Differentiating state services to support district and school improvement makes sense for two reasons: (1) support is most effective when targeted to the specific needs of the district or school, based on both performance data and diagnostic data about prevailing operational and professional practice; and (2) state resources of time and money are…

State education agencies (SEAs) are under fire and face new expectations from all sides. The federal government, state legislatures and governors, and citizens themselves are calling upon the SEA to do "more"--more to improve outcomes for students, more to close the achievement gap, and more to meet the diverse instructional needs of students.…

Paying for employee turnover costs, data storage, and multiple layers of benefits can be difficult for fiscally constrained institutions, especially as budget cuts and finance-limiting legislation abound in school districts across the country. Many traditional paper-based systems have been replaced with automated, software-based services, helping…

Teacher evaluation has emerged as a major focus for reform at the highest levels of education policymaking, and for good reason. Most evaluations are based on scant evidence of actual effectiveness, produce inflated ratings, and provide teachers with little useful feedback. This paper offers policymakers and practitioners important "lessons…

This CED report examines teacher pay and other compensation issues. Schools must be able to compete effectively for college-educated workers who have more career choices and see themselves as more mobile professionally than did earlier generations. Traditional compensation policies for teachers (salary schedules that reward only longevity and…

Disciplines and professions each have their own methods of inquiry. This article outlines the commonalities as well as the differences and describes the relationship between the disciplines and the professions. The emphasis is on consulting because this is the profession with which we are concerned. There are three different approaches in…

The International Society for Performance Improvement has always been divided by two often-conflicting views of what its purpose or mission really is. Is it primarily technology focused (focusing on the development and promotion of the field) or member focused (focusing on members' interests and their professional development)? This difference in…

Conventional human performance technology has had a good run. It allowed scientific and data-based research to be applied to improve performance, usually just individual performance. The field must be expanded without losing this individual performance focus to include a scope that measurably improves performance for individuals and organizations…

The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) is an independent, not-for-profit corporation designated as the administrator of the federal Universal Service Fund (USF) by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). USAC administers the Universal Service Fund and the four Universal Service programs: High Cost, Low Income, Rural Health Care,…

This paper presents the activities of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) for 2009. The past year was one of accomplishment for USAC. USAC implemented a host of advances in operations, infrastructure, and outreach in an effort to continue to improve collection and disbursement of the Universal Service Fund (USF) support and to…