ISSUE 1: ACCESS AND EQUITY

Schools lag behind workplaces, leisure places, and other realms of life in their access to new information technologies. Moreover, current technologies are not equitably distributed among different kinds of schools, special groups of students, or households. Ensuring equitable access to technology is the first and most obvious step toward building a challenging learning environment. Seven breakout sessions dealt with these topics. (note)

A. General Access of Schools to Technology

The schools represented at the conference enjoy an atypical degree of access to technologies, said Jerry Malitz of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in a breakout session. Most schools, for example, do not have access to telecommunications technologies. NCES found that while 35 percent of schools had some form of Internet access, only three percent provided access in classrooms and other instructional areas. And within this small subset of schools, only two percent of teachers, four percent of students, and 11 percent of administrators used wide area networks to a large extent.

Schools are acquiring newer technologies at a fast rate, although only a small percentage could be considered well equipped. According to Jeanne Hayes of Quality Education Data (QED), the percentage of schools with CD-ROM increased from 13 percent in 1992-93 to 37 percent in 1994-95. (These schools may have only one CD-ROM unit for the whole school, however.) The percentage of schools with local area networks (LANs) grew from 14 percent to 27 percent during this same period, and the percentage with videodisc technologies rose from 14 percent to 26 percent.

Conference discussions made clear that access means having enough technology to serve the student body adequately, and that the ratio of students to computers is one telling indicator. About half of the districts in the recent QED survey reported having an overall ratio of more than 25 students per computer.

Outmoded hardware is another problem. QED found that nearly 46 percent of the computers in school inventories are Apple IIe vintage, used mostly in the early elementary grades.

The location of the technology within the school is another critical factor. Are computers clustered in a lab, or placed in individual classrooms? According to presenter Rich Maginn of Smoky Hills High School in Colorado, teachers in his school started using technology more when the school decided to move the computers out of locked labs and place them around the school, so that every teacher and student had close access. This move has changed the culture of the school. "It is now a culture of kids with tools," said Maginn.

Expanding access to technology takes time. For many schools, the only affordable approach is to bring in technologies gradually, instead of all at once. Many conferees preferred the gradual approach in any case, because it allowed time to plan professional development, experiment with different applications, try out different placements and connectivity, and develop models for teaching and learning. Changing the school culture to embrace technology and integrate it into everyday functions may take three to five years, said Nancy Hechinger of the Edison Project, and it cannot be rushed.

Ensuring access also requires careful state and local planning. Good technology planning does not stop with the submission of the first plan, many participants agreed. Planning should be an ongoing process that involves evaluating current technology programs, keeping abreast of new applications, assessing new needs, and modifying plans accordingly.

As participants in the Appalachian regional team meeting observed, the 12-month budget cycle of most schools makes it difficult to plan long-range. Data from the NCES survey and a QED survey confirm that many states do not have operational plans for telecommunications; according to QED, only 14 states have fully operational plans.

Possible State and Local Strategies for Expanding Access

• Public awareness. Many conferees felt that a public awareness strategy was needed to help local citizens and decision makers understand the reasons for investing in educational technology. When local people see the advantages that technology can bring to themselves and their children, they will support it more willingly. This is an area where participants felt that business could help. "Corporations have public relations departments," said Karen Billings of Microsoft, "and some schools have gone to corporations to ask not for money but for experience in this PR aspect."
• Inexpensive access. School districts are trying various strategies to access new technologies and on-line services at reasonable costs, as discussed in more detail in the infrastructure section below. These include using community "freenets," pooling their buying power to bargain for better rates with service providers, and sharing technology with local businesses and corporations.

Options for Federal Action-Suggestions from Conference Participants

• Public awareness. The Department of Education could undertake activities to improve public knowledge of and enlist public support for technology in schools. The Department could mount a national television campaign about educational technology, or disseminate information about its benefits. This information could be tailored to specific audiences, such as parents, business people, state legislatures, community leaders, and others.
• Federal coordination. The Department could instigate partnerships among federal agencies with technology-related missions and efforts to better coordinate their activities.
• Partnerships of key players. Through conferences, grant requirements, and other activities, the Department could encourage collaboration among state and local education agencies, businesses, and other entities.
• Technology planning. The Department could continue to support state and local technology planning activities, could encourage states to view technology planning as an ongoing process, and could encourage state and local planners to include a broad range of stakeholders-parents, industry, community groups, for example-in the planning process.

B. Equitable Access for Urban, Rural, and Disadvantaged Schools

Decisions that school districts and states are making right now will determine whether technology becomes a wedge that divides the advantaged from the disadvantaged communities or a bridge that closes opportunity gaps.

Technology has enormous potential to expand the resources available to inner-city and rural schools and schools in low-income areas. Through distance learning, for example, small or isolated schools can offer advanced courses. Through networking projects, students and teachers in Montana are conducting experiments on water quality and salmon supply with children in Finland.

But urban, rural, and low-income schools face special obstacles in accessing educational technology. Urban schools may lack funding for basic tools, a tax base for capital improvements, home access to technologies, and a group of parents who know first-hand what technology can do. Rural schools face problems of installing expensive infrastructure across vast distances, persuading the private sector to serve a small population base, and overcoming what Mordessa Corbin called "attitudinal isolation" among their citizens.

Data presented by Jeanne Hayes of QED showed the disparities in technology access between high-income and low-income areas. Schools with high concentrations of low-income children (26 percent or more children who meet the Title I poverty definition) have an average student-to-computer ratio of 13.9, compared with the national average of 12.2 and the high-income school average of 11.7. In short, as the concentration of low-income children in a school increases, so does the number of students who must share a computer. This suggests that contrary to popular opinion, Title I support is not overcoming technology inequities, Hayes said.

Similar disparities exist in schools with high concentrations of non-white students, QED found. Schools with more than 50 percent non-white enrollments have an average of 14.1 students per computer. Schools with high concentrations of Hispanic students have the least access, with average ratios of 16.4 students per computer.

Possible State and Local Strategies for Ensuring Equitable Access

• Targeted funding. Some states and districts are targeting technology funding toward "have-not" schools and districts. And when middle-class and advantaged schools realize that the low-income schools have something they do not, the other schools sometimes find the funding from other sources to catch up, said Art St. George of the National Science Foundation. Mike Eason of the Florida Department of Education described a state networking program that began by targeting schools that already had technology resources and were ready for this new application. Soon, however, it became clear that this policy was exacerbating inequities, and in the third year, the program placed priority on schools in low-income areas.
• Rural collaboratives. Rural school districts around the country are forming consortia or collaboratives-not just with other K-12 districts, but also with higher education, business, and even health care providers-to give them greater leverage in regional decisions about access and infrastructure.

Options for Federal Action-Suggestions from Conference Participants

• Targeting in federal programs. The Department of Education and other federal agencies could require that recipients of discretionary grants give special attention to needs of inner-city, rural, and low-income schools.
• Universal access. The federal government could encourage telecommunications entities to provide universal service at affordable prices.

C. Equitable Access for Students with Special Needs

Conference demonstrations shed light on the many exciting ways in which technology can enhance learning for children with special needs.

Breakout sessions included several examples of how assistive technologies can help children with disabilities succeed in the regular classroom and help adults with disabilities participate in learning activities at home, school, or work. Ralph Ferretti of the University of Delaware described a project that uses interactive multimedia technology to help students with disabilities design solutions to social studies problems. A project discussed by Ted Hasselbring of Vanderbilt University uses video to present open-ended math problems with real-life contexts. Several projects focused on developing new tools and software, such as a tool to enable hearing-impaired students to caption their own videos and a project to design "electronic curb ramps" for the information highway.

"The classrooms where students have been provided these facilities have been liberating for everyone," said Judy Heumann. "Students who have been written off can be supported by these new technologies." Assistive technologies can also reduce the expenses associated with other programs, such as rehabilitation and special education, participants noted.

The federal government has played a significant role in developing assistive technologies for individuals with disabilities, through the state grant program for Technology-Related Assistance, the activities of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and other programs. Other public and private groups, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, are developing new kinds of technology, including retrofitted televisions, closed captioning, synthesized speech, and digitally delivered radio, to make public media more accessible to individuals with disabilities.

As noted at one session, the challenge facing the nation now is to do a better job delivering the resources that have been developed and training teachers how to use them.

Technology can also help non-English-speaking students improve language acquisition and keep up with their English-speaking peers in other subjects. Joanne Urrutia of Dade County Public Schools, Florida, demonstrated software that took non-English-speaking students on a video shopping expedition. Students looked for items on their "shopping lists," switching between English and Spanish as needed, and compared their own pronunciations with the synthesized voice on the software. Janet Meizel, a teacher in a multilingual classroom in Davis, California, used computer software to individualize instruction for learners with widely diverse levels of English proficiency.

Michael Hoy, a Dana Point, California, principal, reported that technology has encouraged second-language learners in his school to be less reticent and has fostered cross-cultural collaboration among all students. In addition, he said, students with limited English proficiency are producing more items for their portfolios and are becoming more proficient in both English and their native language. Panelists advised schools to pay close attention to the quality of software for non-English-speaking students, however, because it is seldom exemplary and is sometimes inadequate.

For students with reading problems, technology can demystify the decoding process and encourage them to use different reading strategies.

The issue of gender equity in technology access also merits attention. Girls may need greater encouragement than boys to become involved with computers and other technologies, some participants noted.

Several speakers stressed that technology tools aimed at children with special needs can be equally effective for the whole classroom. "We really are demanding that . . . industry produce what we need to have-technology that is appropriate for all students-and not make one separate technology for each population," observed Judy Heumann.

Possible State and Local Strategies for Providing Access to Students with Special Needs

• Planning. Conferees recommended that states address the need for assistive technologies in state technology plans.
• Software and tools. Schools with concentrations on non-English-speaking students could join forces to encourage software developers to improve the quality and variety of software for these children.

Options for Federal Action-Suggestions from Conference Participants

• National planning. State teams recommended that the National Long Range Technology Plan include strategies to increase access to technologies for students with special needs.

D. Community and Family Access

Several speakers emphasized the enormous potential of technologies in the home and community. Technology can link parents with schools, encourage families to learn together, open up new options for homework, and provide adult education.

Vivian Horner of Bell Atlantic Video Services spotlighted the untapped potential of television. "A few homes have computers, but 99% of homes have television, and we had better use that medium," she said. "We could provide learning for everyone any time they want it."

Families with computers and modems may be unaware of the wealth of on-line information focused on parent needs, said Carol Hyatt of the Consortium for School Networking's Parents Committee. An example is the National Parent Information Network, where parents can obtain expert advice on parenting, education, and child development issues. Other services allow parents to raise difficult or sensitive questions about parenting without embarrassment, or to share ideas.

Schools are using technology in innovative ways to improve parental involvement. The Christopher Columbus School in Union City, New Jersey, which provides every student with a home computer, has found e-mail to be a good vehicle for communicating with single working parents. The Lightspan Partnership project is using television to engage parents in on-line family learning projects and to link students in collaborative homework assignments.

The Buddy System project in Indiana is another promising venture to extend learning into the home. "We do this by placing personal computers in the homes of fourth through sixth grade students and providing a wide array of supporting services," said Alan Hill, President of the Corporation for Education Technology, which established the program. In addition to computers, the project provides modems, printers, software, and family technology activity kits, and trains parents and teachers to conduct family learning activities. Some 6000 families across the state are participating, and the state legislature recently doubled the program's funding. And as a spin-off of the program, some Indiana banks are now offering low-interest loans for families to buy their own computers, said Sue Purnell of the Rand Corporation.

Although technologically aware parents can be boosters for technology in school, parents are rarely involved in school technology planning, according to NCES data.

Possible State and Local Strategies for Expanding Home and Community Access

• After-school access. In some communities, stakeholders are working together to provide after-school access to computers and other technologies for students and their parents, especially those from low-income families.
• Parent access. Some schools are providing take-home computers to students and their families, or giving parents on-line accounts.
• More family resources. Presenters urged industry to pay more attention to family learning needs by expanding educational software and television programming.

Options for Federal Action-Suggestions from Conference Participants

• Tax incentives. The federal government could provide tax incentives for investments in home technology.

[Synthesis of Discussion]Table of Contents[Professional Development]