October 2006 — Policy/Advocacy
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
A Plan Without a Plan
Without some leadership and cooperation at all levels, a new federal mandate for gathering data on students’ technological literacy will produce meaningless results.
SOMETIME THIS YEAR, the federal government, through your state’s department of education, will be asking you how many eighth-grade students in your district have been determined to be technologically literate. (The exact formation of the questions to be used in the collection of this information is not final.) This is thanks to Title II-D of the No Child Left Behind Act—Enhancing Education Through Technology—which has as one of its goals: “To [ensure] that every student is technologically literate by the time the student finishes the eighth grade, regardless of the student’s race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location, or disability.”
When NCLB was signed by President Bush in 2001, the federal DoE told state educational technology directors and state DoEs that they would not be required to collect data associated with EETT’s technological literacy goal. That policy stayed in effect until this past summer, when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) informed the Education Department that it must now begin to gather data on student tech literacy. Data will be collected for the 2006-2007 school year, even though the terms of the data requirement have not been finalized. As of this writing, the DoE:
- will not define technological literacy
- will not define how to assess technological literacy
- will not provide any additional money to use in assessing technological literacy
- will not provide more flexibility in how EETT money can be spent to assess technological literacy
- will not require that states distinguish between districts that receive EETT funds and those that do not
In short, all of these matters are being left to the states. So, what are the states choosing to do? A few already have tests in place for assessing student tech literacy, and a few more are thinking about it, but most will ask questions of those at the district level and send in the results. But the results will be meaningless. Why? Have a look again at the list of things missing from the government’s plan for gathering data on tech literacy, then imagine the quality of the results that will emerge as each district defines tech literate slightly differently from the next, and makes assessments however it chooses.
Most states have a formal definition of technological literacy, but they do not or will not require local districts to use it in connection with this effort. Talking with state technology directors, I more often than not heard the comment, “We are a local-control state.” Tim Magner, director of the Office of Educational Technology, alluded to the same problem, saying, “That is one of the big challenges of a federal system.”
