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Historically, political and social forces have strategically converged to directly influence the formulation and implementation of education policies that seek to equalize educational opportunities for members of minority groups. Such has been the case with school desegregation efforts. Since the 1954 Brown Decision, powerful interest groups have sought and secured the assistance of the courts in providing legal support in abandoning desegregation initiatives. Unfortunately, fifty years after Brown, legal scholars and social scientists continue to debate the merits of school desegregation mandates. As the debate intensifies, desegregation policies continue to be scrutinized and quietly dismantled. As we watch, the public schools resegregate, it is obvious that the promises of Brown have not been fulfilled. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the achievement gap between resegregated and desegregated schools in the city of Norfolk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1990s many school districts abandoned school desegregation initiatives and quietly resegregated the public schools. In 1986, the city of Norfolk ended mandated busing for desegregation and returned to neighborhood schools. This shift resulted in the creation of 11 schools that were more than 95 percent African American. After 17 years of resegregation, the achievement gap between resegregated schools and desegregated schools continues to exist.. The purpose of this paper is to examine the trends in the achievement gap between resegregated and desegregated schools in the Norfolk Public schools District. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel application of web-based virtual laboratories to prepare students for physical experiments is explored in some detail. The pedagogy of supplementing physical laboratory with web-based virtual laboratories is implemented by developing a web-based tool, designated in this work as "eLIVE", an acronym for Engineering Laboratory Instruction in Virtual Environment. Two physical experiments, one each from the thermo-fluids laboratory and the solid mechanics laboratory in the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum, are transformed into web-based virtual experiments for application as pre-lab practice sessions. The key question answered here is as follows: Do the web-based virtual experiments developed for supplementation of physical laboratory instruction enhance students' knowledge of experimental procedure and data acquisition? This question is answered by assessing the performance of a "control" group of students that did not use "eLIVE" and comparing it with the performance of an "experimental" group that availed "eLIVE" prior to the physical experiment sessions. Students' performance in tests and quizzes administered to both the groups prior to the physical experiments was analyzed, using a non-parametric statistical method, to establish the statistical significance of assessed results with respect to "eLIVE" intervention, and demographic parameters such as gender, ethnicity, academic achievement, age, course load etc. Statistical results as well as students' response to surveys presented in this work point to "eLIVE" as being a very useful technology- enhanced interactive learning tool. The present study clearly establishes the pedagogy of physical laboratory supplementation with web-based virtual laboratories on a firm ground for possible extension to other engineering laboratory courses at ODU as well as at other institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]