Elected officials, an audience essential to the relevance and funding of Extension, may lack knowledge of Extension's capacity to engage with them in solving local problems, building consensus, and improving strategic planning or governance. They may not consider that by collaborating with locally knowledgeable Extension professionals, they also…

The many Coast Salish groups distributed on both sides of the United States-Canada border on the Pacific coast today face significant obstacles to cross the international border, and in some cases are denied passage or intimidated into not attempting to cross. The current situation regarding travel by Aboriginal people reflects the…

The U.S. spends twice as much as the average industrialized country on higher education, but continues to slide relative to other nations in the percentage of young adults with an associate degree or higher. Despite recent reductions in state aid to higher education, state taxpayers continue to be the largest single source of unrestricted funds…

Driven by economic and educational imperatives, public policymakers, higher education leaders, and philanthropic and advocacy groups are mobilizing aggressive national and state campaigns to bolster college completion. Campaigns to improve student success are particularly concerned about the performance of the nation's community colleges. In…

Driven by economic and educational imperatives, public policymakers, higher education leaders, and philanthropic and advocacy groups are mobilizing aggressive national and state campaigns to bolster college completion. Campaigns to improve student success are particularly concerned about the performance of the nation's community colleges. In…

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…

This Brief summarizes a study that examined the origins of state performance funding in six states: Tennessee, Missouri, Florida, South Carolina, Washington, and Illinois. In order to capture a wide range of possible forces at work in the origins of performance funding, the authors selected states that differed in a variety of ways, including when…

For Daniel J. Kaniewski, the magic formula needed to redirect his career path from anonymous academic researcher to presidential policy adviser was only 719 words long. A single newspaper column that he wrote in April 2005 succinctly criticized the Department of Homeland Security's disaster-preparation plans. A few months later, a White House…

In honor of National School Psychology Week, the NASP Government and Professional Relations (GPR) and Communications committees and NASP staff joined forces on a campaign to help elected officials on Capitol Hill learn about the positive contributions of school psychologists and how their services impact student mental health and learning. This…

In cities and towns across America, millions of children and youth get out of school by mid-afternoon but have neither a safe, supervised place to go nor a structured or engaging activity in which to participate. Because the hours between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. are when young people are most likely to be affected by crime or to engage in risky…

In order to understand whether loans actually expand opportunities among community college students, it is important to understand who is borrowing and who is not. A binary logistic regression was used to determine which financially needy students are likely to borrow from federal loan programs. The current study found that the following types of…

Big-city school systems face many problems, including high dropout rates, low academic achievement, and achievement gaps between middle-class and low-income children. Many big-city systems are also losing enrollment and facing financial deficits. These problems inevitably lead to criticism of the boards that govern urban school districts, and…

Objective: It is essential for health care professionals to be prepared for a bioterrorist attack or other public health emergency. We sought to determine how well biodefense and emerging infectious disease research information was being disseminated to rural health care providers, first responders, and public health officials. Methods:…

Performance funding in higher education ties state funding directly to institutional performance on specific indicators, such as rates of retention, graduation, and job placement. One of the great puzzles about performance funding is that it has been both popular and unstable. Between 1979 and 2007, 26 states enacted it, but 14 of those states…

Purpose. The purpose of the study was to identify and describe learning preferences of current high school students enrolled in online courses. The study further identified the students' perceived benefits and academic attractions to online education. The study also addressed the degree of satisfaction with their online courses. The study's final…