Adult basic education's role, from the beginning, has been about serving people with foundational skill needs. The author, Judy Mortrude, agrees with the argument that adult literacy education needs to be repositioned within a new framework of lifelong and life-wide learning, a framework in which new policies are formulated, programs are designed…

Community colleges always have played an integral role in training workers for infrastructure- and transportation-related fields like truck driving, construction, welding and electrical work. If the $1 trillion infrastructure package proposed by President Donald Trump comes to pass, these fields will grow significantly, at least for a while, which…

This article presents an interview with Ralph Tyler. This interview will be of interest to those entering the field of education as well as for those who have made their home within the field for some time now. In the interview, Dr. Tyler discusses work in education and educational evaluation that spans over a half a century. He describes issues…

On the surface, America has a great higher education system that works beautifully. Our colleges and universities, we are often told, are the best in the world. They consistently dominate the international rankings. A number of Nobel Prize award winners are closely associated with American institutions. Foreign students flock to our country to…

The United States has provided generations of its residents with the prospect of advancing themselves through education and hard work, and U.S. leaders have the opportunity to make sure this continues for generations to come. To do so, they must handle the national deficit in a decisive, thoughtful manner, ensuring a prosperous future for the…

An in-depth analysis of the substance and the implications of the National Environmental Education Act (1990a and 1990b) is provided. The establishment of new agencies, their charge to coordinate efforts, the range of activities to be supported, and the level of funding all indicate a significant renewal of federal commitment to environmental…

The Higher Education Act (HEA) can be a key part of the solution to the coming "skills gap" resulting from the lack of skilled workers with postsecondary education entering the workforce. HEA should be modernized to support economic development, meet the needs of businesses and workers, and assist the growing number of "nontraditional"…

This paper isolates critical rural economic development issues and identifies needed federal policy interventions. Despite a long history of federal efforts to improve rural economic conditions, recent policies and programs aimed at stimulating rural development have had little impact. Reasons include: (1) narrowly focused economic development…

The authors express reservations about additional federal funding for the National Science Foundation, including new funding for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education programs, provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. For more than 50 years, American political, business, military, and academic leaders…

The author claims that excellence will return to the workplace when every organization, corporate and bureaucratic, and when academia and associations offer professional, technical, and skills training for their own members. Discusses the quest for professionalism, and why accountability should be considered an element of professionalism. (CT)

This series of articles presents a variety of studies related to employment opportunities for the disabled, stimulating economy and employment, and new job creation. These studies are related to both developed and developing countries and are also concerned with the international division of labor. (SSH)

The author perceives the field of evaluation to be changing in several significant ways: (1) support for planning efforts is diminishing; (2) numbers of full-time staff working on these projects is diminishing; (3) personnel specialists are becoming generalists; (4) specialties are becoming blurred; and (5) conceptual and technical paradigms are…

The background essay introducing this special issue on leadership describes potential initiatives aimed at educational leadership research and development. The research supporting the invited journal articles was conducted at two national education leadership research centers. (MLF)

Any system for the sponsorship, support, or design of educational projects (such as curriculum projects) has intrinsic biases as to style and content. To test the thesis that these biases are virtually inevitable and precede considered policy, two simplified models of systems support can be used: the "Culture Ministry" approach and the "In Situ"…

Before a vocational education research and development agenda for the 1980s can be formulated and implemented, a national policy on economic and human resource development should be in place. In its absence, such an agenda must be shared in light of several factors that reflect the current demographic situation and long-range trends, including a…