During the Great Depression, following the stock market crash of 1929, the nation's greatest financial crisis, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration created the Public Works of Art Project. It was the first federal government program designed to support the arts by putting artists back to work. The program's purpose was to alleviate…

Research Findings: This study provides the first independent investigation of the second most widely used multidimensional assessment in Head Start--the Preschool Child Observation Record, Second Edition (COR-2). We conducted a comprehensive investigation into the validity of the COR-2 using data from all children in an urban school district's…

This study considered the facilitators and barriers of successful inclusion in Head Start classrooms by examining the perspectives and practices of instructional professionals. A cross-sectional survey design was combined with direct observation in inclusive Head Start classrooms. Survey data were collected from 71 Head Start instructional…

More than 40 states plan to assess student performance with new tests tied to the Common Core State Standards. In summer 2013, results from Common Core-aligned tests in New York showed a steep decline in outcomes. Common Core advocates hailed the scores as an honest accounting of school and student performance, while others worried that they…

Calls for universal preschool programs have become commonplace, reinforced by President Obama's call for "high-quality preschool for all" in 2013. Any program that could cost state and federal taxpayers $50 billion per year warrants a closer look at the evidence on its effectiveness. This report reviews the major evaluations of preschool…

Section 104(a) of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010 made the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) available to Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) and schools in high poverty areas. Under the CEP, families are not required to submit applications for free or reducedprice (FRP) meals, and schools must provide free lunch and breakfast…

In 2011, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan provided states with an opportunity for flexibility from certain requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, currently known as the No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, Act. A total of 43 states; Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; and eight districts in…

Financial aid programs are supposed to improve access and affordability in higher education (Gillen, 2009). The effectiveness of these programs is increasingly being questioned as college attainment figures stagnate and the financial burden on students and families continues to climb year after year. The purpose of this study was to examine the…

All states test students at specified times as required by the No Child Left Behind Act, but the results of these tests indicate that many students do not meet adequate yearly progress (AYP). This problem was evident in a school district in Missouri in which 3rd-grade students in 2 of the 3 elementary schools did not meet AYP on the communication…

Over the last two decades, there has been interest in developing federal policies that focus on student outcomes in elementary and secondary education. Perhaps most prominently, the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB; P.L. 107-110), which amended and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), marked a…

This dissertation offers empirical evidence for the ongoing debates over targeted and universal preschool. Specifically, I ask: (1) Does universal preschool narrow socioeconomic achievement gaps? (2) To what extent, and under what conditions, does the American public prefer universal to targeted preschool? (3) Is universal preschool better funded…

Fresh Produce, Fresh Start was a pilot farm to family study which tested the effectiveness of a local produce delivery program on dietary intake of Head Start participants. Utilizing a pre-test/post-test design, measures collected from Head Start parents included 24-hour recall of dietary intake, height and weight, and a food security…

No Child Left Behind, hereafter referred to as NCLB, has given us an age of accountability for America's schools that includes high stakes tests for students at various grade levels. Those tests are used to measure a child's knowledge of standards in each core subject area including math, science, language arts, and social studies. The standards…

Through a year-long study of welfare-to-work students in the community college CalWORKs program, we investigated what self-authorship development looks like by examining developmental progress, and whether there are patterns in development along the three dimensions of self-authorship. Findings demonstrate progress toward self-authorship, but…

While policies at all levels affect music educators, and music education researchers have called for increased attention to policy issues, few have explored preservice music teacher educators' beliefs about policy. This study examined music teacher educators' (N = 81) familiarity with and attitudes toward contemporary education and music education…