Home visiting connects expectant parents, new caregivers, and their young children with a support person, called a home visitor. The home visitor meets regularly with the family, develops a relationship with them, and supports them to achieve their goals and meet their needs. To reach the thousands of additional families who could benefit from…

Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) Nevada applied the ECHO virtual hub-and-spoke telementoring model over nine 6-week cohorts (between November 2019 and November 2021) supporting community health workers (CHWs) who advise clients with diabetes or pre-diabetes. This study describes the program implementation, including…

Purpose: School improvement planning and implementation is one organizational process by which principals may positively impact school and student outcomes. Limited research, however, has explored how principal preparation programs prepare aspiring leaders for this common school leadership activity. This study examined aspiring principals engaged…

When done reliably and efficiently, measuring school climate can help improve schools' vital signs and help state boards of education realize their goals and objectives for the system as a whole. Moreover, because it is as consequential to schools as checking heart rates and blood pressure are to humans, schools should always use climate measures…

One way to tackle climate misconceptions is to have students work with data to show how the climate is changing in their local community. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has weather stations nationwide that collect data on air temperature and precipitation that are freely available online. This article describes a lesson…

Extension professionals often assess community needs to determine programs and target audiences. Data can be collected through surveys, focus group and individual interviews, meta-analysis, systematic observation, and other methods. Knowledge gaps are identified, and programs are designed to resolve the deficiencies. However, do Extension…

There is a growing body of research that suggests the first year of high school is a critical transition point for students. It also finds course-taking and successful completion of those courses in 9th grade to be valuable predictors of students' success in high school. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides states an opportunity to…

Districts across the country are facing severe shortages of teachers--especially in certain subjects (math, science, special education, career and technical education, and bilingual education) and in specific schools (urban, rural, high-poverty, high-minority, and low-achieving). The severity of the teacher shortage problem varies significantly by…

From 2016 through 2019, 10 states strengthened their career readiness systems through the New Skills for Youth initiative (NSFY), a $75 million national investment by JPMorgan Chase & Co. to enhance state efforts to increase the number of learners across the country who are prepared for success in both college and career. As part of this…

This report is intended to help governors, legislators, department secretaries, and advocates find information on ways to strengthen the structure and function of their existing cabinets, or create a new cabinet. The survey in this report is the nation's only survey of state child and youth policy coordinating bodies. The biennial survey assesses…

The FNS Research Corner provides a continuing series to summarize recently completed and current research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in the area of child nutrition. Summaries of recently completed research projects and in-progress research are provided in this article.

Extension educators have used different methods to collect information for a needs assessment, including advisory committees, survey questionnaires, focus groups, interviews with key informants, or a combination of the former. This article describes the use of key informant interviews (agency personnel working with parents and young children) that…

There is growing unease about suspension and expulsion of children at the preschool level. Preschoolers are expelled at three times the rate of K-12 students (Gilliam, 2005). Boys--particularly African-American boys--comprise a disproportionate number of these cases, a fact that has caused concern among parents, policymakers, and advocates alike.…

This evaluation assesses the Alternative Route to Licensure (ARL) program of the Clark County School District (CCSD), in Clark County, Nevada from the program participants' perspectives. The program was implemented to reduce teacher shortages in the school district and allow persons with non-education-related Bachelor's Degrees to obtain teaching…

Making robust and reliable information about schools accessible is one of the most powerful ways to foster engagement and promote informed decisions that will shape our communities. Though education data is frequently collected and aggregated at the state level, data is rarely synthesized across cities. This report provides comparable information…