Program satisfaction, self-efficacy to change, and willingness to change, are dispositions that influence physical education teacher change. The study purpose was to validate an instrument measuring program satisfaction, self-efficacy to change, and willingness to change relative to teachers' likelihood to change. A 15-item Teacher Change…

Grandparents University ® (GPU) is a 2-day campus-based nutrition education program for grandparents and grandchildren based on constructs from Social Cognitive Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior. This article describes how program theory was used to develop a working model, design activities, and select outcome measures of a 2-day…

Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs) have advanced and matured, a number of states and localities have undertaken evaluations to validate the systems. Such efforts stem from the desire to ensure that the system is designed and operating in the ways envisioned when the system was established. Given that a central component in a QRIS…

Environmental Field Days (EFD) are held throughout the country and provide a unique opportunity to involve students in real world science. A study to assess the validity of an observation tool for EFD programs was conducted at the Metro Water Festival with fifth grade students. Items from the observation tool were mapped to students' evaluation…

The American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a three-year initiative launched in June 2008 and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It was created to support a pilot group of two-year institutions to develop or expand campus programs that engage plus 50 learners. The initiative focuses on three types of…

The American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a three-year initiative launched in June 2008 and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It was created to support a pilot group of two-year institutions to develop or expand campus programs that engage plus 50 learners. The initiative focuses on three types of…

This article details a strategic planning model and concurrent 3-year research study focusing on the benefits of preK-16 professional development school learning communities for the participating preK-16 educational leaders in a midwestern school-university partnership network. Results of the study, along with the strategic plan's success at…

A study evaluated the use of the request for proposal (RFP) process as a method of distributing federal vocational education and job training funds in Minnesota. Thirty-seven employees of Minnesota technical colleges, community-based organizations, service delivery areas, and state agencies who had actually prepared proposals requesting Job…

This report provides Year 2 data comparing two types of school breakfast programs in Minnesota to schools that did not serve breakfast at all (No Breakfast schools): Fast Break to Learning, a universal free breakfast program (Fastbreak schools), and programs with a sliding fee scale (control schools). Data were collected from 30 Fastbreak, 195…

Early Childhood Family Education is a voluntary public school program for Minnesota families with children through kindergarten age. The program's mission is to support parents' ability to provide for their children's development. To determine the program's effectiveness, participating parents were interviewed in the fall of 1990 and again at the…

A study examined the condition of vocational education in correctional institutions in Minnesota. A literature review was conducted, and surveys were sent to 57 instructors and 18 supervisors of vocational education in correctional institutions throughout Minnesota. Forty-one of 57 instructors (72%) and all 18 supervisors (100%) completed the…

This report details a two-part study to describe the Minnesota secondary and adult consumer and homemaking program and to identify "special" consumer and homemaking programs and describe them through case studies. Questions in the study focus on responsiveness to the 1976 Vocational Education Amendments. The methodological approaches…

The objectives of this study were to examine outcomes of the Minnesota D.A.R.E. Plus Project on violence-related behaviors among middle school students and mediation analyses that test how the intervention was effective in reducing physical and verbal violence. Twenty-four schools were randomly assigned to the D.A.R.E. middle school curriculum,…

Minnesota divides its Title IV-E-IL allocation among three components of a statewide program titled Support for Emancipation and Living Functionally (SELF). SELF is a state-supervised, county-implemented program based on the premise that youth in substitute (foster) care are at significant risk of not making a successful transition to independent…