Evaluation is important to public education and training programs if the United States is to be competitive in a global economy. Six major factors have had an impact on evaluation efforts: decreased financial resources, increased public dissatisfaction, changed management approaches, enhanced evaluation methods and procedures, redesigned organizations, and increased privatization efforts. Today, three strategies are being used for evaluating educational programs, and they are likely to continue to be used into the next century. These strategies are outcome assessment, performance assessment and measurement, and value-added assessment. Ten recommendations are offered to improve evaluation efforts: (1) build a commitment to conducting high-quality evaluations; (2) develop individuals' evaluation capacity; (3) foster a clearer understanding of mission, customers and their needs, and desired results; (4) find a closer link between performance measures and the outcomes that they asses; (5) focus programs on a limited number of outcomes for which they will be accountable; (6) programs should not avoid having outcomes that are difficult to measure; (7) strengthen the systems and processes for generating and using financial and program information in conducting program evaluation; (8) use greater innovation and creativity in developing evaluation and accountability techniques; (9) develop more efficient and cost-effective evaluation and assessment techniques; and (10) keep politics out of the process. (Contains 24 references.) (KC)