In 2014, OSEP instituted the Statewide Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP) reporting requirement. The SSIP was designed as a comprehensive multi-year plan for improving results for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families through system strengthening efforts. States/entities work to improve their infrastructure, implement…

State law requires the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to annually report to the Legislature the number of schools participating in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The report must identify barriers to participation and make recommendations to increase participation. The CEP…

Financial support provided by the Legislature helps to ensure Washington children have access to healthy school meals. In fiscal year 2022, the Legislature provided $11.5 million to eliminate the co-pay for reduced-price meals, support summer meal programs, provide school districts with financial support for breakfast meal service, and provide…

During the 2023 Legislative Session, the Legislature considered House Bill (HB) 1479, a measure which would have prohibited isolation and further restricted restraint in public schools. While the bill did not pass, the Legislature provided the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) with designated state funds to begin actualizing…

A widely cited Emory University study found that while 76% of incarcerated Americans return to prison within five years, that rate drops to 55% for those who take high school classes, 30% for those who complete vocational training, and 13.7% for those who complete an associate degree. Community colleges play a key role in ensuring that people…

Out-of-school-time (OST) programs have long focused on children's social and emotional development as part of their mission of building a culture of connectedness and positive relationships between youth and adults. Research demonstrates that high-quality, evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs are associated with positive…

"Pathways to Implementation" highlights innovative strategies and effective models in career pathways policy, implementation, and programming, as well as challenges states encounter in this work. This seven-part series addresses the key elements of Bellwether's framework for career pathways policy implementation. Each brief defines the…

Approximately 450 community colleges nationally are part of formal statewide or national initiatives to implement guided pathways reforms to improve student success, and many other colleges are implementing guided pathways practices on their own. Because guided pathways is a whole-college reform--and because it takes several years to fully…

"Chemistry in the Public Library" is an outreach event that has fostered a continuing, long-standing partnership between The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington (a public, liberal arts college), the Olympia Timberland Regional Library (the local public library), and the community. It started as a National Chemistry Week event…

This technical supplement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training (E&T) evaluation final reports presents details of the technical approach used for creating analysis variables and estimating impacts of treatment group services on outcomes, including employment, earnings, and SNAP participation. It also…

Strategic partnerships between community-based college success programs and higher education institutions can play a critical role in students' degree completion and workforce readiness. This paper describes partnerships between four community-based organizations and higher education institutions based on interviews with staff directly involved.…

The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorized $200 million for the development, implementation, and evaluation of up to 10 pilot projects to test innovative strategies to reduce dependency on and increase employment among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. The 10 States that received grants were California, Delaware, Georgia,…

The COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting health and safety concerns caused the cancellation of many engineering education opportunities for high school students. To expose high school students to the field of neural engineering and encourage them to pursue academic pathways in biomedical engineering, the Center for Neurotechnology (CNT) at the…

The Running Start Summer School Pilot program was established in 2020 by House Bill 2864 and enacted as Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 28A.630.600. To determine whether the summer term should be funded under the Running Start Program, a summer pilot was created to evaluate interest in and barriers to expanding the Running Start program to…

A team of researchers wanted to learn whether AP teachers using a project-based learning (PBL) approach could develop students' deep learning of knowledge and skills while preparing them for their AP exams. They used a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the Knowledge in Action (KIA) project-based curricula for AP courses. KIA students…