In the twenty-first century, the use of standardized tests as the primary means to evaluate schools and teachers in the United States has contributed to severe dilemmas, including misleading information on what students know, lower-level instruction, cheating, less collaboration, unfair treatment of teachers, and biased teaching. This article…

A recent Department of Education study, developed with the assistance of the Internal Revenue Service, found that of 2.3 million Pell Grants in 1995-96, 102,000 went to students who failed to report or underreported family income. More than 300 recipients had each underreported income by over $100,000. The report comes when the Clinton…

Public officials and student aid experts agree that the federal program delivery system is outdated, inefficient, and vulnerable to fraud, but they disagree on how bad the situation is and whether the Education Department has the structure necessary to fix it. A 1995 project to integrate all federal grant and loan programs into one system has not…

The council's recommendations for 1977 for college-based financial aid programs and for the guaranteed student loan program are both summarized and explained, and the progress of financial aid programs in 1976-77 is reviewed. The latter review includes the training of aid administrators, aid application simplification, regulations and guidelines,…