Background: Since 2003, many states have introduced policies to improve the nutritional content and restrict the availability of competitive foods, which are foods offered outside of the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs. This article evaluates the impact of 2 types of state-level policies on the availability of competitive foods in a…

This report details the status of charter school facilities in the state of Arkansas. In the Spring of 2013, the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, the Colorado League of Charter Schools, and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools worked to collect evidence that would accurately portray both the degree to which Arkansas open…

Many families rely on U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-funded school lunch and breakfast programs to make the family's food budget stretch, improving their food security throughout the school year. These programs feed about 31 million students annually. During the summer where schools are not in session, food security decreases. The USDA…

In this article, the authors describe how they used student's complaints about limited salad choices in the cafeteria as the focus of a class project. Following steps of the Project Citizen protocol of the Center for Civic Education, the authors facilitated students' efforts, which included researching the problem, talking with adult…

The history of the school lunch program is laden with the political wrangling and compromises that usually beset massive government initiatives, and as with other government initiatives, the results of the wrangling and compromises have tended to be sadly durable. The school lunch program has consistently been viewed and managed not primarily as a…

The purpose of this newsletter is to help foodservice directors, supervisors, and managers successfully implement the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) School Meals Initiative (SMI) for Healthy Children regulations. Because there is so much available information on SMI, it can be overwhelming to find answers to your questions and concerns.…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare nutrient content and cost of home-packed lunches to nutrient standards and prices for reimbursable school lunches. Methods: Researchers observed food and beverage contents of 333 home packed lunches at four north Texas elementary schools. Nutritionist Pro was used to analyze lunches for calories,…

Schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program receive a portion of their federal funding as commodity foods rather than cash payments. This research compared the product costs and estimated total procurement costs of commodity and commercial foods from the school district perspective using data from 579 Minnesota ordering sites in…

Purpose/Objectives: The school nutrition environment includes food policy and practices, advertising, and presence of competitive foods (CF). CF provide schools with revenue; however, CF decrease National School Lunch Program (NSLP) participation and reimbursement as well as the nutrient density of children's diets. Local wellness policies (LWPs)…

This randomized controlled field trial examined the efficacy of the Responsive Classroom (RC) approach on student achievement. Schools (n = 24) were randomized into intervention and control conditions; 2,904 children were studied from end of second to fifth grade. Students at schools assigned to the RC condition did not outperform students at…

The current study examines data from students in grades 4-8 who participated in a statewide computer-based benchmark writing assessment that featured automated essay scoring and automated feedback. We examined whether the use of automated feedback was associated with gains in writing quality across revisions to an essay, and with transfer effects…

In compliance with the provisions of A.C.A.§§6-20-2201 et seq., the Annual Statistical Report of the Public Schools of Arkansas, Public Charter Schools, and Education Service Cooperatives, 2013-2014 Actual and 2014-2015 Budgeted, (ASR) is presented here. The Rankings of Selected Items of the Public Schools of Arkansas, 2013-2014 Actual, (Rankings)…

This study examined the effectiveness of the odds-ratio method (Penfield, 2008) and the multinomial logistic regression method (Kato, Moen, & Thurlow, 2009) for measuring differential distractor functioning (DDF) effects in comparison to the standardized distractor analysis approach (Schmitt & Bleistein, 1987). Students classified as participating…

Background: This article seeks to inform state and local school food policies by evaluating the impact of Connecticut's Healthy Food Certification (HFC), a program which provides monetary incentives to school districts that choose to implement state nutrition standards for all foods sold to students outside reimbursable school meals. Methods: Food…

Lunch buddy mentoring is a particular kind of school-based mentoring program: college student mentors meet twice weekly during school lunch with mentees, and a new mentor is provided each semester. The program is designed to benefit elementary school children who are highly aggressive or chronically bullied. Novel to lunch buddy mentoring is a…