In Canada, in-depth evaluations of federal programs are intended to occur every 5 years. As such, evaluation is a periodic retrospective (lag) indicator examining results achieved versus program objectives. In a Canadian context, stand-alone evaluations have proved challenging to implement, time consuming, and not well adapted to annual management…

As part of the "American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009," the U.S. Department of Education sponsored the "Race to the Top" competition to encourage education reforms anchored in improving teacher effectiveness as a driver for improving student-achievement outcomes and closing achievement gaps. The New York State…

This article offers an analysis of the origins, evolution, and impact of the Obama administration's Race to the Top (RTTT) competitive grant program and places it in the broader context of the debate over the No Child Left Behind Act and the shifting intergovernmental relations around education. RTTT is fundamentally about two things: creating…

At least one million community-college students are denied access to federally guaranteed student loans because their institutions do not participate in the federal programs. This article describes the results of a study by the Project on Debt, a nonprofit advocacy group, which found that one in 10 community-college students, including one in five…

Summarizes the first phase of a federally funded study of 157 clearinghouses that store data on human services. Factors addressed include the tasks of a clearinghouse, its potential for overlap, its relationship to its parent organization, the types of product and services it provides, and how it uses its database. (FM)

An intergovernment program implementation framework is shown to be strongly affected by the way federal expectations and administrative actions interact with the state and local education agency programs. They can influence the components of categories of implementation factors, process variables, and the agency role orientations. (CM)