The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), with the mission to increase food security and reduce hunger. The study summarized here seeks to understand how the 53 SNAP State agencies -- 50 States, District of Columbia (DC), Guam, the U.S. Virgin…

In the teaching of social studies, the use of funds of knowledge is beneficial for children to understand different experiences and perspectives. Families use funds of knowledge to teach their children what is important and valuable in their culture. In the case of Latino families, being bilingual is part of their history while for other families…

This document was created by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) to provide guidance for newly opening charter schools. Use this guide to keep track of MDE deadlines, access the reporting calendar, and follow the steps necessary to ensure you are utilizing all the resources and revenue available from the state. This guidance document does…

ORS 327.016 directs the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) to prepare an annual report on English learner program funding and student outcomes. The report's intention is to describe the population of English Learners in Oregon and provide a summary of district and state progress towards meeting their needs and objectives. The ODE annually…

The stage is set for major change in California early childhood education (ECE). The State's requirements for Transitional Kindergarten instruction, teacher training, and professional development could lead to mandated integration of existing, impressive Dual Language Learner (DLL) resources, guidance, and best practices. In addition to more…

Since Ecuador has determined that it wants to be fully bilingual in ten years, this paper describes the experience of a Fulbright Scholar at a university Language Center in Quito; one helping language teachers improve the language learning skills of their students. The theoretical framework for this work comes from Learner Self-Management (LSM) or…

As the number of English learners continues to grow faster than that of any other group in the nation's public schools, concerns are mounting that the distinctive needs of those students and the educators who work with them are receiving diminishing attention from the U.S. Department of Education. Even as the federal government spends roughly $750…

Sierra Vista Elementary School is a Title I school located in south central Phoenix that serves 418 K-8 students, 90 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and live in homes where the primary language is not English. One-third of the student population is made up of English-language learners. Hispanic students make up 78 percent…

In 1994, the federal Early Head Start (EHS) program was created to address the comprehensive needs of low-income pregnant women and children under age 3. EHS was created almost 30 years after Head Start was established in 1965 to serve low-income 3- and 4-year-old children and their families with comprehensive early education and support services.…

As the Race-to-the-Top Assessment Consortia develop their assessments, they will need to develop shared accommodations policies to ensure that their tests are used in consistent ways across the participating states. Developing a common set of accommodations policies will require that Consortium members recognize the divergent viewpoints that…

Gervais High School--with a senior class of 80 and a total enrollment of 337--may be small in size compared to its neighbors, but it has demonstrated over the last four years the ability to think big in pursuit of excellence. A decade ago, Gervais had a well-earned reputation in Oregon's Willamette Valley as a drug-ridden, gang-infested school…

Before awarding waivers from core tenets of the No Child Left Behind Act to 11 states, the U.S. Department of Education ordered changes to address a significant weakness in most states' proposals: how they would hold schools accountable for groups of students deemed academically at risk, particularly those in special education or learning English.…

The U.S. Department of Education's Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) is one of the Obama administration's major antipoverty initiatives and a core strategy of the White House's Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. It is intended to improve educational outcomes by creating a continuum of school readiness, academic services, and family and…

Educators in the Chula Vista Elementary School District determined what kind of instruction students needed through a "response to intervention" (RTI) process, which provides extra help to struggling students with an aim of reducing the number of referrals to special education. As RTI catches on throughout the country, the district is on…

This article discusses how the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability mechanism of No Child Left Behind makes use of supposedly objective standardized test scores to describe schools in a certain way when the very same results could serve to draw very different conclusions. Examining the proficiency scores of students from a specific middle…