Search

This report documents the impacts three years after random assignment for the Pathways to Healthcare program, operated by Pima Community College and Pima County One Stop in Tucson, Arizona. The program aimed to help low-income, low-skilled adults access and complete occupational training that could lead to increased employment and higher earnings. This research was undertaken to evaluate whether Pathways to Healthcare was successful in providing training to low-income, low-skilled adults and whether the program's efforts led to impacts on credentials, earnings, healthcare employment, and other life outcomes. This report sought to answer the following research questions: (1) Three years after random assignment, what were the effects of Pathways to Healthcare on educational outcomes?; (2) Three years after random assignment, what were the effects of Pathways to Healthcare on entry into career-track employment and higher earnings?; and (3) Three years after random assignment, what were the effects of Pathways to Healthcare on individual and family well-being, including income and other life outcomes?

Experimental studies of educational interventions are rarely based on representative samples of the target population. This simulation study tests two formal sampling strategies for selecting districts and schools from within strata when they may not agree to participate if selected: (1) balanced selection of the most typical district or school within each stratum; and (2) random selection. We compared the generalizability of the resulting impact estimates, both to each other and to a stylized approach to purposive selection (the typical approach for experimental studies in education). We found that balanced and random selection of schools within randomly selected districts were the most consistent strategies in terms of generalizability, with minimal difference between the two. Separately, for random selection, we tested two strategies for replacing districts that refused to participate--random and nearest neighbor replacement. Random replacement outperformed nearest neighbor replacement in many, but not all, scenarios. Overall, the findings suggest that formal sampling strategies for selecting districts and schools for experimental studies of educational interventions can substantially improve the generalizability of their impact findings. [This is the online version of an article published in "Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness."]

In 2010, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the first round of five-year Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG 1.0) to 32 organizations in 23 states; five were tribal organizations. The purpose of the HPOG Program is to provide education and training to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other low-income individuals for occupations in the healthcare field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand. HPOG 1.0 grantees designed and implemented programs to provide eligible participants with education, occupational training, and support and employment services to help them train for and find jobs in a variety of healthcare professions. The ACF Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation supports a multipronged research and evaluation strategy to assess the success of the HPOG Program. To assess its effectiveness, the first round of local HPOG programs was evaluated using an experimental design in which eligible program applicants were assigned at random to a "treatment" group that could access the program or a "control" group that could not. To compute the program's impact, the outcomes for each group were compared. This document reports on the impacts that arose about three years after random assignment. It reports an overall average impact across the diverse HPOG 1.0 programs, as well as impacts for selected subgroups of study participants.

This executive summary describes the larger study, "Teacher Preparation Experiences and Early Teaching Effectiveness. NCEE 2019-4007" (ED598664). This study provides information about new teachers' preparation experiences and explores whether particular types of experiences are related to teachers' effectiveness in improving their students' test scores. Understanding whether certain ways of preparing teachers are more effective than others is important, but very little is currently known about what teacher preparation emphasizes at a fine-grained level and how those experiences are related to teaching effectiveness. Research identifying which preparation experiences are related to improved student performance can generate hypotheses for improving teacher preparation. Through an online survey administered in spring 2015, this study collected information from new teachers about their preparation experiences. It also examined the relationship between the frequency of these experiences and teachers' effectiveness in improving student test scores. The summary describes how the study was conducted, key findings, and concluding thoughts.

This report examines the frequency of particular teacher preparation experiences and explores their relationships to beginning teachers' effectiveness in improving student test scores once they get to the classroom. The report found both differences in how teachers prepare for their certification in the field and that certain experiences are related to improving test scores in the classroom. The findings provide a detailed look into current teacher preparation practices and identify potential avenues for improving them. [For the appendices, see ED598665. For the executive summary, see ED598666. For the study highlights, see ED598667.]

The 13 appendices in this publication accompany the full report, "Teacher Preparation Experiences and Early Teaching Effectiveness. NCEE 2019-4007" (ED598664). They include: (1) Teacher Survey Response Rates by District/State; (2) Comparison of the Subsample Used for Relational Analyses and the Full Sample; (3) Development of the Teacher Survey; (4) Teacher Survey Questions on Preparation Experiences; (5) Measures of Preparation Experiences; (6) Teachers' Assessment of the Usefulness of Preparation Experiences; (7) Factor Analysis Methodology; (8) Assessing Measurement Error in Teacher Survey Responses; (9) Value-Added Modeling Methodology; (10) Teachers' Preparation Experiences by Preparation Provider and Degree Program; (11) Robustness of Results to Alternative Statistical Models; (12) Subgroup Analyses of Relational Findings; and (13) Relationships between Preparation Experiences and Effectiveness by Year of Teaching.

In 2010, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the first round of five-year HPOG grants (HPOG 1.0) to 32 organizations (including 5 tribal organizations) in 23 states. The purpose of the HPOG Program is to provide education and training to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other low-income individuals for occupations in the healthcare field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand. This paper examines the relationship between completion of a long-term credential through HPOG and impacts on earnings. To this end, the authors examine whether those who earned longer-term credentials experienced greater impacts on their earnings than those who did not earn long-term credentials. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]