Or help those with fewer cases get better at identifying students in need of help?
The law, he said, empowered educators by identifying students who needed special help and resources.
Identifying students most at risk of violence, as the school administration proposes, is important as far as it goes.
Special emphasis goes to identifying students who are only a few correct answers away from passing state proficiency standards.
He and others have called for reforms in identifying students with disabilities -- minority students are classified far out of proportion to their numbers -- and in the daunting paperwork for the schools.
Jim Shelton, assistant deputy secretary of innovation and improvement, the Department of Education office that oversees charter schools, said some district schools might be identifying students as disabled who are not, a factor that could skew the data.
Dr. Sternberg says the goal of his research, which he calls the Rainbow Project, is twofold: to increase a college's chance of identifying students who will profit from its environment and to counteract the pronounced gap on SAT scores of white and non-Asian minority applicants.
A common complaint heard by the Student Press Law Center is that some officials have tried to keep school publications from identifying students in articles or photographs posted on the Internet, or even running photographs of students, all in the name of student safety.
The group concluded, "The advantage that the SAT I is often assumed to possess -- that it is effective at identifying students with strong potential who have not yet been able to demonstrate that potential -- is largely a phantom, at least at the University of California".
The names of those high school students accused are protected, as the students are or were at the time of the incidents under 18; but the names of at least five accused fraudulent test-takers have been released, identifying students original to the region and now enrolled at Emory University, Indiana University, Tulane University and SUNY Stony Brook.
Identifying students' learning styles has been found to be a significant factor for planning effective instruction.
