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Emotional, behavioral, and mental health challenges make it difficult for many children and adolescents to engage and succeed at school. Research indicates that at least 20% of all children and adolescents have been diagnosed with one more mental health disorders. Behavioral problems, anxiety, and depression are the most diagnosed mental health issues, and they often co-occur. Moreover, these conditions are being diagnosed at increasingly younger ages. In the past several years there has been a rise in the number of adolescents and young adults with serious mental health issues such as major depression and suicidal ideation, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated mental health problems for children and adolescents. Schools offer promise for providing intensive clinical support to the most at-risk students, and schools are necessary environment to explore the implementation of multi-modal youth mental health services. This paper provides an analysis of an intensive, in-school mental health services model developed and implemented by Effective School Solutions (ESS), a New Jersey based provider of high acuity school based mental health services for K-12 students. We analyze this multi-modal model for its effectiveness in improving educational outcomes for over 3,000 students identified as requiring intensive clinical mental health support across the 2021-22 school year. This analysis reveals that those students receiving High- versus Low-fidelity programming (i.e., multiple sessions per week for at least half of the school year versus for less than half of the school year) had better educational outcomes. Students receiving High-fidelity programming had greater improvements in grade point average (GPA) and greater reductions in absences across the school year. A higher number of in-school clinical sessions per week significantly predicted a greater increase in GPA and a greater reduction in total disciplinary incidents (including out of school suspensions) across the school year. This report provides initial promising evidence that in-school intensive mental health clinical services yield positive effects on students' educational outcomes. Though future research is needed to validate and extend these findings, schools may consider implementing such services onsite to meet students where they are and to optimize students' mental, behavioral, and educational well-being. [This white paper report was published by the Yale Child Study Center."]

The onset of the pandemic in spring 2020 substantially disrupted routes into teaching and offered a unique opportunity to study this process with different requirements for initial entry into the classroom. We examine the impacts of the Temporary Certificate of Eligibility (Temporary CE), which allowed teacher candidates in New Jersey to enter the workforce before completing assessment and performance requirements. Relative to the novice teacher workforce before the pandemic, Temporary CE teachers were substantially more diverse without any significant effects on teacher performance or student test scores. However, Temporary CE holders were less likely to remain in the same school or in the New Jersey teaching workforce between 2020-21 and 2021-22. Although Temporary CE holders disproportionately entered through alternate routes into teaching, these patterns hold for both traditional- and alternate-route entrants.

The recent turn toward core practices and practice-based teacher education has been accompanied by a growing literature on the definitions, pedagogies to teach, and assessments of core practices. Despite these developments, the field lacks core practices performance assessments designed to be used across course sections, courses, and subjects. This paper provides an existence proof of this type of assessment and investigates the affordances and constraints of the approach. The study describes three types of mixed-reality simulation-based performance tasks of three core practices. More than 400 novices in 64 teacher preparation programs in the United States reported that they were able to use the simulation environment and believed the tasks measure important teaching skills. Scores on the tasks were positively related to novices' prior academic and teacher education experiences. Implications for the formative use of such simulations are discussed.

This paper is the first to investigate the costs of institution-wide reforms at community colleges. Drawing on data from 12 community colleges implementing comprehensive guided pathways reforms, I use the ingredients method to analyze the resources required to implement such reforms and examine their feasibility and affordability, as well as their value for students. For a typical college with 4,000 full-time equivalent students (FTEs) that implements guided pathways over four years, the total implementation cost beyond business-as-usual operations is estimated at $450 per student each year, or $7.1 million in total, which amounts to 12% of the college's annual budget, or approximately 3% per year. Around one third of this cost is for enhanced student advisement. Extra investments in information technology are also significant. Ongoing operating costs, primarily for student advisement and student success courses, are around $350 per FTE each year. Cost estimates vary depending on how colleges implement guided pathways, but the results are robust to alternative input prices and college characteristics. There is also some evidence of economies of scale. To finance guided pathways, colleges relied mainly on resource reallocation and efficiency gains, extra public funding, and external grants and funds. Increases in tuition/fees were modest, temporary, or delayed until after implementation; increases of just under 1% per year would suffice to support guided pathways reforms. From the student perspective, guided pathways increases the affordability and value for money of community college. With enhanced advising, students take fewer unnecessary courses. Program mapping leads students to take the right courses both at the community college and at any transfer college. Improved advising help students access grants and in-kind services; they also assist with financial plans to pay for college. Overall, the savings these reforms allow for are likely to exceed the modest increase in tuition/fees from guided pathways. [For the companion paper "Funding Guided Pathways: A Guide for Community College Leaders. Report," see ED609234.]

Educational inequality due to family socioeconomic status (SES) has been the focus of both public dialogue and education research in the United States for many years. The current study aims to understand how educational inequality due to family SES has changed in the United States. Specifically, the study focuses on the changes in achievement gaps between high and low SES students between 2003 and 2017 and the changes in the performance of low-SES students over time. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 8 mathematics assessment were used for the analyses. Results show that the SES achievement gap at the national level has remained the same over time. State-level results suggest that 34 of the 50 states' SES achievement gaps experienced no significant change between 2003 and 2017, 14 gaps widened, and only two SES gaps narrowed. In addition, at the national level, more low-SES students achieved at the NAEP Basic and at the NAEP Proficient levels over time with a majority of states improving their low-SES students' performance. In conclusion, the study contributes to the existing literature not only by reflecting on U.S. national trends using an effective SES index, but also by providing state-level results. It also collects trend data on states' macro-level indicators, including economic growth, social inequality, and educational expenditures, allowing state-specific findings to be presented in the context of changes in macro-level context. Initial explorations of relationships between state SES achievement gap trends and macroeconomic factors are presented to motivate future research. The trends in SES achievement gaps and the specific policy contexts are presented in greater detail for 13 states/jurisdictions.

Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and non-financial outcomes. After summarizing the heterogeneity of individual SFR impacts, we then examine its correlates, identifying both policy and legislative/political factors. Taken together, this research aims to provide a rich description of variation in states' responses to SFRs, as well as explanation of this heterogeneity as it relates to contextual factors.

When does a community create and sustain a truly innovative "next generation" high school that not only remains innovative, but also relevant? According to the Carnegie Corporation, this means seizing the opportunity to redesign schools to promote personalized learning. So far, much work has gone into retooling many of these (reform) elements individually. Many states, districts, and schools have made essential progress in changing teacher preparation and professional development to help talented educators enter and stay in the classroom. There have also been pushes for interventions like additional learning time, new curricula, and new technology, much of which has been shown to have a significant impact on student achievement. However, applied individually, each of these fails to get schools and school systems where they need to be to serve every student. This white paper will explore the issues through the perspectives of several members of the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory, who are attempting to share ideas and concepts on system redesign, by examples of schools that are making deep learning a priority through technology and by examples of initiatives and schools that have made personalized learning and mastery the focus of what they do. All these approaches are important for they become part of a comprehensive whole that can drive meaningful change. [For "Innovation and Deeper Learning: Model High Schools," see ED604591.]

Higher levels of civic and community engagement in higher education are positively associated with students' academic performance and they also build upon citizenship skills such as informed voting. Yet, while these are worthy and important outcomes of higher education, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can have more difficulty navigating civic engagement. Focusing on students at thirteen major public universities in the United States, and utilizing survey data generated by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, this study suggest social perspective-taking has a significant positive effect on all students' probability of voting and participating in community service. Students who were asked to identify challenge/solutions to social problems and reflect/act on community issues in the classroom were also more likely to participate in community service. Additionally, Hispanic students and students from lower-income households are significantly less likely to vote and perform community service--findings corroborated by previous research. Females are more likely to vote and participate in community service--findings also corroborated by prior research. Hispanic students and students from low-income backgrounds were more likely to participate in voting and community service if they had increased rates of social perspective-taking. These results suggest that increased opportunities to connect with classmates in the classroom and develop perspective-taking skills (e.g. appreciating the world from someone else's perspective, acknowledging personal differences, interacting with someone with views that are different from your own, and discussing and navigating controversial issues) are potentially quite powerful ways to foster civic engagement among students who traditionally have the lowest civic engagement rates compared to their peers.

The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) and Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program grants have encouraged and supported grantees to develop coherent and comprehensive human capital management systems (HCMS). The goal of such systems is to recruit, select, place, induct, develop, pay, and retain educators with the competencies they need to realize the organization's vision of instructional improvement. In a coherent and comprehensive system, the human capital management (HCM) practices are aligned so that they work together to attract, develop, motivate, and retain educators with the needed competencies. This brief focuses on tools developed by three TIF grantees to help the districts and schools participating in their projects assess and improve the alignment of their HCMS. While the argument for alignment can be compelling, achieving it can be daunting. When confronted with the need to consider the whole set of policies and practices that affect recruiting, placing, inducting, developing, evaluating, compensating, promoting, and retaining educators, it is hard to know where to start. Each of the grantees featured in this brief faced the challenge of working with districts or schools unfamiliar with the concept of alignment. Many partner districts had given little recent attention to their HCM practices. Each of the grantees leveraged TIF technical assistance to develop their tools, but since each also served multiple partners at different stages of HCMS development, the tools take different forms and emphasize somewhat different HCM practices. Overall, the tools should provide states, districts, and schools interested in examining the alignment of their HCMS with examples and ideas for developing their own tools.

A number of English language proficiency exams target grades K-12 English language learners (ELLs) because of the rising need to identify their needs and provide appropriate support in language learning. A good example is the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs (hereafter ACCESS), designed to measure the English language proficiency of students identified as ELLs. Every year approximately two million K-12 ELLs in the WIDA Consortium take ACCESS. After students complete the exam, score reports are provided to relevant stakeholders, including teachers and parents of the students. Because score reports are widely used by stakeholders for many purposes (e.g., placement, reclassification of ELLs), it is necessary to understand how they are interpreted and used in educational and home settings. Such information could be used to understand the usefulness of score reports and also to enhance their quality. However, there is little research on stakeholders' interpretation and use of score reports, especially in the context of K-12 ELL exams in the Unites States. Existing research is limited to teachers' interpretation of score reports (Impara, Divine, Bruce, Liverman, & Gay, 1991; Luecht, 2003; Underwood, Zapata-Rivera, & VanWinkle, 2007). For example, Impara et al. (1991) investigated the extent to which teachers were able to interpret student-level results on a standardized state assessment and the extent to which interpretive information provided on the reverse side of the student score report improved teacher understanding. Findings suggest that interpretive material helped facilitate teachers' understanding of student scores on the assessment. However, few studies have examined how stakeholders actually use the interpreted information. Moreover, very few (Miller & Watkins, 2010) have examined score reports from the parents' perspective. To gain a deeper understanding of the meaningfulness and utility of score reports, it is necessary to examine both educators' and parents' perspectives. The study on which this paper is based investigated how two stakeholder groups--K-12 ELL educators and parents--interpret and use ACCESS score reports. Findings from qualitative interviews offer implications for score report development in general and how to further enhance the quality of ACCESS score reports. In the study, the authors addressed the following research questions: (1) How do K-12 ELL educators and parents interpret the information in an English proficiency exam score report?; and (2) How do K-12 ELL educators and parents use the information in an English proficiency exam score report?

In a 2012 paper for the Center for American Progress, "The State of Evaluation Reform," Patrick McGuinn (Drew University) identified the opportunities and challenges facing education agencies in Race to the Top (RTTT) grant-winning states as they prepared for the implementation of new teacher evaluation systems. The 2012 study undertook in-depth comparative case studies of six states: Tennessee, Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. For this paper the individuals interviewed in those states two years ago (or their replacements if necessary) were re-interviewed to understand how and why their efforts differ today. By analyzing state implementation efforts at two different points in time, the new study utilizes a longitudinal qualitative approach that can reveal the extent to which states are learning and adapting in this work over time. Rather than the detailed state case studies of State Education Agency (SEA) implementation work provided in the 2012 paper, this report uses a more thematic approach that will synthesize the lessons that have emerged from the field. This paper serves 2 purposes: (1) To provide a snapshot in time (Jan 2015) of SEA implementation efforts around new teacher evaluation systems; and (2) To contrast more recent implementation efforts with those two years earlier to understand the ways in which SEAs have (and have not) learned and adapted their implementation work over time. More specifically, the paper will address the following questions: What kinds of capacity--financial, personnel, technical--have SEAs added to support the implementation of new teacher evaluation systems? What kind of capacity is still lacking? How rapidly and how effectively are states implementing their new teacher evaluation systems? Why do some states appear to be having more success/smoother implementation than others? How are states approaching this implementation work differently from one another--do some approaches appear to be more or less effective than others? What challenges are emerging and how are states addressing these? What lessons can be learned from these "early adopter" states that can inform teacher evaluation reform in the rest of the country? How are states approaching the training of evaluators and the principals and teachers who are supposed to use the evaluations to improve personnel decisions and classroom instruction? How well are new teacher evaluation systems being aligned with other reforms such as the move to Common Core and new assessments? How are states dealing with the challenge of measuring student achievement in non-tested subjects? The following is appended: Interviews Conducted As Part of Research.

Children's academic and social development before third grade is highly predictive of later success in school and beyond. Research shows that during those early years, the gains children make in language and literacy, mathematics and social skills, and their growth as learners and thinkers are associated with a range of benefits, from academic achievement to economic stability to healthy habits and behaviors. "The Untapped Potential of an Early Childhood Assessment System: A Strategy for Improving Policies and Instruction from Early Childhood through 3rd Grade" outlines how state leaders can reduce or streamline the assessments being used in early learning programs and elementary schools, achieve economies of scale for educator training and leverage existing data systems to yield more powerful data to inform decision-making.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for K-12 English language arts/literacy and mathematics, released in 2010, have been adopted by 49 states and territories; the District of Columbia; and the U.S. Department of Defense schools, which serve the children of U.S. service members around the world. The widespread adoption of the CCSS is a major step forward, yet significant work remains for states to successfully implement the new more rigorous and relevant academic standards--notably, the adoption of new tests to measure students' progress against the CCSS. This paper reports on states' challenges and progress in creating and launching assessments of students' learning that are aligned with the CCSS.

Bolstered by the recommendations of the 1998 Boyer Report, US federal agencies have put significant resources into promoting opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research. American universities and colleges have been creating support programs and curricular opportunities intended to create a "culture of undergraduate research." Yet our knowledge about the commonality of undergraduate research engagement--how it integrates into the educational experience, and its benefits or lack thereof--is still very limited. Universities exude the ideal of a pivotal link of teaching and research. We have assumed that personal interactions between active scholars and undergraduates--via traditional curriculum, research courses, working in a lab or doing fieldwork--have positive influences on students' maturation and their overall academic and social experience. The following exploratory study looks at data generated by the 2010 Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) undergraduate survey, an online census administered that year at fifteen major research-intensive universities. In this case study of mostly AAU campuses, we find that while some 83 percent of upper division students (juniors and seniors) students experience one or more courses with a significant research requirement like a research paper or project, many lower and upper division students do not--a disappointing finding that needs to be addressed by these campuses. At the same time, undergraduate research engagement outside of the traditional classroom is a relatively common experience. Among those students we find that research engagement leads to self-reported learning gains across many areas, but especially in the areas of field knowledge, how to present and communicate knowledge, research skills, higher levels of satisfaction, better use of time, and higher levels of non-quantitative skills. Yet not all research activities are created equally. Participating in student research and independent studies contribute much more to the learning gains across all dimensions than merely assisting faculty in research. Among the two research activities, participating in student research course is more effective than independent studies in enhancing student learning. Among the three activities involving assisting faculty research, assisting faculty research as a volunteer without credit tends to be connected to higher level of gains than for credit and for pay. Taken together, it appears that research activities that involve active learning contribute more to student learning. We offer a number of recommendations to SERU campuses, including: 1. We encourage member campuses to explore what are the causes for some students not engaging in a research paper or project and seek a path to have all students have this form of research engagement; 2. Use the SERU database to provide regular reports on undergraduate research engagement, and include those reports in Academic Program/Department reviews; 3. Expand existing efforts so that most, if not all, undergraduates have the opportunity for two or more non-classroom forms of research engagement, perhaps depending on the field of the major and discipline. [The 1998 Boyer Commission Report--"Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities" is available in ERIC at ED424840.]

In this paper, the authors draw on empirical data from CCRC's Scaling Innovation project to examine trends in developmental education instructional reform and outline a framework for reform adoption and adaptation. The paper's findings are based on two qualitative data sources: a scan of developmental education reforms that involved changes to curricula, course structure, and/or pedagogy; and fieldwork conducted at 11 colleges working to replicate high-potential instructional innovations developed at other colleges. The data suggest that colleges tend to enact developmental education reforms in ways that may unintentionally undermine their potential benefits. The authors present a framework for engaging practitioners in activities that will increase the impact of their developmental education reforms while strengthening institutional capacity. Appended are: (1) Scaling Innovation Partner Programs; and (2) Methods.

While sparse literature exists investigating the impact of the Great Recession on various sectors of the economy, there is virtually no research that studies the effect of the Great Recession, or past recessions, on schools. This paper starts to fill the void. Studying school funding during the recession is of paramount importance because schools have a fundamental role in fostering human capital formation and economic growth. We exploit unique panel data and trend shift analysis to analyze how New Jersey school finances were affected during the Great Recession and the ARRA federal stimulus period. Our results show strong evidence of downward shifts in both revenue and expenditure following the recession. Federal stimulus seemed to have helped in 2010, however both revenue and expenditure still declined. While total revenue declined, the various components of revenue did not witness symmetric changes. The infusion of funds with the federal stimulus occurred simultaneously with statistically and economically significant cuts in state and local financing, especially the former. Our results also show a compositional shift in expenditures in favor of categories that are linked most closely to instruction, while several non-instruction categories including transportation and utilities declined. Interestingly, budgetary stress seems to have led to significant lay-offs for untenured teachers, leading to a rightward shift of the teacher salary and experience distributions. Heterogeneity analysis shows that high poverty and urban districts sustained the largest falls in the post-recession era, with Abbott districts specifically falling the furthest from pre-recession trends. Of importance, the Abbott districts were the only group in our expansive analysis to show statistically significant negative shifts in instructional expenditure even with the federal stimulus. The findings of this paper contribute valuable insight regarding schools' financial situations during recession and can serve as a guide to aid future policy decisions.

At open-access two-year public colleges, the goal of the traditional assessment and placement process is to match incoming students to the developmental or college-level courses for which they have adequate preparation; the process presumably increases underprepared students' chances of short- and long-term success in college while maintaining the academic quality and rigor of college-level courses. However, the traditional process may be limited in its ability to achieve these aims due to poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards of college readiness. To understand current approaches that seek to improve the process, we conducted a scan of assessment and placement policies and practices at open-access two-year colleges in Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. We describe the variety of approaches that systems and colleges employed to ameliorate poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards associated with the traditional process. Taking a broad view of the extent of these approaches, we find that most colleges we studied adopted a "measured" approach that addressed a single limitation without attending to other limitations that contribute to the same overall problem of poor course placement accuracy or inconsistent standards. Much less common were "comprehensive" approaches that attended to multiple limitations of the process; these approaches were likely to result from changes to developmental education as a whole. Drawing from the study's findings, we also discuss how colleges can overcome barriers to reform in order to implement approaches that hold promise for improved course placement accuracy, more consistent standards of college readiness, and, potentially, greater long-term academic success of community college students. Data Collection Process is appended. (Contains 3 tables and 3 footnotes.)

Curriculum plays an important role in ensuring continuity and progression from early childhood education and care (ECEC) to primary education. The alignment of curricula and standards across these settings shapes children's early experiences with education systems, with implications for children's relationships and engagement in both ECEC and primary school, as well as longer-term learning and well-being outcomes. Governments can achieve curricular continuity in various ways, ranging from high-level alignment of goals across multiple curriculum documents to full integration of the curriculum into a single document that covers both ECEC and primary school. The broader contexts of education systems, such as organisation and governance, the training of staff and teachers who work in these settings, matter for curricular continuity -- and an integrated curriculum alone does not guarantee a continuous experience for children. International data and in-depth case studies from seven jurisdictions (Japan, Luxembourg, New Jersey [United States], New Zealand, Norway, Scotland [United Kingdom] and Victoria [Australia]) provide insights to these different approaches to curricular alignment.

Gaps in early learning are starkly apparent among differing children even before they enter kindergarten. So, a rising number of states are trying to narrow initial achievement disparities by expanding access to quality preschool. At the same time, recent findings show that preschool is not a lasting inoculation: its benefits fade if children move from preschool to dreary elementary schools. So, efforts to advance quality preschooling, especially for children from poor and blue-collar families, will be more effective when the quality of public schools climbs in parallel fashion. Two states--New Jersey and Texas--offer laboratories for understanding how preschool and K-12 finance reforms can be interwoven over time and implemented in concert to raise quality at both levels. This study yields three sets of lessons for California and other states: (1) Advancing simple and equitable finance mechanisms; (2) Unifying mixed-markets of preschool providers; and (3) Widening access while improving quality. Overall, this study details how two large states are simplifying funding streams, progressively expanding access, and improving classroom quality. In New Jersey these efforts stem from a specific mandate by the state courts to equalize opportunity, and the preschool sector is a key part. In Texas pro-equity groups have succeeded in widening support for preschool expansion, and these policy efforts are becoming one element in long-running efforts to more adequately fund the schools. (Contains 3 tables, 4 figures, 1 box, and 79 endnotes.)

This paper highlights New Jersey's community colleges and their efforts to respond to market and consumer needs. Since one-third of the average New Jersey community college operating budget is paid by credit and non-credit students and clients, the colleges must approach their business like private sector enterprises, performing market research and meeting customer needs with quality programs and services. Each college does research in its service area through surveys of business and industry as well as through focus groups of employers, students, and former students. Academic officers, deans of continuing education, and institutional researchers carefully follow labor market projections. This document discusses: (1) industry clusters, concentrations of particular businesses in certain counties that assure that the local community college will provide occupational programs to support those industries; (2) downsizing and retooling, including initiatives to meet the needs of displaced workers; (3) licensure and certification, stating that within the last decade the number of occupations requiring licensure in New Jersey has risen dramatically; (4) retaining and attracting jobs; (5) building strategic alliances; and (6) supporting the middle class. Provided is a table of examples of jobs retained or added through community college training, and a table of mean annual earnings by levels of education. (EMH)

In 1994 the state of New Jersey deregulated the state higher education structure and created a new commission on higher education and a presidents' council. This report presents the findings of a 1998 survey that sought to determine the extent to which the goals of the deregulatory legislation had been achieved and whether the fears of the act's opponents had come to fruition. Respondents, who included state college and university presidents, chairs of governing boards, faculty leaders, state legislators, and leaders of various advocacy groups, were asked to comment on two sets of questions. The first asked about deregulation, the ability of institutions to meet their missions, opportunities for innovation and new degree programs, and increased fiscal flexibility. The second set of questions sought responses to fears expressed by the act's opponents. Although the survey indicated a high level of satisfaction among most respondents with most aspects of the restructuring act, a partisan split remains. Nearly three-quarters of those who supported passage of the legislation (mostly legislators, presidents and governing boards) see it as having benefitted higher education in the state. However, a second group, dominated by faculty leaders who feel they have less of a voice, remain skeptical about the new structure. (Contains 29 references.) (CH)

The New Jersey Unemployment Insurance Reemployment Demonstration Project was undertaken to examine the feasibility of using the unemployment insurance (UI) system to identify displaced workers early in their unemployment spells and then accelerating their return to work by providing them with alternative, early intervention services. Three packages of services were tested: job search assistance (JSA), JSA combined with training or relocation assistance, and JSA combined with a cash bonus for early reemployment. Each treatment's cost-effectiveness was examined through a follow-up study examining long-run treatment impacts approximately 6 years after program participants had submitted their initial UI claims. The UI system was confirmed to be an effective means of early identification of displaced workers likely to experience long-run employment difficulties. All three treatments were found to result in jobs that were more stable than the jobs obtained by control group members. All three treatments afforded net benefits to claimants and society as a whole. (Twenty-eight tables/figures are included. Appended are a description of the samples used to estimate the profiling models and treatment/control group means. Also included is a brief report summarizing the demonstration findings and their policy implications. Contains 12 references.) (MN)

The Evaluation of Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) systems was designed to provide the U.S. Department of Labor information on how states are designing, implementing, and operating their worker profiling and reemployment services systems for dislocated workers and to compare the effectiveness of different state approaches to operating WPRS systems in accomplishing the goals of the WPRS initiatives. Phase I of this evaluation examined how Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Oregon, the prototype states, and Maryland, the test state, designed and implemented their WPRS systems. Data were collected through site visits, review of profiling proposals and activity reports submitted by the states, and a consumer satisfaction survey of a sample of profiled and referred claimants in the states. The study found that most of the states used profiling models to identify which claimants were selected for and referred to services. All states initially screened out certain persons, such as those who were expected to be recalled by their employers. The states used the initial unemployment service claim as the main source of data for profiling. Profiling models included as a dependent variable whether a claimant exhausted benefits and explanatory variables such as definitions of declining industries. Special services were provided to the profiled clients, and clients were generally pleased with the way they were treated and that they were encouraged to find suitable jobs. The study recommended steps to improve the implementation of WPRS systems, including early intervention, improved services, more focus on customer satisfaction, automated feedback systems, and sanctions. (The report includes 25 tables of data developed during the study. Four appendixes provide the following: (1) descriptive profiles of the state programs; (2) the customer satisfaction survey; (3) analysis of non-response to the customer satisfaction survey; and (4) a state implementation database. Contains 15 references.) (KC)

The study reported here focused on whether some special education disputes are resolved more effectively and efficiently by mediation than by a due process hearing, and whether parents and school officials feel satisfied about the process, outcome, and implementation of the agreement. Researchers analyzed requests for due process hearings filed between January 1, 1987 and June 30, 1988 in New Jersey, and received completed questionnaires from 53 mediated cases and 51 cases transmitted for a hearing, for a research sample of 104 cases representing about 30 percent of the total number of requests for a due process hearing during the 1-year period. Major issues in the 104 cases involved eligibility and identification, appropriateness of special education services, related services, and placement. The expectation that mediation would resolve certain types of issues more readily than other issues was not met. Parents lost in 55 percent of the cases that went to a hearing, but lost in only 25 percent of the cases that were mediated. Parents lost or compromised on more cases involving eligibility and identification, won more cases dealing with the appropriateness of special educational services, and won or compromised on 67 percent of the placement cases. Lay advocates were equally as effective as trained attorneys in assisting parents in resolving disputes. School officials tended to be more satisfied than parents with the outcome of mediation. Parents reported significant problems in the implementation of the mediation agreements. (Contains 28 references.) (JDD)

This paper is about the funding status of teachers' retirement pension schemes. Its goal is to relate the accounting for the funding of these pension obligations to the endemic, systematic, and fundamentally fraudulent system of accounting our country uses to assess the financial positions of federal, state, and local government as well as many financial and non-financial private enterprises. Indeed, the paper argues that fraudulent accounting and misrepresentation is the defining element of Ponzi schemes and the real reason we find such schemes repugnant. Furthermore, any public or private enterprise that engages in fundamentally fraudulent accounting can fairly be characterized as running a Ponzi scheme. In this regard, it seems fully appropriate to characterize many, if not most, teachers' retirement plans as Ponzi schemes. (Contains 17 footnotes.)

In April 2021, New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) and the Philanthropication thru Privatization Project (PtP) released a joint proposal that the federal government should invest a substantial portion of the windfall proceeds from future auctions of public airwaves (spectrum) to seed a new Digital Equity Foundation dedicated to addressing equity gaps in broadband adoption and affordability, education, telehealth, access to government services, and other critical areas. The next step in realizing this vision is now in the hands of Congress and other federal policymakers, as allocation of spectrum auction proceeds to support the creation of a Digital Equity Foundation requires legislation. Policymakers will also play a critical role in establishing the guidelines for the creation of an initial foundation board and mission. This paper serves to help flesh out the options for how that could be accomplished, drawing on a review of existing foundations created with public and nonprofit assets to identify best practices for how to start a foundation with public, quasi-public, or nonprofit funds. This paper is structured in five parts. Part I provides a brief overview of the proposed Digital Equity Foundation; Part II, examines some key examples of existing U.S. foundations that illustrate the use of public or quasi-public funds to support priority public needs; Part III, explores ways the proposed Digital Equity Foundation might be structured and organized to achieve its programmatic goals to advance digital equity and inclusion, while operating with appropriate transparency and public accountability; Part IV, considers additional legal considerations that surfaced in a review of foundations previously established under federal legislation; and Part V, provides a summary of concrete recommendations for the proposed foundation. [This report is a joint product of the Open Technology Institute at New America and the Philanthropication thru Privation Project.]

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to address today's claimants and focus on the here-and-now at the expense of long-term concerns and more dispersed constituencies. In the private sector, rules and regulations seek to tame corner-cutting and short-sighted behavior. In the public sector, the primary safeguard is the self-discipline of public officials and the hope that they will not be unduly tempted by short-term electoral considerations or influential constituencies. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges for K-12 schooling. The first challenge is the political incentives that lead to irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public officials make commitments to employees that outstrip the available funds. The second is that of electoral considerations which hinder modernization, as policymakers dance around existing structures built to serve an industrial-era workforce and ill-suited to attracting talent in the contemporary labor market. The alignment of the political stars has helped states and localities to address the first challenge, but there has been little evidence of a willingness to tackle the second. The authors examine the political control of public pensions, the influence of teacher associations, and the lack of institutional constraints on public officials to explain the severity of these challenges. Those dynamics are illustrated via discussion of fiscal crises in New Jersey, Oregon, and San Diego and the way in which those crises created opportunities for addressing enormous shortfalls in funding. The authors close by suggesting several measures that may encourage public officials to be more responsible fiscal stewards or to revisit anachronistic retirement systems in order to promote teacher quality. (Contains 124 footnotes.)

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) addresses issues pertaining to prevention of placement in the child welfare system, as well as family reunification, the specific provisions of ASFA that relate to the termination of parental rights and adoption are perhaps most central to the law's overarching purpose. This paper analyzes adoptions from foster care using data from Chapin Hall's Multistate Foster Care Data Archive to understand what effect, if any, the federal law has had on the proportion of children admitted to foster care that were later adopted and on the time needed to complete those adoption. Using a cohort sequential design, we studied 13 successive entry cohorts of children admitted to foster care in seven states from 1990 to 2002. The results indicate that there was an increase in the period-specific probability of adoption that coincides with the passage of ASFA in 1998. However, we also found that the pace of adoption had remained stable in the early 1990s and started to accelerate in the mid-1990s, before ASFA was passed. This finding clarifies our understanding of ASFA in two ways. First, there was no slowdown in the average time required to complete adoptions that ASFA was originally designed to address. Second, the existence of a pre-ASFA effect suggests that ASFA may have only added to the efforts already made by the states. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

From the time of conception to the first day of kindergarten, development proceeds at a pace exceeding that of any subsequent stage of life. Relationships and experiences with parents, caregivers, and preschool teachers during these early years "form the foundation and scaffold on which cognitive, linguistic, emotional, social, and moral development unfold." Children who do not have the opportunity to participate in quality early experiences, those who are rarely spoken to, and those who have little opportunity to explore and experiment with their environment, may fail to fully develop the neural connections and pathways that support later learning. The heightened awareness of this critical period of development and an ever increasing number of studies that indicate that high-quality programs lead to positive outcomes for children, have led to greater public support and investments in early childhood programs. Despite this new interest and some public policy activity, early childhood policy itself is still very much in its infancy. Because much policy work still remains to be done to ensure quality services for children ages birth to five, the authors believe that now is the time to begin to explore the connections and interactions between infant-toddler and pre-kindergarten policies, and to create a dialogue about how to build systems that ensure the maximum benefit for children of all ages, while avoiding the negative consequences that could result without an intentional discussion about how the parts fit together. This paper begins to explore these interactions through a very limited number of interviews with early childhood leaders in four states (Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York). It provides an initial glimpse into some of the issues involved in building high-quality learning opportunities for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Includes appendix: Related State Activities. (Contains 5 endnotes.) [This report is a joint publication of the Zero to Three Policy Center and The Trust for Early Education.]

This paper, written from the perspective of the child advocacy community, acknowledges the importance of the business community in the political process. The paper profiles the contrast between two New Jerseys, one of prosperity, the other struggling under excruciating poverty. The economic boom of the 1980s broadened the gap between wealthy suburbs and the depressed inner cities. Statistics cited demonstrate that New Jersey's children are in need. A report by the Committee for Economic Development, "Children in Need: Investment Strategies for the Educational Disadvantaged," influenced groups to form a collaboration. The Partnership for New Jersey, the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, and several other well-known groups in the state's education and human service communities formed the steering committee of the Invest in Children Coalition. This coalition exemplifies the types of support that businesses can give. Justification for the committee's starting point, early intervention, is given. The process started with a conference in May 1989, at which three major objectives were derived: to generate widespread and active support, to build a broad advocacy coalition, and to collaborate with others in the private and public sectors. Information on the Institute for Educational Leadership is appended. (RR)

Matrix organization focuses on the shift from cost center or process input planning to product output or results planning. Matrix organization puts the personnel and the resources where they are needed to get the job done. This management efficiency is brought about by dividing all organizational activities into two areas: (1) input or maintenance services are dubbed "functions," that is, research, marketing, legal services, program development, evaluation, financial, and (2) output or product results that come directly from "program management," that is, the personnel and resources on the "line" that actually do the needed job for the client--the student. Functions tend to be "staff" responsibilities; project management or matrix modes tend to be "line" or production responsibilities. Matrix organizational theory focuses management's attention on productivity rather than on institutional maintenance. This paper proposes an analysis of how existing practices judged effective in the New Jersey Department of Education can be maintained or expanded, and how those management practices judged less than effective may be changed or discontinued. (Author/MLF)

In this paper, the author offers an expanded explanation of just what difference sibling position should make, and then subjects this reasoning to a test that seems to meet all of the objections raised about empirical work linking sibling position to achievement. More specifically, the author (1) lays out a simple proximate explanation of the way in which family size, birth order, and child spacing should influence a child's subsequent attainments by governing the time and other inputs he or she receives; (2) transforms these three dimensions of family structure into a single quantitative family-inputs index; (3) tests the link between sibling position and achievement within families as well as across families; and (4) presents calculations suggesting the order of magnitude of the impact of improved contraception on the subsequent inequality and level of a cohort's educational and career attainments. It turns out that the link between sibling position and achievement is significant even when age and parents' attributes have been held constant. The impact of improved contraception on the distribution of achievements in the next generation turns out to be as important, or possibly more important, then would be inferred from past studies. The family-inputs index emerges as an important variable for future studies. (Author/JM)

In 1976, New Jersey public law established uniform statewide minimum standards in the basic communication and computational skills for publicly educated students in the state. To implement the law for the year 1976-77, the New Jersey Educational Assessment Program administered tests to all fourth, seventh, and tenth grade students. These tests were used as the indicator of minimum basic skills proficiency. Students who did not correctly answer at least 65% of the test items did not satisfy the minimum proficiency requirement in that subject. Statewide, 90.4% of the fourth grade students met or exceeded the minimum standard on the reading test. In fourth grade mathematics, 72.1% of the students surpassed the minimum standard. In seventh grade, 74.2% of the students exceeded the statewide proficiency level in reading, while 60.4% did so in mathematics. Tenth grade results indicated that 77% of the students met the statewide criterion in reading, while 74% did so in mathematics. More students from higher socioeconomis status districts surpassed the minimum proficiency level than did students from lower socioeconomic categories. Also, more students from suburban and regional school districts exceeded the minimum level than did students from urban and rural districts. Behavioral objectives for reading and mathematics in the three grade levels are appended. (Author/MV)

The Rural Income Maintenance Experiment (1979) used sample subjects from the Midwest and the South (Iowa and North Carolina) to measure the effect of alternative tax rates and minimum guarantees upon the work behavior of rural male heads of households. Three contingent aspects of job change behavior were examined: the impacts of support on subjects' probabilities of changing employers (241 subjects employed at the pre-enrollment interviews), their duration of unemployment (165 subjects employed at the pre-enrollment interview who subsequently left that employer), and their selection of new jobs (133 subjects employed at the pre-enrollment interview and the 8th quarterly who changed employers 1 or more times). No additive effects of support payments on changing employers were evidenced. However, relative to similar control group subjects, experimentals who initially had desirable positions were less likely to change employers than were those with less desirable positions. Time of unemployment was longer among subjects who expected less gain upon re-employment than among those who expected greater income gains. Those whose prior jobs were undesirable tended to take new jobs less desirable in terms of status and job satisfaction. Those subjects who had good jobs before tended to obtain better positions than similar controls. Experimentals with secondary earners in the family and a higher guarantee level tended to find jobs with more status and earnings. Findings were compared with the results of the New Jersey-Pennsylvania Graduated Work Incentive Experiment. (Author/CM)

Results of the second year of the New Jersey Minimum Basic Skills Tests in reading and mathematics, mandated by the New Jersey Public School Education Act of 1975, are summarized. Approximately 397,000 students in grades three, six, nine, and eleven were tested. Results of the tests showed that a smaller percentage of sixth-grade students met statewide standards than any other tested grade, confirming previous state and national findings of decreased performance in the intermediate grades. Other findings showed relationships between student achievement and socioeconomic status, type of community in which the school district is located, and region of the state. Tables summarizing results are included, along with appendices outlining required minimum competencies for each grade, and the procedures used to determine cutting scores. (MH)

A discussion session for urban school superintendents from Pennsylvania and New Jersey identified four educational issues, currently the focus of a good deal of political debate and activity, that illustrate the shift from local to Federal, and then from Federal to state-level influence and initiative. These are (1) centralization of control; (2) educational adequacy; (3) financial equity; and (4) staff certification, supervision, and salary. Superintendents from New Jersey and Pennsylvania acknowledged that they must increase their influence over local- and state-level policies because there was little they could do about national issues. Because the superintendents had previously concluded that the Pennsylvania League of Urban Schools (PLUS) was more effective at influencing state and local policy than its New Jersey counterpart, much discussion centered on how New Jersey might adapt PLUS tactics. The association of urban superintendents in Pennsylvania enjoys a large budget and the services of a paid director--attributes that enhance the effectiveness of the association. The development of coalitions and information systems was seen as a way to improve the effectiveness of superintendents' efforts in both states. (Contains 31 references.) (SLD)