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by Cheryl Lemke
In my travels over the years as a state technology director both in Illinois and Washington state, I have seen firsthand how classrooms have been transformed by the effective use of education technology. Teachers have shared with me how technology has helped their students become more motivated, spend more time writing, and learn how to work more collaboratively. I have watched the Internet open the world for children isolated by geography or economic status. And I have seen technology help students better grasp the solving of multistep word problems - the kind of complex reasoning that is so important, not just in America's classrooms, but increasingly in the workplace. It is clear that, with over 62% of America's workforce employed as "knowledge workers," fluency with technology is a basic skill of the 1990s.
But what I have seen - and what I have heard about other successes around the nation -- we cannot yet prove. That is why the Milken Exchange on Education Technology and Education Week released this week a state-by-state technology progress report, Technology Counts. Our aim is to bring clarity and consistency to the growing number of education technology "report cards" that usually do little more than count computers and Internet connections, when what we need to do is track the best uses of learning technologies. We also wanted to help decision-makers from the classroom to Congress evaluate the costs and benefits of education technology - investments that, while varying widely from state to state and school to school, nationally represent less than 2 percent of our national education spending budget. Most experts believe the rate of spending should be at least double that.
Yet dollars are far easier to track than benefits. Technology Counts finds that much of the data on computing and connectivity in America's classrooms is flawed or incomplete. Moreover, the lack of solid research on the impact of technology on student learning is thwarting educators hoping to understand how to make full use of technology and to make its availability more equitable to all. At bottom line, Technology Counts poses a new challenge to more accurately gauge how education is helping to prepare students to successfully live, learn and work in a digital age.
The creation of a more coherent and unified education technology national research agenda is one of the five basic strategies of the Milken Exchange. With our partners in universities and state and federal government, we must begin by understanding why the research is so thin and what barriers must be overcome to better establish cause and effect. Some of the problems we face are:
- The goals of education technology are broader than the measures. According to a Milken Exchange national opinion survey last summer, American voters are convinced that fluency with technology can both help graduates land good jobs and provide research and learning tools which add a new context of relevancy to the study of other basic skills. As documented in the Learning Section of Technology Counts, teachers are providing evidence that technology can improve the academic performance of students. Yet a national study commissioned by the Milken Exchange finds that few existing examinations are available even for the testing of technology proficiency - a far easier goal to measure than improving basic skills.
- Policy-makers do not spend money on evaluation. A case in point is the promising California Digital High School Initiative, a four-year, $500 million effort to bring the state's high schools into the information age. The concept and the approach of this effort are exemplary in many ways, but no funds are allocated to evaluate its impact. Unfortunately, many state programs are launched without adequate measures.
- It is difficult to separate the impact of education technology on teaching and learning from other program reforms, such as changes in learning standards, teaching methods, scheduling of time, graduation requirements, or faculty incentive programs. At the same time, standardized tests used to assess reading, math and other subjects do not measure the gains in critical thinking skills, collaboration and real-life problem-solving that technology-mediated learning can produce.
- Schooling is more of an art than a science: education change around the world has been driven more by concepts and exemplary practice, than by research. For example, research on class size reduction is ambiguous, the costs of lowering class size are great, yet the amount spent on this innovation each year dwarfs what we spend on technology.
While the nation puts in place an adequate research and evaluation program, we should not be slowed in our efforts to bring technology to teachers and students. Putting aside for a moment what we don't know about when technology works and under which circumstances, let's focus on what we do know:
- Next June's high school graduates with information technology skills will be greatly advantaged over those without them. We know this from talking to professors and employers as well as from studies of employability and earning power.
- Many classrooms across America are using technology to good effect. We need to learn from these success stories and propagate their productive approaches in schools rich and poor.
- The increase of productivity in American business over the last fifteen years has been linked to its increasing use of information technology, yet few early studies could demonstrate this link. The question to educators is not if technology belongs in schools, but under what conditions can we best capitalize on technology to maximize learning. There are times when good practice and common sense must prevail, this is one of them.
The lesson of Technology Counts is not that we should slow investments in learning technology, but rather that we must launch a crash national effort to develop measures that capture student performance and information literacy within the context of achievement in the basic academics. For the sake of our children, it is the logical next step in helping them adapt to the new realities of the digital age.
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