The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation's largest domestic food and nutrition assistance program for low-income Americans. SNAP-Education, commonly referred to as SNAP-Ed, is the nutrition education arm of SNAP benefits. SNAP-Ed aims to help individuals stretch their food budgets wisely while working to make healthy…

The Federal Work-Study program was introduced as part of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, with the goal of enabling low-income students to work their way through college. It is thus one of the earliest forms of federal financial aid for college, pre-dating both Pell Grants and Stafford Loans. Since its inception, FWS has provided institutions…

"The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (PL 107-110) established the Reading First Program (Title I, Part B, Subpart 1), a major federal initiative designed to help ensure that all children can read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. Reading First (RF) builds upon research indicating that effective reading instruction on…

The Reading First (RF) Program was first and foremost designed to improve young students' reading skills, as reading proficiency is critical to students' success in school. Students must be able to read and comprehend text well in order to master subject matter taught in various content areas. Disproportionately large numbers of minority and…

A hefty body of evidence documents the phenomenon of "summer learning loss," but consensus on the attributes of effective summer intervention, especially when it comes to access to high-quality teaching for students most at risk of falling behind, is only starting to emerge. Now, though, a handful of districts are beginning to wrestle with the…

The Obama Administration is currently using more than $4 billion in federal stimulus funds in a controversial program called Race to The Top in an attempt to improve student achievement in public schools throughout the country. However, this study analyzes a different approach to spending stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment…

Witnesses offered testimony bearing on budget issues and the reauthorization of the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Programs; the Special Supplemental Summer Food Program; the State Administrative Expense Program; the Commodity Distribution Program; and the Nutrition Education and Training Program. Testimony concerning permanently authorized…

This paper proposes a new bipartisan initiative to strengthen the effectiveness of U.S. social programs by focusing funds within each program on research-proven projects, practices, and strategies ("interventions"). The proposal seeks neither an increase nor decrease in overall program funding; rather, its central aim is to maximize the…

These proceedings of the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice deal with the proposed abolition of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which was marked for elimination in the proposed budget of the Justice Department. Testimony is presented that supports retention of this office along with the comments of senators, police and…

To maximize freedom from personal and political conflicts of interest, decentralized mechanisms of federal program evaluations are needed. Block grants mean that state legislatures and governors will become more responsible for oversight of funds. Three proposals are presented for helping the states deal with these increased evaluation…

PPBS is a way to improve the methods used in planning, programing, budgeting, and evaluating Federal programs. Careful analysis of proposed expenditures and investments are an explicit part of the PPB system. The process of examining various alternatives in order to assure efficient and effective allocation of resources is known as cost analysis.…

Information that Congress and various agencies can use to plan, implement, and evaluate programs supported by more than 30 agencies is provided. This statement focuses on the amount and complexity of federal support for education and addresses the challenge of obtaining more and better information. Research indicates that six programs--Child…

National senior service programs have had a long and relatively successful history. Emerging at the intersection of federal aging and poverty policy initiatives in the early 1960s, projects such as the Foster Grandparent Program (FGP) and the Senior Companion Program (SCP) have expanded in size and scope over the last several decades. These two…

Approximately two-thirds of the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL's) fiscal year 1995 (FY95) budget of $34.3 billion consists of mandatory spending on income maintenance programs. Of the remaining $10.7 billion financing DOL's other functions, approximately $6.9 billion is allocated to employment training activities and $2.93 billion is allocated…

This report provides comments and opinions from National Science Foundation (NSF) officials on proposed agency budget cuts which could affect three NSF Directorates: Science and Engineering; Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences; and Scientific, Technological, and International Affairs. Specific topics discussed focus on personnel levels,…