The Food Safety Knowledge Network (FSKN) is a collaboration between Michigan State University, the Global Food Safety Initiative of the Consumer Goods Forum, and other food industry and public sector partners. FSKN's goal is to help strengthen the food industry's response to the complex food safety knowledge and training challenges that affect…

Total quality management will not work well in government agencies because of stress on products, not services; on well-defined consumer groups; on inputs/processes, not results; and on preoccupation with quality. An effective revised version emphasizes client feedback, performance monitoring, continuous improvement, and worker participation. (SK)

A survey of more than 725 federal, state, and local government agencies received a 30 percent response indicating that 52 percent provide preretirement education (considerably less than the private sector); public agencies emphasize financial more than psychosocial or physical issues; and public sector programs make little postretirement contact…

Pay for performance is a popular public education reform, and millions of dollars are currently being targeted for pay for performance programs. These reforms are popular because economic and management theories suggest that well-designed incentive pay programs could improve teacher effectiveness. There is little evidence about the characteristics…

Discussion of leadership development in the nation's institutions of higher education considers the need for a different kind of leadership in a changing nation; new opportunities for leadership particularly in the emerging nongovernmental public sector; increasingly widespread recognition that leaders are developed, not born; and demonstrated…

Accountability and performance incentive plans in education are compromised by goal distortion, gaming, and corruption. Education policy makers who design such plans have paid insufficient attention to similar experiences in other fields. This paper describes institutions in health care, job training and welfare administration, and in the private…

This article describes how school districts that have implemented the School of the 21st Century program have used a mixture of parent fees and public dollars to fund it. It proposes an ideal financing model for the program, linking child care and public education for an accessible child care system. (SLD)

In May 2001, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the establishment of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) as a key part of a new business model for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The GDA initiative aims to launch best practices in public-private partnerships around the world. The model is designed to…

Lifelong learning is often viewed as "human resource development in drag," since debates are largely driven by economic preoccupations. Governments generally restrict their interventions to vocational, non-innovative training measures. England's faltering policy must be revamped to address needs for informal and information-age learning.…

This paper describes a training management system developed by the Center for Development of Social Services. It is a set of practical, systematic procedures designed to manage and evaluate training programs. It is a complete model that meets the necessary criteria for competency-based training system. The system integrates the complex procedures…

This semiannual report to Congress by the Office of Inspector General (OIG), U.S. Department of Education, covers the actions of the OIG from October 1, 2002, through March 31, 2003. The report discusses four goals of the President's Management Agenda: (1) improved financial performance: includes information on financial statement audits,…

Of the 19 projects conducted as part of the Defense Conversion Adjustment (DCA) Demonstration administered by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Work-Based Learning, 8 tested the worker mobility approach. The projects, which shared the common goal of helping dislocated defense workers find high-quality jobs, tested one or more of the…

Of the 19 projects conducted as part of the Defense Conversion Adjustment (DCA) Demonstration administered by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Work-Based Learning, 5 tested the community planning approach. The projects attempted to alleviate the negative impacts of defense cutbacks on communities, firms, and workers. The project sites…

In 1992, the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce in Oklahoma established a welfare-to-work program called Industrial Exchange, Inc. (IndEx). IndEx provides welfare recipients with a combination of education activities and work experience. By contracting with local companies to perform light manufacturing and packaging work at a central site,…

The effectiveness of the Jobs Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families, which seeks to increase employment among people living in public housing, was examined through an in-depth study of the experiences of the interagency and resident Jobs Plus partnerships that were formed in seven cities across the United States in…