Measuring Access to Learning Opportunities (2003) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-6
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 1... ...
They may also renect the failure of schools to fully compensate for disparities already present as children first enter school that may be due in part to past discriminatory practices and current differences in parents' education, income, and family structure. The Committee on Improving Measures of Access to Equal Educational Opportunity concludes that the E&S survey continues to play an essential role in documenting these disparities anti in providing information that is useful both in guiding efforts to protect students' civil rights anti for informing educational policy and practice.
|
From page 2... ...
No training is provided to OCR staff regarding technical issues in accessing and analyzing E&S survey data or potential uses of the data in enforcement. The data sometimes are used in conjunction with citizen complaints and other information to decide whether potential problems in specific schools and school districts may require further investigation.
|
From page 3... ...
With some modifications and closer coordination with other Department of Education databases to accommodate more sophisticated research designs, E&S survey data could play a more prominent role than they have in the past in informing contemporary policy and research questions especially the identification of possible unintended inequitable outcomes of various educational policies and practices. The Department of Education has announced its intention to consolidate the collection and maintenance of administrative data used for program management anti policy (1ecisions through the proposed PerformanceBase(1 Data Management In(licators (PBDMI)
|
From page 4... ...
Improving the ability to connect the data to existing datasets could help with this issue. Also, multiple sources of training and support to OCR staff and other users of the survey data should be provided, and efforts to disseminate survey findings expanded.
|
From page 5... ...
· The survey, although useful for · Because of the survey's impor civi} rights enforcement, inform- tance, the department should ing educational policy, and the consider undertaking a thorough conduct of research, is greatly study of the survey aimed at underused. ensuring that it deals appropri · The survey can be made more ately and in sufficient depth with useful by improvements to the the problems of discovering content, the manner in which the possible restrictions on students' survey is administered, and learning opportunities and, if access to the valuable data it possible, reducing the reporting provides.
|
From page 6... ...
Increasing Access to the Data There are several steps that OCR should take to increase access to the E&S survey data: train staff to make more effective use of the survey data; continue to improve the software provided for public access to E&S survey data over the Internet; sponsor or support programs to train advocates, researchers, and MEASURING ACCESS TO LEARNING OPPORTUNIT searchers and other interested parties on disk or over the Internet, both for historical purposes and to enable researchers to track longitudinal trends. Disseminating Survey Findings Three steps should be taken by OCR to improve dissemination of E&S survey data: conduct or sponsor the conduct of basic tabulations of the data; include findings from analyses of the data in OCR's regular reports to Congress; and publicize the basic findings from the survey in widely disseminated government publications.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.