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Mar 6, 2007 5:51 am US/Eastern
Supercomputer To Analyze NYC Student Achievement
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
New York City educators have long been haunted by the simple question of whether their students are learning enough.
It seems that question may have a price tag: $80 million.
That's how much the city intends to spend on a massive supercomputer designed to analyze the performance of the district's 1.1 million students.
The IBM-designed machine will be fed existing data on students -- including information on gender and race -- and new data developed from interim testing.
The result will be up-to-the-minute information on the performance of every student in the district.
Teachers union president Randi Weingarten says that kind of money could be spent on lower class sizes or buying supplies.
But Mayor Bloomberg says the city will spare no expense on quality education for each child.
In the beginning, only teachers and principals will be able to access the reports generated. Parents will eventually have access, too.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
