Reforming Health Care Delivery Through Payment Change and Transparency: Minnesota's Innovations

Examines Minnesota's healthcare delivery system reforms, with a focus on legislation that included a health improvement program and enhanced coverage for the low-income uninsured. Discusses public and private initiatives, accomplishments, and challenges

The National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth : evaluation of the summer school 2003

An evaluation was carried out of the second year of functioning of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY) with an emphasis on the summer schools as experienced by the students, their parents and the course leaders. The evaluation included pre and post questionnaires sent to students and their parents, as well as interviews with students and course leaders. Specifically, a pre-summer school experience questionnaire was sent to students and a post-summer school questionnaire was sent to both students and parents. Also, a sample (n=87) of students who had responded to the first questionnaire were interviewed at the end of the three-week period at all five sites to obtain their views on the summer school experience. Finally, 26 of the 28 course leaders involved were interviewed during the third week of the summer school

Supporting fathers to engage with their children's learning and education : an under-developed aspect of the Parent Support Adviser pilot

The Parent Support Adviser (PSA) role, piloted in 2006-2008 in 20 Local Authorities (LAs) in England, offered preventative and early intervention support to families where there were concerns about children‟s school attendance or behaviour. Overall, this was a highly successful initiative in terms of supporting parental engagement with their children‟s schools. However, this article presents evidence drawn from 162 interviews (with PSAs, their line managers and coordinators in 12 case study LAs) showing that there was one key area in the PSA pilot that was less successful – the engagement of fathers. The article examines views about how to engage fathers and of the barriers explaining the overall absence of fathers from the PSA project. It highlights the dissonance between policy and practitioner guidance on the one hand and practice on the other with regard to the relative failure to engage fathers with this important initiative

Parenting early intervention programme: 2nd interim report

Centre for Educational Development, University of Warwic

Evaluation of the impact of the DFE investment in initiatives designed to improve teacher workforce skills in relation to SEN and disabilities: 1st interim report

"This is the 1st Interim Report of a longitudinal study to evaluate the impact of investment by the Department for Education (DfE) to improve teacher workforce skills in relation to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The evaluation started in December 2008 and this report covers work carried out over the period January 2009 – July 2010. The evaluation continues until March 2011." - Page 1