April 2005 — SETDA
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Measuring Progress With Technology in Schools
Data from SETDA’s fall 2004 “National Trends” report indicated that states collect technology data from districts in a variety of ways and for a number of reasons. Some states survey districts, schools, teachers, and even a few survey students, while over half conduct site visits; although the latter are typically to grantees of federal or state programs. One of the intents of SETDA’s development of the PETI instruments was to provide consistent definitions and question sets for such data collection. (For more information on state technology surveys, visit www.setda.org and click on “2005 National Trends Report.”)
Given the variability of data collection on education technology across states and school districts, SETDA anticipates that the use of the PETI instruments will vary between states and districts. Such use will be determined by a number of factors, including assessments currently in place, dictates from state mandates, and the goals of the state and district technology/learning plans. In general, SETDA anticipates the following uses:
- States, districts or researchers with sophisticated profiling tools already in place may want to re-analyze that toolset in light of SETDA’s PETI tools, updating where necessary. (Note: Metiri Group, the developers, caution educators who are customizing the tools that in order to maintain validity and reliability such changes be executed at the indicator level, adding and/or eliminating indicators and associated survey items and protocols.)
- States, districts or researchers currently using surveys only to determine their school districts’ technology readiness may want to add a new element: site visitation data. Although such visits are not required for valid and reliable profiles, they increase the credibility of resultant reports to policymakers.
- States, districts or researchers currently using hardware/software inventories may want to continue collecting such data, adding the SETDA/Metiri surveys and/or site visitations to get more complete baselines and trend patterns on their school districts’ technology readiness over time.
- States, districts or researchers currently not collecting data statewide or schoolwide may want to adopt the SETDA/Metiri tools, using only the three surveys, or a combination of the surveys and the site visitation protocols.
Tips and Techniques for Using PETI
PETI is an excellent tool for gauging a school’s readiness to use technology effectively as well as its current state of technology integration. Because local goals and specific technology interventions vary among schools, PETI must be accompanied by local assessments of student learning correlated with the specific uses of technology the school is implementing.
Options for Data Collection. Users can either collect data from all districts, schools and teachers, or use stratified sampling techniques at various levels that would provide a representative sample. While the resultant data sets yield different types of reports, both are statistically sound.
Some states will want to survey every school district and every school building, while others will want to reduce the burden of data collection by surveying representative samples from those populations. Some states will include site visitations (in a sampling of schools representative of the state), while others will rely on the surveys only to determine their school districts’ technology readiness and state of technology integration.
