April 2005 — SETDA
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Measuring Progress With Technology in Schools
State Example: A state may want to consider surveying every district, randomly selecting a representative sample of schools and teachers within those schools to survey, while also selecting a smaller sample of schools/classrooms to conduct site visits. Why? Policymakers often want data on every district, but are satisfied with general trend data by locale (demographics), geographic area, level and size of district/school. Including the site visits in the state data collection adds a dimension of credibility for policymakers who read the reports. It also provides an opportunity to bring the quantifiable data alive by giving examples of what the data trends mean through anecdotes from the field.
District Example:A district may want to consider surveying every school administrator in the district, select a stratified sample of teachers to survey, survey all district administrators, and conduct site visitations in every school that serves students. Why? The sampling is used strictly to reduce the burden of data collection. Whereas a sample of teachers may be acceptable, school board members and school superintendents often want validation of the quantifiable data through site visits in all schools. This is also an opportunity to bring the quantifiable data to life through stories of impact on student learning, teaching, parental outreach and administrative efficiencies.
In Summary
SETDA’s timely development of its framework and the PETI suite of assessment tools provide a forum for states to discuss their assessment needs and design a common framework and suite of tools. This set of tools adds consistency to state data collection, including common definitions of terms, and provides educators a low-cost suite of tools with high validity and reliability. These are tools educators can use with confidence, knowing that resultant reports are providing data for continually increasing the learning return on technology investments.
The Application of PETI
When used to their fullest extent, the PETI tools inform a district's process in using technology effectively from a number of perspectives. The summary reports from the PETI tools enable school districts to track their progress with technology over time.Drilling down a little further to the indicator and item levels enables schools to not only know if they are using technology effectively, but what actions they can take to improve. There is a set of questions from each survey as well as protocols from the site visits that addresses each indicator. This enables schools to get answers to key condition-level questions, and then drill down to the indicator and item levels for data to inform their next steps. For example:
Example of Alignment: Condition ' Indicator ' Cluster of Items
A district using the PETI tools would be informed as to how its schools are doing on indicator C2-2 through an analysis of responses to the survey questions and protocols aligned to that indicator.
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