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With a qualitative approach drawing from four focus groups, this study explored what aspects of preschool are valued most by 30 low-income Latino/a immigrant parents with children enrolled in a state-funded preschool program in Texas. Beyond the push and pull factors of necessity, convenience, and supply, parents reported valuing the responsiveness of schools to families' needs and concerns, the provision of a safe and developmentally appropriate environment, the role of preschool in both care and education, the incorporation of parents within the school, and the school's capacity for developing parents' human and navigational capital. Even though parents saw great value in preschool preparing their children for school and helping themselves as parents, there was also fear and mistrust in neighborhood schools that was rooted in discrimination and long-term educational inequality. [This article will be published in "Early Childhood Research Quarterly."]

The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) identified a need for a comprehensive set of best practices in nutrition education for low-income audiences for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) educational projects, including SNAP-Ed. A comprehensive list of best practices would promote consistency and efficacy in program planning, implementation, and evaluation. In addition, the use of best practices increases confidence that education efforts will result in positive nutrition and health-related behavior changes. Colorado State University (CSU) researchers were charged with identifying best practices, and then involved an expert panel. Seven panel members were chosen based on their experience with nutrition education of low-income populations as program leaders, program implementers, and researchers at universities and public health organizations. Best practices were also substantiated from a review of the research literature. Twenty-eight best practices within five domains were identified, recognizing that nutrition education is most effective when delivered through multiple levels of the Social-Ecological Model. These best practices are appropriate for both direct and indirect delivery of nutrition education to both adult and youth audiences. The expert panel also identified potential data sources to be used by nutrition educators to determine if and to what extent their programs are including best practices. Links to resources are also included for additional information and self-study. In addition to resources, case studies of selected low-income nutrition education programs are included as real-world examples of planning, implementing, and evaluating specific best practices. This resource can be used as a self-assessment tool to identify both program strengths and areas for improvement to better align programs with best practices. Additionally, this resource may serve as a guide for future educator training topics, or as a tool for strategic and long-term program planning. As more programs successfully implement and use these best practices, fidelity and efficacy of nutrition education improves. Best practices are not limited for use by program leaders, but may also be used by managers and outside evaluators at local, state, and national levels, state SNAP agencies, FNS at a regional and national level, and other low-income nutrition education programs.

Despite decades of policy intervention to increase college entry among low-income students, considerable gaps by socioeconomic status remain. To date, policy makers have largely overlooked the summer after high school as an important time period in students' transition to college. In Summer 2012, the authors designed a randomized trial to investigate the efficacy of text messaging as a strategy to mitigate summer attrition. In collaboration with five urban school districts, implemented was a text messaging campaign in which the authors sent students (and in four school districts, their parents) a series of 8-10 text message reminders of key tasks to complete over the summer. The reminders were customized to the institutions at which students intended to enroll and provided recipients with the option of requesting help from a counselor. Approximately 25 percent of treatment group students clicked through at least one of the customized links included in the messages, while 35-50 percent of recipients responded to at least one message. Of these respondents, a considerable share requested a counselor meeting. In addition, counselors commonly indicated that the text messaging campaign allowed them to focus more time on providing students with college-related services rather than doing outreach. These findings are relevant both to ongoing policy efforts to increase college-going among low-income students, and more generally to efforts to harness technology to improve students' educational outcomes.

Raising academic standards and eliminating achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are America's prime national educational goals. Current federal and state policies, however, largely ignore the fact that the childhood poverty rate in the United States is 21%, the highest in the industrialized world, and that poverty substantially impedes these children's ability to learn and to succeed in school. In addition to important school-based educational resources like effective teaching, reasonable class sizes, and up-to-date learning materials, these children need additional comprehensive services, specifically, early childhood, health, after-school and other extended learning opportunities, and family supports. These services can be provided cost-effectively, and it is vital not only to children's welfare, but also to the country's democratic future and continued economic competitiveness in the global marketplace that such comprehensive services be provided on a large scale. This first of a five part series seeks to establish a moral, statutory, and constitutional basis for a right to comprehensive educational opportunity. The asserted right has firm ideological underpinnings in the "American dream" credo that affirms the competitive nature of our society, but justifies its fairness on a presumption that all children will be provided a basic education that will prepare them to go as far as their individual talents and motivation will take them. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) implicitly establishes a statutory right to comprehensive educational opportunity through its stated goal of providing "fair, equal and substantial" educational opportunities to all children and its mandate that all children be proficient in meeting challenging state standards by 2014; in the pending reauthorization of NCLB this implicit right should be made explicit. The constitutional arguments are based on both state and federal precedents. Dozens of state courts throughout the country have held that children have a constitutional right to a "sound basic education"; some of these cases have specifically held that the state constitution imposes an obligation on the state to create an education that overcomes the effects of poverty. The federal argument is based on an extensive consideration of a broad range of equal protection cases under all three of the Supreme Court's equal protection categories. First, probing an issue the Court left open in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez," 411 U.S. 1 (1973); evidence and precedents from the state sound basic education cases demonstrate that that an adequate education is a necessary pre-requisite for students to exercise their free speech and voting rights; a sound basic education-- and one that incorporates necessary comprehensive services--therefore, does constitute a fundamental interest under the federal constitution, a denial of which is entitled to strict scrutiny analysis. Next based on the precedent of "Plyler v. Doe," 457 U.S. 202 (1982), failing to provide children from backgrounds of poverty a meaningful educational opportunity will "perpetuate a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare and crime," and their plight is, therefore, entitled at least to intermediate level scrutiny. Finally, even under the less demanding rational relationship standard, recent "second order" precedents indicate that the present practice of providing some, but far from all, low income students with vitally needed comprehensive services creates "two tiers" of citizens, a pattern that strongly offends the concept of equal protection. [The author is grateful to the Smart Family Foundation, the James and Judith K. Dimon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation for their support of this research. For "Providing Comprehensive Educational Opportunity to Low Income Students. Part 2: How Much Does It Cost?," see ED573119; for "Providing Comprehensive Educational Opportunity to Low Income Students. Part 3: How Much Does New York City Now Spend on Children's Services?, see ED573121; for "Providing Comprehensive Educational Opportunity to Low Income Students. Part 4: What Are the Social and Economic Returns?," see ED573122; and for "Providing Comprehensive Educational Opportunity to Low Income Students. Part 5: A Proposal for Essential Standards and Resources. A Report of the Task Force on Comprehensive Educational Opportunity," see ED573123.]

This report presents early implementation and operational lessons from the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation. Funded by the Administration for Children and Families, SHM uses a rigorous research design to test the effectiveness of a new approach to improving outcomes for low-income children: strengthening the marriages and relationships of their parents as a foundation for family well-being. It also uses implementation research to document and assess how the organizations that were selected to be in the study are implementing the SHM model. The SHM model is for low-income married couples and includes three components: "relationship and marriage education workshops" that teach strategies for managing conflict and effective communication, "supplemental activities" that build on workshop themes and skills through educational and social events, and "family support services" that pair couples with specialized staff who facilitate participation and connect couples with needed services. In the first year of program implementation, SHM providers focused on three main tasks: developing effective marketing and recruitment strategies, keeping couples engaged in the program, and building management structures and systems. Lessons in these three areas from implementation analyses are the focus of this report. Appendices include: (1) Relationship and Marriage Education Curricula Used by SHM Program Operators; and (2) Profiles of Local SHM Program Operators. Individual chapters contain footnotes. (Contains 9 tables, 2 figures and 7 boxes.) [Dissemination of MDRC publications receives additional support from the Sandler Foundation and The Starr Foundation.]

Higher education has become more accessible than ever before, although students from some demographic groups still face challenges in attending college. To help improve access to higher education for minority and low-income students, Titles III and V of the Higher Education Act, as amended, provide grants to strengthen and support institutions that enroll large proportions of these students. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to testify on the Department of Education's (Education) oversight of institutions receiving Title III or V grants and progress Education has made in monitoring the financial and programmatic performance of Title III and V grantees. GAO's testimony is based primarily on its recent report, "Low-Income and Minority Serving Institutions: Management Attention to Long-standing Concerns Needed to Improve Education's Oversight of Grant Programs" (GAO-09-309, August 2009) and updated information provided by Education. In that report, GAO recommended that Education, among other things, (1) develop a comprehensive, risk-based approach to target monitoring and technical assistance; (2) ensure staff training needs are fully met; (3) disseminate information about implementation challenges and successful projects; and (4) develop appropriate feedback mechanisms. No new recommendations are being made in this testimony. (Contains 4 tables and 7 footnotes.)

This study seeks to build on and contribute to research about the access to academic success of economically disadvantaged university students. The researchers aimed to answer the broad question, "How can a public university most effectively and efficiently facilitate the access to academic success and on-time degree completion of low-income students?" Information and data were collected from three large, public universities for comparison and analysis of the persistence and timely graduation of their low-income freshmen participating in "access and success" programs at each institution. Each institution has developed and implemented a robust access and success program and are all operating at different phases of development. The study provides predictive characteristics identifying those students who may be most at risk for academic underachievement in their first year. The study also provides insight into student perceptions of program strengths and weaknesses. Taken together, these outcomes may inform the efforts of institutions to more effectively allocate resources in support of low-income student academic success initiatives. A list of bibliography and references is included. (Contains 7 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Too many low-income, Hispanic, and African-American students in Texas's 50 largest districts are not getting their fair share of the best teachers, or the money it takes to pay for them. This report documents sometimes stunning inequities in teacher credentials, teacher experience, teacher turnover and average teacher salaries among schools within the 50 largest Texas school districts. It also describes how these inequities stack the deck against the educational success of low-income students and students of color throughout the state. (Contains 29 endnotes.)

Noting that high-quality preschool increases the ability of low-income children to profit from elementary and secondary education, thereby increasing their high school graduation rate and generating economic and other returns for taxpayers, this report articulates and analyzes the economic benefits of providing a high-quality preschool education to all low-income 3- and 4-year-olds in the United States, and especially in the Entergy [utilities conglomerate] states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Data were obtained through previously published reports on the benefits of providing preschool to poor children, with additional original research to fill in information gaps. The report notes that benefits of high-quality preschool include reduction in crime; increases in high school graduation rates; increased employment, income, and tax levels; and decreases in health care, welfare, and child care expenses. The estimation of costs for high-quality, part-day, part-year programs was based on the actual average per-child costs of the Head Start program, including federal administrative and support costs. Benefits are identified for both taxpayers and program participants. The report concludes by contending that providing a high-quality preschool education to all low-income children makes good economic sense and that not doing so leaves the nation vulnerable to poorly educated, poorly motivated, low-wage-earning individuals with a greater propensity toward criminal activity. The report's two appendices include tables summarizing benefits by state and describe the extent of American and Southern poverty. (KB)

This report and policy brief synthesizes findings from five reports on the experiences of low-income parents, child care providers, and state child care systems in Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Texas, and Washington. In recent years, there has been increased national funding for child care but deteriorating economic conditions that could jeopardize programmatic gains. The number of families and children receiving subsidy assistance has increased substantially since 1996, as has the number needing assistance, and demand is outstripping supply. Low-income families with subsidies are more likely to access formal and regulated child care than their unsubsidized peers, but low payment rates and insufficient supply of necessary and appropriate child care may limit their ability to access a broad range of care. Although most subsidized children receive care in licensed settings, there is little information about the quality of these settings, and even less information about the quality of license-exempt and informal child care settings. Recent increases in funding may have helped low-income families afford higher quality care. Recommendations for federal policymakers in the areas of funding, quality, administrative barriers, access to a broad array of care, and data collection are presented. An appendix includes executive summaries of the five reports. (SM)

This issue brief details shortcomings of the current Title I comparability provision and provides recommendations for how to improve it. The paper includes a detailed examination of the inequities within school districts, the loopholes in the law that allow these inequities, the repercussions of unequal distribution of resources, and recommendations for how to make school resources within districts more equitable. (Contains 4 tables, 1 footnote, and 45 endnotes.)

This study asks the question: what are the promising practices for transferring students from two-year to four-year institutions? To answer this question, the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education conducted a study to examine the institutional characteristics, practices, and policies that might contribute to assuring that students matriculate and excel in community college and transfer to four-year institutions. The authors focused on six Texas community colleges that had higher than predicted transfer rates of low-socioeconomic status (SES) students. Their analysis identified three common themes or characteristics, each consisting of institutional programs and policies that appear to contribute to higher than expected transfer rates. They call these three characteristics: (1) A Structured Academic Pathway; (2) A Student-centered Culture; and (3) A Culturally-sensitive Leadership. All of the colleges in this study cultivate a culture of transfer. They ensure that their students are well-informed about the transfer process and supported, both academically and socially. These three characteristics and their individual components are described in this report. Appendices include: (1) Quantitative Analysis; (2) Staff & Faculty Interview Guide; (3) Student Interview Guide; and (4) Institutional Profile Matrix. (Contains 2 footnotes, 4 tables, and 5 charts.) [This report was written with the assistance of C. Adolfo Bermeo.]

For decades, college tuition costs have been skyrocketing, yet state financial aid has failed to meet the increasing economic needs of college students -- leaving many young people with the choice of bridging the financial gap by taking out student loans or not attending college at all. This pressing issue of rising college tuition is not just a matter of economic inconvenience; it is a harbinger of deepening racial and socioeconomic inequalities. The lack of financial aid disproportionately deters Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds from pursuing higher education and earning a college degree. In this report, we explore state financial aid funding and associated program requirements in 10 distinct states: California, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. In it, we shed light on the 12 key eligibility requirements that often serve as barriers for students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, undocumented students, and justice-impacted students to afford college: (1) Program type (Need, Merit, or Need and Merit); (2) FAFSA completion required; (3) Alternative to FAFSA; (4) Low-income requirement; (5) Available without standardized test score; (6) Available without mandated GPA; (7) Marginalized student populations included; (8) FAFSA as a state high-school graduation requirement; (9) Institution types eligible; (10) Average undergraduate cost of attendance (COA) for in-state students (2022-23 academic year); (11) Annual award amount description; and (12) Enrollment intensity. This analysis is designed to help educators, policymakers, and advocates better understand the barriers, strengths, limitations, and influences that state financial aid programs can have on the ability of students of color and students from low-income backgrounds to access and afford college.

Prior research has determined that low-income students lose more ground over the summer than their higher-income peers. Prior research has also shown that some summer learning programs can stem this loss, but we do not know whether large, district-run, voluntary programs can improve students' outcomes. To fill this gap, The Wallace Foundation launched the National Summer Learning Study in 2011. This five-year study offers the first-ever assessment of the effectiveness of large-scale, voluntary, district-run, summer learning programs serving low-income elementary students. The study, conducted by RAND, uses a randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of district-run voluntary summer programs on student achievement and social and emotional skills over the short and long run. All students in the study were in the third grade as of spring 2013 and enrolled in a public school in one of five urban districts: Boston; Dallas; Duval County, Florida; Pittsburgh; or Rochester, New York. This report, the second of five that will result from the study, looks at how summer programs affected student performance on mathematics, reading, and social and emotional assessments in fall 2013. A bibliography is included. [For the brief of this report, "First Outcomes from the National Summer Learning Study. Research Brief," see ED561107. For the technical appendices, see ED561141.]

Research shows that when students have access to advanced coursework opportunities, they work harder and are more engaged in school, have fewer absences and suspensions and higher graduation rates. Unfortunately, many Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds lack equitable access to advanced coursework opportunities, such as gifted and talented programs in elementary school, eighth grade Algebra courses, Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), and dual enrollment programs in high school. As a result, these students are missing out on crucial opportunities that can set them up for success after high school. Increasing access to advanced coursework requires commitment from state leaders to collect and analyze disaggregated participation and outcomes data and targeted, data-informed efforts to develop policies that increase access to, and success in, high-quality advanced coursework. This brief is designed to support these efforts by providing data analyses and a scan of policies and practices in Texas for advocates, educators, and policymakers who are leading this work at the state level.

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.

Dual enrollment equity pathways (DEEP) is a research-based framework for rethinking dual enrollment as a more equitable on-ramp to college programs of study that lead to family-supporting, career-path jobs for students who might not otherwise pursue education after college. The DEEP approach involves community colleges and K-12 schools partnering in four practice areas to (1) conduct outreach to underserved students and families to encourage their participation in dual enrollment, (2) align dual enrollment course offerings to career-technical associate and bachelor's degree programs in high-opportunity fields, (3) advise students in the exploration of their interests and the development of post-high school education and career path plans, and (4) support students by delivering high-quality instruction to build their confidence as college learners. In this report, the authors describe what they learned through field research at six promising community college--K-12 partnerships in Florida and Texas that have begun to extend guided pathways practices to dual enrollment offerings and that have achieved strong results using dual enrollment to expand college access and opportunities for Black, Hispanic, and low-income high school students. For each of the four practice areas, the authors highlight the problems or shortcomings of the conventional dual enrollment approach and explain what the partnerships are doing to rethink and reform dual enrollment in ways that motivate and prepare students from underserved groups to pursue postsecondary pathways to careers after high school. The authors then discuss two multifaceted DEEP leadership strategies that emerged from their fieldwork for (1) establishing a shared DEEP mindset and (2) enabling DEEP practices at scale. They also provide a set of discussion questions for college leaders to ask their K-12 schools in order to develop a strong partnership and shared vision. [For the companion report, see ED631291.]

In 2018, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) launched a strategic competitive grant program aimed at supporting Local Education Agencies (LEA) in achieving Math Innovation Zone (MIZ) designation. This initiative's primary focus is to increase PreK - 8th grade math proficiency levels through the implementation of a blended learning model in math classrooms. Blended learning is a data-driven pedagogical technique that integrates specialized adaptive software with traditional in-person teaching. This software enhances a teachers' capacity to promptly evaluate student comprehension of content in real-time during the learning process, which enables the teacher to deliver targeted interventions and extensions as necessary. Coupled with direct teacher instruction and peer collaboration, blended learning empowers students to engage in their own learning process by increasing student agency. This policy brief explores the relationship between MIZ implementation and student achievement, concentrating on the second implementation cohort. This cohort who began blended learning implementation in 2019, is particularly significant due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring of 2020. It highlights how the initiative adapted and influenced education during a challenging period. Examining the influence of the blended learning initiative, despite the crisis, provides valuable insight for educational stakeholders.

Informed by interviews with administrators, faculty, and students at the University of North Texas (UNT) this case study explores how a public four-year institution and designated Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), sets a powerful example for leveraging data to improve student outcomes for all. This research shares insights from UNT's efforts to revamp its data infrastructure and foster a culture of data use across campus that can inform student success efforts at institutions of all types and sizes. UNT's success hinges on three key pillars: (1) Use disaggregated data to inform outcome-driven decision-making; (2) Consider everyone on campus a data user and design systems to meet their needs; and (3) Invest in culture as well as data tools and systems. This case study draws on insights gleaned from conversations during the summer and fall of 2023 with administrators, staff, faculty, and students at UNT.

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.]

Social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD) is a holistic approach to supporting students' development and learning that is integral to ensuring positive outcomes in school and beyond. Schools must ensure students experience healthy development and rigorous learning. Unfortunately, students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, and other underserved students often do not have positive learning experiences. There are six key policy issues that state leaders can implement to create equitable and safe learning environments that promote positive SEAD for all students. This brief highlights how Texas is supporting students' SEAD and areas for growth across six policy issues, as well as questions to ask district leaders about local implementation.

Given math's importance, states are adopting a range of K12 policies to improve math outcomes. As these and other policies unfold, policymakers need to monitor intended outcomes and ultimately gauge impact. They need answers to basic questions: Are more students taking and passing algebra and advanced math? Are performance gaps changing between student groups or schools? What are the characteristics of our math teachers? Are they changing? How are math teachers with different characteristics distributed across schools and students? Policymakers also need answers to more complex questions: Did a given policy have an effect? If so, why, under what conditions, and for whom? Were there any unintended consequences? With these kinds of questions in mind, this CALDER brief singles out the value of longitudinal, individual-level state administrative data by reviewing questions that can--and can't--be answered by the more limited data made publicly available by states. To illustrate, we focus on three states that are attempting to improve math outcomes and that enroll large numbers of students from historically marginalized student groups: California, Florida, and Texas.

Increasingly, obtaining a job that pays family-sustaining wages means getting a college degree or other postsecondary credential. However, according to the 2021 U.S. Census, only 31.5 percent of Texans ages 25 and older have a bachelor's degree or higher. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB)--the highest authority in the state regarding public higher education--has therefore set out a strategic plan to increase that percentage. Specifically, the plan calls for 60 percent of Texans ages 25 to 64 to have a postsecondary credential "of value" by 2030. THECB seeks to improve student outcomes by promoting a variety of student success interventions, particularly corequisite models. To meet this goal, THECB is giving grants to colleges across the state to fund student success programs: programs designed to help more students stay in college and earn degrees, particularly students of color, students from lower-income backgrounds, and students who need additional assistance to make satisfactory academic progress (that is, to earn enough credits to keep their federal financial aid). This brief summarizes some of the information THECB and its partners will use in that effort. It describes best practices and programs with proven effectiveness--the information that policymakers and practitioners need to consider in designing and promoting student success programs. The findings are based on MDRC's 20-year history conducting rigorous evaluations in postsecondary education as well as research and evaluations by other researchers. [This brief was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Education Stabilization Fund Program Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund, as part of the THECB Student Success Acceleration Program Implementation Grants.]

For many high school students, the cost of attending college poses a major barrier to continuing their education. Federal student aid provided through Pell grants, work study, and loans can offer students with low incomes an avenue toward receiving a postsecondary education. But for students to be eligible for federal student aid, they need to submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. Many students who could benefit from federal aid often neglect to submit a FAFSA form because of various barriers, including a lack of awareness about different financial aid options, a lack of understanding about the eligibility requirements, and the FAFSA form's complexity. Despite FAFSA's potential to promote access to postsecondary education, the national FAFSA completion rate was just 53.8 percent for the high school class of 2019. To increase FAFSA completion rates, Louisiana (in 2017) and Illinois (in 2020) introduced mandatory FAFSA completion policies. Following their lead, Texas implemented a mandatory FAFSA completion policy as a graduation requirement beginning in the 2021-22 school year. Although higher education enrollment data are not yet available for 2022-23, Texas hopes that the increase in the number of students who filled out FAFSA applications will in turn create more access to financial aid and to postsecondary education. With other states in the planning stages for implementing similar policies, the early results from Texas can offer key insights on best practices when introducing their own policies.

The United Nations has set forth an ambitious vision for education systems around the globe: cultivating life-long learning from early childhood through an individual's civic and work life. Schools must support children and youth in basic learning--including crucial socio-emotional, literacy, and numeracy competencies--to contribute to sustainable societies. However prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a severe learning crisis held back hundreds of millions of children. Analysts project that 9 out of 10 children in low-income countries and 5 out of 10 in middle-income countries will not develop core secondary education skills in literacy and numeracy by 2030 and the pandemic has only deepened the learning crisis and widened achievement gaps. Students also face daunting global challenges: rapidly evolving job demands, worsening inequality, and doubts over economic sustainability. This brief argues that policymakers and educators must grasp the levers of organizational change inside education institutions to rethink goals and lift school quality. Systems thinking offers key tools for leveraging gains inside classrooms and enriching the quality of teaching and student engagement. This brief shares differing pathways for sparking systems change and details country and state cases that have raised student learning by deploying the powerful tools of systems analysis.

Texans ages 25-34 who earn an associate degree are nearly twice as likely to earn at least $50,000 per year than those who don't earn a degree (24% vs. 13%). Those earning a bachelor's degree or higher are nearly four times as likely to reach this self-sustaining wage (49% vs. 13%). If every eighth grader in Harris County were to earn an associate degree, that one graduating class would collectively earn nearly $818 million in additional annual income. Across the eight largest counties in Texas, annual income gains would total $6.1 billion. Today, only 22% of Harris County students complete a postsecondary certificate or program within six years of their high school graduation This brief explains the two different definitions for "College and Career Readiness" in Texas and the resulting outcomes for Harris County students so that policymakers and advocates can better assess and improve students' readiness to succeed after high school.

The "Examination of the Costs of Texas Community Colleges" study examined the funding levels necessary for community colleges to meet their promise of providing an affordable and accessible pathway to a postsecondary certificate or degree. The study involved three types of analyses: a needs analysis, an equity analysis, and a cost function analysis. The findings from this study can inform Texas policymakers' efforts to distribute funding for community colleges to support equitable opportunities for all students to succeed in college. This document presents the following three appendixes that accompany the study: (1) Texas' Student Success Points performance-based funding system; (2) Data and methods; and (3) Supporting analyses. [For the full report, see ED623284.]

This report, the first in the Economic Vitality and Education in the South (EVES) series, provides state-by-state information on more than 20 critical data points associated with the education-to-workforce pipeline. The report looks specifically at the 17 states in the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) region: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. It explores persistent and historic outcome gaps for Black, Hispanic, and low-income Americans and discusses how inequities in the education system and the labor force--due to these persistent gaps--are often more pronounced in the South.

The overall aim of the Effective Implementation Cohort (EIC) investment is to increase district capacity to implement a high-quality middle years math curriculum as part of a Coherent Instructional System (CIS) to accelerate learning for students who are experiencing poverty, Black, Latino/a, and/or English Learner (EL)-Designated ("priority students"). As a Learning Partner, NIRN seeks to support partnerships between Providers and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) in their implementation and measurement efforts, as well as to collect and study data to answer the investment's learning questions within the cohort wide learning agenda. Implementation support activities and data collection, analysis, and reporting activities for the cohort wide learning agenda will be guided by the Cohort's learning questions and theory of action grounded in implementation science.

This study was conducted to identify factors that affect disadvantaged women in their efforts to gain long-term employment or to complete vocational and technical education programs. Following a review of literature, a questionnaire was prepared and administered to 160 disadvantaged women in Texas. An analysis of the questionnaire responses identified a number of factors. Two factors that were consistently identified by all subjects were (1) the lack of marketable skills and (2) the lack of supportive services, particularly child care. Other inhibiting factors identified included financial difficulties; study, time management, and transportation problems; and inadequate socialization to work or education requirements. These were further hampered by a lack of competent career guidance and personal counseling as well as by a general lack of employment information and educational opportunities. The facilitating factors most consistently identified were child care assistance, financial aid for both education and employment assistance training programs, short-term employment and education programs that result in marketable skills, and job readiness assistance. The study concluded that (1) to increase successful completion of education programs by disadvantaged women, support services, particularly child care and financial aid, must be made available to this population and (2) although such help may facilitate the completion of job readiness programs, they do not ensure long-term employment because the participants do not always acquire skills in the programs for long-term employment. Recommendations were made to the National Women's Employment and Education, Inc.; to San Antonio College; and to Texas policymakers to improve programs to ensure success for disadvantaged women. (KC)