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  • From: Paul Cory <paulcory AT mac.com>
  • To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Education Landscape
  • Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 10:44:30 -0400


We've had some good discussions about education here. For all of you who are interested, the N&O actually has a good article on the impact of the Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) today.

http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1430303p-1463135c.html

Unless the law changes, the fights over public school funding are going to get a lot more intense. In short, the law requires that every identified subgroup (including ethnicity) at a school must meet certain goals on the state's end-of-grade tests, or else the school fails. The state standards simply measure the success of the school as a whole (although DPI does keep track of certain subgroups already).

In NC, that means about 73% of elementary and middle schools would have failed by the federal definition last year, and we're doing well, relative ot other states. Nationwide, some states are estimating that 10% or fewer of their schools would have passed the federal standards last year.

The impact of the NCLB would seem to be pretty straightforward: either more resources will have to be made available for education, or existing resources will have to be redirected to provide more help for those lagging subgroups, which will cause some loss of opportunity for the high achieving children in public schools (a majority of whom are white and asian in NC).

In regards to the previous discussion of Linux in the schools, the need for more resources to meet the federal standards should make some school administrators more receptive to the Free Software pitch - although all the stumbling blocks I laid out earlier will still have to be overcome.

Paul





  • Education Landscape, Paul Cory, 06/02/2002

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