Conventional wisdom and antiquated stage development theories have had a negative effect on children's spirituality. This paper looks at an innovative spiritual practice (embodied prayer) that instead promotes children's agency and embodied engagement in multi-layered meaning making. It traces both the ways in which children respond to higher…

The Families Forward Demonstration (FFD) examined new strategies to increase the earnings of parents who owe child support but are unable to fully meet their obligations due to low earnings. It also focused on "responsive" child support services that helped parents understand their support obligations, and even suspended certain…

This evaluation research addressed the gap in the stress management education literature related to short-term mindfulness programs for youth in non-formal educational settings. The Mindfulness Moments: Today and 4-Life program was adapted from existing curricula and delivered in Ohio and Pennsylvania during summer 2019. The purpose of the program…

State law requires that Ohio's superintendent of public instruction annually report on the status of implementation of special education and related services for children with disabilities. This includes the number of children identified with disabilities and the number of identified children receiving services. The Ohio Department of Education…

Background: Strategic implementation leadership is a critical determinant of successful implementation, hypothesized to create a more supportive implementation climate conducive to the adoption and use of evidence-based practices. Implementation leadership behaviors may vary significantly across contexts, necessitating studies that examine the…

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project conducted 15 randomized controlled trials of behavioral interventions across eight states, in the domains of work support, child support, and child care. BIAS used a systematic approach called "behavioral diagnosis and design" to develop the interventions and their…

The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) created the Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services (BICS) demonstration in 2014. The goals of the demonstration were to use insights from behavioral science to develop interventions that could improve child support services and increase parent engagement, and to encourage the…

The National School Lunch Program's (NSLP) original goal was to help students in need, but policy changes in the past decade have made students from middle-income and upper-income families eligible for federally funded school meals. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), an expansion of the NSLP enacted in 2010, effectively created a federal…

As the first major effort to use a behavioral economics lens to examine human services programs that serve poor and vulnerable families in the United States, the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project demonstrated the value of applying behavioral insights to improve the efficacy of human services programs. The BIAS…

As required by 20 U.S.C. 1407 and 34 C.F.R. § 300.199, the Ohio Department of Education is identifying in writing to local educational agencies and the United States Department of Education the state-imposed special education rules, regulations, and policies adopted by the State Board of Education that are not required by Part B of the Individuals…

Students in public education are expected to attend school on a regular basis to learn. This study applied multiple linear regression models and binary logistic regression models to analyze the effect of risk of early chronic absence pattern on later math achievement by using student level longitudinal data. Results showed that students with small…

The only consistency with children, with and without disabilities, is that they are inconsistent. Much of a child's behavior is adult controlled by their reaction, methods used, and consistency in support and discipline. When adults change the way they respond to the child's behaviors, the child gradually will learn to modify their behavior.…

This article reports on a research study designed to identify who participates in library-based summer reading clubs (SRCs) and why they elect to do so. To address this aim, questionnaires were completed by caregivers of 246 children upon enrollment to the SRC of a metropolitan library as well as 480 youth; the questionnaire was designed to learn…

Objective: This study examines the psychometric properties of the revised Perceived Social Competence Scale (PSCS), a brief, user-friendly tool used to assess social competence among youth. Method: Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) examined the factor structure and invariance of an enhanced scale (PSCS-II), among a sample of 420 youth.…

This study characterized psychotropic medication use among Medicaid-enrolled children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders by examining trends over time, including length of treatment and polypharmacy using 4 years of administrative claims data from 41 state Medicaid programs (2000-2003). The data set included nearly 3 million children…