U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced today that the Department of Education Web site has been redesigned to improve its organization and function for all customers and to offer users interested in customizing the Web site the option to personalize it.

"This redesigned site can help reduce the time teachers, parents and others spend looking for information so they can spend more time using it to help children learn," Paige said. "The new www.ed.gov is part of what will be an ongoing effort to make the information and resources of the Department of Education available and understandable to policymakers, government leaders educators, parents and students alike."

The new www.ed.gov site includes several improvements and adds new features for its users including the following—

• Information has been reorganized and can be reached through multiple paths, including these five categories: grants and contracts, financial aid for students, education resources, research and statistics and policy.
• Customized pages have been created for teachers, principals, parents and families, students, higher education institutions and grantees and technical assistance providers.
• Visitors may personalize the site to see the latest information about their favorite topics. They can also sign up for weekly updates announcing new additions to the site.
• An improved search function will produce results that are more relevant and reliable.

The redesign keeps the best features of the previous site. Visitors using the search function may still search www.ed.gov as well as the hundreds of Web sites supported by department grants and programs. The redesigned site also offers an alphabetical index of the best starting points for research on the site and includes a site map to provide a bird's-eye view of the entire site. The Web site will continue to offer useful information available on the previous site including—

• News regarding department activities and initiatives including press releases, speeches, EDInfo (an information service that announces new reports, new initiatives and funding opportunities from ED through e-mail) and NewsFlash (an e-mail-based alert service that announces new publications and news from the National Center for Education Statistics).
• Publications and products including reports and studies, research syntheses and connections to the ED Pubs online ordering system.
• The Guide to ED Programs, which describes department programs and offers background and contact information for potential applicants and participants.
• The president's budget request for federal education programs and information on how much Congress has appropriated and allocated for those programs.
• An overview of the department's organizational structure of programs and staff.
• Opportunities within the department including information on job openings and more.

The ED Web site-www.ed.gov-is consistently ranked among the top 10 most-visited government Web sites, with an average of more than 1 million visitors and more than 12 million page views each month. A study of government Web sites, released in September 2001 by Brown University, ranked it sixth in quality among 58 federal sites.

The redesign of www.ed.gov was launched in response to feedback from users who completed a survey on the Web site. The redesigned site launched today represents the first phase of redesign activity, and the department will continue to improve the structure, presentation and function of the resources and materials available on the redesigned Web site during a second phase of redesign activity that will begin shortly and continue through 2002.