities for FY 2022 included facilitating workforce development, increasing program reach, and increasing appropriate use of technology in teaching. This report reflects how EFNEP continues to make a difference in the lives of low-income families and youths, even and especially in times of adversity. [For the 2021 report, see ED623567.]

A strategy for addressing persistent teacher shortages is to increase the number of viable teacher candidates enrolling in quality preparation programs from which candidates graduate ready for the classroom on day one. This research report, utilizing data collected through a review of the relevant literature and interviews with a convenience sample of five West Virginia educator preparation programs and three teacher residency programs from across the country, examines current challenges to recruiting individuals to the teaching profession and presents several approaches to improving recruitment of high-quality and diverse teacher candidates. These include implementing data systems to support effective recruitment, establishing partnerships between educator preparation programs and school systems, expanding the pool from which candidates are recruited, employing high-touch recruiting practices, and making preparation programs more accessible to traditionally underserved populations.

To ensure each county board of education provides a thorough and efficient education for its students, the West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) annually reviews county scorecards and efficiency profiles provided by the Office of Support & Accountability. County status is reviewed and determined based on multiple measures of student performance and county operational efficiency. The WVBE will review annually the information submitted by the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) and issue each county board of education an approval status. This report shares the County Efficiency Indicator Status, Counties with Support Balanced Scorecard Student Performance and Success Indicator(s), and Counties with On Watch Balanced Scorecard Student Performance and Success Indicator(s).

West Virginia's three state-funded medical schools enroll more medical students per capita than any other state in the country. Due to its large number of medical student slots, the state typically can offer all qualified West Virginians the opportunity to complete their medical education in the state. In the academic year of 2023, 25 percent (200) of the 828 medical students who enrolled in the first-year classes of the state's three medical schools were West Virginia residents. This report provides information on health sciences in West Virginia including: (1) Medical School Profiles; (2) Medical Licensure Exams; (3) Medical School Indebtedness; (4) Residency Training; (5) Medical School Graduate Retention for Practice in West Virginia; (6) Pharmacy Program Profiles; (7) Dentistry Program Profiles; (8) Loans and Incentives; and (9) Rural Health Initiative Program.

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes three types of state policies that aim to attain three purposes: (1) Differentiated pay: To attract teachers to traditionally hard-to-staff subjects or schools; (2) Performance pay: To reward high-performing teachers; and (3) Pay for prior work: To compensate teacher candidates for prior experience relevant to teaching. With the influx of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, some states have designed new or expanded already existing initiatives aimed to attract or retain teachers to hard-to-staff positions. The analysis in this report includes these state strategies, while acknowledging that they might only remain in place temporarily while ESSER funds remain available. [For the the second report in this three-part series, "State of the States 2021: Teacher Preparation Policy," see ED611532.]

The American Community Survey (ACS), a nationwide study collected continuously every year in every county in the United States, is designed to provide communities with reliable and timely demographic, social, economic, and housing data each year. These ACS estimates are not averages of monthly or annual values, but rather an aggregation of data collected over the five-year period. The data contained in this Chartbook describe how residents in the Appalachian Region were faring before and during the initial 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020. As such, these numbers do not measure the social and economic impact of the outbreak beyond 2020. As data from the pandemic and post-pandemic period are released in the coming years, these figures can serve as a point of comparison that ultimately can enable data users to better measure the pandemic's effect on Appalachia's social and economic dynamics. [For the 2015-2019 Chartbook, see ED613609.]

The U.S. and West Virginia constitutions acknowledge the right to free speech, which must be protected at public colleges, but Senate Bill 657, which became law in 2021, requires that public colleges protect "any lawful verbal and nonverbal speech." Furthermore, many private colleges also promise free speech to their students. However a campus-climate survey published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in 2021 found that 5-in-6 college students have self-censored because of how they perceived other students, a professor, or the college administration would respond. Two-thirds of college students agreed that it was acceptable to shout down a campus speaker or to try to prevent them from speaking. FIRE reviewed the restrictions on free speech at 17 public or private colleges and universities in West Virginia and found 92 policies that restrict freedom of speech. This report reviews FIRE's ratings, gives examples of restrictive policies, and recommends ways to improve students' free speech rights. [The report was written in partnership with the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy.]

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is now more than twenty years beyond its inception when it was built on the concept that digital materials make learning content easy to reuse and share. This report discusses current legislative trends in OER and offers recommended OER practices for states.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation and impacts of the Building Assets, Reducing Risks (BARR) model in its first year of implementation in 66 schools across the U.S. and to document scale-up progress during the Investing in Innovation (i3) grant period (2017-2021). The impact evaluation included 21,529 9th grade students and 524 teachers from 66 schools across three cohorts (2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 school years). The schools were recruited from 12 states and the District of Columbia, with a focus on relatively low-performing schools and districts. Schools in each cohort were randomly selected to receive the BARR model immediately (the treatment group) or receive BARR after one year (a 'wait-list' control group) to provide a reference for measuring the impacts of the BARR model on a range of academic and nonacademic outcomes after the first year of implementation. Across the three study cohorts combined, BARR had substantial and statistically significant impacts on the proportion of students who passed all their core courses. BARR had a statistically significant impact on student achievement for mathematics, but not for reading, as measured by the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), for the two combined cohorts for which this outcome was available. Assignment to BARR caused a negative (favorable) impact on the percentage of students who were chronically absent but did not have a statistically significant impact on suspension rates or persistence to 10th grade across the combined cohorts. The evaluation also found significant positive program effects on seven of nine measures of teacher experiences, with the most substantial effects on teacher collaboration with and view of colleagues, teacher use of data, and teachers' views of school supports. Schools assigned to receive the BARR model as part of the evaluation experienced both challenges and successes in implementing the eight BARR model components with fidelity. BARR Center also made significant progress in implementing the six scaling strategies they considered important to grow and sustain the model over time. The findings from this evaluation indicate that BARR is an effective model for schools aiming to improve students' transitions into ninth grade, reduce course failure, and narrow existing gaps in student academic outcomes between different demographic subgroups of students. [The report was written with Ashley Sunde, So Jung Park, Briana Garcia, and Connie Chandra.]