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In this article the author discusses initiatives by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) that balances the individual needs of various research institutes, on a limited budget, without weakening support for academic research. An overview of the impact of reductions in federal funding on the ability of NSF to support research across a broad range of disciplines and three initiatives implemented by NSF director Subra Suresh that are designed to maintain excellence within a limited budget, including the Career-Life Balance Initiative, the Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI), and Innovation Corps (I-Corps) initiative, is presented.

The authors offers criticism of the U.S. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. He comments that it and the test-based accountability (TBA) system need to be revised. He notes that TBA test scores tend to be inflated to earn performance-based incentives. Also discussed are the so-called proficiency threshold and the proficient performance standard with criticism aimed at the NCLB reward system that focuses attention on a single performance statistic. The author also refers to a shortage of sound evidence on the benefits of the NCLB law and he discusses changes that are needed in implementing the NCLB Act.

The article discusses the report of the U.S. Education Department written by an interagency panel chaired by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. The researchers objected to the department's recommendation that Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) should be the gold standard to judge how a program has affected students. They argue that RCTs are not suitable to handle the complications of most classroom settings and are not able to tell evaluators why a particular intervention has worked. The department expressed its displeasure at the science agencies for doing a poor job of evaluating their combined $3 billion education program.

The article reports on the U.S. government's decision to award $12 million to the University of Maryland, College Park, to set up a center for behavioral and social research on terrorism. The center is the fourth in a network of centers of excellence devoted to various aspects of terrorism funded by the Department of Homeland Security. The center will study how terrorist groups form and recruit, what motivates them and how they pick their targets. It will pull together teams from around the country to investigate areas that have received little attention in the past.