Educators protest plan to alter ERIC. (Update: education news from schools, businesses, research and government agencies).Educators are worried that a popular online database covering virtually every topic in the field of education could become much tougher to use under a Bush administration effort to restructure it. At issue is a Department of Education proposal to consolidate the Educational Resources Information Center. ERIC, as it is called, includes abstracts of over one million journal articles, research reports and teaching guides, among other types of literature. An estimated 22.5 million teachers, parents and researchers consult ERIC each year, using a network that has 16 primary databases, separated into categories that range from rural education and small schools to higher education higher education Study beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. . The databases--known as clearinghouses--are operated by independent government contractors A government contractor is a private company that produces goods or services under contract for the government. Often the terms of the contract specify cost plus – i.e., the contractor gets paid for its costs, plus a specified profit margin. , located at colleges around the country. "Historically, it's been the workhorse work·horse n. 1. Something, such as a machine, that performs dependably under heavy or prolonged use: "the 50-year-old DC-3 ... of our discipline," says John Collins, the librarian at the Harvard University Harvard University, mainly at Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard College, the oldest American college. Harvard College Harvard College, originally for men, was founded in 1636 with a grant from the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Graduate School of Education's Gutman Library. Now the Education Department, concerned that ERIC is inefficient, wants to streamline the service by reducing the number of clearinghouses. "It's a system that is duplicative and slow. And we're simply trying to provide better service," says Grover Whitehurst Grover Whitehurst is the current director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which is the research arm of the United States Department of Education. He received this position in November of 2001 through the Bush Administration. , the Education Department official overseeing the modification. Whitehurst notes that five ERIC Web sites posted nearly identical entries on school bullying Bullying Chowne, Parson Stoyle terrorizes parish; kidnaps children. [Br. Lit.: The Maid of Sker, Walsh Modern, 94–95] Claypole, Noah bully; becomes thief in Fagin’s gang. [Br. Lit. between 1998 and 2001. Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Services, also says it can take months for queries to be processed. Although they agree that the system needs to be updated, educators fear that a wholesale consolidation will take away fundamental components of the network. Breaking ERIC into 16 different sectors, educators say, eases the process of locating and accessing data. Prompted by the expiration of the clearinghouse contracts at the end of 2003, plans for the overhaul began during the Clinton administration Noun 1. Clinton administration - the executive under President Clinton executive - persons who administer the law , Whitehurst says. The revised ERIC will continue to operate on a $10.5 million budget. --Associated Press www.eric.ed.gov, www.saveeric.org |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion