October 2006 — Policy/Advocacy
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A Plan Without a Plan
To get an idea of the disparity among the various approaches states are considering or have already taken, mull on this:
- One state is contemplating defining technological literacy as the ability to use an online testing program.
- Another state is planning to tie the definition to the ability to pass a Technology, Life, and Careers course.
- Another state has a laptop initiative for all students in the seventh and eighth grades. State officials are assuming that all their eighth-graders are tech literate.
- Another state has technology standards embedded in its core curriculum, and thinks it will say that any student who has taken its core curriculum is technologically literate.
And then there is the vast majority of states, which are leaving it entirely up to the districts to tell them how many students are tech literate without requiring the use of the state definition, while allowing assessment tools as varied as a hands-on skills test, a multiple-choice knowledge test, a project result, an aggregation of projects in a portfolio, or simply teacher observation.
To say that comparing data from different assessment methods is like comparing apples and oranges isn’t going far enough. It’s much worse.
To say that comparing data from different assessment methods is like comparing apples and oranges isn’t going far enough. It’s much worse. This isn’t comparing apples and oranges, or even calling apples and oranges a fruit salad. It’s like taking apples, car batteries, sailboats, chairs, cats, printers, and gravel and bringing them all together under one name. If this all gets implemented as currently envisioned, for this year, we will amass an enormous quantity of useless data. In fairness to the Education Department, this requirement was put on it by the OMB, and everyone involved, from the DoE to the state directors of technology, is trying to make things as easy as possible for all concerned. They all realize there is no additional money for this effort, and schools are already up to their ears in testing and other data requirements.
So, we in the ed tech community are faced with an opportunity and a challenge. We are suffering, like most educational programs, with a lack of information. We can take the easy road and collect a bunch of bad data, or we can take the more difficult road and start a process of collecting better data. School districts need to show a willingness and desire to gather better data, and states need to work together to try to unify that data. The federal government needs to show some leadership, flexibility, and preferably some money.
