University of California at Los Angeles

This grant would support the WORLD Policy Analysis Center to improve the quantity and quality of comparative policy data on laws and policies affecting women’s economic empowerment, equality, and population health. The data, analyses of policies and outcomes, and rich info-graphics will be featured on WORLD’s user-friendly Web platform to engage and inform its users—government leaders, citizens, civil society, and researchers around the world. A unique feature of the site will be links to policies that affect gender, educational equity, income security throughout a person’s life, and work-family issues. WORLD will use policy briefings, international meetings, and workshops to disseminate data, findings, and toolkits.

UCLA’s National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, & Student Testing (CRESST) is monitoring the work of the two Common Core assessment consortia, paying particular attention to the way they include deeper learning skills in their test development plans. So far, it has documented substantial progress at both consortia in this regard. At the same time, CRESST’s analysis suggested several challenges they will face in carrying out their plans and identified the need for ongoing technical assistance to solve these problems. With this request, CRESST proposes to continue monitoring the two consortia and to add this technical assistance to its scope of work.