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

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