The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) uses a group 24-hour dietary recall (Gr24HDR) to measure changes in diet quality. Participant perceptions of the tool can guide implementation practices used by EFNEP Extension staff. Focus group (FG) sessions were conducted in five states and transcripts analyzed following a framework…

Developed by the Region 12 Comprehensive Center in partnership with the Colorado Department of Education, this document supports Colorado teams in exploring the geographic information system (GIS) map, facilitating conversations on the data presented in the map, and developing recommendations to strengthen Colorado's educator workforce pipeline.…

Research data management is a prominent and evolving consideration for the academic community, especially in scientific disciplines. This research study surveyed 131 graduate students and 79 faculty members in the sciences at two public doctoral universities to determine the importance, knowledge, and interest levels around research data…

The Early Fractions Test is a paper-pencil test designed to measure mathematics achievement of third- and fourth-grade students in the domain of fractions. The purpose, or intended use, of the Early Fractions Test is to serve as a student pretest covariate and a test of baseline equivalence in the larger study. In this report, we discuss our…

The purpose of this study was to describe how states in the REL Central Region (Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming) evaluate teacher preparation programs and planned changes for evaluation. Publicly available documents were reviewed and interviews were conducted with state education agency representatives…

Leadership matters. Principals are the primary drivers of school improvement and the best long-term investment to ensure effective teaching and learning at scale. Principals are central to State efforts to implement new college and career-ready standards, execute teacher evaluation and support systems and turn around low-performing schools. These…

As an outgrowth of the accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, districts are increasingly implementing "interim" or "benchmark" assessments. This report investigates various stakeholders' original purposes in adopting interim or benchmark assessments, ensuing implementation efforts, and actual assessment…

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Science Digital Library/Distributed Learning (NSDL) program turned 10 years old in 2010. This report presents results of a preliminary program evaluation carried out by RAND and is organized around three principal goals: (1) Provide an initial evaluation of NSDL based on existing information…

One of the most important things school systems can do to promote student achievement is to ensure that all students have effective teachers. Effective teachers may be particularly important for the most disadvantaged students. The U.S. Department of Education commissioned the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to create this report as a…

This document contains statistics and input-output measures for all Colorado public libraries. Tables of the following 1997 survey data are provided: state totals and averages; public library addresses; telephone, fax, and URL for public libraries; public library directors; borrowers, outlets and bookmobiles; ALA-MLS librarians, other staff and…

This study evaluated the first phase of a three-phase project to improve baccalaureate achievement rates of minority students in Colorado. The activities of the first phase included gathering more and better data on the progress of students, analyzing those data, and using that analysis to choose and visit institutions that seem to be succeeding…

This report presents findings from two investigations of the use of classroom artifacts to measure the presence of reform-oriented teaching practices in middle-school science classes. It complements previous research on the use of artifacts to describe reform-oriented teaching practices in mathematics. In both studies, ratings based on collections…

A survey of the reference departments of public libraries in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah was conducted to determine whether CD-ROM products are being used in routine reference work. Previous literature on CD-ROM had primarily been concerned with the response to and acceptance of the technology by patrons. A stratified sample of public…

In Colorado, 8,663 high school seniors from 132 high schools in 91 districts (more than half the districts in the state) participated in a study that posed the following questions: What motivates today's students in school? and How prepared are these students for their future? The study found the following: (1) high school seniors are motivated by…

In 1991, a study was conducted to provide a demographic profile of Colorado's community college faculty; to determine their retirement intentions; to predict the percent of faculty retiring over the next 14 years; to ascertain those incentives most favorable for retaining the services of faculty beyond their retirement eligibility; and to…