Promoting innovations accounts for approximately 10 percent of the federal aid to public schools which currently exceeds $3.5 billion annually. However, serious questions about the usefulness of federal efforts to promote innovation and the prospects for educational reform have been raised. Those questions were examined here by the Rand…

Preliminary findings of a study that identified characteristics of federally funded change agent programs are presented in this paper. The study examined four federal change agent programs: Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title III, Innovative Projects; ESEA Title VII, Bilingual Projects; Vocational Education Act, Part D, Exemplary…

This publication is part of a series of reports that describes the results of the first year of a study of federally funded programs designed to introduce and spread innovative practices in public schools. Over several years, the study will examine innovative educational projects funded under four federal programs, including Title III of the…

Federal policy has been unsuccessful in achieving some of its goals for several reasons, including viewing implementation as an act rather than as a process and assuming that organizations have uniform capacity and willingness to implement policy. A strategy of differential treatment that matches implementing organizations' characteristics is…

This report is one of three volumes that describe the second phase of a study that examined the implementation of four federal change agent programs related to education. Phase 2 of the study focused on what happens to local projects in the two largest change agent programs--ESEA Title III and ESEA Title VII--when federal funding stops. This…

Past federal educational policy failures can be traced to three sources. The first is unrealistic expectations about schools' capacity for social reform, about the time needed to produce significant change, and about the degree of federal leverage over local school district behavior. The second source is the misconception that improving…

Self-conscious federal efforts to promote innovation in local educational practices have resulted in little consistent or identifiable improvement in student outcomes. Although such student outcomes may be disappointing, they do not accurately reflect the potential of innovative ideas because many innovations are not implemented according to plan.…

This testimony summarizes the results of the Rand Corporation's change agent study of educational innovations funded by federal programs. The second section consists of policy recommendations for ESEA Title IV Consolidated Programs, Part C. The study aimed to help improve federal policies by describing how the process of innovation and educational…

This report reviews and synthesizes the findings of a four year, two-phase study conducted by the Rand Corporation to examine and evaluate a national sample of educational innovations funded by Federal programs. Section I of this document provides background information and descriptions of the study. Section II discusses Rand's research approach…

This second volume in the change-agent series reports the interim results of an exploratory statistical analysis of a survey of a nationwide sample of 293 change-agent projects funded by four federal demonstration programs--Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title III, Innovative Projects; ESEA Title VII, Bilingual Projects; Vocational…

Two investigations were conducted to determine whether rural school districts receive a fair share of federal education funds: a quantitative analysis of the distribution of federal funds between rural and nonrural school districts and a qualitative exploration of the special needs and disadvantages of rural school systems. The quantitative study…

This report reviews and synthesizes the findings of the survey and fieldwork as presented in Volumes II and III. In particular, it summarizes the evidence concerning the effects of federal change agent policy. Section 1 introduces the report. Section 2 describes the theoretical approach that served as the basis for data collection and analysis.…

Under the sponsorship of the U. S. Office of Education, Rand is conducting a several-year study of federally funded programs designed to introduce and spread innovative practices in public schools. These change agent programs normally offer temporary federal funding to school districts as "seed money" or "risk capital." If an…