The role of compliance assistance in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's overall enforcement strategy has been quite variable over the past decade and a half, increasing in prominence under the Bush administration and now slated for significantly reduced funding under the Obama administration. While theoretical models and anecdotal evidence…

As test-based educational accountability has moved to the forefront of national and state education policy, so has the desire for better measures of school performance. No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) status and safe harbor measures have been criticized for being unfair and unreliable, respectively. In response to such criticism, in 2005 the federal…

A Washington research group is raising questions about the wisdom of the U.S. Department of Education's favored strategies for turning around the lowest-performing schools with stimulus funding, saying that its research shows that similar federal approaches to school restructuring have not been effective. The questions raised by the new study were…

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how a valid and reliable state accountability system could be developed that identifies effective schools and school districts in a comprehensive, understandable, and practical way. The author presents an overview of the strategy used in the analysis, discusses the use of education production functions…

This document is a directory of current and newly expired projects funded under the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) Secondary Education and Transition Initiative. The compendium is divided into four sections: (1) an overview of project profiles, which contains a summary description of both current and expired…

This work has been done as part of the effort to plan the National Institute of Education (NIE). The report, one of a series, describes four different management systems used by the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA, the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Air Force in managing programmatic research and…

This work has been done as part of the effort to plan the National Institute of Education (NIE). The report, one of a series, describes four different methods used by three Federal agencies--the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research--in managing fundamental research. Fundamental research…

The National Institute of Education (NIE), a new federal agency established in August 1972 within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, occupies a parallel position to the Office of Education. The Administration and the Congress believe that a sustained, systematic investment in research, development, testing, and diffusion will…

Based on the experience of the past, current viewpoints, and opinions about the future as conceived by the Committee on Vocational Education Research and Development (COVERD), this paper explains a framework for considering alternative policy options and discusses the relationships among the social environment, status and trends in vocational…

The case for an in-depth evaluation of many federal education programs is argued, particularly those providing site-specific information capable of informing program improvement. The reauthorization of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) offers an opportunity for the U.S. Department of Education to play a leadership role in…

The federal government needs to provide employment and training assistance to help dislocated workers to become reemployed. Worker mobility assistance should not be focused upon as a major thrust of reemployment programs, since American workers are remarkably resistant to pressures to move to more promising labor markets. Efficient and effective…

The Social Work Education Planning and Assessment (SWEPA) System is an information system designed to function within social work education toward two main purposes: (1) to help schools more effectively specify their own educational objectives, plan their social work education projects to achieve these objectives, mark their progress toward this…

This article argues that the U.S. dissemination system in education is unresponsive to organizational improvement needs, and that development of this bias is exacerbated by political, organizational, and programmatic thrusts in federal agencies. It is suggested that systems in the Netherlands and Denmark could provide useful models for adapting…

An introduction to the "hows" of research and development (R&D) funding decisions made by the U. S. Federal government, this book contains four chapters written by separate authors. The first chapter examines the Federal role, purpose, and practices in funding R&D concluding that Federal funding of R&D is designed primarily…

The Comptroller General of the United States testified before Congress regarding the General Accounting Office's (GAO's) framework for building the information technology (IT) work force to achieve results. The following were among the key points of his testimony: (1) the federal government is facing pervasive human capital challenges that are…