Beginning in 2005, the GE Foundation initiated a commitment of expertise and financial resources to a set of urban school districts to improve public education and enhance student achievement in mathematics and science. With strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement, the GE Foundation’s Developing Futures^TM in Education program pursued a strategy of 1) facilitating school board, union, and district leaders to work together to articulate system goals and priorities; 2) helping district leaders to build systemic change processes and develop internal-management capacity; and 3) supporting district science and mathematics initiatives through materials alignment, coaching, professional development, and other capacity-building measures. This report analyzes the impacts of the GE Foundation commitment to the partner districts by examining trends in student performance in mathematics over time in four districts. We hypothesized that the GE Foundation’s collaborative efforts with the district educators would produce detectable and significant improvements in student outcomes.

Keywords: Education, math, science, parents, teachers, teachers union, teachers unions, community

Philip Sirinides, Jonathan A. Supovitz, Namrata Tognatta, Henry May, Jon Supovitz, Phil Sirinides

Despite a lack of scientifically based research, credit-based transition programs such as International Baccalaureate (IB), Advanced Placement (AP), and dual enrollment have become very popular as a means to increase the rigor of high school course offerings and improve the curricular alignment between high school and college. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationships between participation in the IB Diploma Program and a range of college-related outcomes that occur on the path into and through higher education. By combining data across the International Baccalaureate North American (IBNA) database, the Florida K-20 Education Data Warehouse (EDW), and the National Student Clearinghouse, we can study college enrollment and graduation for a national sample, while using more detailed data from the state of Florida to produce a comprehensive picture of the relationship between participation in IB and students’ postsecondary trajectories as reflected by indicators of academic readiness for college (e.g., high school GPA, SAT scores), access to college (e.g., application and acceptance rates), academic performance in college (e.g., GPA, course grades), persistence to bachelor’s degree attainment (e.g., time to graduation), and access to post-baccalaureate degree programs (e.g., application and acceptance rates). Because not every school offers an IB program, and students who eventually choose to participate in IB programs are a self-selected group, our analytic models include several statistical and econometric approaches for addressing selection bias.

Keywords: Education, AP classes, IB program, gifted students

Henry May, Awilda Rodriguez, Philip Sirinides, Phil Sirinides, Laura Perna, Laura W. Perna, April Yee, Tafaya Ransom

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery (RR) teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a period of 12 to 20 weeks. The purpose of these lessons is to support rapid acceleration of each child’s literacy learning. In 2010, The Ohio State University received a Scaling Up What Works grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund to expand the use of Reading Recovery across the country. The award was intended to fund the scale-up of Reading Recovery by training 3,675 new RR Teachers in U.S. schools, thereby expanding capacity to allow service to an additional 88,200 students. This document is the first in a series of three annual reports produced based on our external evaluation of the Reading Recovery i3 Scale-Up. This report presents early results from the experimental impact and implementation studies conducted over the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years.

Keywords: Education, literacy, teaching, OSU

Henry May, Abigail Gray, Jessica N. Gillespie, Philip Sirinides, Cecile Sam, Heather Goldsworthy, Michael Armijo, Namrata Tognatta, Phil Sirinides, Mike Armijo

To respond to the high prevalence of obesity and its associated health consequences, recent food research and policy have focused on neighborhood food environments, especially the links between health and retail mix, proximity of food outlets, and types of foods available. In addition, the social environment exerts important influences on food-related behaviors, through mechanisms like role-modeling, social support, and social norms. This study examined the social dynamics of residents’ health-related food-shopping behaviors in 2010-11 in urban Philadelphia, where we conducted 25 semi-structured resident interviews—the foundation for this paper—in addition to 514 structured interviews and a food environment audit. In interviews, participants demonstrated adaptability and resourcefulness in their food shopping; they chose to shop at stores that met a range of social needs. Those needs ranged from practical financial considerations, to fundamental issues of safety, to mundane concerns about convenience, and juggling multiple work and family responsibilities. The majority of participants were highly motivated to adapt their shopping patterns to accommodate personal financial constraints. In addition, they selectively shopped at stores frequented by people who shared their race/ethnicity, income and education, and they sought stores where they had positive interactions with personnel and proprietors. In deciding where to shop in this urban context, participants adapted their routines to avoid unsafe places and the threat of violence. Participants also discussed the importance of convenient stores that allowed for easy parking, accommodation of physical disabilities or special needs, and integration of food shopping into other daily activities like meeting children at school. Food research and policies should explicitly attend to the social dynamics that influence food-shopping behavior. In our social relationships, interactions, and responsibilities, there are countless opportunities to influence and also to improve health.

Keywords: Food, Food access, Food desert, Food environment, Health disparities, Nutrition, Social environment

C. C. Cannuscio, A. Hillier, Allision Karpyn, K. Glanz

The greater presence of supermarkets in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods has the potential to positively affect diet quality among those at greatest risk of obesity. In-store marketing strategies that draw attention to healthier products may be effective, sustainable, and scalable for improving diet quality and health. Few controlled studies of in-store marketing strategies to promote sales of healthier items in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods have been conducted. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of in-store marketing strategies to promote the purchase of specific healthier items in 5 product categories: milk, ready-to-eat cereal, frozen meals, in-aisle beverages, and check out cooler beverages.

Keywords: Health, nutrition, diet, obesity, marketing, advertising, advertisement, buying decision, purchasing, customers

Foster, Karpyn, Wojtanowski, Davis, Weiss, Brensinger, Tierney, Guo, Brown, Spross, Leuchten, Burns, Glanz

Guidance for researchers and practitioners wishing to design, implement, and evaluate small store interventions.

Keywords: Customer relationships, store owner, healthy foods, healthier foods, stocking food, evaluation, dissemination, health, food

J. Gittelsohn, M. N. Laska, A. Karpyn, K. Klingler, G. X. Ayala

Previous research has shown differences in adult physical activity (PA) levels within an urban population, in what types of activities they participated, and where they were active. A sample of 514 urban Philadelphia adult residents was surveyed about level and location of PA. A majority (55.6%) of survey participants reported being vigorously or moderately active or walking enough to meet PA guidelines. A significantly higher proportion of men (vs. women), younger (vs. older) adults and people who were employed (vs. unemployed) met the PA guidelines. Most participants (87.5%) reported walking at least once within the previous week, while 79.3% reported engaging in moderate or vigorous activity. Of the participants who reported being moderately or vigorously active, 64.0% were physically active in indoors only, 22.6% were active in outdoors only, and 13.4% were active in both indoors and outdoors. Significantly fewer Black women were active outdoors, compared to all other race/sex combinations (odds ratio = 0.43, p-value < 0.01). In this diverse sample of urban residents, outdoor PA was significantly less frequently reported than indoor PA, particularly for Black women. These findings could help inform urban PA interventions.

Keywords: Health, exercise, activity

A. Hillier, K. Tappe, C. Cannuscio, A. Karpyn, K. Glanz

Informed by a mixed-methods assessment of residents’ shopping and physical activity patterns and barriers and facilitators to healthy food access and activity, and observational assessments of local food environments, we engaged community members in designing a program emphasizing “block-based” environmental changes to prevent or reduce obesity.

Keywords: Health, grocery shopping, food, community

K. Glanz, A. Hillier, N. Thomas, C. Cannuscio, A. Karpyn, C. Watts

The plan for leveraging a nutrition labeling system and the incentive approaches for promoting healthy choices described in this report were developed through a review of the literature, expert consultation, and consideration of ongoing initiatives to help consumers make healthy choices in the retail setting. Expert consultation served to further develop the operational details of potential approaches and to identify challenges, barriers, and opportunities for the likely stakeholders of each approach. The technical expert rankings identified a set of possible approaches that were determined to be both feasible and have substantial potential for impact. From that list, the study team, in consultation with FNS, selected six approaches to develop further. Each of the six approaches were developed to include a full description of the theoretical framework, implementation, and suggested adjunct supports. The study team sought additional input from a mid-sized regional retailer and a small retailer to refine some of the technical features of these approaches.

Keywords: Health, food, nutrition label, label, food choice

Erika Gordon, Nicola Dawkins-Lyn, Reid Hogan-Yarbro, Allison Karpyn, Karen Shore, Stephanie Weiss, Sean Cash

Reading Recovery is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a period of 12 to 20 weeks. The purpose of these lessons is to support rapid acceleration of each child’s literacy learning. In 2010, The Ohio State University received a Scaling Up What Works grant from the U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund to expand the use of Reading Recovery across the country. The award was intended to fund the training of 3,675 new Reading Recovery teachers in U.S. schools, thereby expanding service to an additional 88,200 students. This document is the second in a series of three reports based on our external evaluation of the Reading Recovery i3 Scale-Up. This report presents results from the impact and implementation studies conducted over the 2012-2013 school year—the third year of the scale-up effort and the second full year of the evaluation.

Keywords: Education, literacy, intervention, evaluation, OSU

Henry May, Heather Goldsworthy, Michael Armijo, Mike Armijo, Abby Gray, Abigail Gray, Phil Sirinides, Philip Sirinides, Toscha Blalock, Helen Anderson-Clark, A. J.Schiera, Horatio Blackman, Jessica Gillespie, Cecile Sam