Trends at a Glance

by The Milken Exchange

Trends at a Glance

States are establishing technology standards for students. If the standards are to have an impact, reliable assessments must be developed and implemented. Thirty-six states have established student standards for technology and nine other states are developing such standards. Of those 36 states, 22 have integrated them into their overall standards for the basic academic areas; six states have established standards for technology that are separate from the basic academic areas; and eight states have taken a dual approach. Many states have only recently established these standards, so few are fully assessing them. The Milken Exchange recently commissioned a longitudinal study in West Virginia. Results indicated that 11 percent of the academic gains in mathematics and reading for fifth graders in 1995 were directly attributable to technology interventions. A subsequent analysis by the Milken Exchange found technology to be a cost-effective method to improve student learning when compared to class size reduction (Mann, 1999).

Schools are beginning to use learning technology, but most use it to automate learning rather than to bring students unique learning opportunities never before possible. "It is the more elective and less college preparatory-oriented parts of the high school curriculum where the newer and more creative uses of computers are being found, rather than in the more standards-constrained academic subjects." (Teaching, Learning and Computing: A National Survey of Schools and Teachers, Henry Becker, 1999).

Teachers are getting trained, but classes often do not relate to teaching and learning. "Teachers are being asked to learn new methods of teaching, while at the same time they are facing the greater challenges of rapidly increasing technological changes and greater diversity in the classroom...[ yet,] relatively few teachers (20 percent) reported feeling very well prepared to integrate educational technology into classroom instruction." (U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, January 1999).

Significant funds are being invested in schools, especially those with disadvantaged youth, yet a digital divide based on demographics exists between schools. More than $5 billion is invested annually in learning technology, representing federal, state, and local funds. Yet, from 1994 through 1998, schools with low numbers of minority students were three times more likely to have Internet access in classroom settings than schools with high numbers of minority students. Similarly, high-income schools were twice as likely to have Internet access in classrooms as low-income schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 1998). This trend, combined with the widening wage gap between information technology industries and the total private sector, suggests that the digital divide in the United States is not going away.