Severe inequities for underrepresented student groups (URGs) in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) fields has remained a topic of national concern for several decades. Research has demonstrated the efficacy of STEMM intervention programs (SIPs) in addressing disparate STEMM outcomes. However, there is a dearth of…

The American School Counselor Association Closing-the-Gap Action Plan template is a tool created to help school counselors identify educational gaps and track interventions. We applied a transcendental, phenomenological qualitative research method to explore school counselors' use of the template to advocate for students. Our findings demonstrate…

"The Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation: Early Findings on the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program--A Report to Congress" presents the first findings from the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE), the legislatively mandated national evaluation of the Maternal, Infant, and…

Aggression Replacement Training (ART) was developed by the late Arnold Goldstein of Syracuse University to teach positive alternatives to children and youth with emotional and behavioral problems (Glick & Gibbs, 2011; Goldstein, Glick, & Gibbs, 1998). ART provides cognitive, affective, and behavioral interventions to build competence in…

Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard in research but may not fully explain or predict outcome variations in community-based interventions. Demonstrating efficacy of externally driven programs in well-controlled environments may not translate to community-based implementation where resources and priorities vary. A bottom-up evaluation…

Pennsylvania began scaling up high-fidelity implementation of SchoolWide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) in 2006-2007 due to converging regulatory, legal, ethical, and practical influences. The Pennsylvania Community of Practice on School-Based Behavioral Health adopted Algozzine et al.'s (2010) blueprint to describe and…

Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting legislation permits states to fund "promising practices"--with the understanding that these models will have a rigorous evaluation component. This article describes an innovative, low cost paraprofessional home visiting model developed in Pennsylvania by the Maternity Care Coalition. In…

Children from low-income families are more likely than those from higher income families to have poor social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes. One approach that has helped parents and their young children is home visiting, which provides information, resources, and support to expectant parents and families with young…

The accountability movement in education, in general, and early childhood intervention (ECI), specifically, have fueled the debate about the quality, benefits, and limitations of various types of publicly funded ECI and human service programs (PEW Charitable Trusts, 2008; National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, 2009) not only in…

School belonging is a construct that describes student connections to school via a student's social and emotional attachments to others at school, commitment to adhering to school rules, involvement in school activities, and belief systems related to how much school is valued (Hirschi, 1969; Wehlage et al, 1989). Research has consistently found…

Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts was created to provide research-based, high quality pre-kindergarten opportunities to at-risk children across the commonwealth by leveraging the existing early education services in schools, Keystone STARS child care programs, Head Start, and licensed nursery schools. The standards are high and the accountability…

The study reviewed in this paper examined the effects of a web-based tutoring program, "Intelligent Tutoring of the Structure Strategy" ("ITSS"), on the reading comprehension of fourth-grade students in language arts classrooms. The analysis included 1,875 to 2,371 fourth-grade students from 100 to 117 classrooms in…

This study examines changes in parent support and child emergent literacy skills over time as children moved from Head Start into kindergarten. It compares the transactional parent-child influences in families randomly assigned in Head Start to receive an enriched home visiting program that emphasized parents as teachers relative to a control…

Making Connections was the Annie E. Casey Foundation's signature place-based, community-change initiative of the 2000s. It sought to build on previous work and launch an effort focused firmly on the framework of family strengthening. The Foundation started Making Connections in 22 places, focusing eventually on first 10, then seven sites. It…

The "Personnel Development Program to Improve Services and Results for Children with Disabilities" is authorized under Section 662 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and is known as the Personnel Development Program (PDP). The PDP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education's (ED's) Office of Special…