Both research and the experience of practitioners suggest that, properly implemented, technology can support improved student learning. Most of this research and experience has dealt with small, individual applications of technology. However, a small proportion of the nation's schools have intensively and effectively implemented a variety of educational technologies in ways that engage and motivate students to achieve performance levels and improvements consistent with the nation's educational goals. They have done this by using technology to
2. Extensive use of technology in schools has the potential to promote significant school restructuring and expand the time and motivation for student learning.
We share the view of Louis Gerstner, quoted in the first chapter of this report: "[Information technology] is the force that revolutionizes business, streamlines government and enables instant communications and the exchange of information among people and institutions around the world." However, few schools (or school systems) have had the levels of technology required to support such restructuring, fewer have had technology long enough for restructuring to have been fully worked out, and most efforts have not been extensively documented.
Nonetheless, existing research and the experience of the pioneer schools we consulted are promising and suggestive. Students, teachers, and administrators report taking new roles. Technology has been used as an instructional management tool. Students and their parents report they are more motivated. There is some evidence of improvement on traditional measures of student outcome.
However, the evidence from these schools must be put into an appropriate context. These schools, as early adopters of technology, are clearly exceptional. Moreover, the concepts of learning and instruction that these schools have used are not new. They have foundations in the work of Dewey, in the progressive school movement, and in the modern findings of cognitive scientists. These concepts are also intuitively appealing and, in the hands of skilled practitioners, have proven effective. However, past reform movements built on these concepts have foundered. Systemic barriers--inadequately trained teachers, the lack of clearly defined standards, the effort required to manage many independent student learning activities, and lack of success in gaining broad public support--prevented high performance and widespread adoption.
Technology has the potential to deal with some of these past problems. It can support the management of complex, standards-related instructional processes in ways that have previously been achieved by only the most skilled teachers. It can facilitate communications among teachers so they can collaborate more effectively. Technology can also promote communications among schools, students, and parents that fosters greater accountability and public support.
The potential for success may also be improved because technology is being introduced into schools in a time of broader, systemic reform. The development of clearer and higher standards and associated assessments, a major objective of the systemic reform movement, can sharpen the understanding of a community's goals for education and can sharpen the performance of schools in meeting those goals. Standards and assessments should provide a necessary discipline to a community's schools. At the same time, schools of education, state accreditation agencies, and school systems are being urged to rethink and align their programs with high standards.
But it is important to reiterate that while the early experience with pioneer, technology-rich schools appears promising, it remains to be seen whether technology-rich learning environments can be implemented in large numbers of schools with comparable outcomes.
3. The growth in use of technology by schools is strong; schools are adding equipment and developing connections to the national information infrastructure at a high rate. However, many schools still lack significant access to technology.
Chapter Two documented the rapid expansion in the levels of technology in schools. This expansion is projected to continue at rates that are substantially in excess of the rate of growth of overall school expenditures. The motivation for expanded use of technology is most often to provide students with skills in the use of technology that are central to today's and tomorrow's workplace. For some school systems, the investments are also motivated by a desire to enrich instructional programs of schools with distance learning or access to educationally relevant resources on various wide-area networks.
Despite this rapid growth, data in Chapter Two suggest that the average school still makes limited use of computers and substantial numbers of schools have very limited access to technology of any kind. The uses espoused by advocates of technology-supported instruction are comparatively rare and limited to individual teachers who are excited by the potential that they feel technology has to motivate their students or to access new resources.
4. Data from a study by the IEA in 1992 suggested the availability of technology in schools serving poor, minority, and special needs populations did not appear to lag substantially behind the averages of schools taken as a whole. However, to the extent that technology enables learning outside the school, large disparities in the access of students of different classes and ethnicity to technology is a matter of concern.
Past federal, state, and local funding and policies appear to have mitigated extreme differences in the average availability of computers among special populations. In particular, federal compensatory education programs have supported the acquisition of substantial technology for schools serving disadvantaged populations, particularly at the elementary levels. While this was the case during the 1992-93 time period during which most of the data we use was collected, it is less clear what has and will happen as larger proportions of funding for technology are drawn from state and local (as opposed to federal) sources.
In contrast, the disparities in home possession and use of computers are substantial among families with differing incomes, parental education, and ethnicity.[1] To the degree that technology comes to be used to extend the amount of time spent in learning activities outside the schools, these disparities could have considerable consequences for the achievements of students from different family backgrounds. If the disparities persist, access to technology is likely to become one more element in an array of factors that cause a student's educational attainment to be highly correlated with the socioeconomic status of his or her family.
5. Some schools and school districts have moved rapidly to a fairly ubiquitous use of technology, and their experiences should provide guidance to others that are following.
The penetration of any innovation into a population tends to follow a familiar "s-shaped" curve in which some members of the population are early adopters, most are follow-on adopters, and a few lag far behind in adoptions. This is the case with technology in both school districts and schools. A few districts are well out ahead of the general population of districts in the numbers of computers they are providing to their students or the completeness of the networking of their schools. Similarly, as we have seen, there are some schools that now have a computer for nearly every student in the school. These early adopters constitute a rich source of information concerning the acquisition and use of technology.
6. The costs of ubiquitous use of technology are modest in the context of overall budgets for public elementary education but moving to such use requires significant and potentially painful restructuring of budgets.
The estimated annualized costs related to technology use in the schools examined by Keltner and Ross for this report ranged from about $180 to $450 per student. In 1994-95 the current expenditure per student in average daily attendance was $5,623. If we take $300 as a plausible target level of funding per student for technology-related costs, about 5.3 percent of the budgets of schools would need to be allocated to technology. On its face, this seems a level that should be attainable.
However, our estimate of actual expenditures per student in 1994-95 is $70, or one quarter of the $300 figure. The bulk of school budgets are devoted to personnel costs; in most districts, funding for materials and supplies is very restricted and provides little opportunity for further reallocation to technology. Supporting levels of expenditure equal to $300 per pupil will consequently require reallocations of funds that have proven very difficult to achieve in public schools and/or increments in funding that taxpayers in most jurisdictions have been reluctant to provide. Such reallocation will be possible only if the public and the educational community come to feel that technology is essential to meeting their objectives for student learning. Information about and demonstration of the importance of technology are essential to continued growth in technology's use.
7. When technology is deeply infused in a school's operations, teachers tend to assume new roles and require new skills. There is a strong consensus among the experts we consulted that neither the initial preparation of teachers nor the current strategies for continued professional development have been effective in developing these skills.
The practices of the pioneer schools we examined as well as the testimony of experts point strongly to the need for changes not only in the substance of education courses and training programs but for changes in the manner in which teachers use their time. More time to critically review the teaching practices of others, to collaborate on the development of courses, and to work collaboratively on the assessment of student work will contribute both to the quality of the instructional program and to the professional development of teachers.
8. While there has been a rapid expansion in home education software, the market for school-based content software has been modest and comparatively stagnant. Quality content software for middle and secondary schools is not broadly available. However, this market is likely to evolve rapidly.
As noted in Chapter Four, the school-based market for educational software has grown somewhat in recent years but has been stagnant compared with the growth in home education or "edutainment" software. Moreover, the bulk of the school-based content software has been prepared for the elementary grade levels and has emphasized the development of basic skills.
Experts vary in their assessment of the importance of the shortage in content software. Some feel that the use of software tools (e.g., word processors and spreadsheets) coupled with network-based information resources will come to be the norm. To them content software per se has relatively little importance. Others argue that content software, keyed to emerging standards, is an important component of the technology-rich school of the future because teachers need the expertise and wisdom that can be built into content software (as it has been built into textbooks in the past).
The market for educational materials, as traditionally structured, offers limited incentives for entrepreneurial development of content software. The market is fragmented and governed by a variety of materials adoption practices. Even if a high proportion of schools acquire a product, the volume of sales is small. This is particularly true with the more specialized subject areas characteristic of much of secondary education.
The traditional sources of instructional content, the textbook publishers, have seen this market as "zero-sum." Gains in software sales would be offset by losses in textbook sales. Unless faced with the loss of their markets to new competitors, they have few incentives to actively develop software. Companies specializing in multimedia have focused on the home market where they hope for large volumes of sales and low margins.
However, the nature of this market has the potential to change rapidly. As the density of computers in schools increases, content software may become more critical and demand may increase. Alliances between traditional publishers and newer multimedia companies are being formed with the hope of exploiting synergy between the school and home markets. The likely expansion of software distribution via the Internet will reduce distribution costs and may serve to aggregate the market.
In our view some sense of strategy is needed to overcome the problems seen in past efforts to promote the use of technology and reform in the nation's schools. All too frequently, past efforts foundered because implementation was flawed, communities and teachers were not adequately involved, or inadequate resources were devoted to the task. Some attention to these lessons will help the nation increase the probability that investments in technology will yield improved outcomes in terms of student learning.
A full strategy is surely too ambitious. Gaining agreement from key actors in all sectors would be difficult or impossible. Revising the strategy in the face of rapid changes in technology would be impossibly cumbersome. However, we propose several principles to guide the nation as it moves to introduce additional information technology into its schools. These principles are simple and straightforward--intended to shape an ongoing activity rather than spur new activities.
We have argued that technology itself can be an important catalyst for change. While a rational approach to school improvement might say "figure out what you want to do before you acquire the materials, training, and technology to do it," this is too often a recipe for the status quo or marginal change. Ubiquitous and networked technology can create instructional opportunities at the school level that lead to changes not imagined ahead of time. Technology can foster communications among teachers, students, parents, and administrators that change perceptions of what a school should be doing and how it should be doing it. Reform in some schools can start with the acquisition of technology.
This is not to say that such funding is not an appropriate way to begin. The experiences of Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, and North Carolina, to mention but a few states, are testimony to the importance of the kick start leading to more technology-rich schools provided by special appropriations for technology.
The emerging information and communications infrastructure is and will be dominated by commercial interests. Its future shape will be guided by commercial incentives. Schools and other community institutions such as libraries, museums, and social service agencies may not have the financial clout to shape the infrastructure in ways that serve their needs. In creating whatever regulatory and market structure that guides the evolution of the infrastructure, public officials at all levels should be mindful of these needs.
Evidence suggests that while there is some inequality in the access possessed by disadvantaged relative to more advantaged populations, it is less than the inequality that exists between large and small schools or between some states. That there are not greater inequalities is almost certainly the result of past public policy, particularly the federal policies governing the allocation of Department of Education funding.
School-level access varies less than access in homes. To the extent that the out-of-school use of technology assumes greater importance in the learning of students, this large disparity should be of considerable public concern. Historically, it has been comparatively easy for federal and state policy to at least partially correct for resource inequalities in schools. It is far more problematic whether such policies can compensate for unequal effective access outside schools.
We do not advocate immediate actions to deal with unequal access to educational technology. We do feel that there is a good chance that such inequality of access could develop into a significant concern for a nation that has traditionally been committed to equality of educational opportunity. In our discussion of appropriate federal activities, we will propose both monitoring this issue and R&D on ways in which to compensate for unequal access.
Leadership and Advocacy. The president, vice president, and Secretary of Education have provided significant visibility to the opportunities offered by educational technology and by a more effective national information infrastructure. They have had much to do with the current excitement about educational technology. They have provided this leadership within a broad reform framework worked out over a decade by the governors, the president, and others from the executive branch, the business community, Congress, and educational leaders.
The framework builds on the national educational goals adopted by the governors and President Bush in 1989 and amended by the Goals 2000 legislation in 1994. It encourages the development and use of high academic standards by states and localities. Many states and communities have moved forward to create such standards and to develop assessment systems that will help schools and school districts to gauge their performance. The Goals 2000 legislation, along with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (now called the Improving America's Schools Act), reshaped a number of federal programs and authorized several new programs that are intended to help states and localities reform their schools to meet the national goals.
In our view, the framework is sound. However, as this was being written, the Congress and the executive branch were locked in a major debate about the future of many federal programs and initiatives and about the appropriate federal role in education. Whatever the resolution of this debate, we expect there will remain important leadership roles and functions for the federal government and its officers. Two seem particularly fruitful--convening public and private officials who share common problems and identifying and recognizing examples of outstanding individual and school performance.
Even in these times of political turbulence and change, most Americans look to leaders of the federal government for guidance. Thus the federal government can bring state and local leaders, executives of private firms, community leaders, or representatives of key interests together to discuss common issues or to map collaborative efforts. The Department of Education has brought together leaders of state educational technology efforts several times to share information and develop better collaboration. The National Science Foundation regularly convenes leaders of the research and policy communities to define important research agendas. In creating its national plan, the Office of Educational Technology has used electronic networks to convene practitioners to discuss issues of policy and practice. In Chapter Four, we suggested that a public-private organization be created to bring together the parties that must collaborate to produce effective educational software.
Leadership can also be provided by identifying and recognizing outstanding performance. One of the most powerful national programs affecting the private sector has been the Baldridge Awards for quality management. These awards have inspired many companies to undertake extensive efforts to improve the quality of performance of their entire organization. Various programs to recognize effective schools have had similar, if less well publicized, effects. Effectively publicized programs that appropriately recognize technology-enabled schools, effective educational software, or specific classes of educational technology applications can provide strong guidance and incentives to schools, school systems, and the private sector.
Creating and Disseminating Better Information for Reformers Concerning Technology. A traditional federal government function has been to survey activities across districts and states to understand what is working and what pitfalls and barriers exist. In the area of educational technology, the Department of Education might gather data and assess and disseminate information on
Fostering the Development of More Effective Assistance Organizations. It is important to distinguish between the dissemination of information discussed in the previous subsection and the provision of assistance to schools, teachers, and school systems. RAND's experience in evaluating NASDC's program persuades us that there is an important function of organized assistance for the transformation of schools generally and for the development of schools with technology-enabled learning environments in particular. This assistance should be concrete, timely, and sustained. It should be provided on terms that the recipients find helpful, rather than on terms convenient to the provider.
NASDC is creating "design-based" assistance organizations. However, this is but one class of assistance organization. The Department of Education's Regional Laboratories are another, as are the myriad of assistance centers that support departmental programs. The nation's schools of education are potentially another source of such assistance.
The Department of Education should identify the qualities of effective assistance and inventory the potential sources of assistance related to technology. Working in conjunction with department offices, particularly OERI, it should guide the department's support of assistance organizations so as to further the effective school use of educational technology.
The medium is part of the message. The Department of Education should actively seek opportunities to model and exploit the use of technology as a tool in providing assistance.
Support for Research, Development, and Demonstration. (RD&D) RD&D support has historically been one of the least controversial of federal roles. In areas where private firms cannot expect to capture the full benefit of their investment, R&D tends to be underfunded. Where states and localities have only limited RD&D management expertise, the federal government is the obvious source of support for R&D activities. This is true for education despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly resisted allocating significant funds to the Department of Education for the support of educational R&D.
Important educational technology capabilities can be traced to federal R&D efforts. DoD programs to develop technology-based training systems created much of the intellectual and organizational base for the development of CAI and the more recent integrated learning systems. The Internet is a product of NSF and DoD programs. The popular Mosaic browser for the World Wide Web was developed with federal funding. None of these products was directly targeted at K-12 education; all have or promise to have important impacts on that education.
Certainly there is little need for additional R&D on hardware or software products that have substantial application outside of education. The suppliers of such software and hardware products have every incentive to make R&D investments themselves. However, there are some needs specifically related to education, for which school demand does not seem currently adequate to justify private investment or for which the time horizons of public officials do not lead to state and local investment.
Reflecting our findings in Chapter Four concerning the market for content software, there may be a role for federal R&D supporting the development of software serving important educational needs, particularly in middle and secondary schools. Such developments should build on the substantial experience of the NSF in its mathematics and science education programs.
Chapter Four also argued that improved models for training teachers (and other staff) were needed as well as better methods for promoting their professional development after graduation. We are particularly attracted by the possibility that technology itself can provide more timely and relevant sources of information and assistance than is possible with current institutional arrangements. The report on teachers and technology by the Office of Technology Assessment identified a few examples of such R&D efforts. There should be more.
Earlier we suggested that the federal government investigate ways to promote equal access to educational technology by all citizens. Development and demonstration have important roles to play in this area.
Over the past two years, the Committee on Education and Training (CET) of the National Science and Technology Council has worked to coordinate the R&D agendas of the various departments that have interest in applying technology to education and training. This committee has established priorities for future work on learning and cognitive science R&D, new assessment methods, the development of software tools, and demonstrations of uniquely effective technology-enabled learning processes.[2] Continued dialogue about R&D needs and opportunities is desirable.
We see special value in demonstrations that point the way to better uses of technology in education (and training). Such demonstrations can produce high-quality information concerning the potential of technology for the improvement of learning. Demonstration projects also provide a means for the federal government to share some of the risks associated with new ventures. Solicitations associated with such programs provide the opportunity to stimulate the development of effective new technology applications. Support for demonstrations, if properly structured, can also help with the development of new sources of assistance to schools and to teachers. The Technology Challenge Grant program authorized by Title III of the Improve America Schools Act is a good example of a demonstration program that should contribute to several of these goals.
We close by reiterating a theme we have tried to sustain throughout this report. The nation's most important educational goal must be to produce learners adequately prepared for life and work in the 21st century. Faced by uncertain demands, we should ensure that our youth master basic language and mathematics skills (perhaps in the context of studying subjects like history and science), but that they also learn how to gather information and collaborate with others in the use of that information in solving problems and making informed judgments on public and private concerns. The nation must develop schools that can enable our youth to meet these goals. Properly employed, educational technology will make a major contribution to those schools and their students.
[2]Committee on Education and Training, 1995, pp. 8-9.