The United States faces a new challengeâ€"maintaining the vitality of its system for supporting science and technology despite fiscal stringency during the next several years. To address this change, the Senate Appropriations Committee requested a report from the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine to address "the criteria that should be used in judging the appropriate allocation of funds to research and development activities; to examine the appropriate balance among different types of institutions that conduct such research; and to look at the means of assuring continued objectivity in the allocation process." In this eagerly-awaited book, a committee of experts selected by the National Academies and the Institute responds with 13 recommendations that propose a new budgeting process and formulates a series of questions to address during that process. The committee also makes corollary recommendations about merit review, government oversight, linking research and development to government missions, the synergy between research and education, and other topics. The recommendations are aimed at rooting out obsolete and inadequate activities to free resources from good programs for even better ones, in the belief that "science and technology will be at least as important in the future as they have been in the past in dealing with problems that confront the nation." The authoring committee of this book was chaired by Frank Press, former President of the National Academy of Sciences (1981-1993) and Presidential Science and Technology Advisor (1977-1981).

Excerpt from Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology: Hearing Before the Committee on Science, U. S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session; February 28, 1996; No. 44 The Committee on Criteria for Federal Support of Research and Development approached its task with realism about the budget pressures, an eagerness to pro vide advice that could guide both the Executive Branch and Congress, and a con cern for fairness in evaluating the many parts of the enterprise. The committee's membership reflected these aims. Including individuals who perform federally funded research. Who use the results in industry and other seetors, who have been involved in shaping federal research and development programs in the past, and who are students of the research and development enterprise. The committee's realism about budget pressures was matched by its realism about the report's immediate impact on current budgets. It is the committee's hope that this report will serve well both the executive and legislative branches as they grapple with the very hard decisions that will have to be made over many budget eveles. In a politically and fiscally difficult environment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In a report accompanying funding for the National Institutes of Health for Fiscal Year 1995, the Senate Appropriations Committee requested a study from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The study was to address 'the criteria that should be used in judging the appropriate allocation of funds to research and development activities, the appropriate balance among different types of institutions that conduct such research, and the means of assuring continued objectivity in the allocation process.' The study originated from the Appropriations Committee's concern 'that at a time when there is much opportunity to understand and cure disease, funding for health research supported by NIH in the next fiscal year is held to below the inflation rate for medical research due to budget constraints. Similarly, other Federal research agencies are confronted with constrained resources resulting from the virtual freeze in discretionary outlays'

The United States faces a new challengeâ€"maintaining the vitality of its system for supporting science and technology despite fiscal stringency during the next several years. To address this change, the Senate Appropriations Committee requested a report from the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine to address "the criteria that should be used in judging the appropriate allocation of funds to research and development activities; to examine the appropriate balance among different types of institutions that conduct such research; and to look at the means of assuring continued objectivity in the allocation process." In this eagerly-awaited book, a committee of experts selected by the National Academies and the Institute responds with 13 recommendations that propose a new budgeting process and formulates a series of questions to address during that process. The committee also makes corollary recommendations about merit review, government oversight, linking research and development to government missions, the synergy between research and education, and other topics. The recommendations are aimed at rooting out obsolete and inadequate activities to free resources from good programs for even better ones, in the belief that "science and technology will be at least as important in the future as they have been in the past in dealing with problems that confront the nation." The authoring committee of this book was chaired by Frank Press, former President of the National Academy of Sciences (1981-1993) and Presidential Science and Technology Advisor (1977-1981).

As the United States continues to be a nation of immigrants and their children, the nation's school systems face increased enrollments of students whose primary language is not English. With the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the allocation of federal funds for programs to assist these students to be proficient in English became formula-based: 80 percent on the basis of the population of children with limited English proficiency1 and 20 percent on the basis of the population of recently immigrated children and youth. Title III of NCLB directs the U.S. Department of Education to allocate funds on the basis of the more accurate of two allowable data sources: the number of students reported to the federal government by each state education agency or data from the American Community Survey (ACS). The department determined that the ACS estimates are more accurate, and since 2005, those data have been basis for the federal distribution of Title III funds. Subsequently, analyses of the two data sources have raised concerns about that decision, especially because the two allowable data sources would allocate quite different amounts to the states. In addition, while shortcomings were noted in the data provided by the states, the ACS estimates were shown to fluctuate between years, causing concern among the states about the unpredictability and unevenness of program funding. In this context, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned the National Research Council to address the accuracy of the estimates from the two data sources and the factors that influence the estimates. The resulting book also considers means of increasing the accuracy of the data sources or alternative data sources that could be used for allocation purposes.

Fifth in a series of annual reports, this study provides observations on the Administration's FY 2003 budget proposal for federal science and technology (FS&T) programs. The first section of the report outlines the development during the 1990s of national goals for science and technology (S&T), re-iterating the importance of U.S. leadership in these fields. It also comments on development of approach to tabulating and analyzing the federal S&T investment. The second section of the report summarizes the President's FY 2003 budget proposal, including proposals for spending on research for countering terrorism. The third section provides observations on the President's proposal, noting differences in funding trends by agency and outlining an approach to FS&T budgeting that focuses on both priority-driven and discovery-oriented research. The final section provides recommendations for ensuring that federally-funded S&T programs provide high-quality research outcomes that are relevant to agency missions and provide the U.S. with global leadership in S&T.

The Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy updated its 1999 analysis (Appendix A, Securing America's Industrial Strength, 1999) of changes since 1990 in the distribution of federal research funding by field of science and engineering) by incorporating FY 1998 and FY 1999 obligations from the NSF Federal Funds survey, with particular attention to the trends in basic research support, changes in research fields' relative dependence on research-sponsoring agencies, and the relationship between changes in research support and changes in enrollment in graduate training in selected fields of research. The Board did not recommend funding levels for any discipline but addressed procedural aspects of R&D budgeting.