The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is one of the United States' leading federal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) agencies and plays an important role in the landscape of STEM education. In 2015, NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) created the Science Activation (SciAct) program to increase the…

In this case study, a team of doctoral students--Luis M. Andrade, Angela Hoppe Nagao, Esmeralda Medrano, and Josephine Macharia Lowe--in a community college leadership program participated in a service-learning field project as part of an organizational theory course to analyze comparative outcomes of a college orientation and preparation program…

The need to manage, analyze, and extract knowledge from data is pervasive across industry, government, and academia. Scientists, engineers, and executives routinely encounter enormous volumes of data, and new techniques and tools are emerging to create knowledge out of these data, some of them capable of working with real-time streams of data. The…

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals generate a stream of scientific discoveries and technological innovations that fuel job creation and national economic growth. Ensuring a robust supply of these professionals is critical for sustaining growth and creating jobs growth at a time of intense global competition.…

When charter schools first arrived on the American educational scene, few observers suspected that within two decades thousands of these schools would be established, serving almost a million and a half children across forty states. The widespread popularity of these schools, and of the charter movement itself, speaks to the unique and chronic…

This is one of eight short monographs intended to aid practicing educators in planning and conducting accountability programs in schools. This booklet discusses the concept of educational accountability and examines the major facets of educational accountability programs. Short sections focus in turn on the nature of educational accountability,…

The purpose of this program was to assist faculties in Ontario universities in improving the effectiveness of instructional processes by systematic development of objectives, content, methods, and evaluation for each course offered with economy in the application of instructional resources. The first two chapters of this program report try to set…

Accountability currently is an important concept throughout education. Michigan has assumed leadership among the States in exploring and applying accountability procedures. The purpose of this report is to examine the quality and implications of that leadership. Specifically, the authors' purpose is to assess the Michigan Accountability System…

This monograph defines program evaluation as the process of placing a value on a program, with the two major benefits of evaluation being those of expanding the base for decisionmaking, and the providing of information to motivate the individual, or unit, to improve performance. Most importantly, program evaluation is needed to determine if a…

The staff college approach to senior management education derived its impetus from Britain. It was drawn on by other countries on their own initiative in the light of their assessment of needs. It has proven economical to transplant and can be sensitively adjusted to national needs and the local culture. The first part of this document describes…

This monograph looks into the origins of competency programs in higher education and explores various ideas about educational outcomes as a basis for defining what competency is and is not. These educational outcome ideas relate to behavioral objectives, mastery learning, and testing for specific competencies rather than for an intelligence test…

Designed to be used by preservice and in-service science teachers interested in assessing the outcomes of school science programs, this publication is aimed at helping teachers do a better job of developing tests and inventories specifically for their instructional programs and students. Material is presented in six chapters entitled: (1) Trends…

Systems in teaching and learning are discussed in depth to aid in relating educational theories to the art of teaching. Chapter 1, on individualization of instruction, discusses research in the learning process. Chapter 2, on systems and the systems approach, reviews the meaning of "system," systems analysis and synthesis, and the use of a systems…

This book examines the issue of school readiness, focusing on children's readiness for entrance into kindergarten and promotion to first grade. Chapter 1 reviews the literature on school readiness, exploring trends in policy related to readiness and readiness as a child-centered characteristic. Chapter 2 examines various theoretical frameworks for…

Six papers from a Phi Delta Kappa symposium on educational accountability begin with an examination of accountability both as a goal and a process for achieving a goal, particularly from the state education agency perspective. The second paper, prepared from the vantage point of the teacher, asks questions about the development of accountability…