Googling the 'Net for School Information
This week's commentary is a bit out of the ordinary, although still related to education and schooling. It is, in part, a result of the current, March 29, 2004, issue of Newsweek magazine. Its cover story is an in-depth look at the Internet search engine Google, http://www.google.com/.
Google searches some five billion websites. Results are frequently so voluminous that one can hardly avoid coming across references on almost any topic. This includes schooling or education (contrary to common usage the two terms are not synonymous or interchangeable) and individual topics such homeschooling, public schools or educational alternatives such as vouchers or charter schools.
This is a resource readily available to anyone in the world who uses the Internet, even those who are not computer or Internet wizards. It frees you from dependence on a few sources for information.
The Google home page shows a space in which to type whatever is of interest. Then hit "Go" and in less than a second you will probably be amazed at the results.
For example, search for "home schooling." (Use the quotation marks for a given topic. Otherwise it will bring up every site that uses either word.) Such a search brought forth 1,640,000 sites. Of course they include a wide variety of issues related to the subject.
Searching for "Charter schools", produced 1,150,000 sites; "public school criticism", 1,070,000; "A Nation at Risk" 4,850,000; "Goals 2000", 7,790,000; "NCLB" (the No Child Left Behind Act), 2,200,000, etc.
Sites listed typically appear ten to a page, with a summary of each site and the link to each so it is very easy to retrieve a document. At the bottom of the page are successive page numbers so you can skip ahead, or back, rather than be confined to a numerical sequence.
Obviously no one can check 1,000,000 sites. Countless others are being added and/or updated daily so it is impossible to keep up. On the other hand, a general search makes available information of which you may not be aware and thus would not otherwise find.
Alternatively, if you are looking for a particular item of news, the more specific your wording the fewer sites will be listed and the more likely they will be limited to your interest.
Rather than search for "charter schools" and get 1,150,000 sites, let's assume you know the State of Washington last week became the 41st state to create a charter school law. If you further know that the Governor is Gary Locke, you could do a search for "Gov. Locke signs charter school legislation." Today that provided one site, which is maintained by the Association of Washington Business. The AWB supported the charter school legislation and the story reports their pleasure at its adoption. It also properly gives credit to Jim and Fawn Spady, a husband-and-wife team of Washingtonians who have devoted much of the past ten years to achieving this goal. It is no exaggeration to say that it would not have occurred without them.
The Spadys have scheduled a Seattle Charter School Conference for April 16-18. I have known them for practically all of the ten years, and have helped them where possible, usually from a great distance (Pennsylvania) but also including on-site in Washington state. At their kind invitation I will be there again, Friday and Saturday, April 16-17, as a Conference participant and presenter. Consider yourself forewarned. For more info, Google for "JimSpady" (506 hits), check their website, http://www.wacharterschools.org/, or email JimSpady@aol.com.
For the latest news on any education topic, retired teacher Tom Shuford suggests using Google's "news search." Go to Google, click on "news," then click on "advanced search." In the "exact phrase" window type in the key phrase - "charter school," "voucher," etc. To narrow the search, type additional "must have" words in the top window.
Finally, a personal reference. A search for "David W. Kirkpatrick" brings up 9,410 sites. Although some involve others with the same name, most concern my writings and involvement with public schools, education and education reform over the years. For a specific site, in addition to http://www.freedomfoundation.us/, noted above, you might check http://www.schoolreport.com/.
"'A Nation at Risk' was released in 1983, comparing America's schools to a system that might have been imposed on us by a hostile power. Even so, public confidence in public schools has declined dramatically over the past 25 years, and the rise in test scores has leveled out in recent years."
"Although many people voice initial support for what their local schools are doing, they become much more critical on further questioning. The prevailing view is that public education as a whole is in bad shape and renewed efforts are needed to fix it. Most people think private schools do better than public schools in areas such as safety, order, academic standards and class size."
"Education: Overview," An Issue Guide, Public Agenda, 2004.
David W. Kirkpatrick is a Senior Education Fellow with the U.S. Freedom Foundation and The Buckeye Institute.
