http://www.ed.gov/ (World Wide Web Directory, 06/1995)
U.S. Department of Education (ED)
Secretary: Richard W. Riley
Welcome to the U.S. Department of Education's World Wide Web Server
sponsored by the Department's Office of Educational Research and Improvement
(OERI)
(NOTE: This is a service continually under development. The presence or
absence of information items on this server in hypertext format by no means
reflects on their importance.)
We have placed further technical information
about this server here for those who wish to know who we are and what we are
trying to do. We will also try to keep up with
what's new on this server.
Under the Department of Education Organization Act, (Public Law 96-88 of October
1979), the U.S. Department of Education was established on May 4, 1980. Its
primary mission is to:
- Strengthen the Federal commitment to assuring access to equal educational
opportunity for every individual;
- Supplement and complement the efforts of states, the local school systems
and other instrumentalities of the states, the private sector, public and
private nonprofit educational research institutions, community-based
organizations, parents, and students to improve the quality of education;
- Encourage the increased involvement of the public, parents, and students in
Federal education programs;
- Promote improvements in the quality and usefulness of education through
Federally supported research, evaluation, and sharing of information;
- Improve the coordination of Federal education programs;
- Improve the management of Federal education activities; and
- Increase the accountability of Federal education programs to the President,
the Congress, and the public.
By the year 2000:
- All children in America will start school ready to learn.
- The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90
percent.
- All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having
demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter
including English, mathematics, science, foreign languages,
civics and government, economics, arts, history, and
geography, and every school in America will ensure that all
students learn to use their minds well, so they may be
prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and
productive employment in our Nation's modern economy.
- United States students will be first in the world in
mathematics and science achievement.
- Every adult American will be literate and will possess the
knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global
economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of
citizenship.
- Every school in the United States will be free of drugs,
violence, and the unauthorized presence of firearms and
alcohol and will offer a disciplined environment conducive
to learning.
- The Nation's teaching force will have access to programs for
the continued improvement of their professional skills and
the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed
to instruct and prepare all American students for the next
century.
- Every school will promote partnerships that will increase
parental involvement and participation in promoting the
social, emotional, and academic growth of children.
The National Education Goals remain at the forefront of the movement to
build a nation of learners. The
Summary Guide to the third annual National Education Goals Report
continues our commitment to let the American people know the results we
are getting in education.
A Teacher's Guide to the U.S. Department
of Education centralizes and compiles information on the U.S. Department of
Education's services to teachers, with the intention of increasing teachers'
access to the educational resources available throughout the country. The
Department offers many valuable resources to teachers in the way of programs,
services, and publications. These resources would be more valuable if they were
widely known and used. Think of this publication as a road map of sorts. It
provides a general description of programs and their relative location within
the Department, and it is also a reference to which you can turn with specific
needs or questions.
A Researcher's Guide to The U.S. Department of Education,
compiled January, 1994, is now available. This guide is designed
to be a resource for researchers so that they know what funding
might be available within the Department. The focus is on
discretionary grant programs, fellowship programs, and institutional
projects funded by the Department that might provide information on
research studies or statistics. While we have tried to be inclusive,
not all programs administered by the Department of Education are
included. Nor are research programs funded by other federal agencies.
General Information about the U.S. Department of Education
These General Information pages provide
further basic information about the Department and its programs and policies.
Management Structure
Headed by the Secretary, the Deputy Secretary, and the Under Secretary, there
are seven major program offices and seven staff agencies serving in the
headquarters. This organization is further detailed in this
Staff Directory.
About one third of the Department's 4900 employees are stationed in ten regional
offices making it easier to serve state and local education systems. Regional
staff are primarily involved in representing the Department's goals and views
within the region, particularly in the areas of student financial assistance,
civil rights enforcement, vocational rehabilitation services for the disabled,
and Inspector General audits and investigations.
This department Staff Locator can be
used to search for the phone number, internet email address (where available),
and building/office of individual staff members of the U.S. Department of
Education.
The department is headquartered and has most operations in Washington, DC where
the staff of approximately 3600 occupies parts of several buildings including
the Regional Office Building 3 (ROB3), the Federal Office Building 6 (FOB6),
the Mary E. Switzer Building (MES), Capitol Place, and at L'Enfant Plaza. The
Secretary's office is normally in the Federal
Office Building 6 (large graphics file - slow modems beware) at 400 Maryland
Avenue. Due to renovation of the FOB6 building, the headquarters staff
formerly located there has been temporarily relocated to FOB10 (600 Independence
Avenue).
Additionally, there are almost 1000 staff members who work in the Department's
Regional Offices each of which is headed by a Secretary's Regional
Representative. These regional representatives serve as liaisons to state,
local, and private education organizations and as advocates for the
administration's policies
There are ten regional offices located throughout the country supporting the
programs of the Department:
- Region I (Boston) - Brenda Dann-Messier
Serving Connecticut, Maine, Massachesetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and
Vermont.
- Region II (New York) - Maria S. Mercado
Serving New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands
- Region III (Philadelphia) - W. Wilson Goode
Serving Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
West Virginia.
- Region IV (Atlanta) - Stan Williams
Serving Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Tennessee.
- Region V (Chicago) - Stephanie J. Jones
Serving Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota,Ohio, and Wisconsin.
- Region VI (Dallas) - Sally Cain
Serving Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
- Region VII (Kansas City) - Sandra V. Walker
Serving Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.
- Region VIII (Denver) - Lynn Osborn Simons
Serving Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
- Region IX (San Francisco) - Loni Hancock
Serving Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, American Samoa, Guam, and Trust
Territories of the Pacific Islands
- Region X (Seattle) - Carla Nuxoll
Serving Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.
The Department of Education is undertaking a number of initiatives to promote
systemic education reform. A rapidly growing collection of information is
available on the ED/OERI WWW and Gopher Servers about several key Department
initiatives--
Goals 2000,
School-to-Work,
School-Wide Programs
,
Family Involvement
,
Technology, and the reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
The U.S. Department of Education is working towards establishing several gopher
servers to present information from all individual offices and about all
programs; these will all be linked to this top-level
Gopher Server which can reach all others
in the Department.
At this time only the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) and
the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES - within OERI) have
established gopher servers to disseminate their program information.
However, OERI posts other departmental documents on its gopher server as well,
though in a limited and non-systematic way.
Due to limited resources, the Department must make choices as to which service
gets the support on a case by case basis. At this time the gopher servers will
usually get the documents first as we perceive our primary audience as having
mostly textual devices without the more sophisticated and costly graphical
interface needed to access the WWW documents. As resources allow, we will be
marking up key documents in html and placing them on the WWW server.
The Department publishes several newsletters on a regularly scheduled basis.
Community Update is the Department of Education's monthly newsletter serving
school and community organizations involved in grassroots efforts to achieve the
National Education Goals. With a monthly circulation of approximately 70,000,
the newsletter talks about community-based approaches to the critical issues in
school reform: high standards, professional development for teachers, school
readiness, technology, etc. Regular features, including the "Community Exchange"
that allows readers to pose questions, deliver news that reform-minded
communities need concerning model programs, new resources, relevant legislation,
and other matters. Also featured are other ED Department services for
communities, including Secretary Riley's Goals 2000 Satellite Town Meeting.
At this time the Community Update newsletter is not marked up in html but is
on-line on the department Gopher server. You can get your own copy of this
newsletter. Are you on the Community Update mailing list?
To receive your monthly copy, call 1-800-USA-LEARN.
The Office of Educational Research and Improvement publishes the
OERI Bulletin three times a year (Fall,
Winter and Spring/Summer). The latest version is kept on-line in html format
and previous editions
can be retrieved from the Department Gopher Server.
*** Last update 4/10/95 (eal) ***
If you have comments or suggestions about this server, please email
them to wwwadmin@inet.ed.gov
http://www.ed.gov/ (World Wide Web Directory, 06/1995)