News for Week of November 28, 1999
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Tracking Digital Piracy of Intellectual Property
A new site, www.plagiarism.org, offers a for-fee service to check out submitted materials such as college essays by checking the materials against millions of online pages. iParadigms, Inc., a group of Berkeley academics, researchers and alumni which offers this service, specialize in developing knowledge mining systems to track all forms of intellectual property on the Internet. With the rise of web-sites, databases and term paper services, many consider that digital plagiarism is an academic epidemic. More information and links about the issue can be found at the Center for Academic Integrity.
Last week Dallas Independent School District announced that it is contracting Edison Schools, Inc, the largest private manager of public schools in the US, to run 6 schools beginning in fall 2000. Edison has grown from 4 schools in 1995 to currently managing 79 schools with 38,000 students in 16 states and 36 cities. In these contracts Edison assumes educational and operational responsibility in return for per-pupil funding comparable to that spent on other public schools in the area. Earlier this month Edison completed its Initial Public Offering listed with shares trading on NASDAQ. Reviews of the success of these ventures continue to be mixed and controversial.
Updated November 28, 1999