Body
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a luncheon keynote for a combined audience of the American Association of Publishers and the Software & Information Industry Association’s Ed Tech Government Forum, acknowledged that on one hand, our schools are in a state of crisis, but on the other hand this could be a great opportunity to transform, not just reform, our education system.
Duncan acknowledged that much of the stimulus money given to states for innovation was indeed used to keep teachers from being laid off. Unfortunately that effort was not enough and there is the danger of more teachers being laid off and schools closed in the near future.
In addition to the financial crisis, we are still experiencing a drop out crisis with almost 30% of our high school students dropping out. The U.S. loses 1.2 million students a year as drop outs, and the data shows that the majority of students who are dropping out are doing so because they are bored; they are not engaged in their education.
President Obama’s goal is for America to once again lead the world in the number of students graduating from college. Right now we have a 40% graduation rate and he wants to move it to 60%. And right now while 61% of white students enter college, only 44% of Hispanics, and 29% of African Americans enter college. As we move into a time when we will have a minority-majority population, this data is problematic.
The states are working toward education reform. 48 states have signed up to participate in a grass roots effort to create a Common Core of Standards. A draft of these standards was released in March of 2010 and the plan is for the states to adopt, and then implement the standards during the next three years. The goal is to create standards that will help prepare students for college or career.
The National Educational Technology Plan was recently unveiled, after 10 months of work by the Department of Education and Stanford Research Institute. There are five goals in the new technology plan:
- Learning – Creating more effective and more engaging opportunities for learning, especially through the use of educational technology
- Assessment – Through the use of technology having assessments that are meaningful and provides the teacher immediate feedback.
- Teaching – Helping teachers connect with the tools, resources, experts and peers to provide a better educational experience.
- Infrastructure – Broadband connectivity for all students everywhere, including schools, libraries, and students’ homes. It is very important that the broadband plan support K-12 education.
- Productivity – This encourages us to improve learning while managing costs.
Productivity is probably the most important word. Our economic situation is not going to get better very quickly and it is very important that we use technology in ways that helps us to do more with less. Technology must make us more efficient.
There are three technology trends that will help schools and education:
- Mobility and accessibility. Students have 24/7 access to information. How can that access be better utilized in the schools?
- Digital content is very important. 60% of students publish their own material on the web.
- President Obama has proposed $500 million over ten years for an Online Skills Initiative to design and produce open and high quality courses that will help students be successful in college.
- All students deserve to have access to high quality courses.
- The Administration has a commitment to Open Educational Resources that will be fully open, including open to publishers. This initiative will increase the demand on universities to increase production of online courses.
- Use of social networks for information, collaboration, and learning.
We learn from examples such as the School of One in New York City which personalized education for its students and experienced great growth from their students. We learn from Manor New Tech High in Texas which has used technology to help integrate project-based learning to engage their students with great results.
Secretary Duncan noted that there is concern about the level of E2T2 funding, the major source of dedicated funding for technology in schools. The proposed 2010-11 Budget has basically eliminated educational technology from the education budget as a budget line. But Duncan assured the audience that technology in education was not going away, but rather would be incorporated throughout the Ed Department budget. Technology would support the i3 innovation fund, STEM, and literacy initiatives and could be incorporated into the rest of the department strategies.
Secretary Duncan closed his keynote by stating that education needs to be more engaging. In order to accomplish that, technology is the tool to help teachers personalize education so students, who represent a myriad of learning abilities, can establish a learning method that works best for them.
