August 2005 — Exclusive

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A Second Look at the Nature of Technology in the Classroom

For Adler, new tools included four powerful PCs, an electronic whiteboard, and periodic use of one of the two wireless laptop carts purchased by the grant. She also used data on student performance to adjust her own teaching. 'The data helps me see where I can improve my instruction, and I can see what kids are not getting,' she explains. 'I can change what I'm doing in my whole-group instruction when data says the kids aren't getting it. And I can find the right intervention materials for kids who need individual help.'

That intervention material, targeted to specific, identified needs, is often delivered through computer-based lessons. Students at Henderson Elementary spend an average of four hours each week working on computers each. However, special-needs students, with the support of a resource teacher who coordinates with classroom teachers, receive much more computer time.

Another tool, which was not technology-based, was short-cycle testing, in which teachers constructed proficiency-like tests and administered them every two to three weeks. The day after the tests were given, teachers would review the questions intensively with students, and then analyzed performance to identify gaps in knowledge or instruction. Jacobson and Adler hope that these paper-and-pencil tests will one day be replaced by self-correcting computer-based tests.

However, all is not bliss. 'Whenever you put in all this new equipment, new servers, new software, things won't work at a high-efficiency level. They just won't,' says Adler. 'That seems to be the nature of technology.'

And while reading and math scores accelerated, writing, social studies, and science performance barely budged; it even went down at some grade levels. But Jacobson and Adler are convinced they've taken the right path to reform by focusing resources on those students who will benefit most. With access to data, they intend to analyze what needs to be done and start moving social studies, science, and writing in the same direction as reading and math.

Implementing a Computer-based Assessment Initiative

Another of my recommendations was to use computers for assessment, and benefit from their ability to correct tests automatically and provide results quickly (William Pflaum, The Technology Fix: The Promise and Reality of Computers in Our Schools, ASCD, 2004). That is what they did at the Winterville district in northern Ohio. But Winterville hardly seems like a district in need of reform, with its three elementary schools, middle school and high school all rated 'Excellent'-the district nailed 18 of the state's 18 criteria for success.

But something nagged at district administrators. Math scores among the three elementary schools were uneven, despite very similar soci'economic profiles. The administrators were troubled by these discrepancies and wanted a positive way to address them. The schools' only difference was that they served new home communities that seemed to have almost sprung up overnight in cornfields of this once rural area.

I went to Winterville to meet with the architects and engineers of an assessment-based improvement program for those schools: district technology coordinator Larry Conroy and district technology integration specialist Rebecca Longstreet.