Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in the United States

Panel on Educational Technology

Chairman

David E. Shaw, Ph.D.
Chairman, D. E. Shaw & Co., Inc.
and Juno Online Services, L.P.

Members

 Henry J. Becker, Ph.D.
Professor of Education,
University of California, Irvine

John D. Bransford, Ph.D.
Centennial Professor of Psychology and Co-Director,
Learning Technology Center,
Vanderbilt University

Jan Davidson, Ph.D.
President, The Davidson Group

Jan Hawkins, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Children and Technology,
Education Development Center

Shirley Malcom, Ph.D.
Head, Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs,
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Mario Molina, Ph.D.
Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 1995 Nobel laureate, Chemistry

Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and Director,
California Space Institute,
University of California, San Diego

Phillip Sharp, Ph.D.
Professor and Head, Department of Biology,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 1993 Nobel laureate, Physiology or Medicine

Robert F. Tinker, Ph.D.
President, The Concord Consortium

Charles Vest, Ph.D.
President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

John Young
Former President and Chief Executive Officer, Hewlett-Packard Co.

Staff

Richard Allen
Marianne F. Bakia
Rebecca Bryson
C. Samantha Chen
Sandor Lehoczky
Caroline M. Costello
Marjorie R. Dial
Edith M. Kealey

President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology

Chairs

 John H. Gibbons, Ph.D.
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Policy and
Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy

John Young
Former President and Chief Executive Officer, Hewlett-Packard Co.

Members

Norman R. Augustine
Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Lockheed Martin Corporation

Francisco J. Ayala, Ph.D.
Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Philosophy,
University of California, Irvine

Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.
Professor, Santa Fe Institute;
R. A. Millikan Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics,
California Institute of Technology;
and 1969 Nobel laureate, Physics

David A. Hamburg, M.D.
President, Carnegie Corporation of New York

John P. Holdren, Ph.D.
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy,
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Diana MacArthur
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Dynamac Corporation

Shirley Malcom, Ph.D.
Head, Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs,
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Mario Molina, Ph.D.
Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 1995 Nobel laureate, Chemistry

Peter H. Raven, Ph.D.
Director, Missouri Botanical Garden and Engelmann Professor of Botany,
Washington University in St.Louis

Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and Director,
California Space Institute,
University of California, San Diego

Judith Rodin, Ph.D.
President, University of Pennsylvania

Charles A. Sanders, M.D.
Former Chairman, Glaxo-Wellcome Inc.

Phillip Sharp, Ph.D.
Professor and Head, Department of Biology,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 1993 Nobel laureate, Physiology or Medicine

David E. Shaw, Ph.D.
Chairman, D. E. Shaw & Co., Inc. and Juno Online Services, L.P.

Charles Vest, Ph.D.
President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Virginia Weldon, M.D.
Senior Vice President for Public Policy, Monsanto Company

Lilian Shiao-Yen Wu, Ph.D.
Member, Research Staff, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM

Executive Secretary

Angela Phillips Diaz

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. Potential Significance
    2.1 Serious Problems
    2.2 The Role of Technology in Education
    2.3 The Promise of Educational Technology

3. Hardware and Infrastructure
    3.1 Computers and Peripherals
    3.2 Building Infrastructure
    3.3 Local Area Networks
    3.4 Wide Area Networks
    3.5 Systems Administration and Technical Support

4. Software, Content and Pedagogy
    4.1 Computer-Based Tutorial Systems
    4.2 The Constructivist Model
    4.3 Constructivist Applications of Technology
    4.4 The Human Element
    4.5 How Technology is Currently Used
    4.6 The Educational Software Market

5. Teachers and Technology
    5.1 What Teachers Need
    5.2 Potential Modes of Support
    5.3 The Problem of Insufficient Teacher Time
    5.4 Technology in the Education Schools

6. Economic Considerations
    6.1 Current Technology Expenditures
    6.2 Projected Cost of Educational Technology
    6. 3 Educational Productivity and Return on Investment

7. Equitable Access
    7.1 Dimensions of Access
    7.2 Socioeconomic Status
    7.3 Race and Ethnicity
    7.4 Geographical Factors
    7.5 Gender
    7.6 Educational Achievement
    7.7 Students with Special Needs

8. Research and Evaluation
    8.1 Effectiveness of Traditional Applications of Technology
    8.2 Research on Constructivist Applications of Technology
    8.3 Priorities for Future Research
    8.4 Research Funding
    8.5 Structural and Administrative Considerations

9. Programs and Policy
    9.1 The President's Educational Technology Initiative
    9.2 Funded Programs
    9.3 Leadership and Coordination

10. Summary of Findings and Recommendations
    10.1 Overview of the Panel's Findings
    10.2 Principal Recommendations

Acknowledgments

Executive Summary

In an era of increasing international economic competition, the quality of America's elementary and secondary schools could determine whether our children hold highly compensated, high-skill jobs that add significant value within the integrated global economy of the twenty-first century or compete with workers in developing countries for the provision of commodity products and low-value-added services at wage rates comparable to those received by third world laborers. Moreover, it is widely believed that workers in the next century will require not just a larger set of facts or a larger repertoire of specific skills, but the capacity to readily acquire new knowledge, to solve new problems, and to employ creativity and critical thinking in the design of new approaches to existing problems.

While a number of different approaches have been suggested for the improvement of K-12 education in the United States, one common element of many such plans has been the more extensive and more effective utilization of computer, networking, and other technologies in support of a broad program of systemic and curricular reform. During a period in which technology has fundamentally transformed America's offices, factories, and retail establishments, however, its impact within our nation's classrooms has generally been quite modest.

The Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide independent advice to the President on matters related to the application of various technologies (and in particular, interactive computer- and network-based technologies) to K-12 education in the United States. Its findings and recommendations are based on a (non-exhaustive) review of the research literature and on written submissions and private White House briefings from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. A substantial number of relatively specific recommendations related to various aspects of the use of technology within America's elementary and secondary schools are offered at various points within the body of this report. The list that appears below summarizes those high-level strategic recommendations that the Panel believes to be most important:

1. Focus on learning with technology, not about technology. Although both are worthy of attention, it is important to distinguish between technology as a subject area and the use of technology to facilitate learning about any subject area. While computer-related skills will unquestionably be quite important in the twenty-first century, and while such skills are clearly best taught through the actual use of computers, it is important that technology be integrated throughout the K-12 curriculum, and not simply used to impart technology-related knowledge and skills. Although universal technological literacy is a laudable national goal, the Panel believes the Administration should work toward the use of computing and networking technologies to improve the quality of education in all subject areas.
   
   
2. Emphasize content and pedagogy, and not just hardware. While the widespread availability of modern computing and networking hardware will indeed be necessary if technology is to realize its promise, the development and utilization of useful educational software and information resources, and the adaptation of curricula to make effective use of technology, are likely to represent more formidable challenges. Particular attention should be given to the potential role of technology in achieving the goals of current educational reform efforts through the use of new pedagogic methods focusing on the development of higher-order reasoning and problem-solving skills. While obsolete and inaccessible computer systems, suboptimal student/computer ratios, and a lack of appropriate building infrastructure and network connectivity will all need to be addressed, it is important that we not allow these problems to divert attention from the ways in which technology should actually be used within an educational context.
   
   
3. Give special attention to professional development. The substantial investment in hardware, infrastructure, software and content that is recommended in this report will be largely wasted if K-12 teachers are not provided with the preparation and support they will need to effectively integrate information technologies into their teaching. Only about 15 percent of the typical educational technology budget is currently devoted to professional development; this figure should be increased to at least 30 percent. Teachers should be provided with ongoing mentoring and consultative support, and with the time required to familiarize themselves with available software and content, to incorporate technology into their lesson plans, and to discuss technology use with other teachers. Finally, both presidential leadership and federal funding should be mobilized to help our nation's schools of education to incorporate technology within their curricula so they are capable of preparing the next generation of American teachers to make effective use of technology.
   
   
4. Engage in realistic budgeting. The Panel believes that at least five percent of all public K-12 educational spending in the United States (or approximately $13 billion annually in constant 1996 dollars) should be earmarked for technology-related expenditures -- a significant increase over the current level of approximately 1.3 percent. Because the amortization of initial acquisition costs will account for only a minority of these recommended expenditures, schools will have to provide for increased technology spending within their ongoing operating budgets rather than relying solely on one-time bond issues and capital campaigns.
   
   While voluntarism and corporate equipment donations may be of both direct and indirect benefit under certain circumstances, White House policy should be based on a realistic assessment of the relatively limited direct economic contribution such efforts can be expected to make overall. The Administration should continue to make the case for educational technology as an unusually high-return investment (in both economic and social terms) in America's future, while seeking to enhance the return on that investment by promoting federally sponsored research aimed at improving the cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's elementary and secondary schools.
   
   
5. Ensure equitable, universal access. Access to knowledge-building and communication tools based on computing and networking technologies should be made available to all of our nation's students, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender, or geographical factors, and special attention should be given to the use of technology by students with special needs. Title I spending for technology-related investments on behalf of economically disadvantaged students should be maintained at no less than its current level, with ongoing adjustments for inflation, expanding U.S. school enrollment, and projected increases in overall national spending for K-12 educational technology. Because much of the educational use of computers now takes place within the home, and because the rate of home computer ownership diverges widely for students of different racial and ethnic groups and socioeconomic status, consideration should also be given to certain public policy measures that might help to reduce disparities in student access to information technologies outside of school.
   
   
6. Initiate a major program of experimental research. The Panel believes that a large-scale program of rigorous, systematic research on education in general and educational technology in particular will ultimately prove necessary to ensure both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's schools. Funding levels for educational research, however, have thus far been alarmingly low. By way of illustration, whereas some 23 percent of all U.S. expenditures for prescription and non-prescription medications were applied toward pharmaceutical research in 1995, less than 0.1 percent of our nation's expenditures for elementary and secondary education in the same year were invested to determine which educational techniques actually work, and to find ways to improve them.
   
   The Panel strongly recommends that this figure be increased to at least 0.5 percent (or about $1.5 billion annually at current expenditure levels) on an ongoing basis. Because no one state, municipality, or private firm could hope to capture more than a small fraction of the benefits associated with a significant advance in our understanding of how best to educate K-12 students, this funding will have to be provided largely at the federal level in order to avoid a systematic underinvestment (attributable to a classical form of economic externality) relative to the level that would be optimal for the nation as a whole.
   
   To ensure high standards of scientific excellence, intellectual integrity, and independence from political influence, this research program should be planned and overseen by a distinguished independent board of outside experts appointed by the President, and should encompass (a) basic research in various learning-related disciplines and on various educationally relevant technologies; (b) early-stage research aimed at developing new forms of educational software, content, and technology-enabled pedagogy; and (c) rigorous, well-controlled, peer-reviewed, large-scale empirical studies designed to determine which educational approaches are in fact most effective in practice. The Panel does not, however, recommend that the deployment of technology within America's schools be deferred pending the completion of such research.
   
   

Finally, it should be noted that the Panel strongly supports the programs encompassed by the President's Educational Technology Initiative, which aim to provide our nation's schools with the modern computer hardware, local- and wide-area network connectivity, high quality educational content, and appropriate teacher preparation that will be necessary if information technologies are to be effectively utilized to enhance learning. In the area of research and evaluation, however, the Panel believes that much remains to be done. While a scientific research program of the sort envisioned by the Panel will require substantial funding on a sustained basis, such a program could well prove critical to the economic security of future generations of Americans, and should thus be assigned a high priority in spite of current budgetary pressures.

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1. Introduction

While the importance of securing an adequate education for America's children has long been clear, this undertaking has, over the past fifteen years or so, acquired a sense of special urgency. On the one hand, expanded global competition and corporate restructuring have drawn attention to the importance of preparing the next generation of Americans to add value within an increasingly integrated world economy. Over this same period, however, serious concerns have been raised 1 regarding the capacity of the U.S. educational system to meet this challenge.

While a number of different approaches have been suggested for the improvement of K-12 education in the United States, one common element of many such plans has been the more extensive and more effective utilization of computer, networking, and other technologies in support of a broad program of systemic and curricular reform. Such proposals have been motivated in part by specific examples of the successful application of technology to education, and in part by the more general observation that, during a period in which technology has fundamentally transformed America's offices, factories, and retail establishments, its impact within our nation's classrooms has generally been quite modest² .

The Goals 2000: Educate America Act,³ which was signed into law in 1994, contained a number of provisions designed to foster the application of technology within the nation's elementary and secondary schools. President Clinton has since announced several additional programs that aim to establish various forms of cooperative partnerships involving the federal government, the states, local communities, individual schools and school districts, and the private sector, in each case with the goal of mobilizing technology in service of K-12 education.

In the context of these various initiatives, the Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide independent advice to the President on matters related to the application of various technologies (and in particular, interactive computer-based and digital-network based technologies) to elementary and secondary education in the United States.⁴ The Panel consists of seven PCAST members and five outside experts in the field of educational technology, and has been assisted in its activities by a small research and operational staff.

In the course of its investigations, the Panel reviewed a substantial body of existing written material on the subject of educational technology and solicited additional written input from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. A smaller group of individuals chosen from each of these categories were invited to meet personally with the Panel's members and staff in briefing sessions conducted at the White House in October 1995. ⁵ The Panel's principal findings and recommendations are incorporated in this report.

The report begins with a brief discussion of the nature of the problems now facing elementary and secondary education in the United States, and of the role technology might play in helping to solve those problems. Section 3 surveys the computing and telecommunications hardware (and equally important, the associated infrastructure and technical support) now deployed within our nation's schools, and considers the ways in which these resources will have to be expanded if educational technology is to be mobilized on behalf of all of our K-12 students. In Section 4, we consider the ways in which information technologies are actually used within our schools, and identify a number of challenges related to computer software, educational content, and pedagogical methods.

We continue in Section 5 with an examination of the role of elementary and secondary school teachers within a technology-rich educational environment, and of the professional development, ongoing support, and other resources that will prove necessary if teachers are to effectively integrate technology within their curricula. Current and projected costs associated with the introduction and continued use of technology within all of our nation's schools are estimated in Section 6, and are analyzed in terms of educational productivity and expected return on investment. Section 7 examines the issue of equitable access to educational technology, reviewing current and anticipated disparities based on socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, geographical factors, gender, educational achievement, and special student needs, and considering some of the policy tools that might be used to minimize the extent and impact of these disparities.

Section 8 focuses on the need for rigorous scientific research designed to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of alternative approaches to the use of technology in education, on the extent to which such research should be funded at the federal level, and on the manner in which it might best be organized and administered. Current federal programs in the area of educational technology are reviewed in Section 9, with special attention to the directions in which those efforts might profitably be extended and expanded. The Panel's central findings and most important recommendations are summarized in Section 10.

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2. Potential Significance

Since the effective utilization of technology within all of America's elementary and secondary schools will require a substantial investment of public funds, it seems appropriate to begin our discussion with a critical examination of the rationale for such expenditures. While much remains to be learned about the optimal use of technology in K-12 education, the Panel believes the case for educational technology to be a compelling one in view of certain critical economic and social problems now facing our nation and the weight of the available evidence regarding technology's potential contribution to the solution of these problems.

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2.1 Serious Problems

While the continuing expansion of international trade has the potential to confer substantial long-term benefits on American companies and workers, it also presents certain challenges. As trade barriers fall and cross-border transaction volume increases, our children will find themselves competing more directly with the citizens of other countries to provide goods and services within the world marketplace. Indeed, the effects of international competition have already become evident in the (permanent or temporary) loss of U.S. market share to European and Asian economic competitors within certain industries and in competition-induced productivity improvements which, while beneficial in the long term, have been accompanied in some cases by "corporate downsizing" and economic insecurity on the part of American workers.

Although it seems unlikely that the United States could reverse the secular trend toward global economic integration even if it believed this to be in its own interest, there is much we can do to influence the role that Americans play within the integrated world economy of the future. In particular, the decisions we make today with respect to the education of our children will determine in large part whether they are prepared to hold high-wage, high-skill jobs that add significant value within the world marketplace or are instead forced to compete with workers in developing countries (where economic output is likely to increase steadily over time) for the provision of commodity products and low-value-added services.

The danger of the latter scenario lies not only in its potential effect on our country's aggregate national income, but on the potential for unprecedented (at least within the American experience) disparities in income and wealth among Americans that could threaten the political stability our nation has long enjoyed. Our country's social fabric and democratic form of government have never been put to the test of supporting the extreme bimodality of resource allocation that might result (at least in the absence of aggressive redistributive intervention) if a relatively small percentage of our population were to possess the tools necessary to engage in highly-compensated economic activities, while a substantial majority were forced to compete with unskilled and semi-skilled laborers in developing countries who might well command (inflation-adjusted) wage rates of less than a dollar per hour.

These observations have implications not only for the extent to which we are able to educate our citizenry, but for the way in which we do so. In particular, it is widely believed that a continuing acceleration in the pace of technological innovation, among other factors, will result in more frequent changes in the knowledge and skills that workers will need if they are to play high-level roles within the global economy of the twenty-first century. Our children will thus need to be prepared not just with a larger set of facts or a larger repertoire of specific skills, but with the capacity to readily acquire new knowledge, to solve new problems, and to employ creativity and critical thinking in the design of new approaches to existing problems. In the words of Frank Withrow, the director of learning technologies at the Council of Chief State School Officers, "the U.S. work force does not need knowers,' it needs learners.'"⁶

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2.2 The Role of Technology in Education

While the introduction of technology will not in itself improve the quality of American education, there are several ways in which the Panel believes it can be used as a powerful tool in addressing the problems outlined above. One of the earliest insights into the educational applications of technology was that interactive computer-based systems admit the possibility of individualizing the educational process to accommodate the needs, interests, proclivities, current knowledge, and learning styles of each particular student. Even the earliest drill-and-practice based computer-assisted instruction systems, in which the student was exposed to successive blocks of textual material and answered a series of questions posed by the computer, typically offered the advantages of self-paced instruction. Among other things, self-pacing obviates the need for teachers to target their presentations to some hypothetical "typical" pupil, leaving part of the class behind while other students become bored, restless and inattentive.

In recent years, however, many researchers have begun to focus on the potential of technology to support certain fundamental changes in the pedagogic models underlying our traditional approach to the educational enterprise. Within this "constructivist"⁷ paradigm:

• Greater attention is given to the acquisition of higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills, with less emphasis on the assimilation of a large body of isolated facts.
  
  
• Basic skills are learned not in isolation, but in the course of undertaking (often on a collaborative basis) higher-level "real-world" tasks whose execution requires the integration of a number of such skills.
  
  
• Information resources are made available to be accessed by the student at that point in time when they actually become useful in executing the particular task at hand.
  
  
• Fewer topics may be covered than is the case within the typical traditional curriculum, but these topics are often explored in greater depth.
  
  
• The student assumes a central role as the active architect of his or her own knowledge and skills, rather than passively absorbing information proffered by the teacher.
  
  

Some of the specific ways in which technology might be used within the context of the constructivist curriculum are outlined in Section 4.

Quite apart from its use by students, technology can serve as a potentially powerful tool for teachers, who may use computers and computer networks to:

• monitor, guide, and assess the progress of their students
  
  
• maintain portfolios of student work
  
  
• prepare (both computer-based and conventional) materials for use in the classroom
  
  
• communicate with students, parents, and administrators
  
  
• exchange ideas, experiences, and curricular materials with other teachers
  
  
• consult with experts in a variety of fields
  
  
• access remote databases and acquire educational software over the Internet
  
  
• further expand their own knowledge and professional capabilities
  
  

As noted in Section 4.4, a comprehensive approach to the learning process may also involve the use of technology by parents, and by other (physically proximate or geographically remote) community members. While the Panel has concerned itself only incidentally with the use of information technology in school administration, it should be noted that the effective utilization of technology can yield significant "back office" efficiencies for schools, freeing up resources for application to learning-specific activities.

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2.3 The Promise of Educational Technology

Although our understanding of the effectiveness of various applications of educational technology remains incomplete, such research as is available, combined with anecdotal reports of the positive experiences of a number of schools, suggests that technology may indeed have the potential to play a major role in transforming elementary and secondary education in the United States. While a critical discussion of the existing research literature (and of the need for additional research) will be deferred until Section 8, a few of the better-known examples of the successful application of technology to K-12 education may help to convey an intuitive feeling for the potential of educational technology:⁸

• Blackstock Junior High School (California): This school has ten "smart classrooms," including one in which students can use computer-aided design (CAD) software to describe products that are then fabricated using a computer-controlled flexible manufacturing system. Higher test scores and improvements in comprehension, motivation, and attitude have been reported for the predominantly Hispanic student body.
  
  
• Carrollton City School District (Georgia): Computer technology is used in this school district as part of a novel program that has succeeded in reducing the dropout rate from 19 percent to 5 percent, and the failure rate in ninth grade algebra from 38 percent to 3 percent.
  
  
• Carter Lawrence School (Tennessee): Students in selected classrooms within this Nashville middle school used technology in various ways as part of a program called Schools for Thought, which is based largely on constructivist principles. Sixth-grade SFT participants scored higher on a number of components of Tennessee's mandated standardized achievement test than students in matched comparison classrooms, and demonstrated substantially stronger critical thinking skills in complex performance assessments involving high-level reading and writing tasks. Absenteeism and student withdrawal rates were also dramatically lower among SFT students.
  
  
• Christopher Columbus Middle School (New Jersey): Perhaps the most widely publicized example of the successful application of educational technology, this inner-city school in Union City implemented a reform program that (along with other important changes) provided all seventh-grade students and teachers with access to computers and the Internet, both at school and at home. The performance of its 91 percent Hispanic student population, the majority economically disadvantaged, improved from significantly below to somewhat above the statewide average in reading, language arts, and math.
  
  
• Clearview Elementary School (California): A restructuring program involving the use of advanced technology resulted in an increase in standardized achievement test scores from the lowest 10 percent to the highest 20 percent.
  
  
• East Bakersfield High School (California): A school-to-work program at this school has made extensive use of technology to provide its 60 percent Hispanic student body (including many students having very limited English proficiency) with the skills required for any of five different career tracks, resulting in increased graduation and job placement rates.
  
  
• Northbrook Middle School (Texas): Interdisciplinary teams use computing and networking resources to teach critical thinking and problem-solving skills to this student population, which consists primarily of the children of migrant workers, 76 percent of whom are economically disadvantaged. Highly significant increases in test scores have been reported.
  
  
• Ralph Bunche School (New York): Information technology has been used for collaborative work and project-oriented learning by 120 randomly-selected students in this elementary school, which serves primarily low-income black and Hispanic residents of Central Harlem. These students outperformed a control group by ten percentage points in mathematics on New York City standardized exams. Progress has also been reported on problem-solving skills.
  
  
• Taylorsville Elementary School (Indiana): Self-paced individualized learning is the central focus of this suburban school, whose students are drawn largely from lower middle-class white families. Technology is used to support project work conducted by teams that include students of a mixture of different ages. Internet access and sophisticated information retrieval tools are used to support self-directed inquiries. While the program is relatively young, some improvement has been reported in test scores, along with a significant increase in student interest and enthusiasm for learning.
  
  

Rigorous, systematic, well-controlled research will ultimately be required to identify the specific factors responsible for such apparently successful outcomes and to ascertain their range of applicability and the extent to which they can be generalized. Most researchers and practitioners in the field of educational technology, however, are already convinced that information technologies have the potential not only to improve the efficacy of our current teaching methods, but perhaps more importantly, to support fundamental changes in those methods that could have important implications for the next generation of Americans.

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3. Hardware and Infrastructure

Although elementary and secondary schools in the United States have for some time been acquiring new computing and networking hardware faster than they have been retiring old equipment, access to modern hardware remains a significant impediment (though by no means the only impediment) to the widespread application of technology within grades K-12. The amount of equipment available for instructional purposes remains suboptimal relative to the country's K-12 student population, and a large fraction of the equipment that is available to the schools is obsolete and of very limited utility. This problem is compounded by a lack of appropriate infrastructure for the operation of modern computer and networking equipment, and by a shortage within the schools of trained personnel capable of supporting the use of such equipment.

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3.1 Computers and Peripherals

One commonly employed measure of the penetration of computers into American schools is the ratio of students to computers. Over the years since microprocessor-based personal computers first became widely available, this ratio has declined significantly, dropping from 125 in the 1983-84 school year to 10.5 in 1994-95.⁹ This figure, however, still falls short of the ratio of four to five students per computer (which has been achieved by only a very small minority of all U.S. public schools) that many experts consider to represent a reasonable level for the effective use of computers within the schools. Middle and junior high schools have less access to computers than senior high schools on a per-student basis, and elementary schools have an even higher student/computer ratio.

As a result of the relative scarcity of computer equipment, most schools locate the majority of their computers not within the individual classrooms, but in specialized computer labs that are shared among all classes.¹⁰ If lab use is carefully scheduled, this approach can offer the potential for certain cost efficiencies through higher equipment utilization. On the other hand, the sequestration of a school's computers within a computer lab makes it more difficult to use these tools on an intermittent basis as an integral part of various elements of the curriculum.¹¹ About half of all teachers have at least one computer in their classrooms, but most have no more than two, making student computer use by individuals and small groups impractical within most classrooms.

The computer access problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of the computer systems now in use within the public schools would be considered obsolete by private sector standards.¹² While such machines are able to run certain early educational applications (including some drill-and-practice systems), little or no new software is being written for these platforms, and they would in any case be incapable of supporting much of the functionality incorporated in the most interesting current applications of technology to education. A 1992 survey by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)¹² revealed that only about 20 percent of all school computers were equipped with hard disk drives, thus further limiting the range of accessible software and databases. Nearly 90 percent of all printers owned by American schools were then based on dot-matrix technology, significantly limiting both the speed and quality of digital output, and laser printers were exceedingly rare, especially in elementary and middle schools.

One measure that has been proposed to ameliorate or eliminate the shortage of computer equipment within the schools is the donation by corporations of used computer equipment at the time it is replaced with newer models. While it is possible that such an effort could be beneficial under certain circumstances, the Panel believes that this is not likely to have a major effect on the computer hardware problems now facing American schools for several reasons. First, such equipment would generally be at least one generation behind the then-current state of the art as of the time of donation. Although this might well represent a modest improvement over the current situation in many schools, we believe the "obsolescence gap" between the computers used in American industry and those used in American education should be more aggressively attacked in order to end the technical isolation that has thus far drastically limited the range of software and functionality available to most schools.

Perhaps less obviously, however, the net effective life-cycle cost of donated equipment may actually prove to be higher than would be the case with purchased equipment. Unless a given school receives a large number of identical machines, such donations can raise costs substantially by increasing the number of different platforms that must be integrated, administered, and maintained by school- and district-level personnel. Even in the absence of such considerations, older equipment tends to be more expensive to maintain in usable condition than new machines -- a potentially significant factor, since the average cost of administering and maintaining a computer system over the course of its useful life has been shown to be surprisingly high relative to the value of the hardware itself (as discussed in Section 3.5).

When these less visible costs are taken into consideration, the net value of a corporate equipment donation may in some cases actually be negative particularly after accounting for the loss of public revenue attributable to federal and state tax deductions claimed by the donor.¹⁴ Although the above considerations should not preclude the use of donated equipment under all circumstances,¹⁵ the Panel believes that it would be unrealistic for the Administration to expect such donations to make more than a relatively small contribution overall toward ameliorating the current shortage of modern hardware.

It is also important that educators and policy-makers view the purchase of computer equipment not as a one-time expenditure, but as an ongoing cost. Although technological change in the computer industry is difficult to predict with any certainty, a useful life of between three and five years (which is longer than the typical life cycle in industry) may represent a realistic expectation for our schools, assuming that the criteria for replacement include not only age-related malfunction, but also obsolescence and the inability to support then-current software. In short, it seems inevitable that a significant investment of funds will be required on the local, state, and/or federal level to provide and maintain the sort of computer hardware that our schools are likely to need to support meaningful educational reform.

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3.2 Building Infrastructure

The extensive use of computers, particularly where interconnected by a local area network, imposes requirements on school buildings that were in many cases not anticipated at the time of their construction. "Our building, built in 1948," notes one respondent to a General Accounting Office survey, "was wired for a filmstrip projector."¹⁶ The satisfaction of many (though not all) of these requirements will require extensive and costly rewiring of several sorts.

First, as computer/student ratios continue to drop, the computers, peripheral devices, and other technology installed in each school may draw more current (at least in certain locations) than the AC wiring of many schools can support,¹⁷ requiring the retrofitting of additional power capacity within existing buildings. In addition, most (though not all) current local area networks are based on the use of physical cables for data transmission -- something very few American schools were designed to accommodate.¹⁸ Access to the Internet and other wide area networks will also require that schools be wired for one or more external connections, which may be provided, for example, over telephone or cable television lines.

The vast majority of all American classrooms, however, are not even wired for telephones,¹⁹ much less local area networks and Internet onramps. To make matters worse, many schools have asbestos within their classroom walls, making an already challenging wiring and cable-routing task even more expensive. Although volunteer efforts like the NetDay '96 initiative (which was organized to wire a large number of California schools to the Internet) have illustrated the contribution that community members and cooperative unions can make toward outfitting our schools with the infrastructure necessary to support modern computer networking, it seems unlikely that such efforts can be relied upon as the sole mechanism for providing universal access to technology throughout our nation's schools.

Although wiring once may represent an unavoidable expense, conservative advance planning may at least obviate the need to wire repeatedly to accommodate future growth and unanticipated changes in technology. Although it may be slightly more expensive initially, it is important that resources be made available to allow our schools to install the sorts of flexible and capacious conduits, raceways, and wiring systems that will support the later installation of future generations of higher-speed interconnection technologies (based on fiber optic cable, for example) without the need for extensive surgery on schoolroom walls. In this regard, we would do well to follow the example of hockey player Wayne Gretzky, who has said, "I skate to where I think the puck will be."²⁰

It should also be noted that the placement of significant numbers of computers within the same room can result in enough additional heat dissipation to require air conditioning in schoolrooms that do not currently have such facilities, or to require the provision of additional cooling capacity in those that do. Moreover, air conditioning consumes additional electrical power, adding hidden costs to the expense of installing and operating such environmental control systems.

In short, providing our schools with an educationally optimal configuration of computer and networking equipment will require significant expenditures not only for the purchase and maintenance of that equipment, but for the wiring and upgrading of older school buildings to accommodate new technology. The panel believes, however, that such expenditures represent an important investment in the future of the American public school system that is warranted by the associated economic and social returns that can reasonably be expected.

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3.3 Local Area Networks

Local area networks (LANs) are important not only to connect computers, printers, and other devices together within a given school, facilitating important forms of communication among students, teachers, administrators, and support personnel, but also to provide many or all of these computers with access to systems at remote locations through the Internet or other wide area networks (WANs). A 1992 study reported that only about 20 percent of all school computers were connected to a LAN, though nearly a third of all elementary schools and one-half of all high schools reported that at least some of their computers were interconnected in this manner.²¹

It would appear that the use of locally-networked computers by K-12 schools may be growing at a relatively rapid pace: A (perhaps not entirely comparable) survey conducted shortly thereafter by a different organization found that 44 percent of elementary schools and 66 percent of high schools had local area networks.²² The use of LANs for instructional (as opposed to administrative) purposes would also appear to be enjoying a period of unusually rapid increase. According to a third source, only 5 percent of all public schools used LANs for instruction during the 1991-92 school year; three years later, this figure had risen to 33 percent.²³

While wiring problems remain an obstacle to the provision of more widespread local connectivity, as noted in Section 3.2, it is possible that wireless local networking technologies based on the use of low-power radio frequency communication may ultimately provide a viable alternative for at least some older schools in which physical wiring would be complicated by asbestos or other factors. The trajectory of future decreases in the cost of transceivers and interfaces for wireless networks may be among the determinants of the more widespread adoption of such technologies.

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3.4 Wide Area Networks

About half of all public schools had at least one connection to the Internet as of fall 1995, and another 11 percent to a wide area network that was not connected to the Internet.²⁴ Although it is encouraging that 61 percent of our schools (up from 49 percent just a year before) are now connected to wide area networks (WANs) allowing at least some form of communication with remote sites, these connections are used only modestly by teachers, and are often unavailable for use by students.

While a substantial majority of all schools with Internet connections report that access is available to teachers, for example, a survey commissioned by the National Education Association and other education groups found that only 16 percent of all teachers actually make use of the Internet or online services.²⁵ Even among schools having access to a WAN, 72 percent reported that teachers either never used this network or used it only "to a small extent."²⁶ In cases where WANs are made available for student use, access is often provided only within a centralized library, media center, or computer lab rather than within individual classrooms, where it might be more extensively utilized as part of the process of day-to-day learning.²⁷

Internet access is more commonly available in secondary schools than in elementary schools, and larger schools are more likely to be connected than smaller ones.²⁸ In the vast majority of all schools with Internet access, connections are made through ordinary modems; higher-speed connections are still very uncommon.²⁹ Until greater external network bandwidth becomes more widely available within the schools, many (current and future) Internet applications having an extensive audio and/or graphical component (and in particular, those involving the extensive use of three-dimensional renderings or moving images) will remain too slow for practical use.

Among the principal determinants of the extent to which American schools are able to make use of the Internet and other wide area networks is the availability of reasonably priced telecommunications services of adequate bandwidth to support the interactive use of network-based applications (including those with a substantial multimedia component). A sustained federal commitment to the maintenance of a genuinely competitive telecommunications environment -- not only within the long distance market, but among alternative local carriers as well -- should play a major role in reducing the cost of access for our nation's schools. In addition, however, consideration should be given to measures designed specifically to promote affordable Internet access for American schools, with special attention to those in remote rural areas and to those facing resource limitations that would otherwise preclude the possibility of securing and maintaining such a connection.

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3.5 Systems Administration and Technical Support

It has been estimated that the purchase price of a computer system represents only 20 to 25 percent of the cost of its operation over the period of its useful life within a typical business; the largest part of the life cycle cost of such a system is actually represented by the cost of installation, training, systems administration, user support, and hardware and software maintenance. While the Panel was unable to find reliable data that might shed light on any systematic differences between the operating costs reported in industry and those experienced by the typical elementary or secondary school, it seems likely that the effective life cycle cost of operating a computer within a school environment is in fact an integer multiple of its original acquisition cost, particularly in view of the longer service period typical of computers used within the schools.

Portions of this effective expense may in many schools be incurred in the form of staff time diverted from other, often unrelated functions. An analysis of the 1992 IEA survey data found that only six percent of all elementary schools and three percent of all secondary schools have full-time computer coordinators. Indeed, only about 40 percent of all schools have even a single employee who allocates time in an official capacity to the operation of computer systems.³⁰ In schools having access to a wide area network, support is most commonly provided by a part-time network administrator associated with the school, although some WANs are administered at the district level.³¹ The extent to which limited support for local- and wide-area networks has retarded the widespread utilization of technology within the public schools remains unclear, but experience within the business sector suggests that this may indeed represent a significant obstacle.

Of particular relevance to the schools is the fact that the cost of maintaining a given computer system tends to increase over time, especially when measured relative to the functional capacity or market value of the underlying hardware. While a portion of this increase is attributable to ordinary component- and system-level aging, this effect is exacerbated (again, in value-relative terms) by the use of progressively higher levels of integration within the semiconductor, digital storage, and computer industries. Older equipment uses more integrated circuit chips, more printed circuit boards, and more moving parts (disk drives, cooling fans, and print engines, for example) to realize the same amount of processing power, data storage, and output capability, and system reliability tends to be inversely correlated with component count and with the number of connections between components. This observation has significant implications for initiatives based on the donation to schools of equipment retired from service within corporations, as discussed in Section 3.1.

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4. Software, Content and Pedagogy

"One of the enduring difficulties about technology and education," notes Dr. Martha Stone Wiske, co-director of the Educational Technology Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, "is that a lot of people think about the technology first and the education later, if at all."³² If the federal government is to play a meaningful role in applying technology effectively within the nation's elementary and secondary schools, the deployment of computers and their interconnection within local- and wide-area networks must not be viewed as an end in itself. Indeed, such hardware, while important, is in many ways less central to a discussion of the determinants of favorable outcomes than the educational content, pedagogic models, and organizational framework that define the manner in which it is used.

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4.1 Computer-Based Tutorial Systems

Among the earliest applications of computer technology within the field of education were systems designed to automate certain forms of tutorial learning. Such systems, which were first deployed on an experimental basis during the 1960s, are commonly referred to using the (now confusingly general) term computer-assisted instruction (CAI). In a classical CAI application, short blocks of instructional material are presented to an individual student, interspersed with questions designed to test that student's comprehension of specific elements of the material. Questions must typically be posed within a multiple-choice or "true/false" framework, or in such a way as to admit a simple, concrete answer (such as a numerical quantity) that can be interpreted by the system in a straightforward manner.

Feedback is generally provided to the student as to the accuracy of his or her responses to individual questions, and often as to the degree of mastery demonstrated within a given content area. As noted in Section 2.2, CAI systems typically allow students at least some degree of control over the pace of instruction. Such systems generally also support "branched" structures, in which the student's performance on one question, or degree of mastery of one content area, determines the sequence, and in some cases, the level of difficulty, of the instructional material and questions that follow. Additional time can then be spent on material with which the student is having difficulty, while avoiding needless repetition of subject matter that has already been mastered.

More "intelligent" CAI systems may be capable of inferring a more detailed picture of what the student does and does not yet understand, and of actively helping to diagnose and "debug" the student's misapprehensions and erroneous conceptual models. If a student is having difficulty learning to subtract, for example, the computer may recognize that he or she is systematically failing to "borrow a one," making it possible to offer specific coaching rather than a simple repetition of the original instructional material. While promising early examples of such systems have already been demonstrated in such content areas as mathematics and computer programming, realization of the full potential of this approach will require significant research progress in several areas. In the absence of such progress, it is not clear that highly intelligent tutorial systems will be available for wide deployment within the schools for some time.

Although some of the more recent work on computer-based tutorial systems may well prove useful within a constructivist framework, conventional CAI systems have historically been employed primarily for individual instruction in isolated basic skills, most often in a "drill-and-practice" mode. Instructional sessions have generally focused on a single content area rather than on the integration of a wide range of skills to solve complex problems, and have been limited in duration to the traditional 50-minute class period.

The conventional approach to CAI is often embodied in network-based systems known as integrated learning systems (ILSs), which have typically incorporated computing and networking hardware, systems software, tutorial content, and student record management programs, all provided by the same vendor. As of 1990, approximately 10,000 such systems had been installed in the United States,³³ and penetration is currently estimated at some 30 percent of all American schools. ILS facilities have seen particularly heavy use in remedial instruction, and in the context of programs for the educationally disadvantaged;³⁴ certain (positive and negative) aspects of such applications are discussed in Section 6.

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4.2 The Constructivist Model

The tutorial applications discussed in the previous subsection are for the most part compatible with the pedagogic models traditionally employed within our nation's schools. In recent years, however, many have argued that the use of new technologies to improve the efficiency of traditional instructional methods will result in limited progress at best.³⁵ This view holds that the real promise of technology in education lies in its potential to facilitate fundamental, qualitative changes in the nature of teaching and learning.

While the educational research community has by no means reached consensus on the best way to educate our children, a large part of that community has in recent years converged on a core set of pedagogic principles that form the basis of the constructivist paradigm (introduced briefly in Section 2.2). By contrast with the more traditional view of instruction as a process involving the transmission of facts from an active teacher to a passive student, constructivists believe that learning occurs through a process in which the student plays an active role in constructing the set of conceptual structures that constitute his or her own knowledge base.

Although the intellectual roots of constructivism considerably predate the current educational reform movement, contemporary constructivist thought has been strongly influenced by models of the learning process that have evolved over the past few decades within the cognitive science research community, and which differ in significant ways from those which arose within the theoretical framework of behaviorism. Constructivist theory has given rise to an approach to educational practice that places the locus of initiative and control largely within the student, who typically undertakes substantial, "authentic" tasks, presented in a realistic context, that require the self-directed application of various sorts of knowledge and skills for their successful execution. Such activities often involve student-initiated inquiries driven at least in part by the student's own curiosity,³⁶ and are designed to motivate students in a more immediate way than is typical of traditional curricula based largely on the transmission of isolated facts.

Constructivist curricula often emphasize group activities designed in part to facilitate the acquisition of collaborative skills of the sort that are often required within contemporary work environments. Such group activities may offer students of varying ages and ability levels, and having different interests and prior experience, the opportunity to teach each other -- a mode of interaction that has been found to offer significant benefits to both tutor and tutee. Explicit attention is also given to the cultivation of higher-order thinking skills, including "meta-level" learning -- the acquisition of knowledge about how to learn, and how to recognize and "debug" faulty mental models.

It would be misleading to suggest that the educational research community is unanimous and unambivalent in endorsing the principles and practice of constructivism without qualification. Some³⁷ have argued, for example, that project-based learning techniques may be best suited to highly qualified, highly motivated teachers, and that the extensive use of these techniques by other educators may prove disappointing. Others³⁸ have raised concerns about the elimination or profound de-emphasis of externally assigned, linearly sequenced instructional content (textbooks, lectures, and conventional audio-visual materials, for example), pointing out that the authors and conveyors of such content have often devoted considerable attention to the choice of a presentation order they believe is likely to facilitate understanding.

However compelling we may believe the argument in favor of constructivist practice to be, and however plausible we may find its theoretical underpinnings, the proposition that constructivist techniques, as currently understood, will in fact result in more favorable (in some sense) educational outcomes must still be regarded as largely (though not entirely) a collection of exciting and promising hypotheses that have yet to be rigorously confirmed through extensive, long-term, large-scale, carefully controlled experimentation involving representative student populations within actual schools.³⁹ While the foundations of constructivism provide a rich source of plausible and theoretically compelling hypotheses, the fact remains that the question of how best to teach our children remains an empirical question that has not yet been fully answered.

While the Panel is thus unable to make a confident and definitive statement regarding the superiority of the constructivist approach,⁴⁰ it believes there to be a higher likelihood that many or all of the essential elements of this approach could play a major role in improving the quality of our nation's elementary and secondary schools. Although technology is likely to find use within a number of more traditional instructional roles as well, it seems likely (though not yet certain) that the student-centered constructivist paradigm may ultimately offer the most fertile ground for the application of technology to education.

In order to optimally cultivate this ground, schools will need to make changes that extend far beyond the mere installation of a network of computers. While some benefits may be obtained by using information technologies to pursue existing curricular objectives or by adding new material to an existing course, the richest harvest is likely to accrue from a fundamental restructuring -- at least at the level of the individual course, and ideally, across disciplinary boundaries as well. Such fundamental restructuring, however, is likely to prove complex, difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, and may encounter resistance from parents, educators, and the general public, particularly to the extent that such changes conflict with commonly held beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning.

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4.3 Constructivist Applications of Technology

Within the constructivist paradigm, information technology is not typically used to orchestrate the instructional process in a strictly "top-down" manner, but rather serves largely to facilitate student-initiated and mixed-initiative projects, inquiries, explorations, and problem-solving activities. By way of example (and without any attempt at comprehensiveness), computers and networks might be used within a constructivist framework to implement:

• an environment for the simulation of any of a wide range of devices and machines, physical systems, work environments, human and animal populations, industrial processes, or other natural or artificial systems.
  
  
• an information retrieval or database search engine capable of extracting information from a single system or from sites distributed across the global Internet
  
  
• a tool for the symbolic manipulation or graphical display of mathematical functions, equations, and proofs
  
  
• a facility for the collection, examination and analysis of statistical data (which might be used in connection with any of a wide range of experimental or survey applications)
  
  
• a word processing, document preparation, or outlining system
  
  
• an environment for domain-specific problem-solving
  
  
• a vehicle for various forms of interactive exhibits and demonstrations
  
  
• an environment for the facilitation of group collaboration
  
  
• a flexible laboratory instrument supporting the collection of scientific data from various physical sensors and the flexible manipulation of this data under student control
  
  
• a general or application-specific numerical spreadsheet
  
  
• a "digital workbench" for the creation of musical, artistic, and other creative works
  
  
• a user-friendly environment for the acquisition of basic programming and system design skills
  
  
• a computer-aided engineering workstation supporting the design of mechanical or electrical devices, architectural projects, or even organic molecules
  
  
• an interactive hypertext encyclopedia incorporating various forms of multi-media illustrations, and supporting the rapid traversal of cross-reference links, or
  
  
• a medium for communication with teachers, parents, community members, experts, and other students, both locally and over great distances, and for the organization and coordination of group projects
  
  

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4.4 The Human Element

If computers are destined to play an increasingly important role in education over the next 20 years, it is natural to ask what roles will be played by human beings. Although it seems clear that the expanded use of technology in education will have significant implications for teachers, students, parents, and community members, there is reason to believe that interpersonal interactions among all these groups will be at least as important to the educational process of 2017 as they are in 1997. Indeed, the changing nature of these interactions is probably as central to the promise of new educational technologies as the hardware, software, and curricular elements outlined above.

The use of technology within the framework of the constructivist paradigm is likely to have important implications for the day-to-day role of the teacher. When a high school student using the Internet to complete a self-directed project is able to quickly gain greater familiarity with the particular subject area in question than her teacher, for example, the teacher's traditional role as a font of knowledge is likely to become less relevant. Because different students may be conducting different inquiries at any given point in time, this traditional role may be supplanted in part by one in which the teacher spends a considerable amount of time monitoring the activities of individual students (in part by wandering around the classroom and looking at their computer screens), helping them to "debug" their emerging "mental models," and providing encouragement, direction and assistance as needed.

And what about the students? Will their increasing use of educational technologies deprive them of the opportunity to develop important interpersonal and social skills? Available evidence suggests that this should probably not be a source of concern. First, it seems unlikely at this point that the students in a well-designed technology-rich school environment will spend most of their time sitting in front of their computers. When one research group provided essentially unlimited computer access to each student in a number of experimental classrooms, for example, it found that students spent an average of approximately 30 percent of their time at the computer.⁴¹

Moreover, this research group observed a significant increase in the degree of interpersonal interaction when technology was introduced into the classroom, reporting that the computers typically served as the focal point for extensive collaborative activities, and that students frequently approached each other to exchange ideas, and called each other over to show off what they had done and explain how they had done it.⁴² Software can also be specifically designed to teach collaborative and cooperative skills, and to support group projects and learning exercises. In short, any fears we might have that the increasing use of computers in education will produce a generation of isolated nerds would seem to be unsupported by currently available evidence.

In considering the human side of educational technology, it is also worth noting that elementary and secondary education takes place within a context that includes not only the student and teacher, but also the parents and other members of the surrounding community. Substantial evidence now exists suggesting that parental and community involvement in the educational process has a significant positive effect on educational outcomes.⁴³ If at least basic computing resources (perhaps based on television set-top boxes or a new generation of "network computers") and Internet connectivity could be made available within the homes of those with K-12 aged children, parents would be able to receive school announcements from teachers and administrators, to communicate more easily and frequently with teachers, and to otherwise involve themselves more actively in the education of their children. The cultivation of such parental involvement may be particularly important for those students whose economic or environmental circumstances would otherwise place them at increased risk of educational failure.

There is also a growing consensus that technology should be applied in such a way as to foster broader community-wide involvement in the educational process. The linking of elementary and secondary schools with research universities, public libraries, and private companies, for example, could make valuable educational resources available to both students and teachers while simultaneously building awareness within each community of the needs of its local schools. "Real-world" projects initiated by outside organizations often generate considerable enthusiasm among students, and frequently prove unusually effective from an educational perspective.

Some educators have even discussed the possibility of instituting "tele-apprenticeship" or "tele-mentoring" programs involving brief, but relatively frequent interactions between students and other community members that would be impractical in the absence of networking technologies due to travel time considerations. Conversely, high-tech schools could serve the broader community by making their computing and networking facilities available to local residents outside of school hours, or by offering state-of-the-art job training or lifelong learning programs tailored to community members, thus amortizing infrastructure costs over a larger effective user base while helping to foster intrinsically valuable community integration.

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4.5 How Technology is Currently Used

In examining the ways in which information technology is currently used within the schools, it is useful to distinguish between efforts that attempt to teach students about computers and those that use computers to teach things that may or may not have any relation to technology. While basic "computer literacy" will indeed be important for twenty-first-century Americans, and while computer science, computer engineering, computer programming, and computer networking are all important areas of study, the Panel has concerned itself only incidentally with issues related to teaching about information technology. Rather, the focus of the Panel's investigations has been on the ways in which interactive computing and networking can be used at the K-12 level to facilitate learning in general.

It should be noted, however, that "computer education" currently accounts for a substantial fraction of the current use of information technologies by elementary and secondary schools. A 1992 IEA survey of school computer coordinators, for example, found that some 41 percent of the use of computers by American K-12 students involved the acquisition of keyboarding skills; instruction in the use of word processing, database management, spreadsheet, and other software tools; and the study of computer programming. Academic subjects (defined to exclude vocational instruction) accounted for 54 percent of all usage at the elementary school level, but only 31 percent within the nation's high schools.⁴⁴

At the elementary school level, computers are often employed for teaching isolated basic skills and for playing educational games. Word processing is used to a significant extent at all levels, but in most cases as part of an effort to teach computer skills, and not as a tool for writing in connection with English, social studies, or other academic classes.⁴⁵ The situation would appear to be similar in the case of spreadsheet use, which is generally treated as an aspect of computer literacy, and less commonly integrated into, for example, the math or science curriculum.⁴⁶ It should be noted that some schools have, in fact, integrated computers extensively and effectively within many aspects of the learning process, in many cases relying on information technology as an essential element of educational reform. Such schools, however, would thus far appear to represent a very small fraction of our nation's K-12 institutions.

Although less is known about the precise ways in which wide area networks are currently being used within "ordinary" American schools (as distinguished from the handful of technology leaders that have received special attention within the educational technology community, and in some cases, in the general media), the 1995 NCES survey provides some interesting indications. Among schools with access to the Internet (about half of all public schools as of fall 1995), the most popular application is electronic mail, which is available in 93 percent of all such schools. While e-mail is generally available to administrators and (to a somewhat lesser extent) teachers, however, the majority of all schools with Internet e-mail capabilities do not make this facility available to students.

A majority of such schools also have access to Internet news groups, resource location applications (such as Gopher, Archie, and Veronica), and World Wide Web browsers (such as Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, or Microsoft's Internet Explorer). Once again, however, such applications are more commonly accessible to teachers and administrators than to students.⁴⁷ Little quantitative data is available at present about the frequency with which the Internet is used by the schools to access different sorts of information resources stored on remote sites. It seems clear, however, that the realization of its full potential for providing K-12 students and teachers with access to text, images, and audio material now held by libraries, museums, and other institutions will await the digitization of a much larger fraction of the wealth of information now available only in other forms.⁴⁸

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4.6 The Educational Software Market

There is widespread agreement that one of the principal factors now limiting the extensive and effective use of technology within American schools is the relative dearth of high-quality computer software and digital content designed specifically for that purpose. While this problem is encountered by educators at all K-12 levels, it would appear to be particularly severe within our nation's secondary schools, which typically demand a broader diversity of instructional content.

Growth in the traditional ILS market, which has historically been quite robust, has recently begun to level off, leading to cutbacks in internal research and development spending by the manufacturers of such systems. Unfortunately, these cutbacks are occurring at a time when changing educational goals and a reformist emphasis on higher-order thinking skills are posing new challenges for educational software manufacturers that will be difficult to meet without such R&D expenditures. A number of major ILS vendors have been unable to justify such expenditures in light of various problems (discussed below) that they perceive within the market.⁴⁹

The commercial availability of software and information resources designed to support student-centered, constructivist approaches to education is even more limited, and there is little evidence to date of large-scale, well-funded efforts by either traditional educational software vendors, multimedia developers, or textbook publishers to develop such content.⁵⁰ Moreover, in spite of a general appreciation of the potential for long-term growth in the market for educational software, there has thus far been only limited activity within the venture capital community aimed at launching startup companies focused on the provision of software designed for such pedagogic approaches, and targeted specifically at the nation's elementary and secondary schools.

A rather long and superficially disparate list of factors has been advanced to account for the current problems within the K-12 educational software market. The Panel believes, however, that most of these problems may be best regarded as arising largely from one or more of the following five underlying factors:

• Inadequate software acquisition budgets. Estimates of 1995 school expenditures for instructional software range from $470 million to $724 million,⁵¹ representing between $10 and $16 per student-year, or less than one-third of one percent of all educational expenditures. If technology is to play a significant role in improving the quality of American education, this figure will have to be increased very substantially. Assuming no (inflation-adjusted) increase in total spending, priorities will have to be altered to allow funds now committed to other budget categories to be redeployed -- a process that is complicated in many states and school districts by various statutory and procedural constraints. In the absence of such a reallocation, software developers may not find adequate incentives to justify the substantial research and development expenditures that will be required to produce a new generation of school-based educational software products.
  
  
• Market fragmentation. The market for school-based instructional software encompasses a wide range of academic subject areas (particularly at the secondary school level) and grade and skill levels. While this inherent diversity is arguably no greater (relative to the size of the potential market) than is found in various other software markets, the market for school-based educational software market (in contrast with the more robust market for home-based "edutainment" software) is further fragmented by idiosyncratic differences among the product specifications and other requirements imposed by the various states and school districts. Although it may not be feasible (for political reasons, among others) to eliminate these idiosyncratic requirements or to substitute a universally applicable set of national standards, federal guidance in the promulgation of standards could play a significant role in minimizing this potentially avoidable form of market fragmentation, providing incentives for private firms to develop software targeted toward a smaller set of more substantial submarkets.
  
  
• Lack of modern hardware in schools. Although America's roughly 50 million K-12 students would seem to represent a very attractive market for software developers, the effective size of this market is at present constrained by the limited size of the current installed base of hardware, and by the age of much of the equipment that is currently installed. Since effective market size is a critical determinant of private sector investment, the limited penetration of state-of-the-art hardware has thus far impeded research and development activities that might otherwise have led to more and better educational software products.⁵² Unfortunately, this leads to a certain circularity: While software vendors are reluctant to develop products in the absence of a substantial base of modern hardware on which to run them, educators and policy-makers are reluctant to appropriate additional funds for the acquisition, maintenance, and timely replacement of hardware in the absence of a demonstrably effective base of educational software. As discussed in Section 9, the federal government may be well positioned to play a catalytic role in breaking this cycle.
  
  
• Procurement-related problems. The procedures used by various states to acquire textbooks and other educational materials are in many cases poorly suited to the acquisition of computer software and digital information resources. This is a particular problem in the 22 "adoption" states (primarily in the southern part of the country and in California), in which textbooks and other instructional materials must be approved by the state prior to consideration for adoption by individual districts and schools. Such approvals are often granted only once every five or more years -- a considerable period within the rapidly changing software industry. Applying for approval within all adoption states can also be quite expensive. Each such state may charge an application fee of as much as $5,000 for each product to be considered for adoption, and many require that a number of computers be made available at the expense of the developer for state-level testing. In some states, the procurement process is further complicated by unusual (by private sector standards) mandated payment terms, or by well-intentioned "equity pricing" rules that, when applied to computer software, compel the vendor to charge the same license fee to each school, regardless of the number of enrolled students.
  
  
• Innovation-related economic externalities. As noted above, a substantial investment in research and development is likely to be necessary if effective educational software -- and in particular, software supporting new pedagogic approaches of the sort recommended by many experts is to be made available to the schools. Economic theory predicts, however, that private firms will systematically underinvest (relative to an optimal aggregate industry-wide level) in research and development to the extent they are unable to capture the full benefit accruing from any such activities that might ultimately prove successful.⁵³ Because innovations in educational software constitute a form of intellectual property that cannot be fully appropriated by any one firm (since the marketing and use of innovative software inevitably results in the dissemination of information of value to competitors), an economically optimal level of research is likely to be conducted only in the presence of public funding at the highest level of taxing authority (the federal government, in the case of the United States). While federal funding (especially in the form of grants provided by the National Science Foundation) has already been used to develop promising new types of software for use in math and science education, a considerably higher level of research will be required even in those subject areas to compensate for this form of market failure, while funding in the language arts, social studies, the creative arts, and other content areas has thus far been minimal.
  
  

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5. Teachers and Technology

As schools continue to acquire more and better hardware and software, the benefit to students increasingly will depend on the skill with which some three million teachers are able to use these new tools. In order to make effective use of educational technology, teachers will have to master a variety of powerful tools, redesign their lesson plans around technology-enhanced resources, solve the logistical problem of how to teach a class full of students with a smaller number of computers, and take on a complex new role in the technologically transformed classroom. Yet teachers currently receive little technical, pedagogic or administrative support for these fundamental changes, and few colleges of education adequately prepare their graduates to use information technologies in their teaching. As a result, most teachers are left largely on their own as they struggle to integrate technology into their curricula.

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5.1 What Teachers Need

Among teachers who report having one or more computer systems readily available at school, only 62 percent use a computer regularly for instruction.⁵⁴ Moreover, when teachers do make use of information technologies, they are often used for either teaching students about computers or for drill and practice sessions focusing on the acquisition of isolated basic skills, as noted in Section 4.5. The more ambitious and promising pedagogic applications of computers discussed in Section 4.3 call for considerably more skill from the teacher, who must select appropriate software, effectively integrate technology into the curriculum, and devise ways of assessing student work based on potentially complex individual and group projects. Not surprisingly, most teachers report that computers initially make their job more difficult.⁵⁵ Despite the daunting challenge of using computers and networks appropriately within an educational context, however, teachers commonly report that they have not received adequate preparation in the effective use of computers within the classroom.⁵⁶

Part of the problem arises from the fact that school districts frequently purchase hardware and software without allocating sufficient funds to help teachers learn to use the new equipment within an educational context. Although a consensus is emerging that school computers are likely to be underused or poorly used if less than 30 percent of the computer technology budget is allocated to professional development,⁵⁷ a 1993 survey by Market Data Retrieval found that only 15 percent of the typical computer systems budget is in fact devoted to staff instruction.⁵⁸ The State of Florida has addressed this disparity by requiring that recipients of its educational technology grants set aside at least 30 percent of all grant funds for staff development.⁵⁹ The Panel believes that similar provisions should be considered for incorporation in applicable federal programs, and that the Administration should assume a leadership role in encouraging other states and localities to do the same.

When teachers do receive instruction on the use of new technology, the form and content of the courses leave much to be desired. According to one survey, 46 percent of all educational technology courses are given as half-day workshops, and 79 percent of these courses focus on hardware, Internet usage, or a specific piece of software.⁶⁰ Teachers often have a negative reaction to the narrowly technical orientation of most technology-related courses, which show them how to operate a computer, but not how to use computers to enhance their teaching.⁶¹ Returning to the classroom from what are typically semi-annual encounters with such courses, they are generally unprepared to handle the diverse logistical and curricular challenges they encounter within a technology-rich environment.

In the Panel's view, what teachers actually need is in-depth, sustained assistance as they work to integrate computer use into the curriculum and confront the tension between traditional methods of instruction and new pedagogic methods that make extensive use of technology. Such assistance should include not only purely technical support, but pedagogic support as well, ideally including observation within the classrooms of successful technology-using teachers, periodic consultation with more experienced mentors, and ongoing communication with other teachers grappling with similar challenges.

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5.2 Potential Modes of Support

One particularly important resource for the development of teacher expertise in the use of educational technologies is on-site assistance from a full-time computer coordinator. Less than five percent of all schools, however, have such a full-time professional on staff.⁶² Moreover, computer coordinators spend over half their time teaching students and only twenty percent of their time helping teachers, selecting software, or writing lesson plans.⁶³ Most teachers, however, cannot use computers effectively unless someone is available to help not only with the technical problems that are likely to arise from time to time, but also with the deeper pedagogic challenges of choosing software, organizing projects that make use of technology, and learning how to guide students in the use of computer-based resources.

If a school cannot afford to hire a full-time technology coordinator to assist its teachers, it may be possible to provide adequate (though perhaps suboptimal) technical and pedagogic support at the district level. The 153 schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky, for example, are served by a Computer Education Support Unit staffed by 22 professionals who maintain a technical support hotline and work directly with teachers to encourage and improve the use of technology in the classroom.⁶⁴ Another option is to intensively train several teachers at each school who can then function as a source of expertise for their colleagues. It should be noted, however, that the provision of such training and assistance will take time away from the other responsibilities of these teachers -- an implicit cost that should be realistically assessed in comparing the alternatives for providing technological support to the rest of the faculty.

Cause for optimism, however, may be found in certain contributions that technology itself may ultimately make to the development of expertise in the educational applications of computers and networks. First, the Panel expects that over time, educational software will evolve in such a way as to make less extensive demands on the teacher. In this regard, it is worth noting that the dissemination of computer usage through progressively broader segments of the population has historically been less a function of increasing technical expertise within the general population than of the development of software that requires less technical expertise. Ongoing improvements in processing speed, memory capacity, user interface design, and educational applications can be expected to result in software that both teachers and students can use with less training, and more extensive support for curricular integration is likely to be provided within the application package itself.

Information technology may also help teachers to recover at least some of the time they have invested in deploying technology on behalf of their students. Some (though certainly not all) types of educational software, for example, may ultimately enable students to spend part of the school day learning with less continuous attention from a teacher.⁶⁵ Computing and networking technologies also have the potential to streamline many aspects of a teacher's daily responsibilities, facilitating the development of instructional materials, the recording and assessment of student progress, and access to various forms of information resources.⁶⁶

In addition, technology may ultimately play a direct role in supporting the professional development functions discussed in this section. It has been estimated, for example, that online seminars conducted over the Internet might prepare teachers to use technology at roughly half the cost of conventional courses for which the teachers must be physically present,⁶⁷ and equally important, might make it feasible to provide opportunities for followup consultation and mentoring on an ongoing basis without the prohibitive travel expenses that would be associated with repeated face-to-face meetings. The Internet also provides an excellent medium for various forms of communication among teachers themselves, including the sharing not only of ideas, but of actual lesson plans and curricular materials as well.

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5.3 The Problem of Insufficient Teacher Time

If teachers were given adequate instruction in the art of computer-enhanced pedagogy and had access to on-site assistance as needed, they would be in a better position to reap the benefits of educational technology, but one major obstacle would remain: a lack of sufficient time in their schedules to become familiar with available hardware, software, and content; to prepare technology-related material for use in the classroom; and to share ideas on technology use with other teachers.⁶⁸ In a 1989 survey of 600 fourth- through twelfth-grade teachers conducted by the Center for Technology in Education, respondents indicated that whereas high student/computer ratios had posed the most significant barriers to the effective use of educational technology in the past, the greatest current obstacle was a lack of sufficient time to develop lessons that use computers.⁶⁹

On average, teachers have only ten minutes of scheduled preparation time for each hour they teach.⁷⁰ Since this is generally insufficient to adequately prepare for their classroom responsibilities, they typically spend additional hours outside the school day preparing lessons and grading student work, resulting in an average of 47 hours of work per week.⁷¹ Given such schedules, most teachers find it extremely difficult to reshape their teaching on an ongoing basis around a rapid series of technological innovations.⁷²

While some of the technology available to teachers -- application packages designed to provide assistance with various administrative, record-keeping, and student assessment tasks, for example -- may free up a certain amount of time, this effect is unlikely to offset the additional time required to effectively utilize computers on an ongoing basis. Estimates formulated by various researchers⁷³ suggest that it will take the typical teacher between three and six years to fully integrate information technologies into his or her teaching activities, and ongoing technological changes are likely to ensure that the learning curve never levels off completely. Unless additional time can be made available through the elimination or de-emphasis of other, less critical tasks, such demands are likely to represent a significant ongoing obstacle to the effective utilization of educational technology.

The problem of insufficient teacher time encompasses both a logistical question (how to restructure the school day to give teachers time to develop technology-related teaching skills) and an economic question (how to pay for the additional time associated with technology-related professional development and class preparation). To illustrate the magnitude of the latter challenge, if all of our nation's public K-12 schools were to set aside two hours per week for technology-related curriculum design, as is the case in Arizona's Agua Fria Union High School,⁷⁴ technology-related educational expenditures would increase by about $9 billion per year -- more than tripling by comparison with current spending levels.⁷⁵ Although technology itself may help to mitigate these problems, the (direct and/or opportunity) cost of the time that will be required for teachers to incorporate technology effectively within the curriculum will present a significant challenge -- particularly during an initial transition period -- to the effective utilization of educational technologies.

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5.4 Technology in the Education Schools

Over 200,000 new teachers enter the profession each year, and there is a 50 percent turnover in the teaching force approximately every 15 years.⁷⁶ While advances in underlying technologies, educational software, and pedagogic methods will result in an ongoing need for in-service training, colleges of education have a valuable opportunity to introduce future teachers to the use of educational technology before the demands of an actual teaching position begin to impinge on the time available for such training.

Judging solely from teacher certification requirements in the various states, it would at first appear that education students receive more technology-related instruction than do active teachers: Eighteen states require pre-service technology training, while only two require in-service technology training.⁷⁷ Pre-service requirements, however, can typically be satisfied by completing a course on how to operate a computer, or by taking a "methods" course in which educational technology is discussed, but never actually used by either the professor or the students. As a result, even in states with a technology-related certification requirement, new teachers typically graduate with no experience in using computers to teach, and little knowledge of available software and content. The Office of Technology Assessment summarized the current situation concisely: "Overall, teacher education programs in the United States do not prepare graduates to use technology as a teaching tool."⁷⁸

Colleges of education fail to instruct their students in the use of educational technology for reasons that mirror some of the major obstacles to the spread of technology at the K-12 level, including the inadequate allocation of funds for hardware and software, minimal technology-related professional development for the education school faculty, and a lack of time for professors of education to restructure their courses. Education schools generally have the advantage of better technical support (often provided through the campus computer center) than elementary and secondary schools, but research, publishing, and other academic responsibilities place additional demands on the faculty, thus slowing the process of curricular reform.⁷⁹

The Panel believes that the principal focus of an education school's technology program should be the ways in which elementary and secondary school teachers can use information technologies to facilitate thinking and learning by K-12 students. Nonetheless, given that K-12 teachers will find it difficult to help their students make effective use of computing and networking technologies if they have gained little experience doing so themselves, any element of the education school curriculum that affords prospective teachers the experience of making profitable use of information systems is likely to increase the probability of effective later use within a professional context. Colleges of education should be encouraged to find ways to reward faculty members who include new technologies in the methods or content of their courses. Specialized degree programs in educational technology should also be encouraged, both to address the need for computer coordinators capable of providing teachers with more than purely technical support and to foster the development of a nucleus of technological expertise within the education faculty.⁸⁰

Education students should also be given the opportunity to observe the use of educational technology and to practice teaching with technology in K-12 schools. If the elementary and secondary schools that are available for student teacher placement have not yet effectively integrated technology into their own curricula, education students may be able to obtain some (though certainly not all) of the same benefit by studying examples of technology-rich pedagogy on videotape or interactive videodiscs. Indeed, such materials may be useful even when technology-rich placements are available, since they may enable education students to analyze complex classroom events more closely than would be permitted by real-time observation. Repeated viewings and discussions of particular teacher-student interactions, supplemented by exercises in which the video is stopped and education students are asked what they would do, can yield considerable insight into essential issues involved in effective technology use.⁸¹

Funding decisions at the federal level could have a significant impact on the degree to which America's education schools are capable of producing teachers who are able to make effective use of educational technology. In the past, federal funding has not been available for pre-service teacher development at levels comparable to those associated with in-service training, and Federal support for technology-related teacher development in general has been described as "highly variable from year to year, piecemeal in nature, and lacking in clear strategy or consistent policy."⁸² Federal grants targeted toward both the extensive use of modern information technologies within our colleges of education and the inclusion of educational technology as an integral part of the education school curriculum would go a long way toward insuring that America's future teachers are able to provide the next generation of Americans with the best possible education.

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6. Economic Considerations

While funding by no means represents the only challenge that will have to be overcome if the potential of educational technology is to be realized, most of the other challenges would be far less formidable if cost were not an issue. As a result of current budgetary pressures, however, along with a persistent historical pattern of significant inflation-adjusted increases in educational expenditures, economic considerations have in fact assumed a position of central importance in the ongoing deliberations surrounding the topic of educational reform.

In this section, we compare estimates of current technology spending for K-12 education with projections of the expenditures that will likely be required in order to capture substantial benefits. We then briefly consider the potential role and likely limitations of technology in improving the productivity of the educational enterprise, and end with a brief discussion of the analysis of federal education expenditures in terms of return on investment.

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6.1 Current Technology Expenditures

While the estimation of current annual spending on educational technology is complicated by differences in the types of expenditures included within this category by different observers, the available data suggests that public elementary and secondary schools in the United States spent somewhere between $3.5 and $4 billion on computing and networking hardware, wiring and infrastructural enhancements, software and information resources, systems support, and technology-related professional development during the 1995-96 school year.

A study conducted by McKinsey & Company for the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council⁸³ put the corresponding figure at approximately $3.3 billion during the 1994-95 school year, including expenditures of about $1.4 billion for hardware,⁸⁴ $800 million for software and other content,⁸⁵ $500 million for local interconnection,⁸⁶ $200 million for wide-area networking,⁸⁷ $300 million for professional development,⁸⁸ and $100 million for systems operation.⁸⁹ These McKinsey estimates appear to be in rough agreement (after adjustment for differences in included expense categories) with those reported by several other researchers,⁹⁰ and have been adjusted upward to account for what would appear to be a relatively rapid current growth rate in arriving at our estimates for 1995-96.

The McKinsey estimate of $3.3 billion in technology-related expenditures during the 1994-95 school year represents only 1.3 percent of the roughly $248 billion⁹¹ that was spent during that period on public K-12 education (excluding capital outlays, debt service, and state administrative costs). Expressing these aggregate numbers in more familiar terms, of the $5,623 our public schools spent during the 1994-95 school year⁹² on each of the 44 million students⁹³ who were enrolled as of the beginning of that year,⁹⁴ just $75 was allocated to technology-related expenditures. While a number of complex issues arise in the course of comparing educational institutions with private sector enterprises, it seems clear that our public schools allocate a considerably smaller share of their financial resources to computer and networking technologies than do most information-based industries.

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6.2 Projected Cost of Educational Technology

Estimates of the cost of introducing information technology into U.S. classrooms and effectively using such technology to improve the quality of American education vary widely, in large part as a result of differences in assumptions regarding the level and nature of technology usage and the provisions made for technology-related professional development. After adjustment for these factors, however, the projections of most observers are reasonably consistent, and provide a basis for assessing the magnitude of the funding that would be required to have a meaningful impact on our nation's schools.

In the McKinsey/NIIAC study, cost projections were formulated for models based on four different levels of technology usage. The lowest level, which assumed an average of 25 computers per school, all deployed within a single Internet-connected computer lab or multimedia room, was estimated to involve an initial acquisition cost of $11 billion nationwide, with an additional $4 billion per year required for operation and maintenance. Adding a computer and modem for every teacher was projected to double the initial deployment cost and increase ongoing operating expenses to $7 billion. A model in which networked computers are installed in half of all classrooms (at a density of one computer for every five students), and the central lab is eliminated, was estimated to entail $29 billion in initial costs and $8 billion per year for operation and maintenance. A similar model in which computers are deployed in all classrooms (at the same one-to-five ratio) was estimated to require $47 billion initially and annual operating expenses of $14 billion.⁹⁵ A percentage breakdown of McKinsey's projected costs by category is shown in Table 6.1 for the lowest ("Laboratory") and highest ("Classroom") levels of technology use.

Table 6.1 Breakdown of McKinsey/NIAAC Cost Projections96
Cost Category	Laboratory Model		Classroom Model
	Initial	Annual	Initial	Annual
Hardware	34%	17%	51%	14%
Software, Other Content	20	26	14	21
Local Interconnection	12	5	13	4
Wide-Area Networking	7	15	4	7
Professional Development	19	31	14	41
Systems Operation	8	6	4	13

A 1995 study conducted by the RAND Corporation examined six "technology leader" schools (including three of those profiled in Section 2.3) and attempted to estimate the cost of providing similar capabilities within a typical American school. Hardware and software investments were amortized over a five-year period to obtain annualized expenditure projections; equipment costs were based not on the historical cost of each school's actual inventory, but on the prices of roughly equivalent hardware as of the time of the study. Infrastructure costs were amortized over a ten-year period, while staff costs, professional development, materials and supplies were treated as ordinary (non-capitalized) expenses. Hardware and personnel costs were found to dominate other technology-related expenditures, and to account for much of the variation among the six model schools, whose replication costs ranged from a low of $142 to a high of $415 per student-year.⁹⁷

To facilitate the identification of an approximate consensus range for the projected cost of introducing technology into American elementary and secondary schools, we have (somewhat arbitrarily, and at the expense of a rather Procrustean assault on some of the original data) converted the above projections, along with those of several other authors, into annualized cost figures based on the amortization of capital acquisition and other startup costs over a five-year period. The resulting figures are presented in Table 6.2.

Table 6.2 Cost Projections of Various Authors
Source	Project Cost/Year98
Glennan and Melmed99	$9 to $22 billion
Harvey100	$7 to $15 billion
Keltner and Ross101	$7 to $21 billion
McKinsey102	$6 to $23 billion