CHALLENGES OF CREATING A NATION OF TECHNOLOGY-ENABLED SCHOOLS

1. Financing the costs of creating and sustaining technology-rich schools.

2. Providing teachers with the skills and time needed to implement such schools.

3. Features of the educational software market that may restrict the supply of some important classes of software.

FINANCING THE COSTS OF INTRODUCING AND USING TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS

1. How does a school system obtain the resources for the initial investment necessary to transform a school into a technology-rich enterprise?

2. How does a school system obtain 3 to 5 percent (or more) of their budget per year to devote to technology and training on a continuing basis?

Front-End Investment

This form of "expedient" financing is symptomatic of a deeply ingrained problem of social service providers in general and educational agencies in particular. Compared with the private sector, they lack an investment mentality.[2] School districts do not regularly set aside a specified portion of their revenues for investing in activities to improve school performance. The reasons for this are found in the political nature of resource allocation in public education.

The allocation of resources in public school districts is a highly political process. The governance of school systems forces a superintendent and his or her staff to satisfy a large number of claimants. Teachers, other staff, advocates for students with special needs, schools with politically powerful parents, employers seeking a steady supply of job entrants, and government leaders seeking schools to enhance economic development all put pressures on the leaders of a school district. Funding restrictions may be imposed by state or federal governments in support of one or another interest that has made its needs known at higher levels of government.

To cope with these demands, many superintendents and their staffs adopt coping rather than strategic behaviors. The resulting budget is a product of political compromise intended to minimize political pain. Existing allocations of resources are the starting point and only marginal changes are made. Firm, long-term commitments of the type required to install technology throughout a system are seldom made. Such commitments restrict future capabilities to allocate funds, while key district actors prefer to keep their options open.

This behavior is reinforced by the difficulty of assessing the relative values of alternative investments. The sort of investment planning possible in the private sector is hampered by the lack of clear measures of outcome and an understanding of the link between investment actions and outcomes.

An example may illustrate this. Consider two quite different investment options. The first is an "academy" at which the district's staff can be trained or provided opportunities to plan with the assistance of specialized staff. Funds are required to build or renovate space, acquire necessary materials, and hire and train a staff. The returns are presumably improved programs in individual schools. The second option is investment in the technology infrastructure of a set of schools coupled with the training necessary to exploit that infrastructure.

Both of these alternatives are forms of investment. Both can plausibly be expected to yield a long-term return on the investment. However, generally agreed-to causal links between investment actions and learning outcomes are lacking, and the latter are difficult to measure. Under similar circumstances, private organizations might be able to use expert judgment in evaluating the alternatives, but for schools, this is complicated by the open nature of school decisionmaking.

Most decisions like these have to be made in public forums where virtually all decisions must be politically defensible. Aggregating resources for a strategic purpose inevitably means that resources must be taken from other activities. If widely agreed-to relations between investment acts and outcomes are not available, those losing resources will complain loudly and, if politically powerful, will be likely to prevail. It is easy to see why there is a tendency to spread resources among claimants rather than to mass resources for a strategic purpose.[3]

As with any broad generalization, there are important exceptions to this observation. Some districts have had a significant history of investing in technology for their schools. To develop a better understanding of how they operated, we interviewed administrators in 14 districts that have invested heavily in technology.[4] Several points stand out.

Taken as a whole, these districts relied heavily on their own local funding sources. Nearly half had made technology a part of one or more local bond issues that supported building expansion and renovation as well.[5 ] Many of the systems had moderately restructured their central office expenditures to free up funding. Several had strong support from the local business community; for example, Jefferson County, Kentucky, reported that 60 percent of the costs of acquiring computers were covered by the business community. Where state programs were available, schools took advantage of those funds. Only a few of the districts we surveyed reported making significant use of federal Title I or Title II funding.[6]

As would be expected with efforts funded largely by local sources, the respondents reported that the investments in technology seemed to have strong public support. The public felt that widespread use of computers and other technology was important and that the educational system was doing an effective job of deploying technology in its schools. As with other school reforms, good strategies for engaging the public are important.

While the school districts that we surveyed provide some guidance concerning the manner in which investments in technology can be fostered and an investment mentality developed, it is important to note some important caveats concerning this sample of districts. Because of the source and nature of the data used to select them, the 14 districts are all large ones with substantial student populations. Most are in regions that are experiencing population and/or economic growth. The sample does not include either small, resource-poor districts or urban districts that have lost much of both their tax base and their middle-class families. For many schools that fall into these groups, it is probably unreasonable to expect that the districts and schools can finance substantial technology and reform efforts wholly on their own.

We believe that if schools are going to significantly restructure themselves and if technology is to be a major element of the restructuring, an investment mentality must be engendered in state and local districts. There are several possible ways to do this.

1. Districts could decide to set aside a portion of their total funding explicitly for investment and develop decision procedures governing the use of these funds.

2. Communities could establish and fund independent foundations intended to support the acquisition and deployment of technology.

3. Higher levels of government, more insulated from local politics, could establish special funds or programs that can be used to support technology investments.

District Set-Aside Funds. We are not aware of any district that formally allocates funds to an investment "account." However, funds are often allocated to staff and/or curriculum development activities. There are likely to be technology line items in some districts. There are funds for purchasing textbooks that may be allocated centrally. Each of these activities has an investment purpose although they may be treated as a current expense.

Funding for these activities (and others having an investment purpose) could be aggregated and an explicit investment planning process instituted. While these investments should not be restricted to technology, for districts that have decided that technology and its implementation should be a major investment activity, technology could constitute a major theme. Funds raised from the sale of bonds might also be allocated through the same investment planning process.

Decisions on the level of funding for investment should be a major concern of the school board, presumably based on the recommendation of the superintendent. A significant effort to engage the public in this activity would be necessary with a major goal being to establish the legitimacy of this means of allocating funds.

Community-Based Funds. We noted above that in one of the districts we interviewed, Jefferson County, the business community had established a local foundation over a decade ago with the explicit goal of putting computers in schools.[7] While this is the most ambitious example of a community fund for technology we know of, there are many examples of less formal agreements between businesses or collections of businesses and schools.

Creating a community fund allows the allocation of investment resources to be separated somewhat from the normal budget allocation process of the school system. Moreover, the actions of the fund can be coordinated with related activities by the district such as the allocation of funds for the support of professional development. In communities where business and local foundations exist, this may be an attractive option for supporting initial investment in technology.

State and Federal Funding. Quite a number of states have provided funds for technology. Some have explicitly sought to create networks (e.g., Texas and North Carolina). Others have provided funds for equipping schools and training staff (e.g., Ohio and Florida). Several have provided funds for exemplary projects (e.g., California and Kentucky). As we noted, while most of the districts we surveyed relied largely on local funds, 8 of the 14 mentioned state funding (including lottery funding) as a source of some funding.

Only 3 of the 14 districts surveyed mentioned federal funds as a primary funding source, but as we noted above, the districts we interviewed were generally ones for which federal funding was not very important. In fact, nationwide, perhaps 30 percent of the funding for technology in elementary and secondary education in 1994 came from federal sources.[8] Much of this was supported by Chapter I, the component of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that provides resources to districts with high proportions of educationally disadvantaged students.[9]

Both the states and the federal government have the advantage that they are somewhat distant from the politics that focuses on district-level allocations. As a consequence, both have placed more emphasis on investment both in technology itself and in training. While all levels of government are under heavy political pressure to hold down overall spending, future initial investments in technology almost certainly will require additional funding from sources above the local district.

Whether the funds come from improved local allocations, community-level foundations, or state and federal sources, it is important that they be seen as initial investments. Planning surrounding their use should anticipate the need for continuing expenditures for operations, maintenance, and replacement.

Continuing Costs of Operating Technology-Rich Schools

Historically, there has been little inclination to make significant shifts in resources. Figure 4.1 shows the overall distribution of current expenses for K-12 education in the nation as a whole. About two-thirds of the resources are allocated either to instruction or to school administration at the school-building level. Instructional services include funding for curriculum development and staff training and are therefore a potential source for some of the resources needed to support a school in transition to a technology-enabled program.

The instructional budgets of the schools themselves are largely allocated to teaching staff. Figure 4.2 provides a further breakdown of the top bar (instruction) in Figure 4.1.

The most obvious source of funding for technology is the category "supplies," but, according to participants in our software workshop, at least half of those resources are devoted to textbooks and a quarter of the remainder goes to materials such as pencils, paper, and other supplies. Much of the rest does currently support instructional software. The purchased services and tuition-and-other categories may, in some instances, provide limited resources to support training and to purchase technical assistance.[10]

In short, the resource picture that is presented in Figures 4.1 and 4.2 suggests that the modest reallocations of existing budgets (possibly supplemented with some additional capital funds from state or local bond issues) could be used to provide the $180 per student that we suggested in Table 3.3--always with the caveat that some schools and districts facing particularly difficult fiscal and student population challenges are exceptions to this generalization. Our assumed costs for technology in such schools was on the order of 3 percent of total educational costs (or 4.5 percent of expenditures at the school-building level).

The situation is different, however, for schools that are truly technology intensive. If we assume that such schools might have a continuing annualized cost of $450 per student for hardware, additional personnel, software and materials, and training, this cost constitutes nearly 8 percent of the expected national average, current, per-student expenditure of $5,600--or about 12 percent of the resources allocated directly to the school building. Clearly, this poses a different magnitude of difficulty.

There are existing sources of funding to offset some of these costs. The most obvious are the resources currently available in the form of released time for teachers, pupil free days, or other time for teacher planning and professional development. In some states and school systems, up to 10 or more days per teacher can be assembled if the school and its teachers act to effectively marshal these resources. Funding, either at the school level or in the central office can also provide resources for outside expertise necessary to support the effective implementation of a technology-rich learning environment.[11]

Ross and others have also made proposals to use the incentives for professional development provided by the salary systems of many school districts. These systems make a significant part of a teacher's salary dependent on accumulated educational credits. Currently, there is little restriction on what additional training is sought, and many feel that much of the training is distinctly marginal in terms of teaching performance. Reforms that sharpened the incentives of teachers to develop the skills needed in technology-rich (and other learner-centered) schools could further support the needs for staff training.

Requirements for new staff positions, such as technology coordinators or lead teachers that work with classroom teachers, can, to some degree, be met by redefining existing staff positions. The schools represented at our workshop often operated in this fashion. A teacher was designated as a part-time technology coordinator. Teachers decided to accept slightly larger classes to free one person for the role of technology coordinator. Schools, given adequate levels of autonomy with the use of their staff, can make important reallocations of staff responsibilities.

However, the marginal tapping of all these sources will defray only a part of the total resource requirements for a technology-intensive school. Given that 93 percent of the resources at the school-building level are devoted to salaries and benefits, assuming that there are limited opportunities for further pruning of noninstructional costs, and assuming that there will be little addition to overall revenues beyond that needed to accommodate additional students, some substitution of technology costs for personnel costs will be required.

Discussions of both the means and the probability of actually making such substitutions are beyond the scope of this report, but several "facts" are relevant. Over the past 25 years, the nation has steadily reduced the ratio of students to teachers from 25.8 to one to 17.6 to one. This is shown in Figure 4.3. This decline appears largely to be due to the addition of a significant number of teachers who serve special needs and populations, including students requiring special and remedial education or bilingual education.[12] These classes are often held in separate settings. Thus, the school class sizes reported by teachers have not declined significantly over the same period as shown by the bars in the figure.[13]

As we have noted, technology provides the opportunity to significantly tailor instructional experiences to individual students. In the schools represented at the RAND workshop, teachers had regrouped themselves, and class periods had been changed. In such settings, the meaning of class size becomes blurred. Some activities may involve 40 students with one teacher in a group activity; others may involve three or four students working closely with a single teacher. Some will involve small groups of students working collaboratively with coaching from a single teacher; others will involve a student working intensively with a computer, largely on his or her own. It seems not only possible but desirable that schools integrating extensive technology into their programs review how personnel are used and even whether substituting technology or technical assistance for some personnel will lead to a more effective school.

Such changes are very difficult to make. They involve individual careers, the imperatives of the teachers' union, and beliefs of parents. Because the reallocations should occur at individual schools, it is important that those schools have substantial autonomy, either through explicit grants of authority or by the use of waivers to state and local regulations and rules. Successful budget reallocations require skillful and participatory management at the school-building level and a scope of interaction with parents at the school that has proven difficult to achieve in the past.[14]

Opportunities for Federal and State Action

Moreover, it is likely that substantially more ubiquitous use of technology will profoundly affect the roles and work of school staffs. Such use should involve trade-offs among expenditures for equipment, software, connections to data resources, and personnel. Consequently, success in making transitions to technology-rich learning environments will require active participation by local school staffs in deciding how to acquire and use that technology. State and federal agencies can help in a variety of ways, but the fundamental direction together with the engagement of the public must rest with schools and school districts.

While local schools and districts may have the most important long-term roles, state systems have accepted and continue to play important roles. Particularly for early adopters, risks for schools are high--risks to their reputations and to the careers of their staff and the welfare of the students. It is unlikely that many restructured schools can be created without states and localities aggregating resources and making them available for the effort, as many already have.

States and larger local jurisdictions should consider setting up investment funds to support the initial development of technology-rich schools. Continued funding for operations, maintenance, and replacement should be built into the individual school's budget. These schools should also be expected to use their staff development resources to support the development of teaching skills appropriate to technology-rich learning environments.

Many states have played and are likely to continue to play important roles in seeing that schools are connected to useful information infrastructures. Some have encouraged their public utility commissions to see that all schools can have access to the national information infrastructure at a reasonable cost.

Finally, if the federal government decides to provide categorical funding for the initial startup of technology-rich schools, it is critical that such funds be provided in ways that strongly encourage schools and school systems to incorporate the continuing costs of maintaining and replacing equipment in their budgets. Federal funding for demonstrations of school programs using advanced technology and funding to schools serving special populations to support the acquisition and use of technology should, in our view, receive the highest priority. The Department of Education's research and assistance arms should also collect and disseminate information on exemplary financing practices.

PROVIDING TEACHERS WITH SKILLS NEEDED FOR EFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGY-RICH SCHOOLS

The Nature of the Current Teaching Force

The turnover in teachers is concentrated at the extremes of the experience distribution. Some 17 percent of the teachers with less than one year of experience left teaching in or following the 1990-91 school year.[18 ] This figure fell to 2.4 percent for teachers with 10 to 19 years of experience. The largest percentage of those that quickly leave the profession appear to do so because of family or personal moves, pregnancy or child-rearing, or health reasons.[19] This group forms a pool of potential teachers that often reenter teaching later in their professional lives.

Judging from the experience of the early 1990s, increasing proportions of the new hires in schools are first-time teachers. (See Table 4.1) Of the new hires in 1990-91, nearly 42 percent were first-time teachers, while a third were transfers from other schools or school districts.[20] Twenty-four percent were reentrants to teaching. In contrast, in 1987-88, about a third of the new hires were transfers, while only 31 percent were first-time teachers. Most (about 60 percent) first-time teachers in 1991-92 were fresh out of college.

____________________________________________________
Source of Supply               1988          1991
____________________________________________________
First-time teachers            30.6          41.7
Transfers from other schools   36.6          34.3
Reentrants                     32.8          24.0
____________________________________________________
SOURCE: NCES, 1994b, p. 158.

It is difficult to pin down the level of computer literacy possessed by the current population of teachers. It has often been said to be low, but two years ago, a survey commissioned by the National Teachers Association found that 54 percent of teachers had access to computers in their home.[22] Moreover, according to the same National Education Association survey, 65 percent of the teachers rated their computer skills as good or excellent. No doubt the majority of the younger new entrants to teaching will have used computers in schools and colleges and feel reasonably comfortable with them.

However, for the technology-enabled learning environments represented by the schools described in Chapter Two, many additional skills are required. In such environments, teachers would be expected to recurrently assess student progress, create learning opportunities appropriate to the student, access resources needed for projects, and relate diverse instructional activities to the school's educational goals. By the testimony of school reformers and the individuals who attended the RAND workshops, comparatively few teachers have been prepared to perform these functions. Successful implementation of technology-enabled schools depends upon the capability to help existing teachers, as well as new entrants to the profession, to develop the skills required to perform these functions effectively.

Support for Continuing Professional Development

1. Adequate time (and organization of time) for teachers to acquire skills and to plan the school's program and activities.

2. Assistance that is keyed to the needs of the teachers and administrators and provided at the times when they need it.

3. A clear vision concerning the purposes and the educational goals that guide the program of the school and classroom.

Adequate Time. Teachers engaged in reform universally complain about the shortage of time in which to develop the plans and new skills needed. The problem is that many of those skills must be learned at the same time teachers are carrying out their teaching functions. Many of the reforms enabled by technology require collaboration among teachers rather than simply allowing teachers to make the changes in the isolation of their own classrooms. If ways cannot be found to provide collective time for such activities without it all being done on the teachers "own" time, it is unlikely that the reforms we are discussing can take place.

Blackstock Junior High School in Port Hueneme, California, took a quite unique approach to this issue. Eight years ago, a history teacher was given a year off from teaching and told to develop a year-long history program that made significant use of technology. He was given considerable freedom and resources to allow him to
redesign his classroom into what the school now calls a "smart classroom." Later, several other teachers were given the same opportunity. The initial effort appears to have been program or class centered as opposed to emphasizing the entire school.

While this may be an exemplary way in which to provide teachers with the time to learn about and develop applications of technology, a look at the cost figures in the previous section suggests that this approach is almost certainly not feasible on a large scale. More cost-effective ways of providing teachers time and skills to innovate must be found.

Northbrook Middle School in Houston, Texas, provides a different example. In a newly opening school, the principal was chosen a year in advance and had considerable latitude in choosing staff that shared her vision. Two weeks were provided all teachers to prepare during the summer before school opened.[23] The school schedule was substantially restructured to provide planning periods for teams of teachers working closely together and for staff development days. The district does provide training and support, and teachers are encouraged to attend conferences. Teachers spend time on planning and learning skills before and after school.

The Apple Classroom of Tomorrow Teacher Development Center project makes the provision of time for development of skills and plans a key requirement for participation. In addition to providing a teacher the time to attend week-long practicums and/or four-week summer institutes, a principal must agree to

• provide teachers with the authority and flexibility to adjust daily instructional schedules and to develop curriculum objectives that promote team teaching and interdisciplinary instruction

• allow time each day for teachers to meet and plan

• provide time for teachers to reflect on their practice

• acknowledge the importance of the team's efforts to the rest of the staff.[24]

Responsive Assistance. The attendees at the workshop on professional development emphasized the importance of assistance that is timely and keyed to the needs of teachers rather than the convenience of assistance-providing institutions or the central office. The same has been regularly emphasized by teachers implementing NASDC designs. Preparation of teachers in NASDC-related schools places a great deal of emphasis on the value of coaching--provision of assistance in situ so that teachers can relate lessons to their specific situations. (In some NASDC designs, this preparation is provided by a trained coordinator, who either is a part of the school's staff or is a frequent visitor to the school.)

Both workshop participants and teachers in the NASDC schools strongly emphasized the limitations of traditional approaches to in-service activities that do not effectively meet the needs of teachers and school staff in a timely way when those needs arise. Some believe that technology, in the form of interactive media or a network of practitioner experts, can be effective in providing timely and relevant assistance. However, aside from the numerous on-line networks that enable practitioners to ask for and provide advice, we have found no extensive examples of such activities. While wide-band communications and multimedia materials may be able to provide timely support to teachers at some time in the future, perhaps more practical approaches involve development of the capabilities and ethos to allow teachers to support one another in a school.[25]

Individuals filling the emerging role of technology coordinator may be able to play an important role in the development of their colleagues. We have heard from several school leaders that technology coordinators sometimes do play an important role in demonstrating effective technology-enabled pedagogical strategies and in coaching teachers in the effective use of technology. However, it appears that this is not a very common practice. Becker, in his analysis of the 1992 IEA data, reports on the distribution of effort of what he terms major coordinators.[26] His findings are shown in Table 4.2. Clearly, train-ing and helping teachers is not a major function for most of the co-ordinators surveyed. Teaching and supervising students using computers occupies an average 54 percent of their time. Help to teachers averages 3.6 hours of effort per week.

   ______________________________________________________________________________
								     Mean
								 Percentage of
   Activities                                           Hours       Effort
   ______________________________________________________________________________
   Teach, supervise students using computers             19.5         54
   Train, help teachers to use computers                  3.6          9
   Select and acquire material, equipment                 2.3          6
   Maintain equipment and software                        4.0         11
   Self-development                                       4.0         11
   Other (write software, lesson plans, all other)        4.1         11
   Total number of hours per week                        37.5
   ______________________________________________________________________________
   NOTE: Percentages in final column are means of the responses for the
   activity.  Data are for those categorized as "major coordinators."
   SOURCE:  Becker, 1994, Table 7.4.

The danger is that these exciting things will not add up to anything. The student may develop some deep knowledge about one subject area or an enthusiasm for a classroom activity that is exciting, but parents and the community are left with the uncomfortable feeling that the fundamental skills and knowledge that they believe kids should have are not being imparted.

Each of the schools that made presentations to the workshop appeared to have a clear educational sense of purpose. Technology served that purpose. The professional development of teachers served that purpose. The Christopher Columbus school derived its guidance from an extensive systemwide effort to create a curriculum framework emphasizing a "whole language philosophy of education." This starting point led to revamping the schedule of the school day, the introduction of more cross-curricular thematic units, support for professional development, and as a final step, the integration of technology into school activity. The district and school administration made it clear that this last step was a means to the curricular ends that they had established.

The Taylorsville school represented a distinctive, school-centered approach to the development of a technology-enabled school. As we noted in the last chapter, it is an elementary school affiliated with the Modern Red School House design activity (MRSH) funded by NASDC. Its efforts to transform itself started with a set of standards for student learning that MRSH has developed that derive from the various national standards development efforts. These standards, which may be modified somewhat by the requirements of the district or state (Indiana), provide guidance to the curriculum development, the assessments, and the sequencing of activities in the school. The standards are built into a computer-based instructional management system that supports the refinement of the curriculum as well as student learning contracts that are intended to provide the individualization that is sought in the school design. The design implementation requires teachers to develop curriculum units as a means to professional development. The design also seeks to develop the skills of teachers as members of the governance structure of the schools. Altogether, the professional development activities of the school staff are guided by an overall vision and goals inherent in the MRSH design.

In sum, as illustrated by these two examples, a reformed and restructured school (whether or not it uses technology) must have a clear sense of its educational mission that is shared by its staff, its students, and its parents. The professional development required of its staff must, in turn, be guided by the functional needs associated with the vision, together with the existing capabilities of the teachers. An important implication is that the details of professional development activities should be shaped by individual schools rather than by a school system's central office.

Preservice Training for Teachers

The recent OTA report on teachers and technology reviewed activities of colleges of education and painted a fairly discouraging picture of their capabilities to make such changes.[27] The difficulties faced by these schools are systemic and related to their place in higher education generally. OTA suggests that these difficulties stem from a lack of access to resources, faculty attitudes and training, and lack of institutional support for work with technology. However, the reform and restructuring of these institutions is much broader than that required by the increasing importance of technology and beyond the scope of this report.

On the other hand, the OTA report does catalogue a number of experiments by schools of education using technology that provide a rather rich picture of the potential technology has as both a means for fulfilling traditional missions in more effective ways and as an agent for fostering college of education reforms. The examples, which have required substantial funding over sustained periods of time, suggest the potential fruitfulness of research and development expenditures in this area.

Opportunities for Federal, State, and Local Action [28]

If this is the case, a principal task for local school districts is to make such activities possible and to provide assistance to school faculties in accordance with their needs. For many districts, this means a profound restructuring of the way in which they conduct staff development activities. It also requires a cultural change at the school-building level that leads the principal and the faculty to take greater responsibility for their professional development.

While we believe much of the action must be at the local level, there are important roles for state and federal actors as well. States play a major role shaping teacher certification requirements which, in turn, shape the programs of teacher training institutions. Working with organizations like the National Council for Accrediting of Teacher Education (NCATE), they should seek to revise certification requirements to ensure that new teachers possess skills that allow them to enter and effectively work in technology-enabled schools.

The federal government supports many programs and institutions providing assistance to teachers, schools, and school districts.[29] It also supports R&D for improved methods for training teachers and supports programs to train teachers, primarily in math and science. These programs should be periodically reviewed and encouraged to address needs posed by technology-rich learning environments as well as to use technology to enhance the delivery of training and assistance relevant to those environments.

ENSURING THAT NEEDED SOFTWARE IS AVAILABLE

Today's technology-rich schools, as represented by the schools described in Chapter Two, rely on a spectrum of software. They use

• drill-and-practice software developed in the past (frequently with partial federal support) and focused primarily on the needs of the elementary grades

• curricular and pedagogical practices exploiting existing applications software (e.g., communications, word processing, or spreadsheets) coupled with access to computer-based and other content

• reference materials that are now appearing in CD-ROM formats that are sold both to schools and homes

• instructional management software that aids a school's staff to help all students acquire and demonstrate the skills and knowledge sought by the community

• administrative support software such as programs supporting student grading or keeping attendance records.

The software underlying the above applications falls into three broad categories. Software "tools" are application packages similar or identical to those commonly used in offices and homes. The development of word processors and spreadsheets is driven by these larger markets, and schools use what is available. Content software incorporates information, curricular structure, and often, some form of specialized instructional management system. Common examples are the integrated learning systems (ILS) and less elaborate drill-and-practice programs. Instructional management systems are a newly emerging class of software that helps a school to relate its instructional program to the district's curriculum framework, supports the development of individual work plans for students, and tracks and displays indicators of the performance of students.

The tools software poses little problem because it relies on larger commercial markets. Some instructional management software is available and more is being developed. While school representatives at our workshop said the existing products were expensive and not yet fully suited to their needs, there was no general sense conveyed that there is a significant market problem. Workshop participants generally agreed, however, that there was a shortage of content software, particularly for middle and secondary school students.

Current technology-rich schools tend to place a good deal of emphasis on project-based learning using communications, word-processing, and spreadsheet software. As we noted earlier, this reflects the lessons of modern cognitive science concerning constructivist and situated learning as well as the long-espoused views of educational philosophers such as Dewey. In such schools (and in others sharing these views, if not the technology), individual teachers normally design the projects and must ensure that these projects produce the skills that students need to acquire. Such projects are found in virtually all subject areas, including science, math, history and social studies, and language arts--often in interdisciplinary activities.

While we are strong supporters of project-based learning, we believe that too extensive a reliance on such pedagogy may pose a significant risk for the current school reform movement. Much of the current development of such projects takes place in exceptional schools at the leading edge of school reform. The teachers involved are often among the most qualified in their schools and school systems. When expanded to many more schools, particularly to those with teachers less motivated or less well prepared, the educational benefits of this pedagogy may prove disappointing to policymakers and parents alike. Moreover, many teachers may come to resent the added burden of creating and recreating motivating projects for students. The result could be disillusionment similar to that which killed the progressive school movement in the 1930s.

A complement, and partial alternative to this use of technology, is content software that incorporates some of the structure of current textbooks but does so in a manner that engages students in a far more effective way. Such software would be sophisticated in pedagogy and rich in the imagery required to motivate the attention of today's adolescent student. Properly used, such software could help "demassify" current instruction and attend to the individual needs of each student. It can do this, in part, by freeing "learning time" from the restrictions of the rigid schedules of today's schools and extending it to other hours and places.

An illustrative example of this class of software appears in the box below.

This scenario is drawn from `Dreamworld' by Jacob T. Schwartz, an article in the Summer 1987 issue of Daedalus, p. 170, A Lesson in Ancient History.

The student, in a college-level world history course, is reviewing the sequence of political events surrounding the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Principate of Augustus. Some of the material is presented as text, which appears on the screen in an attractive booklike format, with still illustrations occupying roughly a quarter of the screen. The text can be enlivened by occasional (optional) audio quotations from ancient sources, such as Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Romans; each of these can be delivered in the voice of an actor who represents the ancient author. This material is visually announced on the screen: "Concerning Crassus, Plutarch said the following . . . ." This line appears in a color that the student recognizes as meaning that an optional audio insert is available. If he touches this line on the screen, the video illustration on the page switches to an image of a bust of Crassus, while Plutarch's remark on Crassus is read in a voice emphasizing its drama and irony. Later in the lesson, information concerning the Battle of Philippi is presented, first by text explaining its date and significance, then by five to ten minutes of filmed material . . . introduced with a compelling musical fanfare. A map of Italy and Greece is displayed, showing the paths taken by the Republican and Antonian armies to the battle. This is followed by a more detailed map of the area of northern Greece in which the battle was fought, and by video footage of the terrain of Philippi, taken from a helicopter. After this, a brief enactment of the battle is shown, with views of its commanders in action, voice-over commentary on its main incidents, and dramatic scenes of the suicides of Cassius and Brutus. These video clips yield to text reviewing the significance of the battle and ensuing events, with audio statements from authorities on ancient history reflecting on the battle's significance for the Roman World.

The content in such a piece of software would be reinforced by a set of open-ended questions demanding an energetic line of independent inquiry (perhaps computer assisted) by the student, as in the following examples:

• What was the size of these armies by comparison to a modern army?

• How large was the civilian population to support armies of this size?

• What are typical ratios of civilian population to military personnel in wartime today, and if much different, explain the difference?

• What was the cost to maintain these standing armies and the "GNP" required to do so?

• What materials were used for weaponry and armor?

This is but one form of content software. There are others such as the intelligent tutors that have been developed with National Science Foundation (NSF) and other funding; simulations, which require students to examine public policy issues such as health care; and virtual environments in which students can conduct simulated scientific experiments. A well-known and quite widely used class of content software supports foreign language instruction.

Market Supply and Demand for Educational Software

To investigate the nature of the education software market, RAND held two workshops (one in November 1993 and the other in February 1995[30]) at which representatives of textbook publishers, ILS vendors, educational software publishers, and multimedia developers were present. Both workshops explored the demand for and the supply of software, with emphasis on content software. Based on information provided by the participants, we estimate that the size of the school market for software was less than $750 million in 1994; about 0.3 percent of all K-12 educational expenditures. This figure can be compared with an estimate of nearly $400 million in expenditures by households for "edutainment" and reference CD-ROMs in the first year (1994) that "home" computers were marketed with integrated CD-ROM drives. The largest fraction of sales was basic-skills software to elementary schools often in the form of large-scale, integrated learning systems costing $30,000 or more per installation.

The attendees at the workshops clarified the disincentives they face in expanding the supply of software. Traditional school textbook publishers consider that they operate in a zero-sum game, that the school budget structure sharply limits what can be spent on instructional materials of all kinds, and that any software sales they make will simply cut into their volume of textbook sales. They note too that software development costs can be high, and that even such an unambiguous marketing success as selling one software copy to each and every one of the nation's schools need not guarantee a positive return on investment.

These factors do not appear to inhibit low-overhead educational software publishers, who can successfully find a market niche for education and training materials in schools, hospitals, and prisons. Such companies have found profitable markets for materials that supplement existing textbook and other materials. They do not, however, have the capital necessary to engage in major development efforts.

New multimedia developers, whether conglomerates like Paramount or more modest independent firms like Broderbund, find the home market with its nearly 100 million households a far more appealing target than the nation's 100 thousand schools. Even at $50 a copy, a single successful CD-ROM that sells to only 1 percent of U.S. households can produce revenues of $50 million in a relatively short time period. By contrast, if it developed a comparably priced CD-ROM for schools and sold it to all 100,000 of them, it would have revenues of $5 million. So while an industry is taking shape that is potentially capable[31] of meeting the school need for sophisticated content software, its output is presently directed to a more lucrative market segment.

The pioneer, technology-rich schools, whose costs we examined in Chapter Three, provide some additional hints on why the school software market is not now particularly attractive. In these schools, software expenditures ranged between 4 percent and 10 percent of total annualized technology implementation costs; about one-fifth of hardware costs. (By contrast, software costs tend to approach the value of hardware costs in typical enterprise computing.)

In their report,[32] Keltner and Ross provide a partial explanation for the low proportion of technology expenditures devoted to software:

The school environment is not one that puts sophisticated demands on the software component of a technology program. The number of basic software programs installed on individual student computers is typically limited. None of the schools in our survey purchased site licenses for more than five to six "tool-based" software products, e.g., Microsoft Word, Clarisworks, Hypertext or Hypercard, and the average figure was more like three. With a site license for 25 computers costing between $1000 and $1500, an expenditure of $3000 to $4000 typically proved enough to outfit an entire classroom of computers with basic software applications.

Another explanation for the low level of software expenditure is the ability of schools to generate economies of scale in the use of expensive "content-based" software products. The Christopher Columbus, Corona and Elizabeth St. schools each spent $30,000 to $40,000 to set up large libraries of CD-ROM and laserdisk software products. While expensive, these software items do not increase software expenditures per student significantly, because their cost is distributed over a large number of classrooms. Blackstock and Taylorsville schools spent $43,000 and $70,000 respectively on network and instructional management software. Network and instructional management system software products too are also normally used on a school-wide or classroom-based LAN.

To summarize, the traditional providers of instructional materials, the textbook manufacturers, are anxiously watching but apparently not ready to strike out in a big way for fear of jeopardizing current markets. The major providers of educational software, firms specializing in integrated learning systems, have developed a business based upon a low volume with high margins, which is not well adapted to developing and selling applications for individual use on large numbers of unintegrated computers. Small software firms have found profitable niches but lack the resources (and perhaps a taste for risk) needed to strike out into new developments. The new multimedia firms not only lack deep knowledge of educational needs in schools but have a production and distribution system keyed to high sales volumes with comparatively low margins. To date, the result is the "shortage" of content software reported by so many of the people with whom we have consulted.[33]

Opportunities for Federal, State, and Local Action

Our discussion of financing earlier in this chapter did consider two approaches that would serve to increase demand for software and thus should promote improvements in the quantity and quality of supply. The first is the restructuring of traditional school budgets so as to raise the current proportion of the budget devoted to the acquisition of instructional materials. The second is state or public-private investment strategies for increasing the investment in technology generally and thus software expenditures as well. If such changes are made and the density of computers continues to increase significantly, the attractiveness of the market will increase correspondingly.

The major tool available to the federal government is its R&D program. As we have noted, federal R&D support was a major contributor to the early development, and hence the current availability, of drill-and-practice materials in the basic skills. Current NSF funding is providing support for potentially important content software, primarily in mathematics and science. The transfer of such developments to the private sector (where appropriate) has always been very difficult, but the magnitude of the investment suggests that explicit attention should continue to be given to the problem. It is possible too that a program of federal support for pre-competitive multimedia educational software R&D might also serve to counter market disincentives presently faced by software vendors.

Beyond this, the federal government should be looking for every chance it can to promote discussion and consultation among software developers, publishers, scholars, and educators concerning potential software applications. No one group can deal with this problem alone. At our first workshop, attendees suggested that a joint public-private institute be founded, one of whose major purposes would be to support just such discussions. Such an institution would hold regular symposia for developers and educators, maintain databases of exemplary technology applications, foster the development of technical standards, and generally serve as a clearinghouse and convener. Whether such an institution could capture the support of the members of a potentially highly competitive industry is a question that would have to be answered before serious consideration is devoted to its establishment.

[2]School systems do plan for building and renovating schools, but these activities are normally tied to specific bond issues and are not closely related to school programs. Requirements for networks and adequate power for technology are often part of these projects.

[3]This certainly should not be taken to say that such investment behaviors are impossible. For example, during the 1980s both superintendents Richard Wallace in Pittsburgh and Donald Ingwerson in Jefferson County, Kentucky, succeeded in introducing investment-like behaviors with the strong support of the business leaders in their communities.

[4]The work reported here was carried out by Karl Sun. The districts were chosen using QED's list of large districts rank-ordered by the number of students per computer. These districts had ratios of students to computers ranging from 4.1:1 to 7.5:1. QED, 1994, Appendix H.

[5]It appears that the payback periods for these bond issues were structured so that the part that supported the technology was paid in five to seven years, in keeping with the expected lifetime of the equipment.

[6]These were sections of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that supported funding for schools with high proportions of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and school improvement. The act has been reauthorized as the Improving America's Schools Act, with a substantially different program structure.

[7]See the Jefferson County case study in Beryl Buck Institute for Education, 1994.

[8]It is estimated that the federal government provided about $850 million of the funds invested in educational technology and related training in 1994. Of this, more than half came from Chapter I. Interview with Charles Blaschke, Education Turnkey Systems, August 15, 1995.

[9]The changes incorporated in its recent reauthorization to expand the number of "whole school" Chapter I (now Title I) programs should make it an even more effective source of funds supporting technology for schools serving high proportions of economically and educationally disadvantaged children.

[10]Our available study resources did not permit us to dig into any school budgets in detail. Our impression from discussions both at our workshops and with technology coordinators in schools is that the funds for technology at any particular site are likely to come from a wide variety of sources and that it would be quite impossible to track those costs back into the data underlying Figures 4.1 and 4.2. These charts simply provide a view of the relative magnitudes of classes of expenditures.

[11]RAND has made a limited examination of these sources of funds in three districts in its work for the New American Schools Development Corporation. See Ross, unpublished.

[12]Richard Rothstein and Karen Miles have recently examined differences in the allocation of resources for K-12 education between 1967 and 1991. Their analysis provides a consistent but more detailed confirmation that most of the increases in teachers have been devoted to special education, education of the disadvantaged, and other functions than decreasing the class size in general education. Rothstein and Miles, 1995.

[13]The sources of the data in Figure 4.3 are not comparable. The teacher-pupil ratios come from the Common Core Data Set, which is a census collection. The class sizes are reported in a sample survey done by the National Education Association. The picture they paint, however, is consistent with that painted by long-term teachers with whom we have talked.

[14]Researchers associated with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) have discussed the prerequisites for the decentralization of authority in school systems that is needed to achieve effective, restructured technology-rich schools.

[15]Harvey and Purnell, 1995, p. 1.

[16]A brief review of the recent critiques of preservice education and of proposals for its reform is contained in OTA, 1995, pp. 167-181.

[17]NCES, 1994a, Table 67.

[18]This may have been an unusually high figure; 11 percent of those with less than a year's teaching experience left teaching the year before.

[19]In 1988-89, 45 percent of teachers with three years of experience or less gave this as a reason. Only 6 percent said they were leaving because they were dissatisfied with teaching, while about 15 percent said they left for other career opportunities. NCES, 1993, Table 3.18.

[20]NCES, 1994b, p. 158.

[21]NCES, 1995c, Table 32. We have used the "middle alternative projection."

[22]Princeton Survey Research Associates, 1993.

[23]New teachers joining school must agree to spend two days in training (without compensation) before they start at the school.

[24]Ringstaff, Marsh, and Yocum, 1995, p. 6.

[25]A study commissioned by the Office of Technology Assessment provides case studies of two districts that have technology programs fostering such activities. See the case studies on Bellevue, Washington, and Jefferson County, Kentucky, in Beryl Buck Institute for Education, 1994.

[26]"`Major coordinators' are those who either spent at least 20 hours per week in activities related to this position or for whom the position of computer coordinator constituted at least 50 percent of their responsibilities." Becker, 1994, Table 7.4.

[27]OTA, 1995, Chapter 5 in general and pp. 187-191 in particular.

[28]It should be noted that a number of national and local foundations are making important investments to help school districts develop improved professional development strategies. Among these are The Pew Charitable Trusts and The MacArthur Foundation.

[29]A list of such programs is contained in OTA, 1995, Tables 6-2 and 6-3.

[30]Harvey, 1995b.

[31]That is, with a capability for the necessary rich imagery, and potentially able to acquire the capabilities for sophisticated pedagogy and course content.

[32]Keltner and Ross, 1996.

[33]We should note another problem with the educational technology market that has been important in the past. As we noted in Section 2, while there are many computers in the schools, they are of an immense variety of brands and vintages. Developing for multiple platforms increases costs substantially, and the fact that many of the computers lack hard drives and modern video displays limits the installed base available to a software developer. This problem is lessening with time, but as long as the Macintosh-PC distinction remains strong it will remain.