Performance management systems may improve service delivery and participant outcomes, but they do not necessarily provide information on a program's causal effects. This article develops a statistical model that describes the conditions under which regression adjustment improves the...

This report presents the value-added models used to measure school and teacher effectiveness in the District of Columbia Public Schools in the 2010–2011 school year.

This study examines the value of state Medicaid program spending by exploring the relationship between both sides of the efficiency coin—costs and outcomes. The authors create measures that relate spending per beneficiary to quality indicators, compare states’ performance, and build a...

The Food Stamp Program (FSP) provides millions of Americans with the means to purchase food for a nutritious diet and is the largest of the 15 domestic food and nutrition assistance programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. This report presents...

The Enhanced Home Visiting Pilot Project, funded by the Head Start Bureau in 2004, supports the quality of care that family, friends and neighbors—"kith and kin" caregivers—provide to infants and toddlers enrolled in home-based Early Head Start programs. This publication describes...

In response to higher effective work participation rates that followed the reauthorization of the TANF program in 2005, states added new policies and programs that divert eligible families from the TANF system. This report describes states’ policies on and experiences with diversion....

Building Strong Families (BSF) is a large-scale demonstration and rigorous evaluation of marriage and relationship education programs that has now enrolled more than 5,000 low-income, romantically involved, unmarried couples. At enrollment, all couples were expecting or recently had a child...

States have shown creativity and adaptability in developing outreach strategies to promote State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) enrollment. This article reviews the evolution of state outreach strategies under SCHIP, using qualitative information from all 50 states and the...

The Santa Clara County Children’s Health Initiative is an innovative effort to expand low-income children’s health insurance in this California county. This issue brief describes changes in children's medical care and other outcomes during the most recent three years that they had stable...

This article summarizes the availability, completeness, quality, and usability of the encounter data in the MAX file, derived from CMS’s Medicaid Statistical Information System, for enrollees in comprehensive managed care plans. It also gives specific information by state. Most states that...