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ExpectMore.govExpectMore.gov home pageEXPECT FEDERAL PROGRAMS TO PERFORM WELL, AND BETTER EVERY YEAR.
 
Program Assessment

Program

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K-12 Math and Science Education

NSF invests in research and development to enable effective learning and teaching of K-12 math and science education. Rigorous projects for hypothesis-generation, design, implementation, scale-up, and synthesis are funded. The two centerpiece programs are the Math and Science Partnerships and Discovery Research K-12.

Rating

What This Rating Means

PERFORMING
Moderately Effective

In general, a program rated Moderately Effective has set ambitious goals and is well-managed. Moderately Effective programs likely need to improve their efficiency or address other problems in the programs' design or management in order to achieve better results.
  • The NSF K-12 programs are well designed and positioned to help address a clear National need via a competitive merit-based award process.
  • There are no independent studies that have explicitly assessed the efficacy and impact of the NSF K-12 programs in comparison to other relevant government and private efforts.
  • The NSF K-12 programs have long-term and annual measures in place, though work remains to collect the data necessary to demonstrate that the programs are directly and unambiguously responsible for the measured progress.

Improvement Plan

About Improvement Plans

We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:

  • Initiating an independent study of the efficacy and impact of the NSF K-12 programs, including a comparison with other relevant government and private efforts.
  • Engaging independent evaluations of the Math and Science Partnerships program designed to demonstrate a clear causal link between this program and measured progress in student proficiency.
  • Developing and implementing systems and evaluation components to ensure that all necessary information is gathered from Discovery Research K-12 awardees.

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