Source Note: “No Child Left Behind: The Numbers”

March 13, 2009 in Research Project

Title: “No Child Left Behind: The Numbers”

Summary: Multimedia artifact displays the 

Topic: Should the Obama Administration reform the No Child Left Behind Act?

Category: Journalistic; Multimedia; Graph and Text

Publication Information: The New York Times, 6/12/08

Author: N/A

Location: nytimes.com

Accessed: March 12, 2009

Support:

• National achievement levels according to the Department of Education: The graphic is a line plot of the number of American students at levels of “basic achievement” in math and reading. Between 2001, when No Child Left Behind was passed, and 2007, there was a 20% increase in the number of students found proficient in math. In reading, however, there was approximately a 3% decrease in the number of students meeting the minimum standard for proficiency.

Audience and Agenda: The New York Times is, along with the Washington Post, the major national newspaper most commonly cited in U.S. academic circles. It is one of the only metropolitan newspapers that does not rely primarily on commercial wire services for coverage outside its namesake locale. According to its Quantcast audience profile, it shares online readership  primarily with other business-minded publications such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, and recieves approximately 13.9 million visits per month.

Usefulness: The multimedia display provides visual documentation of performance changes in math and reading following the passage of NCLB. Visual presentations are especially useful for explaining research results to lay audiences, making it a valuable addition to my research project.

Works cited:

“nytimes.com – Quantcast Audience Profile,” http://www.quantcast.com/nytimes.com

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