Food stamp participation rates vary substantially from state to state. This report looks at the two factors most likely to cause this variation—the characteristics of those eligible to receive food stamps, as well as the economic and policy conditions, in each state. The authors found...

Paying teachers for their performance rather than solely on experience and education is not a new idea, but it is gaining traction in today's climate of educational accountability. Yet the research has not kept up with policy, in part because most programs do not last long enough to be studied...

In 2008, Congress created the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Program to fund alternative training programs that draw highly qualified teachers to high-need schools. Funded under this grant, teaching residency programs (TRPs) are designed to attract new teachers to the profession. The programs...

The Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), a whole-school intervention that aims to improve schools by raising teacher quality, provides teachers with opportunities for professional growth, promotion to school leadership roles without leaving the classroom, structured feedback, and performance-based...

This report presents interim findings from the Power4Kids evaluation. Conducted just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, the evaluation is assessing the effectiveness of either substantial parts or all of four widely used programs for elementary school students...

Summarizes recent work in the food security area and methods used to measure food security; also describes analytic and empirical issues related to analyzing food security data.

This report details findings from an experimental evaluation of four widely used programs for elementary school students with reading problems—Corrective Reading, Failure Free Reading, Spell Read P.A.T., and Wilson Reading. Conducted just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny...