Project Highlights

Early Childhood Education Network

The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) has been awarded a grant by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to expand its successful Early Childhood Education Network, a project to ensure that all children start school ready to learn, to six new states: Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, and Virginia.

NASBE first created the Early Childhood Education Network project in March 2001 to help states increase their capacity to create integrated, high-quality early childhood education policies, programs, and services to children. The results of the Network were impressive, with participating states (Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Wyoming) unifying their standards and defining school readiness, aligning higher education course content with early childhood preparation programs, and collecting data on children’s knowledge and skill acquisition subsequent to preschool participation. Read more...

High School Redesign Initiative

State Boards of Education are an essential component in the efforts to redesign the nation's high schools and are the entity with the strongest probability of delivering sustained change and improvement. State Boards are uniquely positioned to improve high schools that prepare students for the 21st century and postsecondary pathways because they have broad oversight over a number of education reform efforts.

Thus, NASBE's High School Redesign Initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was created to keep State Boards of Education informed of current research, policy, and practice in the area of high school redesign and to assist states in creating a systemic and cohesive model with corresponding policies to support all students, but in particular those students attending low and under-performing high schools, to prepare for the 21st century and succeed in college and work.

Because there are no "magic bullets" in turning around low and under-performing high schools, NASBE is working with states to develop a systemic and cohesive High School Redesign model. Read more...

Center for Safe and Healthy Schools

Since 1987 NASBE has partnered with the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to provide guidance and assistance to state and local education policymakers and practitioners. Our goal is to encourage safe, healthy, and nurturing school environments for all of the nation's children and youth.

NASBE's Center for Safe and Healthy Schools currently has two cooperative agreements with CDC-DASH:

• The Increasing Healthy Eating project is focused on providing research-based capacity-building assistance and information to education leaders on helping schools establish, maintain, and evaluate healthy school nutrition environments and collaborate with parents, community, and public health partners on increasing healthy eating at school.
• The project to Strengthen Leadership and Governance for HIV Prevention is focused on providing research-based capacity-building assistance to DASH-funded state or local education agencies that have expressed a commitment to pursue HIV-related education policy and program improvement initiatives.

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In 2007 NASBE was awarded a two-year grant under the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Leadership for Healthy Communities national program to help reverse the growing epidemic of childhood obesity. The NASBE Obesity Prevention Project assists state boards of education and other state policymakers in their efforts to create healthier communities to reduce rates of childhood obesity, especially among students at high risk for obesity

Education Leadership Initiative

In 2000, The Wallace Foundation launched a national initiative on education leadership to place quality leadership at the core of school reform. It has supported a range of efforts aimed at significantly improving student learning by strengthening the standards, training and performance of education leaders along with the conditions and incentives that affect their success. The focus has been to develop, test and share useful approaches for improving the training of education leaders and the conditions that support their ability to significantly lift student achievement across entire states and districts, especially in high-need schools. To that end, NASBE seeks to inform state boards of education on why leadership matters and how to exercise the specific policy levers under their authority to strengthen leaders’ knowledge and skills in improving student learning.

Education Leadership Initiative Project Homepage

Student Leadership Initiative

The Student Leadership Initiative Sponsored by the MetLife Foundation, the goal of this project is to increase the number of students serving on state boards of education. Another goal of the project is to enhance the communication tools available to students who currently serve on state boards.

This initiative stems from the 2005 NASBE study (sponsored by the MetLife Foundation), Student Leadership in Education: An Analysis of the Student Voice on State Boards of Education, which examined the roles of student board members, the means by which they came to board service, and the impact of their service on the state board. Read More...

Student Leadership Initiative Project Homepage

State Adolescent Literacy Network

For the last several years, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) has committed to support states in improving adolescent literacy achievement.

The issue of literacy goes to the heart of what NASBE and state boards consider their essential work—instituting standards-based reforms that ensure students are well-prepared to meet the demands of employment, advanced training, and civic participation. NASBE has done extensive work on this issue, first convening a year-long study of adolescent literacy in 2005, culminating in a final report disseminated nationally, Reading at Risk: The State Response to the Crisis in Adolescent Literacy. The report outlines recommendations for policymakers that frame a new approach to meeting this national crisis—one based on joint problem-solving, collaborative practice, and collective accountability that engages students in purposeful reading and writing in all subjects being taught. Read More...