US Education Sector: A Detailed Review

The USA prides itself as having one of the top nations with the most effective and functional educational systems. The US has been consistently working towards the improvement of the country's education-related initiatives.

The government has consolidated programs that not only offer federal loans, but it also includes academic grants to eligible scholars who attempt to continue their schooling and acquire a degree in a certain field of expertise.

In order to consistently ensure the correct consolidation of these initiatives, the US government has established several agencies which are intended solely for the administration of education-related initiatives.

First up is the US Department of Education, most commonly referred to as the ED or USED. The agency, established in October of 1979, was built to ensure that efficient channels are present in terms the administration and consolidation of educational laws, policies, programs, and initiatives.

The mission of the Department of Education is to "establish policy for, manage and coordinate most federal help to education, collect data on US schools, and to induce federal educational laws relating to privacy and civil rights."

For more specific concerns, the Department of Education has established a few sub-agencies or divisions, namely:

a) Institute of Education Sciences – This division was created as a part of Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 and is the primary research arm of the United States Department of Education.

b) Federal Student Aid (FSA) – This division of the ED is the largest provider of financial aid in the United States in the form of grants, loans, and work-study funds. The mission of the FSA is to "ensure that all qualified Americans benefit from federal financial assistance grants, loans and work-study programs for education beyond high school."

In the year 2011, the FSA was reported to administrator roughly $ 144 billion to nearly 15 million postsecondary students and their respected families.

c) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) – This agency is operating under the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences and it's primarily tasked to gather, investigate, and share statistical data on education and public school district finance data all over the United States of America.

d) Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS) – Another program of the ED that has consistently been aiming at achieving its major agency mission which is to "to provide leadership to reach full integration and collusion in society of people with incapacities by guaranteeing equal opportunity and access to, and excellence in, education, employment and community living.

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