ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Preparing Youth for College and Career: A Process Evaluation of Urban Alliance
Author: Theodos, Brett
Date: 2014-09-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: College Preparation,College Readiness,Career Readiness,Internship Programs,Program Evaluation,High School Seniors,Training,Mentors,Work Experience Programs,Program Descriptions,Program Implementation,At Risk Students,Coaching (Performance),Alumni,Models,Student Characteristics,Demography,Academic Achievement,Student Attitudes,Student Attrition,Student Recruitment,Costs,Training Methods,Public Speaking,Job Training,Organizational Development,Urban Areas

This report presents baseline and process study findings of an evaluation of the Urban Alliance high school internship program, which provides training, mentoring, and work experience to high school seniors from distressed communities in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, and Chicago. The report, which focuses on the program's operations in DC and Baltimore in the 2011-12 and 2012-13 program years, explains the internship program model and its various components; describes the characteristics of youth participants; and presents findings from dozens of interviews and focus groups with program staff, youth, job mentors, and other stakeholders. An appendix contains a detailed description of the data and methods used during the course of the process study.
Review of Massachusetts Child Care Subsidy Eligibility Policies and Practices: A Report for the Assessment of the Massachusetts Subsidized Child Care System. Research Report
Author: Adams, Gina
Date: 2015-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Child Care,Grants,State Aid,Eligibility,Policy,Interviews,Focus Groups,Policy Analysis

This report summarizes findings from a review of Massachusetts' child care subsidy eligibility policies and implementation practices. The review included interviews and focus groups with approximately 60 experts and stakeholders with a broad range of perspectives on the system. It identifies several important issues that, if addressed, could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the subsidized child care system. Such reforms would help fill in some of the gaps in the current policy framework, which has many strong components. This review is one component of a legislatively mandated assessment of the Massachusetts subsidized child care system. The following are appended: (1) Project Overview; (2) Value-Stream Improvement Process Overview; and (3) Work Support Strategies.
The CUNY Fatherhood Academy: A Qualitative Evaluation. Research Report
Author: McDaniel, Marla
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Fathers,Urban Areas,Parent Education,Community Colleges,Workshops,Access to Education,Employment,Qualitative Research,Program Evaluation,Young Adults,Recruitment,Enrollment,Persistence,Employment Opportunities,Minority Groups,African Americans,Hispanic Americans,Poverty,At Risk Persons,Dropouts,Program Effectiveness,Parent Surveys,Adolescents,Early Parenthood,Parenting Skills,College Readiness,Semi Structured Interviews,Focus Groups

Knowing the economic challenges young fathers without postsecondary education face in providing for their families, New York City's Young Men's Initiative launched a fatherhood program housed in LaGuardia Community College in spring 2012. The CUNY Fatherhood Academy (CFA) aims to connect young fathers to academic and employment opportunities while supporting them through parenting classes and workshops. This report summarizes Urban Institute's qualitative evaluation of the program. The evaluation, completed under contract with the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity, focuses on CFA's design, implementation, and participant outcomes in the four cohorts served between March 2012 and December 2013. Appendices include: (1) Study Methods; (2) CFA Program Description; and (3) Interview Discussion Guides. [For the executive summary, see ED559327.]
The CUNY Fatherhood Academy: A Qualitative Evaluation. Executive Summary
Author: McDaniel, Marla
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Fathers,Urban Areas,Parent Education,Community Colleges,Workshops,Access to Education,Employment,Qualitative Research,Program Evaluation,Young Adults,Recruitment,Enrollment,Persistence,Employment Opportunities,Minority Groups,African Americans,Hispanic Americans,Poverty,At Risk Persons,Dropouts,Program Effectiveness,Parent Surveys,Adolescents,Early Parenthood,Parenting Skills,College Readiness,Semi Structured Interviews,Focus Groups

Knowing the economic challenges young fathers without postsecondary education face in providing for their families, New York City's Young Men's Initiative launched a fatherhood program housed in LaGuardia Community College in spring 2012. The CUNY Fatherhood Academy (CFA) aims to connect young fathers to academic and employment opportunities while supporting them through parenting classes and workshops. This executive summary provides highlights from Urban Institute's qualitative evaluation of the program. The evaluation, completed under contract with the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity, focuses on CFA's design, implementation, and participant outcomes in the four cohorts served between March 2012 and December 2013. [For the full report, see ED559326.]
Could a Cash Balance Plan Benefit Illinois Public School Teachers?
Author: Johnson, Richard W.
Date: 2015-04-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Teacher Retirement,Retirement Benefits,Public School Teachers,Retrenchment,Compensation (Remuneration),Simulation,Educational Equity (Finance)

The Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois is one of the worst-funded public pensions in the nation. In 2013, it held enough assets to cover only 41 percent of its future obligations (Buck Consultants, 2014). This shortfall has led to several reforms, mostly involving benefit cuts that have undermined retirement income security for Illinois teachers and made it more difficult for Illinois school districts to attract and retain qualified teachers. This brief describes the distribution of pensions provided to Illinois teachers under the current plan, and simulates outcomes under a proposed cash balance plan. The authors' previous report &quot;Evaluating Retirement Income Security for Illinois Public School Teachers&quot; (2014) details methods used for the proposed cash balance plan. Results show that 72 percent of Illinois public school teachers hired before 2011--and 56 percent of those with five or more years of completed service--would fare better in the simulated cash balance plan, even though the cash balance plan would be no more costly to taxpayers than the existing plan. [For &quot;Evaluating Retirement Income Security for Illinois Public School Teachers&quot; (2014), see ED559321.]
Supporting Youth Transitioning out of Foster Care. Issue Brief 3: Employment Programs. OPRE Report No. 2014-70
Author: Edelstein, Sara
Date: 2014-12-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Foster Care,Transitional Programs,Federal Legislation,Independent Living,Employment Opportunities,Program Effectiveness,Child Welfare

This issue brief is one of three that focus on programs providing services to youth transitioning out of foster care in three common service domains: education, employment, and financial literacy and asset building. This brief highlights why employment services are important to youth currently or formerly in foster care, what we know about the current types of programs and services offered in this service area, and the effectiveness of these services. Drawing on a review of existing research and convenings conducted with researchers, program managers, and federal staff, this brief addresses remaining research gaps and how the available evidence should inform future planning for evaluation activities. [This brief series is a product of the Planning a Next Generation Evaluation Agenda for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program Project, contracted by the Administration on Children and Families and led by the Urban Institute and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.]
How Will Rhode Island's New Hybrid Pension Plan Affect Teachers? A Report of the Public Pension Project
Author: Johnson, Richard W.
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Retirement Benefits,Teacher Retirement,Role,Employees,Income,Public School Teachers,Change,Teacher Salaries,Public Policy

In 2011 Rhode Island replaced the stand-alone defined benefit pension plan it provided to state employees with a hybrid plan that reduced the defined benefit component and added a 401(k)-type, defined contribution component. Although controversial, the new hybrid plan will boost retirement incomes for most of the states public school teachers. Our simulations show that two-thirds of newly hired teachers will earn more retirement benefits under the hybrid plan they would have earned under the old plan. Defined contribution plans the dominant employer-sponsored retirement plan in the private sector can play an important role in the reform of public-sector pensions.
Assessing Learning Control of English Hedges among Tertiary Cantonese-Speaking EFL Students
Author: Siu, Fiona Kwai-peng
Date: 2014-11-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: College Students,Sino Tibetan Languages,Native Language,Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,English for Academic Purposes,Experimental Groups,Verbs,Error Analysis (Language),Foreign Countries,Writing (Composition),Difficulty Level,Language Usage,Essays,Control Groups,Nouns,Persuasive Discourse,Pragmatics,Teaching Methods

This project was designed to try to investigate the difficulties EFL learners would have in learning to use hedging as a rhetorical device in academic writing. The participants were 136 native Cantonese-speaking EFL students who enrolled in the one-year course &quot;English for Academic Purposes&quot; offered by a language centre at a university in Hong Kong. Specifically, this paper aimed: 1) to examine whether there was a significant increase in the number of hedges used in the discussion essays written by students at the beginning of a one-year EAP course (the control group) and at mid-course (the experimental group), and 2) to determine whether, in a specific context, the subjects' use of hedges was appropriate. The measurements for the first purpose included a ranking of hedges. Such a ranking, admittedly being arbitrary, was modified from Halliday's (1994) ranking of modal verbs. The measurements for the second purpose entailed frequency counts of hedging errors. It was found that there were not significant differences across the two groups in the types of hedges and in the total number of hedging errors, although a significantly greater degree of hedging was found in the essays written by the experimental group. Both groups of subjects mainly used may to mitigate tone; they also used will copiously, seemingly unaware of the absolute certainty this modal denotes. On the contrary, the use of nouns to show possibility was relatively rare. The excessive use of the simple present tense and the use of &quot;will&quot; constituted the common types of hedging errors. The conditional use of would and the use of could to provide options appeared to confuse most students. [This article was published in &quot;European Journal of Business and Social Sciences&quot; v3 n8 p104-120 Nov 2014.]
Study Skills of Arts and Science College Students
Author: Sekar, J. Master Arul
Date: 2015-04-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Study Skills,Art Education,Science Education,Check Lists,Statistical Analysis,Rural Urban Differences,Undergraduate Students,Graduate Students,Gender Differences,Comparative Analysis,Hypothesis Testing,Surveys

The main objective of this study is to find out the level of study skills of arts and science college students. Study Skills Check List developed and standardized by Virginia University, Australia (2006) is used to collect the relevant data. The sample consists of 216 Government arts and science college students of Tiruchirappalli district, Tamil Nadu, South India, of whom 108 are men and 108 are women. The data are analysed by mean, standard deviation and &quot;t&quot; test. The results indicate that there is no significant difference between men and women, arts group and science group students and the students of rural and urban arts and science colleges in their study skills. But there is significant difference between undergraduate and postgraduate students of arts and science colleges in their study skills. The undergraduate students are better in their study skills than the postgraduate students of arts and science colleges.
Determination of Biology Department Students' Past Field Trip Experiences and Examination of Their Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Planning and Organising Educational Field Trips
Author: Bozdogan, Aykut Emre
Date: 2015-07-15
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Biology,College Graduates,Preservice Teachers,Field Trips,Self Efficacy,Beliefs,Planning,Organization,Questionnaires,Statistical Analysis,Student Experience,Student Attitudes,Foreign Countries

The purpose of this study is to determine the past field trip experiences of pre-service teachers who are graduates of Faculty of Sciences, Department of Biology and who had pedagogical formation training certificate and to examine their self-efficacy beliefs in planning and organizing field trips with regard to different variables. The study was carried via cross-sectional design and total 260 pre-service teachers from three different universities, 112 males and 148 females, participated in the study. During the process of data collection, questionnaire form and teacher self-efficacy belief scale for organization of educational field trips (EAGOO) developed by the researcher was used. The numerical data gathered was analysed via descriptive statistical methods and open-ended questions were examined via content analysis. The research findings revealed that nearly half of the pre-service teachers never joined educational field trips and out of the participants, who joined these field trips, three-quarters of them took part in field trips during their university years and they preferred field trip sites which were suitable to their course contents of the department they were studying at. Another finding of the study revealed that pre-service teachers did not have much knowledge about organizing educational field trips, but they thought that they were qualified for organizing field trips.
Improving Access to Prekindergarten for Children of Immigrants: &quot;Building Relationships.&quot; Fact Sheet No. 3
Author: Lei, Serena
Date: 2014-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Preschool Education,Immigrants,Access to Education,Administrators,Interviews,Enrollment,Capacity Building,Barriers,Cultural Capital,Cultural Awareness,English Language Learners

Pre-K has been shown to strongly boost children's learning trajectories. This is as true, or even truer, for children of immigrants and English language learners (ELLs) as for children overall. Children of immigrants, who make up about a quarter of children in the United States, have significantly lower rates of pre-K enrollment, on average, than children with US-born parents. Issues such as a lack of awareness about programs, language barriers, logistical barriers to enrollment, and lack of comfort with programs can keep immigrant parents from signing their children up for pre-K. Local and state pre-K directors and staff, directors of other early childhood education programs, and early childhood education specialists were interviewed to compile their strategies for stepping up enrollment among immigrant families. Ideas for building immigrant friendly programs are detailed and include: (1) Building capacity for communicating with immigrant parents; (2) Addressing logistical barriers; and (3) Building cultural competency. This is the third of three fact sheets based on &quot;Supporting Immigrant Families; Access to Prekindergarten&quot; by Julia Gelatt, Gina Adams, and Sandra Huerta.]
Improving Access to Prekindergarten for Children of Immigrants: &quot;Enrollment Strategies.&quot; Fact Sheet No. 2
Author: Lei, Serena
Date: 2014-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Immigrants,Access to Education,Preschool Education,Preschool Children,English Language Learners,Enrollment,Parents

Pre-K has been shown to strongly boost children's learning trajectories. This is as true, or even truer, for children of immigrants and English language learners (ELLs) as for children overall. Children of immigrants, who make up about a quarter of children in the United States, have significantly lower rates of pre-K enrollment, on average, than children with US-born parents. Issues such as a lack of awareness about programs, language barriers, logistical barriers to enrollment, and lack of comfort with programs can keep immigrant parents from signing their children up for pre-K. Local and state pre-K directors and staff, directors of other early childhood education programs, and early childhood education specialists were interviewed to compile their strategies for stepping up enrollment among immigrant families. The experts shared their strategies for helping immigrant parents overcome obstacles and in many cases streamlining enrollment for all families. Among them were: (1) Considering other document sources to fulfill enrollment requirements; (2) Flexibility in the ways families verify their income; and (3) Clearly explaining that Social Security numbers are optional. [This is the second of three fact sheets based on &quot;Supporting Immigrant Families' Access to Prekindergarten&quot; by Julia Gelatt, Gina Adams, and Sandra Huerta.]
Does Increasing Reliance on Student Debt Explain Declines in Entrepreneurial Activity? Posing the Question, Gathering Evidence, Considering Policy Options. Research Report
Author: Baum, Sandy
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Debt (Financial),Loan Repayment,Student Financial Aid,Entrepreneurship,Trend Analysis,Incidence,College Graduates,Barriers,Correlation,Causal Models,Financial Policy,Age Differences,Academic Degrees,Credit (Finance)

In recent years, concerns have emerged both about declines in entrepreneurial activity, and about increases in the amount students borrow to finance postsecondary education--in the aggregate as well as on average. Because the financial obligations associated with student debt could limit access to credit for individuals seeking to start businesses, and reduce the amount of financial risk college graduates are willing to take, the possibility of a causal relationship between student debt and the business start-up rate deserves attention. Experts on entrepreneurship and experts on student debt met at a conference in September, 2014, to discuss the idea that the increasing prevalence of student debt among recent college graduates might be preventing a significant number of people who are interested in starting new businesses from doing so. The conference aimed to bring together the knowledge and analytical perspectives of the two groups to consider what we know and what a rigorous research agenda might teach us about a causal relationship between these two phenomena. This paper summarizes some of the insights from that discussion and considers constructive directions for future inquiries into the issue. A central consideration is where a research agenda might lead. If a causal relationship between student debt and entrepreneurial activity were to emerge with evidence that a significant number of potentially successful entrepreneurs were discouraged by their debt obligations, what remedies would be available and desirable? The best strategies for addressing the problem would probably lie in helping individuals with entrepreneurial ambitions deal with their student debt rather than in attempting to solve the larger and less tractable problem of finding the optimal system for financing postsecondary education. The policies likely to emerge are probably constructive components of efforts to encourage entrepreneurship--whether or not student debt is a significant driver of recent trends in this activity. The following is appended: Urban Institute Conference Participants.
Improving Access to Prekindergarten for Children of Immigrants: &quot;Outreach.&quot; Fact Sheet No. 1
Author: Lei, Serena
Date: 2014-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Immigrants,Access to Education,Preschool Education,Preschool Children,Outreach Programs,English Language Learners

Pre-K has been shown to strongly boost children's learning trajectories. This is as true, or even truer, for children of immigrants and English language learners (ELLs) as for children overall. Children of immigrants, who make up about a quarter of children in the United States, have significantly lower rates of pre-K enrollment, on average, than children with US-born parents. Issues such as a lack of awareness about programs, language barriers, logistical barriers to enrollment, and lack of comfort with programs can keep immigrant parents from signing their children up for pre-K. Local and state pre-K directors and staff, directors of other early childhood education programs, and early childhood education specialists were interviewed to to compile their strategies for stepping up enrollment among immigrant families. Providers and program directors use a variety of strategies to connect with immigrant parents and tell them about pre-K programs. Those include: (1) Participating in community events; (2) Going door to door; (3) Reaching parents where they already go by posting flyers or setting up an information table at places like grocery stores, doctors' offices, and churches; and (4) Encouraging parents of enrolled children to recruit other parents. To sustain outreach, the experts shared the following strategies for managing cost and staffing demands and for making the best use of limited resources: (1) Targeting resources to children of immigrants and English language learners (ELLs); (2) Drawing from flexible funding; (3) Tapping existing staff or hiring a designated cultural liaison; (4) Evaluating outreach efforts; and (5) Weaving outreach into program reporting requirements. [This is the first of three fact sheets based on &quot;Supporting Immigrant Families' Access to Prekindergarten&quot; by Julia Gelatt, Gina Adams, and Sandra Huerta.]