This study addresses the question: Do the kinds and amounts of pre-service education and preparation that beginning teachers receive before they start teaching have any impact on whether they leave teaching? Authors Richard Ingersoll, Lisa Merrill, and Henry May examine a wide range of measures of teachers’ subject-matter education and pedagogical preparation. They compare different fields of teaching, with a particular focus on mathematics and science, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ nationally representative 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the 2004-05 Teacher Follow-up Survey. The analyses show that beginning teachers widely varied in the pre-service education and preparation they received. In general, mathematics teachers and, especially, science teachers tended to have more subject-matter content education and more graduate-level education, and to have less pedagogical and methodological preparation than other teachers. The analyses also show that, after controlling for the background characteristics of teachers and their schools, some aspects of the education and preparation that beginning teachers received were significantly associated with their attrition, while others were not. Specifically, the type of college, degree, entry route or certificate mattered little. What did matter was the substance and content of new teachers’ pedagogical preparation. Those with more training in teaching methods and pedagogy—especially practice teaching, observation of other classroom teaching and feedback on their own teaching—were far less likely to leave teaching after their first year on the job.

Keywords: Education, teaching, teachers, math, science, NCES, surveys, content expertise, teacher preparation, teacher certification

Richard Ingersoll, Lisa Merrill, Henry May

The Case of Data Coach Vendors in Delaware: Accountability puts demands on educational agencies that often exceed their capacity. As a result, a variety of educational organizations are contracted to design and implement policy. Programs and services offered by these contractors are not only instrumental in the process of mediating and implementing policy but may also be instrumental in translating research into practice. To explore this issue, a case study is conducted using vendor proposals for Delaware’s Data Coach initiative. Data are analyzed through content and citation analyses to examine the degree and nature of research use by educational contractors. This research offers new directions for studies of research use in policy but also lessons for policymakers and practitioners that seek the services of educational contractors.

Keywords: knowledge utilization, research use, data use

Elizabeth Farley-Ripple, Akisha R. Jones, Liz Farley-Ripple

Objective: To explore shoppers’ responses to the taste of different types of cow’s milk in a blind taste test and to examine their willingness to purchase lower-fat milk as part of an in-store marketing intervention.

Design: Participants were recruited on-site in the supermarket to participate in a blind taste test of three varieties of cow’s milk and asked to guess what type they sampled.

Setting: The taste testing was conducted as part of the Healthy Retail Solution (HRS) intervention that took place in four large supermarkets in Philadelphia, PA, USA over the course of six months.

Subjects: Adults (n = 444) at participating Philadelphia supermarkets.

Results: The majority of participants at all stores reported typically purchasing higher-fat milk. Forty percent of participants reported buying whole milk, 38% purchased milk with 2% fat. Very few participants correctly identified all three milk samples during the taste test (6.9 %) and a majority of participants were unable to identify the type of milk they self-reported typically purchased.

Conclusions: Most consumers could not accurately distinguish between various types of milk. Taste testing is a promising strategy to introduce lower-fat milks to consumers who have not tried them before. Campaigns to purchase skim, 1% or 2% milk may result in significant energy reduction over time and can serve as a simple way to combat overweight and obesity.

Keywords: Nutrition, health, choice, food choice, decision, purchasing, grocery shopping

Stephanie Weiss, Erica Davis, Alexis C. Wojtanowski, Gary D Foster, Karen Glanz, Allison Karpyn

There is a direct connection between the level of education and public health. Policymakers from these two fields should collaborate to press for education improvements that would ultimately result in better public health.

Keywords: health, low-income, obesity, policy, public

Allison Karpyn

Assessments of access to healthful food frequently use GIS to measure the distance and concentration of food outlets relative to where residents live. These descriptive approaches do not account for food shopping behavior, which may vary based on the attributes of food shoppers and their activity space—places where they live, work, access resources, and socialize. Building on transportation research about accessibility, we reframe the issue of food access and equity from one about ‘what is nearby?’ to ‘where do people shop?’. We use a conditional logit model to analyze disaggregate data from a door-to-door survey of food shopping choice and food store surveys conducted in a predominantly non-Hispanic Black and middle-income and low-income section of Philadelphia. Our results highlight the importance of distance from home to food stores, overall, but they also emphasize the influence on food store choice of the race and sex of food shoppers, travel mode, and where they spend time other than at home, as well as food prices and the availability of healthful foods. This approach to understanding food access holds promise for future research that can link store choice to specific food purchases and health outcomes as well as for refining place-based strategies for improving access to healthful foods.

Keywords: Food access, supermarkets, GIS, discrete choice, Philadelphia, food deserts, NEMS-S

Amy Hillier, Tony Smith, Carolyn C Cannuscio, Allison Karpyn, Karen Glanz

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term, one-to-one intervention designed to help the lowest achieving readers in first grade. This article presents first-year results from the multisite randomized controlled trial (RCT) and implementation study under the $55 million Investing in Innovation (i3) Scale-Up Project. For the 2011–2012 school year, the estimated standardized effect of RR on students’ Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) Total Reading Scores was .69 standard deviations relative to the population of struggling readers eligible for RR under the i3 scale-up and .47 standard deviations relative to the nationwide population of all first graders. School-level implementation of RR was, in most respects, faithful to the RR Standards and Guidelines, and the intensive training provided to new RR teachers was viewed as critical to successful implementation.

Keywords: Education, literacy, intervention, evaluation, OSU

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

This document provides an in-depth look at the possibilities for implementing an urban farm complex on the lot on Gordon Street (Wilmington, DE). We begin with an overview of Wilmington’s Socio-economic Demographics to frame the project followed by extensive research on each model.  For some sections, we delve deep into the model and for others, we focus more on case studies, best practices, and other important information.

Keywords: Nutrition, Delaware, farming, food

Nicole Filion, Carly Wine, Eli Turkel, Serita Moss, Katie Russel, Phoebe Connell, Grace Duffy, Madeleine Rouviere, Cassandra Finucan, Juan Pastor

Supermarkets are a primary source of food for American households, and increased presence in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods present opportunities to increase access to healthy foods. It is important to assess store manager and customer reactions to in-store marketing interventions. The objective was to evaluate manager and customer reactions to stealth, low-cost, sustainable in-store marketing strategies to promote healthier purchases in five product categories and gain insight into shopping habits and willingness to change behaviors. Surveys were collected as part of the evaluation of a cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted from 2011-2012 in eight urban supermarkets in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods. Store manager (n=16) and customer intercept surveys (n=100) were administered at intervention stores in May-July 2012 and August 2012, respectively. Demographics, shopping habits, and impact were calculated using frequency distributions, cross-tabulation, and analyses of variance. Correlations were calculated using Pearson’s R or one-sided Fisher’s Exact Test. Most managers reported the project had a positive impact on stocking, ordering, staffing, and interaction with other employees. Most customers did not notice new marketing strategies, although they were intentionally stealth. A large number of customers reported making impulse purchases regularly. Opportunities to positively affect purchasing may exist.

Keywords: in-store marketing, healthy food shopping, grocery stores, evaluation, supermarket

Erica L. Davis, Alexis C. Wojtanowski, Stephanie Weiss, Gary D. Foster, Allison Karpyn, Karen Glanz

In response to lack of access to healthy foods, many low-income communities are instituting local healthy corner store programs. Some stores also participate in the United States Department of Agriculture’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This study used two assessment tools to compare the healthfulness of offerings at stores participating in local healthy store programs (upgraded stores), WIC, and/or SNAP to that of similar non-participating stores. Based on store audits conducted in 315 New Jersey corner stores in 2014, we calculated healthy food availability scores using subsections of the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for Corner Stores (NEMS-CS-Availability) and a short-form corner store audit tool (SCAT). We used multivariable regression to examine associations between program participation and scores on both instruments. Adjusting for store and block group characteristics, stores participating in a local healthy store program had significantly higher SCAT scores than did non-participating stores (upgraded: M = 3.18, 95% CI 2.65-3.71; non-upgraded: M = 2.52, 95% CI 2.32-2.73); scores on the NEMS-CS-Availability did not differ (upgraded: M = 12.8, 95% CI 11.6-14.1; non-upgraded: M = 12.5, 95% CI 12.0-13.0). WIC-participating stores had significantly higher scores compared to non-participating stores on both tools. Stores participating in SNAP only (and not in WIC) scored significantly lower on both instruments compared to non-SNAP stores. WIC-participating and non-SNAP corner stores had higher healthfulness scores on both assessment tools. Upgraded stores had higher healthfulness scores compared to non-upgraded stores on the SCAT.

Keywords: Health, nutrition, diet, food, food assistance, food environment, nutrition surveys

RS DeWeese, M Todd, Allison Karpyn, M J Yedidia, M Kennedy, M Bruening, C M Wharton, P Ohri-Vachaspati

Philadelphia has a high prevalence of hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. To reduce chronic disease, there is a need for targeted, innovative community-based interventions to improve the food and physical activity environments for urban residents. This case study describes the development and evaluation of a pilot program to address barriers to healthy food access and physical activity environments in a West Philadelphia neighborhood.

Keywords: Obesity; Food Environment; Community-Based Participatory Research; Urban Health; Physical Fitness; Food Preferences

Karen Glanz, Nicole Thomas, Allison Karpyn, Colleen Watts, Alexandra Tomlinson, Carolyn Cannuscio