How jaded are you when it comes to school reform / transformation efforts, particularly when it comes to educational technology? Thursday President Obama proposed a cut in 2009-2010 EETT funding (the TitleIID, Enhancing Education through Technology program) from $269 million to $100 million. Hillary Goldman is surprised, quoting the joint ISTE / COSN / SIIA / SETDA press release:
“During the past several months, the Obama Administration has outlined a vision of educational innovation and improvement to enable our nation’s children to compete in the global economy. But today’s budget proposal falls far short of the targeted investments needed to ensure all students have the modernized classrooms and technology-rich instruction needed to achieve this vision.”
I supported President Obama in his campaign and still support his work leading our country, but I have been EXCEEDINGLY disappointed by the total LACK of leadership he’s provided (along with his cabinet) when it comes to the causes of educational transformation and specifically 21st century skills. All the rhetoric I’ve read and heard from the Obama administration when it comes to education sounds like “more of the same” that we got from GWB and NCLB. I’ve had and continue to maintain a very contrary view to that vision. Unfortunately, it does not appear President Obama does… Yet. (I’m not giving up hope!)
School districts and edtech vendors around the United States continue to anticipate a massive windfall of money from ARRA, even if these proposed cuts in EETT go through. In past years, the administration has proposed cutting EETT and Congress has restored level funding. Will that happen again this year? I don’t have a crystal ball, but I doubt it will. The spending spree of the Obama administration has to end somewhere, and it is probably good (on balance) that FINALLY voices in his administration are being heard who are calling for constraints and limits on government spending. How are we supposed to spend our way out of our financial maladies anyway? Don’t we really need to save more and spend less to remedy our national debt crisis, which continues to be ignored by most of our leaders?
Miguel Guhlin, in his post “Rant – Obama Cuts Ed-Tech Funding,” shares many reasons why it may not matter that President Obama is proposing cuts to EETT. After all, who stands to benefit the most from this windfall of funding? Miguel writes:
The truth of the matter is, Who really cares anymore except companies that suffer from school’s loss of funding?
When you balance the fact that people are losing their jobs left and right, losing their homes, against the point that K-12 schools in the United States won’t have money to install high tech computer labs that:
- Don’t get used to their full potential because the teachers–including the “computer teachers”–don’t bother to learn the software and/or help students learn it.
- Involve school districts blowing $500K or more on initiatives like [fill in the blank with your favorite Integrated Learning System] that have a negligible impact on student achievement.
- Technology funds get DIVERTED BY THE SUPERINTENDENT–did you know NCLB Title 2 Part D funds can get diverted by the Superintendent of K-12 school districts? It’s in there–anyways so that what is actually spent in schools ends up going to money-hungry vendors who provide what administrators who could care less about stepping out of their comfort zone think they need to have.
- No requirement that Curriculum and Instruction departments actually LEARN how technology can be used except as a drill-n-practice tool behaviorism approaches left over from 20+ years ago.
…So, yes, if technology continues to be irrelevant to teaching, then cut it out. Excise funding on technology from the budget. If you’re not going to make it a requirement, if you’re not going to fire superintendents who dance around using technology except to put it in so that it looks like something is happening, if you’re not going to require teachers to learn how to use it and CHANGE their teaching, if you’re not going to transform curriculum specialists and how they work, then it’s a waste of money.
I absolutely agree that a LOT of the money we have spent and continue to spend on educational technology solutions is wasted. I pointed this out in my keynote for eTechOhio this past February, “Reinventing Education for the 21st Century,” quoting both Dr. Larry Cuban and Dr. Clayton Christensen.
These were the key quotations I shared on this subject in my presentation.
From Dr Larry Cuban. Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom. Harvard University Press. 2003. ISBN: 0674011090. pages 178-179:
As for enhanced efficiency in learning and teaching, there have been no advances (measured by higher academic achievement of urban, suburban, or rural students) over the last decade that can be confidently attributed to broader access to computers. No surprise here, as the debate over whether new technologies have increased overall American economic productivity also has had no clear answers. The link between test score improvements and computer availability and use is even more contested.
From Christensen, Horn & Johnson. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. McGraw Hill. 2008. Pages 72-73:
…the billions schools have spent on computers have had little effect on how teachers and students learn… The reason for this disappointing result is that the way schools have employed computers has been perfectly predictable, perfectly logical– and perfectly wrong. As we show in this chapter, schools have crammed them into classrooms to sustain and marginally improve the way they already teach and run their schools, just as most organizations do when they attempt to implement innovations, including computers. Using computers this way will never allow schools to migrate to a student-centric classroom.
One of the points I tried to make in my keynote was that we need to look at educational technology solutions through the “accommodating or transforming” lens. Is a given technology simply going to let us do a traditional/analog task with an electronic tool, or is it going to truly enable us to TRANSFORM learning and the interactions which ensue both inside and outside the classroom? We need to seek educational technology uses which are TRANSFORMATIONAL rather than merely accommodating.
In his post, Miguel cites Jamie McKenzie and The CEO Forum on Education & Technology who claim:
…we have no reliable evidence that one-to-one computing translates into improved student learning results…
I take issue with this view, and offer up the July 2008 TCER report, “Third-Year (2006-07) Traits of Higher Technology Immersion Schools and Teachers” as a case in point.
When we ask a bad question, we almost always get a bad answer. There was so much change in campus leadership as well as variance in the ways the TxTIP program was implemented in its initial years, that was silly to ask (in essence) the question: “Has access to laptop technology led to the miraculous transformation of educational cultures in TxTIP immersion schools?” Of course it did not. When researchers looked more closely at campuses which actually implemented the TxTIP immersion project with strong leadership / administrative support and modeling, consistent PD, helpful and useable digital curriculum, etc, the results they found were QUITE different than those produced when all TxTIP schools were studied.
I’m delighted our schools, specifically in Oklahoma where I live, will receive more funding and support for educational technology needs in FY10. I’m here to tell you, our schools NEED IT. They are woefully underfunded overall, and specifically underfunded when it comes to technology. I fear, however, that in many cases Miguel’s worst fears may be justified unless state leaders (here and elsewhere) step up and insist that technology funds be spent in ways that support the TRANSFORMATION of the learning environment. This means, in my view, EVERY student and teacher in grades three and up being equipped with a netbook computer. With volume pricing, these laptops can be purchased for less than $300 each with an extended warranty from the vendor. Do all computer hardware vendors REALLY want to sell schools lots of inexpensive netbooks? No, many certainly don’t. They would much rather continue selling $1000+ laptops, and limit those sales to only a FEW campuses, a FEW teachers, a FEW administrators, and a FEW students.
The problem with this model is, educational technology for the few will never transform the face of learning in our schools. We MUST aggressively move to embrace open source learning platforms and software tools in our schools, and put netbooks in the hands of all our learners (in grades 3 and up) as soon as possible. We need to study and understand the lessons of 1:1 projects like TxTIP, articulated in reports like the July 2008 TCER report previously cited, and then implement projects which support teachers and students well in making a transition to 21st century learning.
Will the real educational leaders please step forward? If none are present with the vision to do this in the present Obama administration, could we please replace them with some leaders who DO have this vision they can not only articulate but act and lead on?
If the educational leaders we need are not going to step forward, perhaps we shouldn’t care about EETT proposed cuts. After all, if you’re not a vendor, will any of those new (non-netbook) proposed purchases REALLY make a difference to the “learning bottom line” in your classroom and the classrooms of your children? Probably not.
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