Aspen Institute Publications
Aspen Institute publications are listed below. Many are available for purchase through Google Checkout, a secure system for handling credit card transaction online. For assistance with ordering publications, please contact our Publications office by email or by phone at (410) 820.5433. Please note: Orders are shipped two times a week from our warehouse in Queenstown, MD, on the Eastern Shore.
Building Teacher Evaluation Systems: Learning From Leading Efforts
Ambitious reforms across the country are reshaping teacher evaluation and performance management. Designing new systems for measuring teacher effectiveness and using that information to increase student achievement are at the heart of these efforts and at the center of important policy debates. Yet little information exists about how these systems work in practice and how to use evaluations in concert with other levers to improve teaching and learning.
As policymakers and education leaders seek to accelerate reform in this area, it is essential to learn from efforts already underway. The Education & Society Program published three new reports: profiles of the performance management work in District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and the Achievement First (AF) charter school network; and a synthesis of issues that emerge from the two profiles. Both DCPS and AF are at the forefront of efforts to re-design teacher evaluation, performance management, and compensation policies. The commonalities, distinctions, and early lessons learned in these initiatives represent an important learning laboratory for the field.
Building Teacher Evaluation Systems: Learning from Leading Efforts [Summary report]
Achievement First: Developing a Teacher Performance Management System that Recognizes Excellence
The Future of Work: What It Means for Individuals, Businesses, Markets and Governments
The Future of Work examines the challenges to conventional notions of work and organization brought on by new digital technologies and trends. As the velocity of change increases, institutions and individuals must adapt. Yet many structures, including those in education, government, business and the economy, often remain rooted in the past. The report captures the insights of the Nineteenth Annual Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology, where business leaders, technologists, international politicians, academics and innovators explored how global structures and institutions are being confronted by the 21st century realities of distributed knowledge, crowdsourcing, open platforms and networked environments. The report shares the solutions these leaders proposed for preserving individual well-being and defining a future world of work that benefits everyone involved.
American Interests in South Asia: Building a Grand Strategy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India
American Interests in South Asia: Building a Grand Strategy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, is the latest in a series of policy books stemming from the Aspen Strategy Group's annual summer workshop. The book contains a collection of commissioned papers that provide an intensive exploration of the interconnected national security challenges posed by the events in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Chapters focus on the lessons from history and balance of power in the region, the current strategy in Afghanistan, the effect of American foreign assistance and private sector development, and the implications for the United States of India-Pakistan relations Together, these chapters seek to further collective understanding of the current issues facing the region and help policymakers find a way to cope with what has become one of America's most pressing security problems. The papers commissioned for the conference are now available in paperback compiled by Director Nicholas Burns and Deputy Director Jonathon Price. It is available through the Aspen Institute bookstore and Brookings Press.
Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication
Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication calls on community and elected leaders to adopt sensible strategies to strengthen civic communication and citizen engagement. The paper is the sixth in a series of white papers following up the recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Learn more at www.knightcomm.org
Creating Local Online Hubs: Three Models for Action
Creating Local Online Hubs: Three Models for Action, a new policy paper by Adam Thierer, explores three scenarios under which community leaders and other stakeholders can work together to create local online hubs where citizens can access information about their governments and local communities. Ensuring that every local community has at least one high-quality hub is one of 15 key recommendations made by the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.
Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government
Americans are demanding more transparency and accountability from their governments at all levels, goals that are easier to achieve when governments have made a commitment to operating transparently and making public information truly open and accessible to the public. Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government, a new policy paper by Jon Gant and Nicol Turner-Lee, calls on state and local governments to adopt six sensible strategies to accelerate the trend toward open government. The strategies focus on enhancing government expertise and transparency, educating citizens regarding the availability and utility of government information and e-government tools, expanding efforts to support greater adoption of broadband Internet access services and devices, and forging public-private-citizen partnerships in order to enhance open government solutions.
Key Data on the Scale of Microlending in the U.S.
Drawn from data collected during the 2009 U.S. Microenterprise Census that collected fy2008 data, this report seeks to better understand lending institutions and the financial products that they offer. The report then compares the largest lenders to smaller lenders to draw out additional trends and information.
The Price of Persistence: How Nonprofit - Community College Partnerships Manage and Blend Diverse Funding Streams
This report describes how nonprofit - community college partnerships, participating in the Courses to Employment (CTE) demonstration project, leverage multiple funding streams to address the barriers of low-income, adult learners to help them persist and complete their educations in community college, and to ultimately succeed in the labor market.
The Shared Future: A Report of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change
The Aspen Institute and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation are pleased to release the final report and recommendations of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change, entitled “The Shared Future: A Report of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change.” The report and recommendations promote an important new perspective on the level of international cooperation and stewardship that will be necessary to manage the Arctic marine environment in anticipation of the climate change impacts it faces.
eHealth for India: Reaching the Unreached
Report of the Fifth Annual Joint Roundtable on Communications Policy.
