Free school meal access has become increasingly intertwined with federal social safety net programs--including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)--to reduce duplicative paperwork for schools. The changes to SNAP that House Republicans have proposed would have downstream effects on free school meal access. The proposed changes to…

Under section 1001 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESEA), the purpose of the Title I, Part A program (Title I, Part A) is to provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education as well as to close educational achievement gaps. The…

Growth-to-standard models evaluate student growth against the growth needed to reach a future standard or target of interest, such as proficiency. A common growth-to-standard model involves comparing the popular Student Growth Percentile (SGP) to Adequate Growth Percentiles (AGPs). AGPs follow from an involved process based on fitting a series of…

The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact of Race to the Top (RTTT) on test scores, both overall and in terms of narrowing demographic achievement gaps--a central focus in the original RTTT applications. We draw on student-level NAEP data in reading and mathematics for fourth and eighth graders from 1996 to 2019. An event-study…

House Republicans have passed their version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which now goes to the Senate for consideration. The goal is to pass the bill by July, though final content and timeline are subject to change. The bill puts forth several changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aimed at reducing federal spending…

Access to high-quality early care and education (ECE) supports healthy child development, accelerates academic achievement, reduces educational inequality, and catalyzes economic growth. The benefits of ECE are even greater among economically disadvantaged children, children with disabilities, and multilingual learners. However, despite these…

In this article, we introduce the term "vulnerability to achievement stressors," which refers to differentially low achievement when shifts in the educational environment "stress" or threaten the capacity of an individual or a group of individuals to make academic progress. We also introduce a methodological framework for…