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…

One of the biggest challenges that states and local intermediaries face in setting up and scaling high-quality youth apprenticeships is gathering relevant, accurate and actionable data. High-quality data is an essential ingredient for a strong youth apprenticeship program because it equips state and local leaders to evaluate impact, monitor…

Minnesotans value education. Education is the largest financial investment in the state budget, and those investments place Minnesota students among the top performers in the nation. Still, substantial gaps in opportunity and performance persist. The three purposes of the needs assessment were to: (1) Describe infrastructure, capacity, and costs…

The NASA Education Implementation Plan (NEIP) provides an understanding of the role of NASA in advancing the nation's STEM education and workforce pipeline. The document outlines the roles and responsibilities that NASA Education has in approaching and achieving the agency's and administration's strategic goals in STEM Education. The specific…

The purpose of the state education agency (SEA) is to focus the entire education system on helping students become capable in college and career in an increasingly complex world. One of the most vexing problems facing SEAs today is how to meet increasing demands for performance while adjusting to significant resource reductions. Meeting that…

The term "institutional effectiveness" was developed in response to accreditation, and this emphasizes the large extent to which accreditation drives institutional effectiveness efforts on community college campuses. There are two general types of accreditation. "Institutional accreditation" is the process by which institutions of higher education…

Girls' delinquency has attracted the attention of federal, state, and local policymakers for more than a decade as girls have increasingly become involved in the juvenile justice system. For example, from 1995 through 2005, delinquency caseloads for girls in juvenile justice courts nationwide increased 15 percent while boys' caseloads decreased by…

This report is a product of an ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) seminar on the first external evaluations of quality assurance agencies, held in Paris in July 2008. The seminar took stock of the achieved reviews of agencies to learn lessons from these first outcomes and, hence, provided a platform for…

Strategies for increasing evaluation research leverage are reviewed. Alignment of evaluation research with regulatory bodies with authority to suspend public program expenditures is advocated. Several likely obstacles in the development of the regulatory evaluation model are anticipated and addressed. (Author/RL)

The author's concerns about California's proposed external assessment system center around: a) the dual role of the Commission for Teacher Preparation and Licensing; b) lack of involvement of teacher educators in the process; and c) the amount of time and effort involved. (HMD)

Recent reorganization of the General Accounting Office is reviewed. With regard to environmental concerns it is aiming to see if federal environmental programs are meeting the congressionally mandated objectives of laws. Surveys and reviews are explained. (BL)

The article reports on the findings of a comparative case study of six projects that operated in Israel between 1980 and 2000. The study findings identify characteristics of the programs, the host organizations, and the social and political environment, which differentiated programs that are sustained from those that are not. The findings reaffirm…

Since the 1940s, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its predecessor agencies have contracted with state approving agencies (SAA) to assess whether schools and training programs offer education of sufficient quality for veterans to receive VA education assistance benefits. SAAs are created or designated by state governments but are…

Reviewed are the basic functions of the National Advisory Committee on the Handicapped, designed to insure that federal government administrators of programs for handicapped indiviudals continue to receive direction from professionals and consumers regarding the operation and coordination of their programs. (SBH)

Describes the work of the Youth Serving Agency Program designed to provide young people with accurate and age-appropriate sexual information through the informal education systems (youth agencies) in which they participate. (Author/CM)