With the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a greater emphasis has been placed on the public school system’s effectiveness at educating all children, despite race, socioeconomic status, and various other differences. The U.S Department of Education claims, “No Child Left Behind is designed to change the culture of America’s schools by closing the achievement gap, offering more flexibility, giving parents more options, and teaching students based on what works.” Many argue that a primary contributor to the achievement gap is the presence of the Digital Divide in schools, meaning that unequal access to technology in schools creates unequal levels of education.
This website provides insight into how a difference in access to technology affects education, specifically how funding, technological programs, and student achievement are all interrelated. The data and articles on past research provided will allow you to see that funding affects access to technology in schools, which then in turn affects the academic performance of students. This website will explore how schools in affluent areas are able to provide better technology, and thus a better education, while schools that struggle to afford adequate technological resources are not able to provide their students with the same education.
I selected this topic because as a Political Science major with an emphasis in Public Sectors, I have taken an interest in how policies aid or hinder the education of certain groups, specifically groups within different socioeconomic classes. The general question posed in this research is whether or not schools with more technology programs have better test scores and graduation rates, which would suggest that schools who can afford these technology programs are better equipped to set their students up for success; this question was explored through examination of 9 different public high schools throughout the bay area. My data was collected from school-profiling websites, such as greatschools.org and schoolmatters.com, which provided me access to information regarding dropout rates, test scores, financial information, and demographics. If we wish to uphold the promises made in the No Child Left Behind Act, we must recognize the inequalities that exist in education and understand their causes.
