School's back in session, so as students tackle reading and math, journalists can get busy reporting. Whether it's teacher quality or test scores, budgets or bus rides, the education beat offers lots of issues worth exploring with computer-assisted reporting. Nowadays, journalists need to be even more insightful and aggressive in their education reporting. The federal government and all 50 states have put public schools under growing pressure to help kids succeed in the classroom.
Most notably is the No Child Left Behind Act signed into law by President Bush this year. It requires states to set academic standards for children at each grade level and test children to see if they're meeting those standards. Some groups of children tend to perform better than others, but in the past those disparities rarely came to light. Now schools must break down test results by race, English proficiency, socioeconomic status, and other variables.
Schools and districts must publish report cards with test scores, graduation rates, teacher qualifications, and other data. So for education reporters and CAR junkies, these mandates make for a veritable data-fest with lots of numbers, statistics, and trends to scrutinize.