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The technology for providing schools access to these resources and services exists today, and the costs of installing and supporting that technology would represent a small portion of the public education budget. Depending on how much technology is deployed and how quickly, the cost of connecting all public K-12 schools to the information superhighway-including not only the connection, hardware, and content costs, but also essential professional development and support for teachers-could range from 1.5% to 3.9% of the total K-12 budget nationwide during the peak year of expenditures. By comparison, 1.3% of the public K-12 budget is spent on similar technology today.
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Each school and district will need to make choices about how much investment in technology is required to achieve its educational goals, and how fast it wishes to deploy the technology infrastructure. Across all schools, however, the pace of deployment and the capture of educational benefits will be strongly influenced by three factors: the availability of funding, professional development opportunities for teachers and other school professionals, and the pace of courseware development. While installing the hardware and internal wiring depends mainly on raising the required funds, the value of the hardware and network connections hinges on the quality of the courseware and teachers' ability to integrate it into the curriculum.
Consequently, the deployment process will need to be staged over several years, allowing time for schools and districts to secure adequate funding to cover not only the costs of initial deployment but also ongoing operations and support; for teachers to build skills and develop confidence with the technology; and for courseware developers to produce a wider variety of high-quality curricular materials. During this multiyear deployment period, committed leadership will be critical at the local, state, and national levels to provide direction and sustain momentum for this effort.
The NII includes the Internet and other public and private networks accessible through computers, video equipment, or telephones. Collectively, these networks offer schools a wide range of information resources and services, including up-to-the-minute news reports, electronic libraries of government documents, electronic bulletin boards for debate of educational issues, multimedia "edutainment" products, on-line encyclopedias, and National Geographic's Kids Network. Just as important, the information superhighway can connect students to a broad spectrum of human resources: teachers at other schools (including colleges); experts from museums, libraries, archives, and research institutes; and other students from around the world. Parents and other community members can become more involved in the educational process, as well, by dialing into the local school's network from home computers, from equipment made accessible through local libraries and community centers, or at the school itself if it provides after-hours access. The connection to the NII greatly expands the information resources available to students and teachers, and creates new channels for communication.
To illustrate: a typical morning at a middle school connected to the information superhighway might begin as one group of students arrives early to update the school's home page on the World Wide Web. This home page signals to other schools that also have electronic access to the Web that they have a sister school here whose students and teachers are interested in exchanging ideas about world events and other educational topics. At the same time, another group of early arrivals works with the vice principal to prepare the morning broadcast. Each school day formally starts with a live television presentation about the day's events; these presentations are written, directed, and produced by rotating teams of students and broadcast internally to all the classrooms. In the quiet minutes before this broadcast airs and classes start, a young language teacher is using his desktop computer to access an electronic bulletin board to see how language teachers from schools across the state have responded to his question about the best ways for explaining prepositions. Meantime, the principal is reviewing the electronic mail that parents sent her the evening before, prior to sending voice mail to all her teachers suggesting a schedule for the upcoming parent-teacher "open house."
Later in the morning, in a first-period modern history class, the same video technology that carried the local morning broadcast now enables this class to tour the Smithsonian's aerospace museum. In the classroom next door, the subject is anthropology. Students are grouped in teams of 3 and 4 around the classroom's computers, engrossed in a computer simulation that allows them to play the role of archaeologists on-site in Egypt, exploring ancient Egyptian culture as revealed in its artifacts. In a classroom down the hall, each individual student is working math problems pitched at exactly the pace and level of difficulty appropriate for him or her, and getting immediate feedback on the answers, thanks to interactive software. At the same time, students in a writing class are drafting an essay assignment on their computers and employing electronic mail to get rapid feedback on their work from their peers....
None of the above is science fiction. These kinds of activities are taking place in innovative schools around the nation right now. And the early evidence from these schools suggests that in addition to exciting and engaging students, connection to the information superhighway can support important educational goals. At a minimum, connectivity promotes the computer literacy and networking/information skills that are prerequisite! to an increasing number of jobs. By the year 2000, as much as 60% of American jobs may require such technology skills. In addition, by providing easier, faster, and more efficient access to a wide array of courseware, connectivity supports and enhances computer-assisted instruction, which has been proven effective in helping students master traditional academic subjects such as mathematics, science, and writing.
Many schools have experienced significant improvements in student performance after introducing computer-assisted instruction. For example, the Carrollton City School District in Georgia established a computer lab, among other changes, to reduce the failure rate in 9th grade algebra from 38% to 3%. In New Jersey, the Christopher Columbus Middle School saw student performance rise from well below to above state averages on standardized tests in reading, language arts, and math after the school implemented reforms that included extensive use of networked computers. The academic literature confirms technology's role in these improvements: a review of 254 controlled studies concluded that appropriate use of computers in the classroom reduces the time needed to master certain types of knowledge by as much as 30%. Put another way, in three school years, students benefiting from computer-assisted instruction can learn almost a full year's worth of material more than students who do not have access to the technology.
Furthermore, case studies suggest that when technology is integrated into the curriculum, it can support new teaching methods that emphasize critical thinking and investigative skills. For example, researchers have found that among students in California's Hueneme School District, average critical thinking abilities increased from the fortieth percentile to the eightieth percentile over the 12 years that the district has been integrating educational technology, including computers and electronic networks, into its classrooms.
While the coming years will see important technological advances such as wider availability of broadband networks-with their greater speed, capacity, and transmission quality-the basic technology needed for connecting schools to the information superhighway already exists today. However, connecting requires more than just the external connection from a school to the NII. It also requires a local area network at the school to link the equipment; computers, video equipment, and other hardware; electronic content in the form of multimedia courseware, educational video programs, and on-line services; professional development programs for teachers and other school professionals; and ongoing technical support.
To date, few public K-12 schools have assembled all the required elements of technology infrastructure. For example, while on average there are 14 multimedia-capable computers per K-12 school, distribution of these computers is highly uneven across schools. Some schools have many, others few. And while up to 50% of schools have already installed local area networks, less than 10% of these networks connect computers in all classrooms; most just connect administrative computers or a few classrooms. Similarly, almost all schools have telephone lines, but they are primarily used for administrative purposes-only 12% of classrooms have telephones.
There are many possible approaches to putting all these elements of technology infrastructure into place so that public K-12 schools can successfully connect to the NII. To provide a framework for considering the wide range of options for deploying the technology infrastructure, this report describes a series of deployment models that assume different timeframes (i.e., deployment to all public K-12 schools by the year 2000 versus by 2005) and different levels of technology infrastructure (e.g., connecting all classrooms to the NII versus connecting one multimedia lab per school). These models were chosen because they represent the prototypical technology choices that schools are actually making, and because they illustrate the key economic breakpoints among different levels of technology infrastructure-that is, the step functions in cost. The models focus on connecting to the information superhighway via networked computers. In addition, the report describes the costs of providing public K-12 schools with interactive video equipment, classroom telephones, and voicemail.
The costs associated with the computer-based models illustrate the size of the funding challenge. For example, connecting a computer lab with 25 multimedia-capable computers to the NII in every public K-12 school by the year 2000 would consume 1.5% of the currently projected education budget for 2000 (which would be the peak year of expenditures, assuming phased deployment over 5 years). The cost of connecting every classroom in every public K-12 school by 2005 would represent 3.9% of the projected 2005 education budget (again, the year of maximum expenditures, assuming phased deployment over 10 years). Adding telephones, voice mail, and business quality video to the classroom model would require an additional 0.4% of the education budget.
Using today's spending as a benchmark, schools are not that far from the Lab model: schools currently spend 1.3% of the public K-12 education budget on similar technology. However, while school spending is close to the Lab model on average, the 1.3% figure includes schools that spend more, and are consequently well down the road of technology deployment, and those that spend less and would have to begin nearly from scratch.
The models include both initial and ongoing costs for deployment. They include all investments needed to buy, install, operate, and maintain the equipment, as well as the costs of technical support staff and professional development for teachers. Not surprisingly, in all models purchasing and installing hardware constitutes the largest initial cost. But funding for substantial ongoing maintenance and support is also essential for successful deployment. During the period of deployment itself, professional development for teachers is the largest of these ongoing costs. By contrast, the actual costs of connection (e.g., Internet access, telephone bills) represent a relatively small part of overall expenditures.
Once a school or district has set goals for infrastructure deployment, the pace of progress will depend primarily on the availability of funding, adequate development opportunities for teachers and other school professionals, and appropriate courseware. Each of these factors is critical for successfully connecting schools to the NII.
While the funding challenge in aggregate sounds reasonable, it must be noted that numerous pressures are squeezing education budgets at the national, state, and local levels. The funding picture is further complicated by the fact that educational technology is unevenly distributed across public K-12 schools. As mentioned above, some schools have already established an integral role for computers, video, and networks in their curricula. Many have experimented with the technology in a limited way. Others have yet to launch-or identify funding for-their first experiments.
It should nonetheless be possible to meet the funding challenge through a combination of cost reduction, reprogramming existing funds, and additional initiatives from the public and private sectors. In the area of cost reduction, for example, steps such as bulk purchasing taken at the state or national level would reduce costs further than a typical district could on its own. In addition, certain categories of the school budget bear some relation to spending on technology infrastructure and thus might be reprogrammed to support connecting to the NII. For instance, a portion of the textbook budget might be shifted to acquiring on-line instructional materials. Finally, innovative schools across the country have secured funding through partnerships with corporations and community organizations.
Providing adequate development opportunities for teachers and other school professionals is the second critical factor for successful deployment. Teachers play the pivotal role in integrating the technology into the curriculum and facilitating its day-to-day use. But nearly 50% of today's teachers have had little or no computer experience, much less the training and confidence they need to fully integrate networked computers into their classroom teaching. The educational system currently offers little incentive to motivate teachers to build and apply technology skills. Incentives will need to be created and state certification requirements, teacher college curricula, and in-service training programs will need to be revamped to address technology skills. Providing development opportunities for other school professionals is also essential. School librarians, media specialists, and administrators often make decisions about technology purchases and advise teachers on technology use.
Finally, the value of the hardware and the network connections depends heavily on the quality of the educational materials they deliver. Meeting the diverse curriculum needs of all public K-12 schools will require a broad assortment of high-quality courseware. Currently, production of such courseware is limited because the market for such products is still relatively small. Widespread commitment to connecting the public K-12 schools to the information superhighway would accelerate growth of this market, which in turn would accelerate production of high-quality courseware. In addition, slow and cumbersome public school budgeting and procurement processes could be streamlined to speed up adoption of new courseware and make it easier for courseware developers to enter the public school market.
Successfully connecting America's public K-12 schools to the NII involves coordinating several elements. Each school or district will need to make the commitment, and to make decisions about how much technology to deploy (connect one lab? every classroom? every desktop?) and how fast (establish lab-level connection by 2000? build out to the classroom level by 2005?). In making these decisions, the school or district will also need to identify adequate funding both for installing the technology infrastructure and for supporting it going forward. Funds may come from multiple public and private sector sources; tapping this range of resources will often require both diligence and creativity. To make sure that the technology-once funded-is applied effectively in the classroom, teachers will need the opportu-nity, incentive, and support to experiment with it, master it, and learn to adopt and adapt it as a basic teaching tool. Finally, as more schools make commitments to connectivity and acquire funding, and as more teachers become excited about teaching with the NII, the demand for courseware will grow. In turn, this will stimulate development of more and better courseware for teachers to choose and adapt for their classrooms.
These elements will have to be addressed in parallel and the effort needs to begin now, because bringing the elements together will take time. It will require the sustained efforts and contributions of leaders at all levels-school, district, community, state, and federal. In each school and district, it will be necessary for local leaders to communicate a compelling vision, set clear goals, and generate enthusiasm for connectivity.
The deployment process has to be "bottom-up" by nature, since without the commitment of teachers, principals, school boards, parents, and other community members, little change can take place in the classroom. The leadership required to encourage local deployment, spur courseware development, help teachers build new skills, and secure budget funds, grants, donations, and subsidies, will need to come from both the public and private sectors. To some extent, this process has already begun, and leaders are emerging. But without broader intervention, the process will likely be slow and inequitable. While no single blueprint for deployment can meet the diverse needs of every school district, it is equally true that individual schools will need help in marshaling resources and moving forward.
Strong leadership has been a key success factor in every case study we examined. Local leaders at innovative schools like the Ralph Bunche School in New York City, the Carrollton City School District in Georgia, and the schools in California's Hueneme District have pioneered the way, and students in those schools are already profiting from the educational benefits of technology. Actively encouraging experiments and initiatives in many more schools and districts around the country could result in widespread and significant improvements in American education.