When President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law in 2002, the U.S. national high school graduation rate was 72.6 percent. Today, the national high school graduation rate has reached an all-time high of 81 percent and the number of low-graduation-rate high schools has declined considerably. While this progress is notable,…

THE INVESTIGATOR IDENTIFIED AND ANALYZED FACTORS WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO THE PASSAGE OF THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT OF 1965, USING AN INPUT-OUTPUT SYSTEMS MODEL TO ORGANIZE RELEVANT FACTORS INTO MEANINGFUL PATTERNS. INPUTS WERE PHENOMENA, BOTH PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL, OCCURRING OUTSIDE THE BOUNDARIES OF A POLITICAL SYSTEM, AS A…

In 1965, Robert Kennedy initiated federal evaluation policy with ESEA. His conception of political accountability was converted into a system of cost benefit analysis, which periodically justified funding curtailments. This systems approach, similar to Taylor's Scientific Management, is inadequate as the sole evaluation tool for federal programs.…

The Joint Federal/State Task Force on Evaluation (the Belmont Group) is currently developing a Joint Comprehensive Evaluation System (JCES) for the federally funded programs under the federal acts listed above. It is planned that JCES will replace the multiplicity of evaluation systems (and paper work) under the separate existing programs. This…