Netp2010

Transforming American Education

Learning
Powered by Technology

National Education Technology Plan 2010

U.S. Department of Education
Office of Educational Technology

Section 2422 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act specifies that the secretary shall
update and publish, in a form readily accessible to the public, a national long-range technology plan
that describes how the secretary will promote: (a) higher student academic achievement through the
integration of advanced technologies, including emerging technologies, into curricula and instruction;
(b) increased access to technology for teaching and learning for schools with a high number or
percentage of children from families with incomes below the poverty line; and (c) the use of technology
to assist in the implementation of state systemic reform strategies. In addition, Section 2422 specifies
that this report should also include a description of joint activities of the Department of Education and other
federal departments or agencies that will promote the use of technology in education. In accordance with that
requirement, the Office of Educational Technology of the Department of Education is publishing this report.

This report was produced under U.S. Department of Education Contract No. ED-04-CO-0040, Task
Order 0002, with SRI International. Bernadette Adams Yates served as the contracting officer’s
representative. Mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations in this report does not
imply endorsement by the U.S. government. This publication also contains URLs for information created
and maintained by private organizations. This information is provided for the reader’s convenience. The
U.S. Department of Education is not responsible for controlling or guaranteeing the accuracy, relevance,
timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Further, the inclusion of information or URLs
does not reflect the importance of the organization, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed,
or products or services offered.

U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology
Arne Duncan Karen Cator
Secretary Director

November 2010

This report is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce this report in whole or in part is granted.
While permission to reprint this publication is not necessary, the suggested citation is: U.S. Department
of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by
Technology, Washington, D.C., 2010.

To order copies of this report, write:
ED Pubs
Education Publications Center
P.O. Box 22207
Alexandria, VA 22304

To order via fax, dial 703-605-6794. You may also call toll-free: 1-877-433-7827 (1-877-4-ED-PUBS). If
877 service is not yet available in your area, call 1-800-872-5327 (1-800-USA-LEARN). Those who use
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To order online, point your Internet browser to: www.edpubs.ed.gov.

This report is also available on the Department’s Web site at http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/
ppss/reports.html.

On request, this publication is available in alternative formats, such as Braille, large print, or computer
diskette. For more information, please contact the Department’s Alternate Format Center at 202-260-
0852 or 202-260-0818.

Contents

Letter From the Secretary v

National Education Technology Plan Technical Working Group vii

Executive Summary ix

Introduction 1

Learning: Engage and Empower 9

Assessment: Measure What Matters 25

Teaching: Prepare and Connect 39

Infrastructure: Access and Enable 51

Productivity: Redesign and Transform 63

RD: Innovate and Scale 75

References 81

Appendix A. How This Plan Was Developed A-1

Appendix B. Contributors B-1

Appendix C. Acknowledgments C-1

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology iii

National Education Technology Plan
Technical Working Group

Daniel E. Atkins, University of Michigan

John Bennett, Akron Public Schools

John Seely Brown, Deloitte Center for the Edge

Aneesh Chopra, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Chris Dede, Harvard University

Barry Fishman, University of Michigan

Louis Gomez, University of Pittsburgh

Margaret Honey, New York Hall of Science

Yasmin Kafai, University of Pennsylvania

Maribeth Luftglass, Fairfax County Public Schools

Roy Pea, Stanford University

Jim Pellegrino, University of Illinois, Chicago

David Rose, Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)

Candace Thille, Carnegie Mellon University

Brenda Williams, West Virginia Department of Education

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology vii

Executive Summary

Education is the key to America’s economic growth and prosperity and to our ability to
compete in the global economy. It is the path to good jobs and higher earning power for
Americans. It is necessary for our democracy to work. It fosters the cross-border, cross-
cultural collaboration required to solve the most challenging problems of our time.

Under the Obama administration, education has become an urgent priority driven by two
clear goals:
• We will raise the proportion of college graduates from where it now stands (around

41 percent) so that 60 percent of our population holds a two-year or four-year degree by 2020.

• We will close the achievement gap so that all students graduate from high school ready

to succeed in college and careers.

These are aggressive goals and achieving them is a sizable challenge. Add to the challenge
the projections of most states and the federal government of reduced revenues for the
foreseeable future, and it is clear we need cost-effective and cost-saving strategies that
improve learning outcomes and graduation rates for millions of Americans.

Specifically, we must embrace innovation, prompt implementation, regular evaluation, and
continuous improvement. The programs and projects that work must be brought to scale
so every school has the opportunity to take advantage of their success. Our regulations,
policies, actions, and investments must be strategic and coherent.

Transforming American Education
The National Education Technology Plan 2010 (NETP) calls for revolutionary transformation
rather than evolutionary tinkering. It urges our education system at all levels to
• Be clear about the outcomes we seek.

• Collaborate to redesign structures and processes for effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility.

• Continually monitor and measure our performance.

• Hold ourselves accountable for progress and results every step of the way.

The plan recognizes that technology is at the core of virtually every aspect of our daily lives
and work, and we must leverage it to provide engaging and powerful learning experiences and
content, as well as resources and assessments that measure student achievement in more
complete, authentic, and meaningful ways. Technology-based learning and assessment systems
will be pivotal in improving student learning and generating data that can be used to continuously
improve the education system at all levels. Technology will help us execute collaborative teaching
strategies combined with professional learning that better prepare and enhance educators’

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary ix

competencies and expertise over the course of their careers. To shorten our learning curve, we
should look to other kinds of enterprises, such as business and entertainment, that have used
technology to improve outcomes while increasing productivity.

We also should implement a new approach to research and development (RD) in
education that focuses on scaling innovative best practices in the use of technology in
teaching and learning, transferring existing and emerging technology innovations into
education, sustaining the RD for education work that is being done by such organizations
as the National Science Foundation, and creating a new organization to address major RD
challenges at the intersection of learning sciences, technology, and education.

A Model of Learning Powered by Technology
The NETP presents a model of learning powered by technology, with goals and
recommendations in five essential areas: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure,
and productivity. The plan also identifies far-reaching “grand challenge” RD problems that
should be funded and coordinated at a national level.

The challenging and rapidly changing demands of our global economy tell us what people
need to know and who needs to learn. Advances in learning sciences show us how people
learn. Technology makes it possible for us to act on this knowledge and understanding.

Learning: Engage and Empower
The model of learning described in this plan calls for engaging and empowering learning
experiences for all learners. The model asks that we focus what and how we teach to match
what people need to know, how they learn, where and when they will learn, and who needs
to learn. It brings state-of-the art technology into learning to enable, motivate, and inspire all
students, regardless of background, languages, or disabilities, to achieve. It leverages the power
of technology to provide personalized learning and to enable continuous and lifelong learning.

Many students’ lives today are filled with technology that gives them mobile access to
information and resources 24/7, enables them to create multimedia content and share it with
the world, and allows them to participate in online social networks where people from all
over the world share ideas, collaborate, and learn new things. Outside school, students are
free to pursue their passions in their own way and at their own pace. The opportunities are
limitless, borderless, and instantaneous.

The challenge for our education system is to leverage the learning sciences and modern
technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all
learners that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures. In contrast to
traditional classroom instruction, this requires that we put students at the center and
empower them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several
dimensions.

A core set of standards-based concepts and competencies should form the basis of what
all students should learn. Beyond that, students and educators should have options for
engaging in learning: large groups, small groups, and work tailored to the individual goals,
needs, interests, and prior experience of each learner. Technology should be leveraged to
provide access to more learning resources than are available in classrooms and connections
to a wider set of “educators,” including teachers, parents, experts, and mentors outside the
classroom. It also should be used to enable 24/7 and lifelong learning.

x Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

What and How People Need to Learn
Whether the domain is English language arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history,
art, or music, 21st-century competencies and such expertise as critical thinking, complex
problem solving, collaboration, and multimedia communication should be woven into all
content areas. These competencies are necessary to become expert learners, which we
all must be if we are to adapt to our rapidly changing world over the course of our lives.
That involves developing deep understanding within specific content areas and making the
connections among them.

How we need to learn includes using the technology that professionals in various disciplines
use. Professionals routinely use the Web and tools, such as wikis, blogs, and digital content
for the research, collaboration, and communication demanded in their jobs. They gather
data and analyze the data using inquiry and visualization tools. They use graphical and
3D modeling tools for design. For students, using these real-world tools creates learning
opportunities that allow them to grapple with real-world problems—opportunities that prepare
them to be more productive members of a globally competitive workforce.

Assessment: Measure What Matters
The model of learning requires new and better ways to measure what matters, diagnose
strengths and weaknesses in the course of learning when there is still time to improve student
performance, and involve multiple stakeholders in the process of designing, conducting, and
using assessment. In all these activities, technology-based assessments can provide data to
drive decisions on the basis of what is best for each and every student and that, in aggregate,
will lead to continuous improvement across our entire education system.

The nation’s governors and state education chiefs have begun to develop standards and
assessments that measure 21st-century competencies and expertise in all content areas.
Technology-based assessments that combine cognitive research and theory about how
students think with multimedia, interactivity, and connectivity make it possible to directly
assess these types of skills. This can be done within the context of relevant societal issues
and problems that people care about in everyday life.

When combined with learning systems, technology-based assessments can be used
formatively to diagnose and modify the conditions of learning and instructional practices
while at the same time determining what students have learned for grading and
accountability purposes. Both uses are important, but the former can improve student
learning in the moment (Black and Wiliam 1998). Furthermore, systems can be designed
to capture students’ inputs and collect evidence of their knowledge and problem-solving
abilities as they work. Over time, the system “learns” more about students’ abilities and can
provide increasingly appropriate support.

Using Data to Drive Continuous Improvement
With assessments in place that address the full range of expertise and competencies
reflected in standards, student-learning data can be collected and used to continually
improve learning outcomes and productivity. For example, such data could be used to create
a system of interconnected feedback for students, educators, parents, school leaders, and
district administrators.

For this to work, relevant data must be made available to the right people at the right time
and in the right form. Educators and leaders at all levels of our education system also must
be provided with support—tools and training—that can help them manage the assessment
process, analyze relevant data, and take appropriate action.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary xi

Teaching: Prepare and Connect
Just as leveraging technology can help us improve learning and assessment, the model of
learning calls for using technology to help build the capacity of educators by enabling a shift
to a model of connected teaching. In such a teaching model, teams of connected educators
replace solo practitioners, classrooms are fully connected to provide educators with 24/7
access to data and analytic tools, and educators have access to resources that help them
act on the insights the data provide.

Professional educators are a critical component of transforming our education systems,
and therefore strengthening and elevating the teaching profession is as important as
effective teaching and accountability. All are necessary if we are to attract and retain the
most effective educators and achieve the learning outcomes we seek. Just as leveraging
technology can help us improve learning and assessment, it also can help us shift to a model
of connected teaching.

In a connected teaching model, classroom educators are fully connected to learning data
and tools for using the data; to content, resources, and systems that empower them to
create, manage, and assess engaging and relevant learning experiences; and directly to
their students in support of learning both in and out of school. The same connections give
them access to resources and expertise that improve their own instructional practices and
guide them in becoming facilitators and collaborators in their students’ increasingly self-
directed learning.

In connected teaching, teaching is a team activity. Individual educators build online learning
communities consisting of their students and their students’ peers; fellow educators in their
schools, libraries, and after-school programs; professional experts in various disciplines
around the world; members of community organizations that serve students in the hours they
are not in school; and parents who desire greater participation in their children’s education.

Episodic and ineffective professional development is replaced by professional learning that
is collaborative, coherent, and continuous and that blends more effective in-person courses
and workshops with the expanded opportunities, immediacy, and convenience enabled by
online environments full of resources and opportunities for collaboration. For their part, the
colleges of education and other institutions that prepare teachers play an ongoing role in the
professional growth of their graduates throughout the entire course of their careers.

Connected teaching enables our education system to provide access to effective teaching
and learning resources where they are not otherwise available and more options for all
learners. This is accomplished by augmenting the expertise and competencies of specialized
and exceptional educators with online and blended (online and offline) learning systems, on-
demand courses, and other self-directed learning opportunities.

21st-Century Resources for Professional Educators
The technology that enables connected teaching is available now, but not all the conditions
necessary to leverage it are. Many of our existing educators do not have the same understanding
of and ease with using technology that is part of the daily lives of professionals in other sectors.
The same can be said of many of the education leaders and policymakers in schools, districts,
and states and of the higher education institutions that prepare new educators for the field.

This gap in technology understanding influences program and curriculum development, funding
and purchasing decisions about educational and information technology in schools, and
preservice and in-service professional learning. This gap prevents technology from being used in
ways that would improve instructional practices and learning outcomes.

xii Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

Still, we must introduce connected teaching into our education system rapidly, and therefore we
need innovation in the organizations that support educators in their profession—schools and
districts, colleges of education, professional learning providers, and professional organizations.

Infrastructure: Access and Enable
An essential component of the learning model is a comprehensive infrastructure for
learning that provides every student, educator, and level of our education system with the
resources they need when and where they are needed. The underlying principle is that
infrastructure includes people, processes, learning resources, policies, and sustainable
models for continuous improvement in addition to broadband connectivity, servers, software,
management systems, and administration tools. Building this infrastructure is a far-reaching
project that will demand concerted and coordinated effort.

Although we have adopted technology in many aspects of education today, a comprehensive
infrastructure for learning is necessary to move us beyond the traditional model of educators
and students in classrooms to a learning model that brings together teaching teams and
students in classrooms, labs, libraries, museums, workplaces, and homes—anywhere in the
world where people have access devices and an adequate Internet connection.

Over the past 40 years, we have seen unprecedented advances in computing and
communications that have led to powerful technology resources and tools for learning.
Today, low-cost Internet access devices, easy-to-use digital authoring tools, and the Web
facilitate access to information and multimedia learning content, communication, and
collaboration. They provide the ability to participate in online learning communities that cross
disciplines, organizations, international boundaries, and cultures.

Many of these technology resources and tools already are being used within our
public education system. We are now, however, at an inflection point for a much bolder
transformation of education powered by technology. This revolutionary opportunity for
change is driven by the continuing push of emerging technology and the pull of the critical
national need to radically improve our education system.

Always-on Learning
An infrastructure for learning is always on, available to students, educators, and administrators
regardless of their location or the time of day. It supports not just access to information, but
access to people and participation in online learning communities. It offers a platform on which
developers can build and tailor applications.

An infrastructure for learning unleashes new ways of capturing and sharing knowledge
based on multimedia that integrate text, still and moving images, audio, and applications that
run on a variety of devices. It enables seamless integration of in- and out-of-school learning.
It frees learning from a rigid information transfer model (from book or educator to students)
and enables a much more motivating intertwinement of learning about, learning to do, and
learning to be.

On a more operational level, an infrastructure for learning brings together and enables access
to data from multiple sources while ensuring appropriate levels of security and privacy. The
infrastructure integrates computer hardware, data and networks, information resources,
interoperable software, middleware services and tools, and devices, and connects and
supports interdisciplinary teams of professionals responsible for its development, maintenance,
and management and its use in transformative approaches to teaching and learning.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary xiii

Productivity: Redesign and Transform
To achieve our goal of transforming American education, we must rethink basic assumptions
and redesign our education system. We must apply technology to implement personalized
learning and ensure that students are making appropriate progress through our P–16 system
so they graduate. These and other initiatives require investment, but tight economic times
and basic fiscal responsibility demand that we get more out of each dollar we spend. We
must leverage technology to plan, manage, monitor, and report spending to provide decision-
makers with a reliable, accurate, and complete view of the financial performance of our
education system at all levels. Such visibility is essential to meeting our goals for educational
attainment within the budgets we can afford.

Improving productivity is a daily focus of most American organizations in all sectors—both
for-profit and nonprofit—and especially in tight economic times. Education has not, however,
incorporated many of the practices other sectors regularly use to improve productivity and
manage costs, nor has it leveraged technology to enable or enhance them. We can learn
much from the experience in other sectors.

What education can learn from the experience of business is that we need to make
the fundamental structural changes that technology enables if we are to see dramatic
improvements in productivity. As we do so, we should recognize that although the
fundamental purpose of our public education system is the same, the roles and processes
of schools, educators, and the system itself should change to reflect the times we live in and
our goals as a world leader. Such rethinking applies to learning, assessment, and teaching
processes and to the infrastructure and operational and financial sides of running schools
and school systems.

Rethinking Basic Assumptions
One of the most basic assumptions in our education system is time-based or “seat-time”
measures of educational attainment. These measures were created in the late 1800s and
early 1900s to smooth transitions from K–12 into higher education by translating high school
work to college admissions offices (Shedd 2003) and made their way into higher education
when institutions began moving away from standardized curricula.

Another basic assumption is the way we organize students into age-determined groups,
structure separate academic disciplines, organize learning into classes of roughly equal size
with all the students in a particular class receiving the same content at the same pace, and
keep these groups in place all year.

The last decade has seen the emergence of some radically redesigned schools,
demonstrating the range of possibilities for structuring education. These include schools
that organize around competence rather than seat time and others that enable more flexible
scheduling that fits students’ individual needs rather than traditional academic periods and
lockstep curriculum pacing. In addition, schools are beginning to incorporate online learning,
which gives us the opportunity to extend the learning day, week, or year.

The United States has a long way to go if we are to see every student complete at least a
year of higher education or postsecondary career training. There is no way to achieve this
target unless we can dramatically reduce the number of students who leave high school
without getting a diploma and/or who are unprepared for postsecondary education.

A complex set of personal and academic factors underlie students’ decision to leave
school or to disengage from learning, but support should start as early as possible, before
children enter school, and should become intensified for those students who need it as they

xiv Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

move through school. Practices supported with technology can help address the problem,
including learning dashboards that keep students on track with their course requirements
and earning credits for courses taken online.

Redesigning education in America for improved productivity is a complex challenge that will
require all 50 states, the thousands of districts and schools across the country, the federal
government, and other education stakeholders in the public and private sector to come
together to design and implement innovative solutions. It is a challenge for educators—
leaders, teachers, and policymakers committed to learning—as well as technologists, and
ideally they will come together to lead the effort.

A Rigorous and Inclusive Process
This plan, led by the Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, was
developed using a rigorous and inclusive process built on the report of a technical working
group of leading education researchers and practitioners.

In keeping with the White House’s Open Government Directive, the Department invited
extensive public participation in the development of the plan. Broad outreach efforts and
state-of-the-art communications and collaboration technology enabled tens of thousands
of individuals to learn about and contribute to the development of the plan over its 9-month
development period.

The Time To Act Is Now
The NETP accepts that we do not have the luxury of time: We must act now and commit to
fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go. Success will require leadership, collaboration,
and investment at all levels of our education system—states, districts, schools, and the federal
government—as well as partnerships with higher education institutions, private enterprises,
and not-for-profit entities.

In the United States, education is primarily a state and local responsibility. State and local
public education institutions must ensure equitable access to learning experiences for all
students and especially students in underserved populations—low-income and minority
students, students with disabilities, English language learners, students in rural and frontier
schools, and others. States and districts need to build capacity for transformation. The
Department of Education has a role in identifying effective strategies and implementation
practices; encouraging, promoting, and actively supporting innovation in states and districts;
and nurturing collaborations that help states and districts leverage resources so the best ideas
can be scaled up.

Postsecondary education institutions—community colleges and four-year colleges and
universities—will need to partner more closely with K–12 schools to remove barriers to
postsecondary education and put plans of their own in place to decrease dropout rates.
Clearly, postsecondary institutions would be key players in the national RD efforts
recommended in this plan.

Education has long relied on the contributions of organizations in both the private and not-for-
profit sectors, and this will not change.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, there has never been a more pressing
need to transform American education or a better time to act. The NETP is a 5-year action plan
that responds to an urgent national priority and a growing understanding of what the United
States needs to do to remain competitive in a global economy.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary xv

Goals and Recommendations
To transform education in America, we must turn ideas into action. The NETP presents
five goals that address the key components of this plan—learning, assessment, teaching,
infrastructure, and productivity—along with recommendations for states, districts, the federal
government, and other stakeholders in our education system for achieving these goals.

1.0 Learning: Engage and Empower
All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and out of
school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in
our globally networked society.

To meet this goal, we recommend the following:
1.1 States should continue to revise, create, and implement standards and learning objectives
using technology for all content areas that reflect 21st-century expertise and the power of
technology to improve learning.

Our education system relies on core sets of standards-based concepts and competencies that
form the basis of what all students should know and should be able to do. Whether the domain is
English language arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, art, or music, states should
continue to consider the integration of 21st-century competencies and expertise, such as critical
thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, multimedia communication, and technological
competencies demonstrated by professionals in various disciplines.

1.2 States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that use
technology to embody design principles from the learning sciences.

Advances in learning sciences, including cognitive science, neuroscience, education,
and social sciences, give us greater understanding of three connected types of human
learning—factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivational engagement.
Technology has increased our ability to both study and enhance all three types. Today’s
learning environments should reflect what we have learned about how people learn and take
advantage of technology to optimize learning.

1.3 States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that exploit the
flexibility and power of technology to reach all learners anytime and anywhere.

The always-on nature of the Internet and mobile access devices provides our education system
with the opportunity to create learning experiences that are available anytime and anywhere.
When combined with design principles for personalized learning and Universal Design for
Learning, these experiences also can be accessed by learners who have been marginalized
in many educational settings: students from low-income communities and minorities, English
language learners, students with disabilities, students who are gifted and talented, students from
diverse cultures and linguistic backgrounds, and students in rural areas.

1.4 Use advances in learning sciences and technology to enhance STEM (science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics) learning and develop, adopt, and evaluate new methodologies
with the potential to inspire and enable all learners to excel in STEM.

New technologies for representing, manipulating, and communicating data, information, and
ideas have changed professional practices in STEM fields and what students need to learn to be
prepared for STEM professions. Technology should be used to support student interaction with
STEM content in ways that promote deeper understanding of complex ideas, engage students
in solving complex problems, and create new opportunities for STEM learning throughout our
education system.

xvi Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

2.0 Assessment: Measure What Matters
Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what
matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement.

To meet this goal, we recommend the following actions:

2.1 States, districts, and others should design, develop, and implement assessments that
give students, educators, and other stakeholders timely and actionable feedback about
student learning to improve achievement and instructional practices.

Learning science and technology combined with assessment theory can provide a
foundation for new and better ways to assess students in the course of learning, which
is the ideal time to improve performance. This will require involving experts from all three
disciplines in the process of designing, developing, and using new technology-based
assessments that can increase the quality and quantity of feedback to learners.

2.2 Build the capacity of educators, education institutions, and developers to use technology
to improve assessment materials and processes for both formative and summative uses.

Technology can support measuring performances that cannot be assessed with conventional
testing formats, providing our education system with opportunities to design, develop,
and validate new and more effective assessment materials. Building this capacity can be
accelerated through knowledge exchange, collaboration, and better alignment between
educators (practitioners) and experts.

2.3 Conduct research and development that explores how embedded assessment
technologies, such as simulations, collaboration environments, virtual worlds, games, and
cognitive tutors, can be used to engage and motivate learners while assessing complex skills.

Interactive technologies, especially games, provide immediate performance feedback so that
players always know how they are doing. As a result, they are highly engaging to students
and have the potential to motivate students to learn. They also enable educators to assess
important competencies and aspects of thinking in contexts and through activities that
students care about in everyday life. Because interactive technologies hold this promise,
assessment and interactive technology experts should collaborate on research to determine
ways to use them effectively for assessment.

2.4 Conduct research and development that explores how Universal Design for Learning can
enable the best accommodations for all students to ensure we are assessing what we intend to
measure rather than extraneous abilities a student needs to respond to the assessment task.

To be valid, an assessment must measure those qualities it is intended to measure and
scores should not be influenced by extraneous factors. An assessment of science, for
example, should measure understanding of science concepts and their application, not the
ability to see print, to respond to items using a mouse, or to use word processing skills.
Assessment and technology experts should collaborate to create assessment design tools
and processes that make it possible to develop assessment systems with appropriate
features (not just accommodations) so that assessments capture examinees’ strengths in
terms of the qualities that the assessment is intended to measure.

2.5 Revise practices, policies, and regulations to ensure privacy and information protection
while enabling a model of assessment that includes ongoing gathering and sharing of data
on student learning for continuous improvement.

Every parent of a student under 18 and every student 18 or over should have the right to
access the student’s own assessment data in the form of an electronic learning record
that the student can take with them throughout his or her educational career. At the same

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary xvii

time, appropriate safeguards, including stripping records of identifiable information and
aggregating data across students, classrooms, and schools, should be used to make it
possible to supply education data derived from student records to other legitimate users
without compromising student privacy.

3.0 Teaching: Prepare and Connect
Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that
connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable
and inspire more effective teaching for all learners.


3.1 Expand opportunities for educators to have access to technology-based content,
resources, and tools where and when they need them.

Today’s technology enables educators to tap into resources and orchestrate expertise across
a school district or university, a state, the nation, and even around the world. Educators can
discuss solutions to problems and exchange information about best practices in minutes,
not weeks or months. Today’s educators should have access to technology-based resources
that inspire them to provide more engaging and effective learning opportunities for each and
every student.

3.2 Leverage social networking technologies and platforms to create communities of practice
that provide career-long personal learning opportunities for educators within and across
schools, preservice preparation and in-service education institutions, and professional
organizations.

Social networks can be used to provide educators with career-long personal learning
tools and resources that make professional learning timely and relevant as well as an
ongoing activity that continually improves practice and evolves their skills over time. Online
communities should enable educators to take online courses, tap into experts and best
practices for just-in-time problem solving, and provide platforms and tools for educators to
design and develop resources with and for their colleagues.

3.3 Use technology to provide all learners with online access to effective teaching and better
learning opportunities and options especially in places where they are not otherwise available.

Many education institutions, particularly those serving the most vulnerable students and
those in rural areas, lack educators with competencies in reaching students with special
needs and educators with content knowledge and expertise in specialized areas, including
STEM. Even in areas where effective teaching is available, students often lack options for
high-quality courses in particular disciplines or opportunities for learning that prepare them
for the modern world. Online learning options should be provided to enable leveraging the
best teaching and make high-quality course options available to all learners.

3.4 Provide preservice and in-service educators with professional learning experiences
powered by technology to increase their digital literacy and enable them to create compelling
assignments for students that improve learning, assessment, and instructional practices.

Just as technology helps us engage and motivate students to learn, technology should be
used in the preparation and ongoing learning of educators to engage and motivate them in
what and how they teach. This will require synthesizing core principles and adopting best
practices for the use of technology in preparing educators. Technology also should be an
integral component of teaching methods courses and field experiences rather than treated
as a discrete skill distinct from pedagogical application.

xviii Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

3.5 Develop a teaching force skilled in online instruction.

As online learning becomes an increasingly important part of our education system, we
need to provide online and blended learning experiences that are more participatory
and personalized and that embody best practices for engaging all students. This creates
both the need and opportunity for educators who are skilled in instructional design and
knowledgeable about emerging technologies. Crucial to filling this need while ensuring
effective teaching are appropriate standards for online courses and teaching and a new way
of approaching online teacher certification.

4.0 Infrastructure: Access and Enable
All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning
when and where they need it.


4.1 Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate
wireless connectivity both in and out of school.

Students and educators need adequate broadband bandwidth for accessing the Internet
and technology-based learning resources. “Adequate” should be defined as the ability to use
the Internet in school, on the surrounding campus, throughout the community, and at home.
It should also include simultaneous use of high-bandwidth resources, such as multimedia,
communication and collaboration environments, and communities. Crucial to providing
such access are the broadband initiatives being individually and jointly managed by various
federal agencies.

4.2 Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and
appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content
creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school.

Only with 24/7 access to the Internet via devices and technology-based software and
resources can we achieve the kind of engagement, student-centered learning, and
assessments that can improve learning in the ways this plan proposes. The form of these
devices, software, and resources may or may not be standardized and will evolve over time.
In addition, these devices may be owned by the student or family, owned by the school, or
some combination of the two. The use of devices owned by students will require advances in
network filtering and improved support systems.

4.3 Support the development and use of open educational resources to promote innovative
and creative opportunities for all learners and accelerate the development and adoption of
new open technology-based learning tools and courses.

The value of open educational resources is now recognized around the world, leading to
the availability of a vast array of learning, teaching, and research resources that learners
of any age can use across all content areas. Realizing this value will require new policies
concerning the evaluation and selection of instructional materials so that digital resources
are considered and processes are established for keeping educational resource content up
to date, appropriate, and tagged according to identified content interoperability standards.

4.4 Build state and local education agency capacity for evolving an infrastructure for learning.

Building an infrastructure for learning is a far-reaching project that will demand concerted
and coordinated effort. The effort should start with implementing the next generation of
computing system architectures and include transitioning computer systems, software, and
services from in-house datacenters to professionally managed data centers in the cloud for
greater efficiency and flexibility. This will require leveraging and scaling up the human talent

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary xix

to build such an infrastructure, which should ultimately save money and enable education IT
professionals to focus more on maintaining the local infrastructure and supporting teachers,
students, and administrators.

4.5 Develop and use interoperability standards for content and student-learning data to
enable collecting and sharing resources and collecting, sharing, and analyzing data to
improve decision making at all levels of our education system.

Fragmented content and resources and student-learning data siloed in different proprietary
platforms and systems, along with a lack of common standards for collecting and sharing
data, are formidable barriers to leveraging resources for teaching and learning. These
barriers exist because we lack common content interoperability standards and tools to
enable use of such standards. The lack of common standards affects the quality of tools
because developers limit their RD investments into narrow markets and are not able
to leverage overall market advancements in research and development. Interoperability
standards are essential to resolving these issues.

4.6 Develop and use interoperability standards for financial data to enable data-driven
decision making, productivity advances, and continuous improvement at all levels of our
education system.

Just as content, resources, and student learning data are fragmented in disconnected
technology systems and throughout our education system, the same is true for financial
data. Therefore, we also need financial data interoperability standards and tools that enable
the use of these standards.

5.0 Productivity: Redesign and Transform
Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage
of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of
time, money, and staff.


5.1 Develop and adopt a common definition of productivity in education and more relevant
and meaningful measures of outcomes, along with improved policies and technologies for
managing costs, including those for procurement.

Education has not incorporated many of the practices other sectors regularly use to
measure outcomes, manage costs, and improve productivity, a number of which are
enabled or enhanced by technology. As other sectors have learned, we are unlikely to
improve outcomes and productivity until we define and start measuring them. This starts
with identifying what we seek to measure. It also requires identifying costs associated with
components of our education system and with individual resources and activities so that the
ratio of outcomes to costs can be tracked over time.

5.2 Rethink basic assumptions in our education system that inhibit leveraging technology
to improve learning, starting with our current practice of organizing student and educator
learning around seat time instead of the demonstration of competencies.

To realize the full potential of technology for improving performance and increasing productivity,
we must remove the process and structural barriers to broad adoption. The education system
must work to identify and rethink basic assumptions of the education system. Some of these
include measurement of educational attainment through seat time, organization of students
into age-determined groups, the structure of separate academic disciplines, the organization of
learning into classes of roughly equal size, and the use of time blocks.

xx Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

5.3 Develop useful metrics for the educational use of technology in states and districts.

Current data on the use of educational and information technology in our system consist
of records of purchases and numbers of computers and Internet connections. Very
little information on how technology is actually used to support teaching, learning, and
assessment is collected and communicated systematically. Only by shifting our focus
to collecting data on how and when technology is used will we be able to determine the
difference it makes and use that knowledge to improve outcomes and the productivity of our
education system.

5.4 Design, implement, and evaluate technology-powered programs and interventions to
ensure that students progress seamlessly through our P–16 education system and emerge
prepared for college and careers.

year of higher education or postsecondary career training. Achieving this target will require
dramatically reducing the number of students who leave high school without getting a
diploma and/or who are unprepared for postsecondary education. A complex set of personal
and academic factors underlie students’ decisions to leave school or to disengage from
learning, and no one strategy will prevent every separation from the education system.
Collaboration between P–12 and higher education institutions and practices supported with
technology are crucial to addressing the problem.

Getting Started Now
The Department of Education has a role in identifying effective strategies and
implementation practices; encouraging, promoting, and actively supporting innovation
and best practices in states and districts; and nurturing collaborations that help states
and districts leverage resources so the best ideas can be scaled up. To help ensure the
successful implementation of this plan, the Department of Education can take action around
the following priorities:

Convening education stakeholders, in person and online, to share content, insights, and
expertise and to collaborate on key elements of this plan. Ideas and best practices that
emerge from these convenings will be shared throughout our education system.

The Department of Education can

Convene learning science researchers, developers of educational technology, curriculum
developers, public and private sector organizations, and Universal Design for Learning
experts to share information and research for developing the next generation of technology-
based learning platforms, resources, courses, and tools.

Facilitate collaboration between states and private and public sector organizations to design,
develop, validate, and scale up new technology-based assessment resources for both
formative and summative uses. These efforts should include exploring the use of embedded
assessment technologies, such as simulations, collaboration environments, virtual worlds,
and games in new assessment resources.

Convene P–12 and higher education institutions, states, and districts to collaborate on
strategies for creating persistent student electronic learning records and using student data
for continuous improvement.

Facilitate collaboration between states, districts, universities, other research and
development organizations, other agencies, and the commercial sector to develop and
leverage open educational resources. Designs for use and reuse and new business models
will be included.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary xxi

Convene states, teacher accreditation organizations, colleges of education, and
organizations representing online learning providers to promote states’ consideration of
voluntary standards for online courses and for online teaching. This activity should include
the promotion of reciprocity agreements between states for certifying online teachers.

Convene states and education leadership organizations to identify and rethink basic assumptions
in our education system, starting with but not limited to the measurement of educational
attainment through seat time. Other assumptions that should be reexamined are the organization
of students into static age-determined groups and the organization of learning into classes of
roughly equal size, as well as the structure of separate academic disciplines. The use of online
learning and combining offline and online learning to provide options for flexibility, additional
learning time, and more effective use of the time allotted should be explored.

Convene states, districts, and education and technology experts from the academic, private, and
public sectors to define useful metrics for the use of technology in support of teaching and learning
and improved operations that states and districts can use to guide technology purchases.

Promote collaboration between two- and four-year postsecondary education institutions,
P–12 programs, and educational technology developers in the private and public sectors
to design programs and resources to engage and/or reengage students and motivate them
to graduate from high school ready for postsecondary education. Facilitate collaboration on
alternative programs that take advantage of technology to reconnect with students and help
them complete learning programs.

Supporting efforts to ensure that all students and educators have 24/7 access to the
Internet via devices, including mobile devices, and that states, districts, and schools adopt
technologies and policies to enable leveraging the technology that students already have.


Endorse and actively support the broadband initiatives of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009, which are intended to accelerate deployment of Internet services
in unserved, underserved, and rural areas and to strategic anchor institutions, such as
schools, that are likely to provide significant public benefits. These initiatives are the
Broadband Technology Opportunities Program of the Department of Commerce’s National
Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Rural Development Broadband
Program of the Department of Agriculture, and the interagency National Broadband Plan
developed by the Federal Communications Commission.

Work with districts, states, and the private sector to articulate effective technology support
models for 24/7 access including using school- and student-owned devices. New support
models for this type of access will require improved security systems, more intelligent
filtering systems that allow blocking and enabling access within this type of infrastructure,
and personnel and/or systems capable of providing around-the-clock support for school-,
student-, and educator-owned devices used for learning.

Participating in efforts to ensure that transitioning from predominantly print-based classrooms
to digital learning environments promotes organized, accessible, easy-to-distribute and easy-
to-use content and learning resources.


Support the development of an open architecture mapping and navigation platform that will
enable the visual depiction of learning progressions across all content areas and reflect
21st-century expertise. Accessible online, these learning progressions can be used to
reenvision content, resources, assessments, curricula, and professional learning for teachers
and encourage the sharing of best practices and new approaches to improve teaching and
learning. This platform would encourage a variety of mashups and spur innovation.

xxii Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

Initiate an interagency effort to create, publish, and maintain open standards for content,
student learning, and financial data interoperability. State and district requests for proposals
for assessment and data systems should require appropriate use of these standards.

Create a learning registry, an open-standard registry of all content developed by various
agencies throughout the federal government so that states, districts, and schools can access
and leverage it and combine it with their own repositories of content.

Expand the availability of digital-learning content, resources, courses, and tools and ensure
their continuous improvement by funding the research and development of open educational
resources. Facilitate states working together to pool resources for identifying and evaluating
or issuing requirements for developing open educational resources.

Support research and evaluation efforts focused on the effectiveness of online and blended
learning environments at all levels.

Encourage the use of technology and online learning courses and resources in federally
funded programs that expand learning opportunities for underserved populations and others
who need it most.

Encourage states, districts, P–12 programs, and postsecondary education institutions to
experiment with such resources as online learning, online tutoring and mentoring, games,
cognitive tutors, immersive environments, and participatory communities and social
networks both within and across education institutions to give students guidance and
information about their own learning progress and strategies for seamless completion of a
comprehensive P–16 education.

Funding online communities of practice to ensure that teachers are connected to data,
resources, experts, and peers to prepare and enable connected teaching.


Fund a contract for design research on online communities of practice and apply the design
to a series of at least six communities of practice in order to leverage the use of educational
technology and social networking to improve teaching, assessment, learning, and
infrastructure in schools. The communities of practice will be designed to ensure teachers
and other education professionals are highly connected to data, resources, content, experts,
peers, and just-in-time expertise on a variety of topics.

Leverage the design work on online communities of practice to inform contracts and grants
for providing technical assistance throughout the Department of Education.

Ensuring a sustained focus on RD for education, including scaling up and sustaining innovations,
technology transfer, and grand challenge problems.


Implement an approach to RD for education that focuses on five areas:

• ransferring existing and emerging technology innovations from sectors such as
T
business, consumer, and entertainment into education.

• ransferring appropriate developments from the Department of Defense Advanced
T
Research Projects Administration to the public education sector.

• Supporting and sustaining the education RD that is currently happening throughout the

National Science Foundation by designing a commercialization strategy.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary xxiii

• Creating a new organization (the National Center for Research in Advanced Information

and Digital Technologies) with the mission of serving the public good through RD at the
intersection of learning sciences, technology, and education.

• Providing competitive grants for scaling up innovative and evidence-based practices

through the Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund.

Encouraging states and districts to move to more integrated use of technology in teaching
and learning.


Encourage states to assign responsibility for educational technology to senior-level
individuals who will provide leadership in connecting the planning for educational and
information technology to the core functions of curriculum and instruction, assessment, and
professional learning and in ensuring that the most efficient and effective purchases are
made. These individuals will be invited to participate on a cross-functional team organized
by the Department of Education to share insights and best practices and collaborate on
technology for teaching and learning.

Encourage every federal grant program and expenditure to consider how technology can be
a multiplier for support and scale in education.

Leading a national initiative to identify strategies for increasing productivity in education and
work with states, districts, and schools to build their capacity for implementing them.


Start a national initiative and develop an ongoing research agenda dedicated to improving
productivity in the education sector. The initiative will focus on defining productivity in
education and establishing new and more useful metrics and methods for measuring it. The
initiative will promote continuous improvement and data-driven decision making, leveraging
technology to plan, manage, monitor, and report spending so that education decision-makers
can be provided with a reliable, accurate, and complete view of the financial performance of
our education system at all levels.

Encourage states to adopt common cost accounting standards to allow benchmarking
and analysis of costs and provide a platform for sharing strategies for cost saving and
productivity improvement and highlight policies at the federal, state, and local level that
might inhibit progress, for example, in procurement.

Develop new and better ways of assessing the efficacy of technology in teaching and
learning and in the financial operations of education institutions.

xxiv Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology - Executive Summary

Introduction

“By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion
of college graduates in the world.”

—President Barack Obama,
Address to Congress, Feb. 24, 2009

Education is the key to America’s economic growth and prosperity and to our ability
to compete in the global economy. It is the path to good jobs and higher earning power for
Americans. It is necessary for our democracy to work.

With this in mind, America needs a public education system that provides all learners—
including low-income and minority students, English language learners, students with
disabilities, gifted and talented students, early childhood learners, adult workforce learners,
and seniors—with engaging and empowering learning experiences. Our education system
also should help learners set goals, stay in school despite obstacles, earn a high school
diploma, and obtain the further education and training needed for success in their personal
lives, the workplace, and their communities.

We want to develop inquisitive, creative, resourceful thinkers; informed citizens; effective
problem-solvers; groundbreaking pioneers; and visionary leaders. We want to foster the
excellence that flows from the ability to use today’s information, tools, and technologies
effectively and a commitment to lifelong learning. All these are necessary for Americans to be
active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society.

To accomplish this, schools must be more than information factories; they must be incubators
of exploration and invention. Educators must be more than information experts; they must
be collaborators in learning, seeking new knowledge and constantly acquiring new skills
alongside their students. Students must be fully engaged in school—intellectually, socially, and
emotionally. This level of engagement requires the chance to work on interesting and relevant
projects, the use of technology environments and resources, and access to an extended social
network of adults and peers who support their intellectual growth.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology 1

Education reform has been on the national agenda for decades. Still, we no longer have the
highest proportion of college graduates in the world, and we have a system that too often
fails our students. According to current data,

• pproximately 25 percent of young people in the United States fail to graduate on time
A
with a regular diploma (Stillwell 2010). That number jumps to almost 40 percent for
Latino and African-American students.

• Some 5,000 schools persistently fail year after year, and about 2,000 high schools

produce about half the nation’s dropouts and three-quarters of minority dropouts
(Balfanz and Legters 2004; Tucci 2009).

• Of students who do graduate from high school, one-third are unprepared for

postsecondary education, forcing community colleges and four-year colleges and
universities to devote precious time and resources to remedial work for incoming
students (National Center for Education Statistics 2003).

• By 2016—just six years from now—four out of every 10 new jobs will require some

advanced education or training (Dohm and Shniper 2007). Fifteen of the 30 fastest-growing
fields will require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2007).

• Only about 41 percent of young people earn a two-year or four-year college degree

(OECD 2010). Enrollment rates are unequal: 69 percent of qualified white high school
graduates enter four-year colleges compared with just 58 percent of comparable
Latino graduates and 56 percent of African-American graduates (National Center for
Education Statistics 2007).

• hirty million adults have below-basic levels of English literacy, and another 63 million
T
read English only at a basic level, which means that 44 percent of adults living in
America could benefit from English literacy instruction (National Center for Education
Statistics 2009).

As Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said, the current state of our education system
is “economically unsustainable and morally unacceptable” (Duncan 2010).

Transforming American Education: An Urgent Priority
Under the Obama administration, education has become an urgent priority driven by two
clear goals set by the president:

• By 2020, we will raise the proportion of college graduates from where it now stands

(about 41 percent) so that 60 percent of our population holds a two-year or four-year
degree (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education 2008).

• We will close the achievement gap so that all students graduate from high school ready

to succeed in college and careers.

2 Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

To accomplish these goals, we must embrace a strategy of innovation, careful
implementation, regular evaluation, and continuous improvement. The programs and
projects that work must be brought to scale so that every learner has the opportunity to
take advantage of that success. Our regulations, policies, actions, and investments must be
strategic and coherent.

To this end, Secretary Duncan has identified four major areas where our investments and
efforts can have the greatest impact:

• States should adopt standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in

college and the workplace and compete in the global economy.

• States should build data systems that measure student growth and success and inform

educators about how they can improve instruction.

• States should recruit, reward, develop, and retain effective educators, especially in

underserved areas where they are needed most.

• States should turn around their lowest-achieving schools.

In addition, in November 2009 President Obama launched the Educate to Innovate
campaign to improve the participation and performance of all U.S. students, including
underrepresented groups such as girls and women, in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM).

We are guided in these and other education initiatives by Secretary Duncan’s conviction that we
need revolutionary transformation, not evolutionary tinkering, and we know that transformation
cannot be achieved through outdated reform strategies that take decades to unfold.

We must be clear about the outcomes we seek. We must apply the core principles of
process redesign to quickly evaluate our education system for effectiveness, efficiency, and
flexibility and design and implement new processes where needed. We must monitor and
measure our performance to continually improve learning outcomes while managing costs.
We must hold ourselves accountable. To do all these things, we must apply the advanced
technology available in our daily lives to student learning and to our entire education system.

Above all, we must accept that we do not have the luxury of time. We must act now and
commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go. We must learn from other kinds
of enterprises that have used technology to improve outcomes and increase productivity.


Drivers of Change
The Department of Education’s decisions and actions—and those of the entire education
system and its stakeholders throughout the United States—must be guided by the world we
live in, which demands that we think differently about education than we have in the past.
Technology and the Internet have fostered an increasingly competitive and interdependent
global economy and transformed nearly every aspect of our daily lives—how we work; play;
interact with family, friends, and communities; and learn new things.

The context of global interdependence is especially important for this generation of students
because only individuals and nations working together will solve many of today’s challenges.
The leadership of the United States in the world depends on educating a generation of
young people who are capable of navigating an interdependent world and collaborating
across borders and cultures to address today’s great problems.

Another important context is the growing disparity between students’ experiences in and
out of school. Students use computers, mobile devices, and the Internet to create their own
engaging learning experiences outside school and after school hours—experiences that too
often are radically different from what they are exposed to in school. Our leadership in the
world depends on educating a generation of young people who know how to use technology
to learn both formally and informally.

Technology itself is an important driver of change. Contemporary technology offers
unprecedented performance, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness.

Technology can enable transforming education but only if we commit to the change that
it will bring to our education system. For example, students come to school with mobile
devices that let them carry the Internet in their pockets and search the Web for the answers
to test questions. While such behavior traditionally has been viewed as cheating, with such
ubiquitous access to information is it time to change what and how we teach? Similarly,
do we ignore the informal learning enabled by technology outside school, or do we create
equally engaging and relevant experiences inside school and blend the two?

We know from our rankings in the world in terms of academic achievement and graduation
rates that what we have been doing to fill our education pipeline and ensure students
graduate is not working. Getting students to stay in school is crucial, and equipping them
with the skills they need to learn to be successful throughout their lives is equally important.

The essential question facing us as we transform the U.S. education system is this:
What should learning in the 21st century look like?


Learning Powered by Technology
Building on the report of a technical working group of leading researchers and practitioners
and on input received from many respected education leaders and the public, this National
Education Technology Plan tackles this essential question and other important questions.
The plan presents goals, recommendations, and actions for a model of learning informed by
the learning sciences and powered by technology. Advances in the learning sciences give us
valuable insights into how people learn. Technology innovations give us the ability to act on
these insights as never before.

The plan is based on the following assumptions:

• Many of the failings of our education system stem from our failure to engage the hearts

and minds of students.

• What students need to learn and what we know about how they learn have changed,

and therefore the learning experiences we provide should change.

• How we assess learning focuses too much on what has been learned after the fact and

not enough on improving learning in the moment.

• We miss a huge opportunity to improve our entire education system when we

gather student-learning data in silos and fail to integrate the information and make it
broadly available to decision-makers at all levels of our education system—individual
educators, schools, districts, states, and the federal government.

• Learning depends on effective teaching, and we need to focus on extended teams of

connected educators with different roles who collaborate within schools and across
time and distance and who use technology resources and tools to augment
human talent.

• Effective teaching is an outcome of preparing and continually training teachers and

leaders to guide the type of learning we want in our schools.

• Making engaging learning experiences and resources available to all learners anytime

and anywhere requires state-of-the-art infrastructure, which includes technology,
people, and processes that ensure continuous access.

• Education can learn much from such industries as business and entertainment about

leveraging technology to continuously improve learning outcomes while increasing the
productivity of our education system at all levels.

• Just as in health, energy, and defense, the federal government has an important

role to play in funding and coordinating some of the RD challenges associated with
leveraging technology to ensure the maximum opportunity to learn.


The plan also assumes that with technology we can provide engaging and powerful learning
content, resources, and experiences and assessment systems that measure student
learning in more complete, authentic, and meaningful ways. With technology-based learning
and assessment systems, we can improve student learning and generate data that can be
used to continuously improve the education system at all levels. With technology, we can
execute collaborative teaching strategies combined with professional learning strategies
that better prepare and enhance educators’ competencies and expertise over the course
of their careers. With technology, we can redesign and implement processes to produce
better outcomes while achieving ever higher levels of productivity and efficiency across the
education system.

Collaboration and Investment for Success
Transforming U.S. education is no small task, and accomplishing it will take leadership
throughout our education system—states, districts, schools, and the federal government—as well
as partnerships with higher education institutions, private enterprises, and not-for-profit entities.

In the United States, education is primarily a state and local responsibility. State and local
public education institutions must ensure equitable access to learning experiences for all
students and especially students in underserved populations—low-income and minority
students, students with disabilities, English language learners, preschool-aged children,
and others. States and districts need to build capacity for transformation. The Department
of Education has a role in identifying effective strategies and implementation practices;
encouraging, promoting, and actively supporting innovation in states and districts; and
nurturing collaborations that help states and districts leverage resources so the best ideas
can be scaled up.

Building capacity for transformation also will require investment. But we must resolve to
spend investment dollars wisely, with clear expectations about what we expect in terms of
learning outcomes and process improvements.

Implementing the plan depends on the broadband initiatives of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009, which are intended to accelerate deployment of Internet services
in unserved, underserved, and rural areas and to strategic institutions that are likely to create
jobs or provide significant public benefits. These initiatives are the Broadband Technology
Opportunities Program of the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and
Information Administration, the Rural Development Broadband Program of the Department
of Agriculture, and the interagency National Broadband Plan developed by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC).

The plan also draws guidance and inspiration from the report of the National Science
Foundation (NSF) Task Force on Cyberlearning, Fostering Learning in the Networked World:
The Cyberlearning Challenge and Opportunity, published in June 2008, and the work of the
President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).


The plan will be best served if postsecondary education institutions—community colleges
and four-year colleges and universities—partner with K–12 schools to remove barriers to
postsecondary education and put plans of their own in place to decrease dropout rates.
In addition, postsecondary institutions are key players in the transformation of teacher
preparation and the national RD efforts recommended in this plan.

Education has long relied on the contributions of organizations in both the private and not-
for-profit sectors, and this will not change.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, there has never been a more
pressing need to transform American education, and there will never be a better time to
act. In keeping with the appropriate role of the federal government, this Nation Education
Technology Plan is not a prescription but rather a common definition and a five-year action
plan that responds to an urgent national priority and a growing understanding of what the
United States needs to do to remain competitive in a global economy.

Accessibility of Web Content

Not all of the websites identified in this plan, at the time of its publication, meet the technical
requirements for Web accessibility established by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of
1973, as amended (see http://www.Section508.gov for these requirements). The Department of
Education will take appropriate steps to bring all websites subject to Section 508 into compliance
with those accessibility requirements as soon as reasonably possible. Moreover, as Secretary
of Education Duncan stated in the cover letter to this plan, the Department is committed to
taking a leadership role in ensuring that the benefits of educational technology are accessible
to all learners “regardless of background, languages, or disabilities.” To meet that goal, the
Department will not only exercise its authority under sections 508 and 504 of the Rehabilitation
Act of 1973* as necessary to achieve compliance, but also will work with and encourage the
broader educational community to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not denied the
benefits of educational technology due to accessibility issues.

* Section 504 provides that:
No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States, as defined in section
705(2) of this title, shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the
participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program
or activity receiving Federal financial assistance or under any program or activity conducted by
any Executive agency or by the United States Postal Service.


Learning: Engage and Empower

Goal: All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and out
of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in

Our education system today supports learning, mostly in classrooms and from textbooks,
and depends on the relationship between individual educators and their students. The role
technology plays in the nation’s classrooms varies dramatically depending on the funding
priorities of states, districts, and schools and individual educators’ understanding of how to
leverage it in learning in meaningful ways.

Meanwhile, many students’ lives outside school are filled with technology that gives them
mobile access to information and resources 24/7, enables them to create multimedia content
and share it with the world, and allows them to participate in online social networks and
communities where people from all over the world share ideas, collaborate, and learn new
things. According to a national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 8- to 18-year-olds
today devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media in a
typical day—more than 53 hours a week (Kaiser Family Foundation 2009). The opportunity
to harness this interest and access in the service of learning is huge.

Technology brings similar opportunities to professionals in many fields. Physicians
use mobile Internet access devices to download x-rays and test results or to access
specialized applications, such as medicine dosage calculators. Earthquake geologists
install underground sensors along fault lines, monitor them remotely, and tie them in to early
warning systems that signal the approach of seismic waves. Filmmakers use everyday
computers and affordable software for every phase of the filmmaking process, from editing
and special effects to music and sound mixing. Technology dominates the workplaces of
most professionals and managers in business, where working in distributed teams that need
to communicate and collaborate is the norm.

The challenge for our education system is to leverage technology to create relevant learning
experiences that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures. We live in a highly
mobile, globally connected society in which young Americans will have more jobs and more
careers in their lifetimes than their parents. Learning can no longer be confined to the years
we spend in school or the hours we spend in the classroom: It must be lifelong, lifewide, and
available on demand (Bransford et al. 2006).


To prepare students to learn throughout their lives and in settings far beyond classrooms, we
must change what and how we teach to match what people need to know, how they learn,
and where and when they learn and change our perception of who needs to learn. We must
bring 21st-century technology into learning in meaningful ways to engage, motivate, and
inspire learners of all ages to achieve.

The challenging and rapidly changing demands of our global economy tell us what people
need to know and who needs to learn. Advances in learning sciences show us how people
learn. Technology makes it possible for us to act on this knowledge and understanding.

What Learning Should Look Like
Figure 1 depicts a model of learning powered by technology. In contrast to traditional
classroom instruction, which often consists of a single educator transmitting the same
information to all learners in the same way, the model puts students at the center and
empowers them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several
dimensions. A core set of standards-based concepts and competencies form the basis of
what all students should learn, but beyond that students and educators have options for
engaging in learning: large groups, small groups, and activities tailored to individual goals,
needs, and interests.


Figure 1. A Model of Learning, Powered by Technology

Information
Management Knowledge-
Communication building
Tools Tools

Learning
Communities

Teachers
h Parents
t

Personal Peers With
Learning Common
Networks Interests

Student

Information, Online
Data Tutoring
Resources Guided
Courses
Expertise
Peers Authoritative Mentors
t
Sources Coaches

In this model, technology supports learning by providing engaging environments and tools
for understanding and remembering content. For example, game-based courses use
features familiar to game players to teach core subject content, such as history.

Technology provides access to a much wider and more flexible set of learning resources than
is available in classrooms and connections to a wider and more flexible set of “educators,”
including teachers, parents, experts, and mentors outside the classroom. Engaging and
effective learning experiences can be individualized or differentiated for particular learners


(either paced or tailored to fit their learning needs) or
Individualized, Personalized, and
personalized, which combines paced and tailored learning
Differentiated Instruction
with flexibility in content or theme to fit the interests and prior
Individualization, differentiation, and experience of each learner. (See sidebar for definitions of
personalization have become buzzwords in
individualized, differentiated, and personalized learning.)
education, but little agreement exists on what
exactly they mean beyond the broad concept that
each is an alternative to the one-size-fits-all model
An example of individualized and differentiated learning can be
of teaching and learning. For example, some found in New York City’s School of One pilot, a 2009 summer
education professionals use personalization to program that allowed students learning mathematics to learn
mean that students are given the choice of what at their own pace and in a variety of ways. On the basis of its
and how they learn according to their interests, initial success, the School of One concept was expanded in
and others use it to suggest that instruction is
2010 and is set for further expansion in 2011. (See sidebar on
paced differently for different students. Throughout
this plan, we use the following definitions:
the School of One for more information.)

Individualization refers to instruction that is
Personalized learning supports student learning in areas of
paced to the learning needs of different learners.
Learning goals are the same for all students,
particular interest to them. For example, a student who learns
but students can progress through the material Russian to read the works of Dostoevsky in their original form and
at different speeds according to their learning another who orders a surgical kit on eBay to practice sutures on
needs. For example, students might take longer oranges are learning things we would never ask all students to do.
to progress through a given topic, skip topics that But these things are important because they are driven by learners’
cover information they already know, or repeat
own passions.
topics they need more help on.

Differentiation refers to instruction that is tailored Within specific content areas, although standards exist for what
to the learning preferences of different learners.
we expect all students to know and be able to do, the model also
Learning goals are the same for all students,
provides options for how the learning can take place. Among
but the method or approach of instruction varies
according to the preferences of each student or these options is working with others in project-based learning
what research has found works best for students built around challenges with real-world relevance. Well-designed
like them. projects help students acquire knowledge in specific content
Personalization refers to instruction that is areas and also support the development of more specialized
paced to learning needs, tailored to learning adaptive expertise that can be applied in other areas (Trilling
preferences, and tailored to the specific interests and Fadel 2009). (See sidebar on Winona Middle School for an
of different learners. In an environment that is fully example of such a project.)
personalized, the learning objectives and content
as well as the method and pace may all vary (so
Technology also gives students opportunities for taking
personalization encompasses differentiation and
individualization). ownership of their learning. Student-managed electronic
learning portfolios can be part of a persistent learning record
and help students develop the self-awareness required to
set their own learning goals; express their own views of
their strengths, weaknesses, and achievements; and take
responsibility for them. Educators can use them to gauge
students’ development, and they also can be shared with peers,
parents, and others who are part of students’ extended network.


What People Need to Learn School of One: Individualizing and
Differentiating Learning
Education is an enterprise that asks, What’s worth knowing and
During summer 2009, the New York City school
being able to do?
system conducted a two-month pilot test of a
radically new education concept, the School of
Education experts have proposed answers to this question, One. Conducted at Middle School 131 in New
and although they differ in the details all recognize that what we York’s Chinatown, the pilot program focused on a
need to know goes beyond the traditional three Rs of Reading, single subject, mathematics, and a single grade
’Riting, and ’Rithmetic. Whether the domain is English language level (sixth grade). The New York City Department
of Education views it as demonstration of a
arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, art, or
concept that is equally applicable in other subjects
music, 21st-century competencies and expertise such as critical
and grades.
thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and multimedia
Instead of organizing the 80 participating students
communication should be woven into all content areas.
into classes with one of the school’s four teachers
assigned to each class, the School of One used
We are still evolving our understanding of what it means to be flexible arrangements of students and teachers and
a 21st-century learner. For example, what does it mean to be a large collection of alternative ways for students
digitally literate in an age of constantly evolving technologies to learn the 77 mathematics skills that were the
and resources, and how we can teach learners to use new objectives for the program. The School of One
technology in ways that are productive, creative, and responsible? lesson bank included more than 1,000 lessons
covering those 77 mathematics skills. Rather
One response to these essential questions is offered by the
than giving every student the same content, the
International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE), which School of One used data from prior assessments
has published the National Educational Technology Standards to identify which skills each student should work
for Students (NETS–S). (See sidebar on ISTE’s standards for on during the summer. Inputs from teachers and
students for more information.) from students provided information about how
each student learned best (for example, “likes to
learn through games” or “likes to learn alone”). A
A number of other researchers and organizations also have
computer algorithm used information about each
addressed the issue either in part or whole, and the domain
student’s demonstrated mathematics skills and his
seems to include three categories: information literacy, the ability or her learning preferences to generate individual
to identify, retrieve, evaluate, and use information for a variety of “playlists” of appropriate learning activities.
purposes; media literacy, the ability to consume and understand Staff for the summer pilot included teachers whose
media, as well as communicate effectively using a variety of efforts focused on large-group instruction, college
media types; and digital citizenship, the ability to evaluate and use students studying to be teachers who provided
technologies appropriately, behave in socially acceptable ways small-group instruction and support for online
within online communities, and develop a healthy understanding learning, and high school students who focused on
tutoring and the grading of assessments.
of issues surrounding online privacy and safety. All this requires a
basic understanding of technologies themselves and the ability to School of One uses technology to develop a unique
make increasingly sound judgments about the use of technology learning path for each student and to provide a
significant portion of the instruction that is both
in our daily lives.
individualized and differentiated. The New York
City Department of Education now operates the
Answers to questions about 21st-century learning also must School of One program in three middle schools and
take into account that people no longer can learn everything plans to expand the program to serve over 5,000
there is to know in a lifetime, and the economic reality is that students by 2012.
most people will change jobs throughout their lives. Therefore,
we need adaptive learning skills that blend content knowledge
with the ability to learn new things. This requires developing
deep understanding within specific domains and the ability to


make connections that cut across domains—learning
Winona Middle School’s Cultural History Project
activities that should replace the broad but shallow
In 1995, when the Internet was just arriving in schools, exposure to many topics that is the norm in our
students at Winona Middle School in Winona, Minn.,
education system today. We also need to know how to
began to use it to support and showcase a class project
use the same technology in learning that professionals
about local history and the changing demographics of
their town. Students gathered information about their in various disciplines do.
community by visiting local museums, searching texts, Professionals routinely use Web resources and such
and interviewing local residents. They built a website
participatory technology as wikis, blogs, and user-
to share their findings with one another and with their
generated content for the research, collaboration, and
community. The website began to take on a life of its own,
attracting the interest of community leaders, professional communication demanded in their jobs. For students,
historians, and individuals living halfway around the these tools create new learning activities that allow
world who found they were distant relatives of the town’s them to grapple with real-world problems, develop
earliest immigrants. Students expanded the website to search strategies, evaluate the credibility and authority
include the contributions of the wider community and built
of websites and authors, and create and communicate
a searchable database of genealogical information and
with multimedia (Jenkins 2009; Leu et al. 2004). For
other artifacts.
example,
Today, Winona’s Cultural History website continues to be
a valuable resource for the school and its community, and • In the study of mathematics, professional-level

students continue to interact with others in or outside their interactive graphing and statistical programs make
local area to evolve an ongoing knowledge base. One of complex topics more accessible to all learners and
the secrets of this project’s success is that it leverages help them connect to datasets that are current and
very simple technology so that it can be sustained with
relevant to their lives.
minimal funding and maintenance.

• In earth sciences, collecting data with inquiry tools,

ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards adding geotags with GPS tools, and interactively
for Students analyzing visualizations of data patterns through
The International Society for Technology in Education Web browsers bring professional scientific methods
has created National Educational Technology Standards
and techniques to learners of all ages and abilities.
for Students (NETS-S) that encompass a full range of
technology competencies. The NETS standards include • In history, original documents available to historians

• Creativity and innovation. Students should be able
as digital resources from the Smithsonian and other
to use technology and their existing knowledge to
institutions are available to engage learners in
generate new ideas, products, or processes.
historical thinking and reasoning.
• ommunication and collaboration. Students should
C
be able to work collaboratively, both in person and at
As these examples illustrate, the world’s information
a distance, and to communicate ideas effectively to
multiple audiences using new media.
and sophisticated tools for using it, which are available
• esearch and information fluency. Students should be
R anytime and anywhere, demand that in addition to
able to use a variety of digital media to locate, organize, knowing content, we become expert learners in at least
analyze, and evaluate information from a variety of sources. three ways:
• ritical thinking, problem solving, and decision
C
• s skillful and strategic learners who have learned
A
making. Students should be able to define problems,
plan and conduct research, and identify solutions or how to learn new things and communicate what we
appropriate decisions using digital tools and resources. have learned;
• igital citizenship. Students should take responsibility
D
for their own lifelong learning and should practice safe, • s motivated and engaged learners who identify
A
legal, and ethical use of information and digital tools. ourselves as growing in competence and want to
• echnology operations and concepts. Students
T
learn even more; and
should understand technology systems, select and
use technology applications effectively, and be able to
troubleshoot systems and applications.


• s networked learners who have the ability to tap expertise
A
The Neuroscience of Learning
anytime and anywhere that can advance our learning.
Three broad types of learning—learning that,
A crucial step in transforming American education to produce learning how, and learning why—each correspond
to one of three main areas of the human brain.
expert learners is creating, revising, and adopting content
standards and learning objectives for all content areas that Learning that is associated with the posterior
reflect 21st-century expertise and the power of technology to brain regions (the parietal, occipital, and temporal
lobes within the cerebral cortex). These regions
improve learning.
primarily take information in from the senses
and transform it into usable knowledge—the
patterns, facts, concepts, objects, principles, and
regularities of our world. The medial temporal
How People Learn lobe, including the hippocampus, provides a
system of anatomically related structures essential
Advances in the learning sciences, including cognitive science, to conscious memory for facts and events—what
neuroscience, education, and social sciences, give us greater is called declarative knowledge (Squire, Stark,
understanding of three connected types of human learning— and Clark 2004).
factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivational Learning how is associated with the anterior
engagement. Neuroscience tells us that these three different parts of the brain (the frontal lobe, from the primary
types of learning are supported by three different brain systems. motor cortex to the prefrontal cortex), specialized
(See sidebar on the neuroscience of learning.) Social sciences for learning how to do things, and is expressed
through performance (Squire 2004). This also
reveal that human expertise integrates all three types of
has been called procedural knowledge, implicit
learning. Technology has increased our ability to both study and
memory, and knowing how. This type includes
enhance all three types of learning (National Research Council learning “low-level” motor skills but also high-level
2000, 2003, 2007, 2009; National Science Foundation 2008b). skills and strategies known as executive functions.

Learning why is associated with the interior or
central brain regions, including the extended
Factual Knowledge limbic system and amygdale. These evolutionarily
primitive brain regions are specialized for affective
Students are surrounded with information in a variety of forms, and emotional learning (LeDoux 2000). They
and specific features of information design affect how and contribute to learning and remembering not
whether students build usable knowledge from the information what an object is or how to use it but why it is
important to us. These structures underlie what
they encounter. For example, computers can replicate and
attracts our attention and interest, sustains our
integrate a wide variety of media for learning and education:
effort, motivates our behavior, and guides our goal
text, video/film, animations, graphics, photos, diagrams, setting and priorities. With these regions, we learn
simulations, and more. As a result, technology can be designed our values and priorities: our image as a person
to provide much richer learning experiences without sacrificing and as a learner and the values and goals that
what traditional learning media offer. Technology can comprise it.

• Represent information through a much richer mix of

media types. This allows the integration of media and
representations to illustrate, explain, or explore complex
ideas and phenomena, such as interactive visualizations
of data in earth and environmental sciences, chemistry, or astronomy.
Technology can help learners explore phenomena at extreme spatial or
temporal scales through simulation and modeling tools. This opens up
many domains and ways of learning that were formerly impossible or
impractical. (See sidebar on Chesapeake Bay FieldScope.)


• Facilitate knowledge connections through interactive tools.

Chesapeake Bay FieldScope: Analyzing
These include interactive concept maps, data displays, and
Authentic Scientific Phenomena
timelines that provide visual connections between existing
Chesapeake Bay FieldScope is a collaborative knowledge and new ideas.
high school science project that combines
traditional hands-on fieldwork with Web-based
geospatial technology and other tools to help
students build a rich understanding of the Procedural Knowledge
ecosystem around them. Students
use National Geographic FieldScope, a Procedural knowledge learning includes both content-related
Web-based mapping, analysis, and collaboration procedures (learning how to do science inquiry, for example)
tool, to investigate water quality issues in and and learning-related strategies (learning how to figure out how
around the Chesapeake Bay. In the classroom, to solve a new problem or self-monitor progress on a task).
students learn about the bay using a multimedia
Technology can expand and support a growing repertoire of
database of scientific information. In the field,
strategies for individual learners by
students gather their own scientific observations
(such as water quality samples, written notes,
or digital photos of wildlife) and then upload • Providing scaffolds to guide learners through the

them to the FieldScope database. All database learning process. Many programs use interactive prompts
information is organized as points on a map, embedded directly into the learning resources, live or
providing an intuitive geospatial format to
virtual modeling of helpful strategies, interactive queries
scaffold student learning.
that prompt effective processing, and timely and informative
feedback on results. These scaffolds can be designed to
respond to differences in individual learning styles and be
available on demand when the learner needs help and then
evolve or fade as the learner builds stronger skills.

• Providing tools for communicating learning beyond written or spoken language. This

can be accomplished through Web-based multimedia, multimedia presentations, or
such gestural expressions as those that drive interactions in gaming systems.

• Fostering online communities. Technology can provide platforms for connecting

learners in online communities where they can support each other as they explore and
develop deeper understanding of new ideas, share resources, work together beyond
the walls of a school or home, and gain access to a much wider pool of expertise,
guidance, and support (Ito 2009).

Motivational Engagement

The field of affective neuroscience has drawn attention to the critical importance of
motivation in how the brain learns. We learn and remember what attracts our interest and
attention, and what attracts interest and attention can vary by learner. Therefore, the most
effective learning experiences are not only individualized in terms of pacing and differentiated
to fit the learning needs of particular learners, but also personalized in the sense that they
are flexible in content or theme to fit the interests of particular learners.


To stimulate motivational engagement, technology can

• Engage interest and attention. Digital learning resources enable engaging individual

learners’ personal interests by connecting Web-learning resources to learning standards,
providing options for adjusting the challenge level of learning tasks to avoid boredom
or frustration, and bridging informal and formal learning in and out of school (Brown
and Adler 2008; Collins and Halverson 2009; National Science Foundation 2008b).
Technology also can be used to create learning resources that provide immediate
feedback modeled on games to help engage and motivate learners (Gee 2004).

• Sustain effort and academic motivation. Technology-based learning resources can

give learners choices that keep them engaged in learning, for example, by providing
personally relevant content, a customized interface, options for difficulty level or
alternative learning pathways, or choices for support and guidance.

• Develop a positive image as a lifelong learner. Technology can inspire imagination and

intellectual curiosity that help people engage actively as learners and open new channels
for success or visions of career possibilities. For example, when students use the tools
of professionals to engage in real-world problems, they can begin to see themselves in
productive professional roles (“I am a graphic artist,” “I am a scientist,” “I am a teacher”).
Technology also provides opportunities for students to express themselves by engaging
in online communities and sharing content they have created with the world.

Where and When People Learn
Not that long ago, people expected to learn much of the information and skills they needed
for life and work within the confines of a school day and their years in school. Today, learning
must be continuous and lifelong. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. Lifelong and lifewide learning

Source: Banks et al. 2006.


A key enabler of continuous and lifelong learning is technology. Technology gives learners
direct access to learning and to the building blocks of their knowledge—organized, indexed,
and available 24/7. This empowers learners to take control of and personalize their learning.
Technology also can serve as a bridge across formal (in school) and informal (outside
school) learning settings (Barron 2006), creating new opportunities to leverage informal
learning by integrating it purposefully into the fabric of formal learning. Technology also
provides ways to ensure that as students pursue self-directed and informal learning they are
still guided by professional educators.

These are powerful ideas for individual learners but even more so when applied to
groups of learners and learning communities—from small groups with different roles and
responsibilities in pursuit of a learning project to far larger communities that may be pursuing
ambitious design and learning products. Group learning especially is enhanced by social and
participatory approaches, such as wikis, in which learners and teachers regardless of their
location or the time of day can build knowledge structures or tackle inquiry problems that
are posed together. Social media content created by teachers and learners, from blogs to
podcasts to YouTube videos or creations and performances in virtual worlds (Jenkins 2009;
Johnson, Levine, and Smith 2009; OECD 2008, 2009b), enrich such learning.

Specific examples of individual and collaborative learning with technology include the following:

• Inquiry and adventure environments with games and activities that foster learning.

• Online “collaboratories” (National Science Foundation 2008a) in which scientists

establish protocols for collecting data with sensors from local environments across the
planet. Learners and teachers learn science by doing science as they capture, upload,
and then visualize and analyze geospatial and temporal data patterns from the data
contributed by the globally networked community.

• Earth- and sky-mapping Web resources with data from the sciences and other fields

of scholarly inquiry that anyone can use to develop virtual travel tours to be applied in
learning and teaching activities.

• ugmented reality platforms and games that bring locally relevant learning resources into
A
view for users of mobile devices with a GPS (Johnson et al. 2010).

• Use of the power of collective intelligence and crowdsourcing to tackle complex

interdisciplinary problems.

• Powerful learning applications for mobile Internet access devices, such as musical

instrument simulators, language-learning tools, and mathematical games.

• Sites and communities that publish academic content, including user-generated

content. One notable example is the videotaped lectures of MIT physics professor
Walter Lewin, available on MIT’s OpenCourseWare site as well as through commercial
courseware and video-sharing sites. Lewin’s engaging and entertaining lectures have
earned him a following of millions worldwide.


Who Needs to Learn
The United States cannot prosper economically, culturally, or politically if major parts of our
citizenry lack a strong educational foundation, yet far too many students are not served by
our current one-size-fits-all education system. The learning sciences and technology can
help us design and provide more effective learning experiences for all learners.

Universal Design for Learning

Making learning experiences accessible to all learners requires universal design, a concept
well established in the field of architecture, where all modern public buildings, including
schools, are designed to be accessible by everyone. Principles and guidelines have been
established for universal design in education based on decades of research and are known
as Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The UDL principles reflect the way students take in
and process information (Rose and Meyer 2002). Using them to develop goals, instructional
methods, classroom materials, and assessments, educators can improve outcomes for
diverse learners by providing fair opportunities for learning by improving access to content.
The UDL principles are as follows:

• Provide multiple and flexible methods of presentation of information and knowledge.

Examples include digital books, specialized software and websites, text-to-speech
applications, and screen readers.

• Provide multiple and flexible means of expression with alternatives for students to

demonstrate what they have learned. Examples include online concept mapping and
speech-to-text programs.

• Provide multiple and flexible means of engagement to tap into diverse learners’

interests, challenge them appropriately, and motivate them to learn. Examples include
choices among different scenarios or content for learning the same competency and
opportunities for increased collaboration or scaffolding.

The definition of UDL that appears in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (103
U.S.C. § 42) has come to dominate the field because of its broad applicability and its
research foundation in the learning sciences, both cognitive and neurosciences.

Serving the Underserved
The goal of UDL is to reach all learners, but some groups are especially underserved. In the
past two decades, the disparities in access to and the use of technology have been closely
associated with socioeconomic status, ethnicity, geographical location, and gender; primary
language; disability; educational level; and generational characteristics (Pew Internet
American Life Project 2007). The FCC now refers to “digital exclusion” as what must be


overcome, because job applications, health information, and
Universal Design for Textbooks: National many other crucial information resources appear only in the
Instructional Materials Accessibility
digital realm (Federal Communications Commission 2009). As
Standard—NIMAS
we use technology to reach all learners, the following groups
Traditional textbooks, like any standardized need special attention:
learning technology, are much more accessible to
some learners than others. For students who are • Low-income and minority learners. Despite significant

blind, who have physical disabilities, or who have gains, learners from low-income communities and
reading disabilities, textbooks impose barriers underserved minority groups still are less likely to have
rather than opportunities for learning. In the past,
computers and Internet access and have fewer people in
each classroom teacher or school had to generate
their social circles with the skills to support technology-
some kind of work-around to overcome these
barriers—contracting for a Braille version of the based learning at home (Warschauer and Matuchniak
book, engaging an aide to help with the physical 2010). Some of the solutions to the access problem are
demands of textbooks, recording or purchasing capitalizing on existing programs in the public sphere—
an audio version for students with dyslexia, and extended hours for use of networked computers in
so forth. The costs—in time, resources, learning
schools, libraries, community centers, and so on.
opportunities—of retrofitting in these ways are
high. Most important, the costs of such one-off
accommodations are repeated in every classroom
• English language learners. English is the predominant

and district throughout the country—a staggering language of instruction in most U.S. classrooms and in
waste of money and time. the vast majority of Web resources. The challenges of
In 2006, the U.S. Congress mandated a new learning the content and skills necessary to function as
and more universally designed approach. In that a 21st-century citizen are heightened if English is not a
year, regulations for the National Instructional person’s first language. Recent advances in language
Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) went translation technology provide powerful tools for reducing
into effect. That standard stipulates that all U.S.
language barriers. With proper design, technology can
textbooks be available as a “digital source file”
easily represent information so that there are multiple
(a fully marked up XML source file based on the
Daisy international standard). The power of that alternatives for English, multiple options for unfamiliar
digital source file is in its flexibility: It can be easily vocabulary or syntax, and even alternatives to language
transformed into many different student-ready itself (use of image, video, and audio).
versions, including a Braille book, a digital talking
book, a large-text version, and so forth. The same • Learners with disabilities. In public schools, many learners

content can be generated once by a publisher but
are identified as having special needs. These students
can be displayed in many different ways to match
the different needs of diverse students.
need accommodations to have the opportunity to achieve
at the same levels as their peers. In addition to UDL for
learners with significant physical and sensory disabilities,
powerful new assistive technologies are increasingly
becoming available to improve access to learning
opportunities. These include electronic mobility switches
and alternative keyboards for students with physical
disabilities, computer-screen enlargers and text-to-speech
and screen readers for individuals with visual disabilities,
electronic sign-language dictionaries and signing avatars
for learners with hearing disabilities, and calculators and
spellcheckers for individuals with learning disabilities.
Many of these devices are difficult or impossible to
use with traditional learning materials, such as printed
textbooks. The advantage of digital resources,


especially those that are universally designed, is that
Building Early Literacy Skills Through
they can easily be made accessible through assistive
Technology-rich Learning Experiences
technologies. (See the sidebar on universal design
Although decades of research show that public
for textbooks.)
media can improve literacy skills when young
children watch at home (Fisch 2004; Thakkar,
• Early childhood: For underserved children, learning
Garrison, and Christakis 2006), using digital media in
gaps in literacy begin in early childhood and become preschools has been more controversial. Now, new
increasingly difficult to overcome as their education research suggests that technology-rich classroom
progresses. Early intervention is crucial if these children experiences can help build young children’s school
readiness skills (Penuel et al. 2009).
are to keep pace with their peers, especially intervention
that augments the linguistic, visual, and symbolic In a recent study, researchers evaluated the
worlds that learners experience and seek to emulate. impact of a 10-week literacy intervention built
around media-rich materials developed with
Increasingly, educational television offerings are being
support from Ready to Learn. The intervention
complemented with computer-based activities and
targeted preschool children’s literacy skills through
resources for caregivers that help them engage with a combination of teacher-led video viewings of
young learners around the learning content. A recent PBS shows, educational computer games, and
rigorous experimental test of such a combination, when hands-on activities. Early childhood educators
used in daycare settings to target early literacy skills, learned how to use the media as tools to support
academic instruction, actively engaging children
found significant positive effects. (See the sidebar on
with technology to teach key learning concepts.
building early literacy skills through technology.)
Children who participated in the literacy curriculum
outscored the control group children on four
• dult workforce. Many adults in the workforce are
A
important literacy measures that predict later
underproductive, have no postsecondary credential, and
reading success: the ability to name letters, know
face limited opportunities because they lack fluency in the sounds associated with those letters, recognize
English or other basic literacy skills. Unfortunately, they letters in their own names, and understand basic
have little time or opportunity for the sustained learning concepts about stories and printed words. Notably,
and development that becoming fluent would require. For these learning gains were of a magnitude rarely
observed in preschool curriculum intervention
these learners, technology expands the opportunities for
studies (Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research
where and when they can learn, enabling them to catch
Consortium 2008), demonstrating the power of
up and continue to learn. Such resources as Learner technology-based interventions to help close early
Web and USA Learns make it possible for working adults learning gaps.
to take online courses anytime and anywhere. While
individual adults benefit from more opportunities for
advancement, companies and agencies benefit from the
increased productivity of a fully literate workforce, one
continuously preparing for the future. (See the sidebar on
adult learning resources.)

• Seniors. The aging population is rapidly expanding, and

elders have specific disabilities—visual, hearing, motor,
cognitive—that accompany the neurology of aging.
At the same time, seniors have special strengths that
come from their accumulated wisdom and experience.
Capitalizing on those strengths in supporting lifelong
learning for seniors requires careful design of learning
environments and the use of technology so that sensory


weaknesses (in vision or hearing) and mnemonic capacity (in
Adult Learning Resources
working and associative memory) do not erect insurmountable
Learner Web barriers to continued learning, independence, and socialization.
Developed at Portland State University, Learner
Web is a learning support system for adults with a
specific goal, such as earning a GED, transitioning Enabling All Learners to Excel in STEM
to higher education, or gaining skills to qualify for
a job. The system is structured around the adult’s The state of science and engineering in the United States
selected learning plan and offers courseware, is strong, but U.S. dominance worldwide has eroded
work with a tutor or teacher, assessments, and
significantly in recent years, primarily because of rapidly
an electronic portfolio. Learners can receive
assistance both over the Web and by telephone.
increasing capability in East Asian nations, particularly China
(National Science Board 2010). In addition, new data show
USA Learns
that U.S. 15-year-olds are losing ground in science and math
The online multimedia resource USA Learns helps achievement compared with their peers around the world
adult learners increase their skills in reading,
(McKinsey Company 2009).
writing, and speaking English. USA Learns was
created for Spanish-speaking adult immigrants by
the U.S. Department of Education in collaboration
In November 2009, President Obama launched the Educate
with the Sacramento County Office of Education to Innovate campaign to improve the participation and
and the University of Michigan Institute of Social performance of America’s students in STEM with the goal of
Research. The topics, characters, and simulations enabling all learners to excel in STEM. In January 2010, the
in USA Learns reflect the challenges of the President announced a new set of public-private partnerships
immigrant experience. The system is intended
committing $250 million in private resources to attract, develop,
for home use but includes a management
component that teachers or tutors can use to
reward, and retain STEM educators.
monitor progress if the adult learner is in a formal
program. Users of USA Learns can choose to get In addition, the NSF through its cyberlearning initiatives
instructions in English or Spanish, and immediate and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and
feedback and comprehension checks and quizzes Technology (PCAST) are making recommendations to guide
help learners gauge their own progress.
the restructuring of STEM domains for more effective learning
with technology, taking into account that technologies for
representing, manipulating, and communicating information
and ideas have changed professional practices and what
students need to learn to be prepared for STEM professions.
In particular, technology can be used to support student
interaction with STEM content in ways that promote deeper
understanding of complex ideas, engage students in solving
complex problems, and create new opportunities for STEM
learning at all levels of our education system.


Reaching Our Goal
1.0 Learning:

All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and out of
school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in

To meet this goal, we recommend the following:

1.1 States should continue to revise, create, and implement standards and learning
objectives using technology for all content areas that reflect 21st-century expertise and the
power of technology to improve learning.

Our education system relies on core sets of standards-based concepts and competencies
that form the basis of what all students should know and should be able to do. Whether
the domain is English language arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, art,
or music, states should continue to consider the integration of 21st-century competencies
and expertise, such as critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, multimedia
communication, and technological competencies demonstrated by professionals in various
disciplines.

1.2 States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that use
technology to embody design principles from the learning sciences.

Advances in learning sciences, including cognitive science, neuroscience, education,
and social sciences, give us greater understanding of three connected types of human
learning—factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivational engagement.
Technology has increased our ability to both study and enhance all three types. Today’s
learning environments should reflect what we have learned about how people learn and
take advantage of technology to optimize learning.

1.3 States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that
exploit the flexibility and power of technology to reach all learners anytime and anywhere.

The always-on nature of the Internet and mobile access devices provides our education
system with the opportunity to create learning experiences that are available anytime and
anywhere. When combined with design principles for personalized learning and UDL,
these experiences also can be accessed by learners who have been marginalized in
many educational settings: students from low-income communities and minorities, English
language learners, students with disabilities, students who are gifted and talented, students
from diverse cultures and linguistic backgrounds, and students in rural areas.


1.4 Use advances in learning sciences and technology to enhance STEM learning and
develop, adopt, and evaluate new methodologies with the potential to inspire and enable all
learners to excel in STEM.

New technologies for representing, manipulating, and communicating data, information,
and ideas have changed professional practices in STEM fields and what students need to
learn to be prepared for STEM professions. Technology should be used to support student
interaction with STEM content in ways that promote deeper understanding of complex ideas,
engage students in solving complex problems, and create new opportunities for STEM
learning throughout our education system.


Assessment: Measure What Matters

Goal: Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure
what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement.

Most of the assessment done in schools today is after the fact and designed to indicate only
whether students have learned. Little is done to assess students’ thinking during learning
so we can help them learn better. Nor do we collect and aggregate student-learning data in
ways that make the information valuable to and accessible by educators, schools, districts,
states, and the nation to support continuous improvement and innovation. We are not using
the full flexibility and power of technology to design, develop, and validate new assessment
materials and processes for both formative and summative uses.

Just as learning sciences and technology play an essential role in helping us create
more effective learning experiences, when combined with assessment theory they also
can provide a foundation for much-needed improvements in assessment (Pellegrino,
Chudowsky, and Glaser 2001; Tucker 2009). These improvements include finding new
and better ways to assess what matters, doing assessment in the course of learning when
there is still time to improve student performance, and involving multiple stakeholders in the
process of designing, conducting, and using assessment.

Equally important, we now are acutely aware of the need to make data-driven decisions
at every level of our education system on the basis of what is best for each and every
student—decisions that in aggregate will lead to better performance and greater efficiency
across the entire system.


What We Should Be Assessing

“I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards
and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a
test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical think-
ing and entrepreneurship and creativity.”

—President Barack Obama,
Address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 10, 2009

President Obama issued this challenge to change our thinking about what we should be
assessing. Measuring these complex skills requires designing and developing assessments
that address the full range of expertise and competencies implied by the standards.
Cognitive research and theory provide rich models and representations of how students
understand and think about key concepts in the curriculum and how the knowledge
structures we want students to have by the time they reach college develop over time. An
illustration of the power of combining research and theory with technology is provided by the
work of Jim Minstrell, a former high school physics teacher who developed an approach to
teaching and assessment that carefully considers learners’ thinking.

Minstrell’s work began with a compilation of student ideas about force and motion based on
both the research literature and the observations of educators. Some of these student ideas,
or “facets” in Minstrell’s terminology, are considered scientifically correct to the degree one
would expect at the stage of introductory physics. Others are partially incorrect, and still
others are seriously flawed. Using these facets as a foundation, Minstrell designed a Web-
based assessment program with sets of questions that can be used to inform learning about
force and motion rather than simply test how much students have learned (Minstrell and
Kraus 2005). Minstrell’s facet assessments and instructional materials are available on the
Web (http://www.diagnoser.com).


Technology Supports Assessing
Complex Competencies
As Minstrell’s and others’ work shows, through multimedia, interactivity, and connectivity
it is possible to assess competencies that we believe are important and that are aspects
of thinking highlighted in cognitive research. It also is possible to directly assess problem-
solving skills, make visible sequences of actions taken by learners in simulated environments,
model complex reasoning tasks, and do it all within the contexts of relevant societal issues
and problems that people care about in everyday life (Vendlinski and Stevens 2002).

Other technologies enable us to assess how well students communicate for a variety of
purposes and in a variety of ways, including in virtual environments. An example of this is
River City, a decade-long effort at Harvard University funded by the NSF. River City is a
multiuser virtual environment designed by researchers to study how students learn through
using it (Dede 2009). This virtual environment was built as a context in which middle school
students could acquire concepts in biology, ecology, and epidemiology while planning and
implementing scientific investigations in a virtual world.

River City takes students into an industrial city at the time in the 18th century when scientists
were just beginning to discover bacteria. Each student is represented as an avatar and
communicates with other student avatars through chat and gestures. Students work in teams
of three, moving through River City to collect data and run tests in response to the mayor’s
challenge to find out why River City residents are falling ill. The student teams form and test
hypotheses within the virtual city, analyze data, and write up their research in a report they
deliver to the mayor.

Student performance in River City can be assessed by analyzing the reports that are the
culmination of their experiences and also by looking at the kinds of information each student
and each student team chose to examine and their moment-to-moment movements,
actions, and utterances. On the basis of student actions in River City, researchers developed
measures of students’ science inquiry skills, sense of efficacy as a scientist, and science
concept knowledge (Dede 2009; Dieterle 2009). Materials and other resources have been
developed to support educators in implementing River City in their classrooms.

As the River City example illustrates, just as technology has changed the nature of inquiry
among professionals, it can change how the corresponding academic subjects can be taught
and tested. Technology allows representation of domains, systems, models, and data and
their manipulation in ways that previously were not possible. Technology enables the use
of dynamic models of systems, such as an energy-efficient car, a recycling program, or a
molecular structure. Technology makes it possible to assess students by asking them to
design products or experiments, to manipulate parameters, run tests, record data, and graph
and describe their results.


Another advantage to technology-based assessments is we
Technology-based Assessment Using a Hot-air
can use them to assess what students learn outside school
Balloon Simulation
walls and hours as well as inside. Assuming that we have
The National Assessment of Educational Progress
standards for the competencies students must have and
(NAEP) has been exploring the use of more
complex assessment tasks enabled by technology. valid, reliable techniques for measuring these competencies,
In one technology-based simulation task, for technology can help us assess (and reward) learning
example, eighth-graders are asked to use a hot regardless of when and where it takes place.
air balloon simulation to design and conduct an
experiment to determine the relationship between
payload mass and balloon altitude. After completing The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has
the tutorial about the simulation tool interface, designed and fielded several technology-based assessments
students select values for the independent variable involving complex tasks and problem situations (Bennett et al.
payload mass. They can observe the balloon rise
2007). (See sidebar on technology-based assessment using a
in the flight box and note changes in the values of
the dependent variables of altitude, balloon volume, hot-air balloon simulation.)
and time to final altitude.

In another problem, the amount of helium, another Growing recognition of the need to assess complex
independent variable, is held constant to reduce competencies also is demonstrated by the Department’s Race
the task’s difficulty. Students can construct tables to the Top Assessment Competition. The 2010 competition
and graphs and draw conclusions by clicking on
the buttons below the heading Interpret Results.
challenged teams of states to develop student assessment
As they work with the simulation, students can get systems that assess the full range of standards, including
help if they need it: A glossary of science terms, students’ ability to analyze and solve complex problems,
science help about the substance of the problem,
synthesize information, and apply knowledge to new situations.
and computer help about the buttons and functions
of the simulation interface are built in to the The Department of Education urged participants in this
technology environment. The simulation task takes competition to take advantage of the capabilities of technology
60 minutes to complete, and student performance to provide students with realistic, complex performance tasks;
is used to derive measures of the student’s
provide immediate scoring and feedback; and incorporate
computer skills, scientific inquiry exploration skills,
and scientific inquiry synthesis skills within the accommodations that make the assessments usable by a
context of physics. diverse array of students (Weiss 2010)

Using Technology to Assess in Ways That
Improve Learning
There is a difference between using assessments to determine
what students have learned for grading and accountability
purposes (summative uses) and using assessments to diagnose
and modify the conditions of learning and instruction (formative
uses). Both uses are important, but the latter can improve student
learning in the moment (Black and Wiliam 1998). Concepts that are
widely misunderstood can be explained and demonstrated in a way
that directly addresses students’ misconceptions. Strategic pairing
of students who think about a concept in different ways can lead to
conceptual growth for both of them as a result of experiences trying
to communicate and support their ideas.


Assessing in the Classroom
Using Networked Graphing Calculators for
Educators routinely try to gather information about their Formative Assessment
students’ learning on the basis of what students do in class. But
Over a wireless network, students can contribute
for any question posed in the classroom, only a few students mathematical content to the classroom, such as
respond. Educators’ insight into what the remaining students do algebraic functions or graphs—content that is much
and do not understand is informed only by selected students’ richer than the answer to a multiple-choice question.
facial expressions of interest, boredom, or puzzlement. Mrs. J, an experienced science teacher in an urban
middle school, participated in a large field trial testing
To solve this problem, a number of groups are exploring the the effectiveness of networked graphing calculators.
use of various technologies to “instrument” the classroom in an When district-level tests had revealed that her
attempt to find out what students are thinking. One example students struggled to interpret graphs, Mrs. J used
the graphing calculator-based wireless system to
is the use of simple response devices designed to work with
implement weekly practice on graph interpretations,
multiple-choice and true-false questions. Useful information
overcoming her initial feeling that “technology is just
can be gained from answers to these types of questions if they overwhelming.” She reported, “I have taught for 18
are carefully designed and used in meaningful ways. Physics years and I have been in seventh-grade science
professor Eric Mazur poses multiple-choice physics problems for about 15 of the 18 … and there are things that
to his college classes, has the students use response devices I have always been really sure that … kids have
understood completely. Now I see what they are
to answer questions, and then has them discuss the problem
thinking. And I am like, whoa, I am just amazed.”
with a peer who gave a different answer. Mazur reports much
higher levels of engagement and better student learning from Mrs. J used the insights into her students’
misunderstandings as revealed by the graphs they
this combination of a classroom response system and peer
constructed to guide her instructional decisions.
instruction (Mazur 1997).
Mrs. J also found the classroom network
technology beneficial for providing specific help
Science educators in Singapore have adopted a more
for individual students: “We were doing earth and
sophisticated system that supports peer instruction by capturing
sun relationships … revolution versus rotation
more complex kinds of student responses. Called Group … and … I was able to … see who was making
Scribbles, the system allows every student to contribute to a those mistakes still…. So it helped me because
classroom discussion by placing and arranging sketches or small I could pinpoint [students’ weaknesses] without
notes (drawn with a stylus on a tablet or handheld computer) on embarrassing them.”

an electronic whiteboard. One educator using Group Scribbles
asked groups of students to sketch different ways of forming an
electric circuit with a light bulb and to share them by placing them
on a whiteboard. Students learned by explaining their work to
others and through providing and receiving feedback (Looi, Chen,
and Ng 2010). (See sidebar on networked graphing calculators
for another example of how a technology-based assessment can
be used to adjust instruction.)

Assessing During Online Learning

When students are learning online, there are multiple opportunities to exploit the power of
technology for formative assessment. The same technology that supports learning activities
gathers data in the course of learning that can be used for assessment (Lovett, Meyer, and
Thille 2008). An online system can collect much more and much more detailed information
about how students are learning than manual methods. As students work, the system can


capture their inputs and collect evidence of their problem-solving sequences, knowledge,
and strategy use, as reflected by the information each student selects or inputs, the number
of attempts the student makes, the number of hints and type of feedback given, and the time
allocation across parts of the problem.

The ASSISTment system, currently used by more than 4,000 students in Worcester County
Public Schools in Massachusetts, is an example of a Web-based tutoring system that
combines online learning and assessment activities (Feng, Heffernan, and Koedinger 2009).
The name ASSISTment is a blend of tutoring “assistance” with “assessment” reporting to
educators. The ASSISTment system was designed by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic
Institute and Carnegie Mellon University to teach middle school math concepts and to
provide educators with a detailed assessment of students’ developing math skills and their
skills as learners. It gives educators detailed reports of students’ mastery of 100 math skills,
as well as their accuracy, speed, help-seeking behavior, and number of problem-solving
attempts. The ASSISTment system can identify the difficulties that individual students are
having and the weaknesses demonstrated by the class as a whole so that educators can
tailor the focus of their upcoming instruction.

When students respond to ASSISTment problems, they receive hints and tutoring to the
extent they need them. At the same time, how individual students respond to the problems
and how much support they need from the system to generate correct responses constitute
valuable assessment information. Each week, when students work on the ASSISTment
website, the system “learns” more about the students’ abilities and thus can provide
increasingly appropriate tutoring and can generate increasingly accurate predictions of
how well the students will do on the end-of-year standardized test. In fact, the ASSISTment
system has been found to be more accurate at predicting students’ performance on the state
examination than the pen-and-paper benchmark tests developed for that purpose (Feng,
Heffernan, and Koedinger 2009).

How Technology Supports Better Assessment

Adaptive Assessment Facilitates Differentiated Learning

As we move to a model where learners have options in terms of how they learn, there is a
new role for assessment in diagnosing how best to support an individual learner. This new role
should not be confused with computerized adaptive testing, which has been used for years to
give examinees different assessment items depending on their responses to previous items on
the test in order to get more precise estimates of ability using fewer test items.

Adaptive assessment has a different goal. It is designed to identify the next kind of learning
experience that will most benefit the particular learner. The School of One demonstration
project (see the sidebar on the School of One in the Learning section) used adaptive
assessment to differentiate learning by combining information from inventories that students
completed on how they like to learn with information on students’ actual learning gains


after different types of experiences (working with a
tutor, small-group instruction, learning online, learning Meshing Learning and Assessment in Online and
Blended Instruction
through games). This information was used to generate
The online learning systems being developed through
individual “playlists” of customized learning activities for
the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon
every student. (See the sidebar on meshing learning and
University illustrate the advantages of integrating
assessment for an example of adaptive assessment in learning and assessment activities. The OLI RD team
higher education.) set out to design learning systems incorporating the
learning science principle of providing practice with
feedback. In the OLI courses, feedback mechanisms
are woven into a wide variety of activities. In a biology
Universal Design for Learning and Assistive
course, for example, there are
Technology Improve Accessibility • nteractive simulations of biological processes that
I
students can manipulate; the student’s interaction
Technology allows the development of assessments
with the simulation is interspersed with probes to get
using Universal Design for Learning principles that make at his or her understanding of how it works;
assessments more accessible, effective, and valid for
• Did I Get This?” quizzes following presentation
“
students with greater diversity in terms of disability and
of new material so that students can check for
English language capability. (See the sidebar on universal themselves whether or not they understood, without
design for textbooks in the Learning section.) any risk of hurting their course grade;

• hort essay questions embedded throughout
S
Most traditional tests are written in English and can be the course material that call on students to make
taken only by sighted learners who are fluent in English. connections across concepts; and
Technology allows for presentation and assessment using
• Muddiest Point” requests that ask students what
“
alternative representations of the same concept or skill and they thought was confusing.
can accommodate various student disabilities and strengths.
Tutored problem solving gives students a chance to
Moreover, having the option of presenting information
work through complex problems with the opportunity
through multiple modalities enlarges the proportion of the to get scaffolds and hints to help them. The students
population that can be assessed fairly. receive feedback on their solution success after doing
each problem, and the system keeps track of how much
Technology also can support the application of UDL assistance students needed for each problem as well as
whether or not they successfully solved it.
principles to assessment design. For example, the
Principled-Assessment Designs for Inquiry (PADI) system When OLI courses are implemented in a blended
developed by Geneva Haertel, Robert Mislevy, and instruction mode that combines online and classroom
learning, the instructor can use the data that the learning
associates (Zhang et al. 2010) is being used to help states
system collects as students work online to identify the
develop science assessment items that tap the science
topics students most need help on so that they can focus
concepts the states want to measure and minimize the upcoming classroom activities on those misconceptions
influence of such extraneous factors as general English and errors (Brown et al. 2006). OLI is now doing RD on
vocabulary or vision. Technology can support doing this a digital dashboard to give instructors an easy-to-read
labor-intensive work more efficiently and provides a record of summary of the online learning data from students taking
their course.
all the steps taken to make each assessment item accessible
and fair for the broadest number of students. The OLI has developed learning systems for
engineering statics, statistics, causal reasoning,
economics, French, logic and proofs, biology, chemistry,
Similarly, assistive technology can make it possible for
physics, and calculus. A study contrasting the
students who have disabilities that require special interfaces
performance of students randomly assigned to the OLI
to interact with digital resources to demonstrate what they statistics course with those in conventional classroom
know and can do in ways that would be impossible with instruction found that the former led to better student
learning outcomes in half the time (Lovett, Meyer, and
Thille 2008).


standard print-based assessments. Designing assessments to work with assistive technologies is
much more cost-effective than trying to retrofit the assessments after they have been developed.

Technology Speeds Development and Testing of New Assessments

One challenge associated with new technology-based assessments is the time and cost of
development, testing for validity and reliability, and implementation. Here, too, technology
can help. When an assessment item is developed, it can be field-tested automatically by
putting it into a Web-based learning environment with thousands of students responding
to it in the course of their online learning. Data collected in this way can help clarify the
inferences derived from student performance and can be used to improve features of the
assessment task before its large-scale use.

Technology Enables Broader Involvement in Providing Feedback

Some performances are so complex and varied that we do not have automated scoring options
at present. In such cases, technology makes it possible for experts located thousands of miles
away to provide students with authentic feedback. This is especially useful as educators work
to incorporate authentic problems and access to experts into their instruction.

The expectation of having an audience outside the classroom is highly motivating for many
students. Students can post their poems to a social networking site or make videotaped
public service announcements for posting on video-sharing sites and get comments and
critiques. Students who are developing design skills by writing mobile device applications
can share their code with others, creating communities of application developers who
provide feedback on each other’s applications. The number of downloads of their finished
applications provides one way of measuring success.

For many academic efforts, the free-for-all of the Internet would not provide a meaningful
assessment of student work, but technology can support connections with online
communities of individuals who do have the expertise and interest to be judges of students’
work. Practicing scientists can respond to student projects in online science fairs. Readers
of online literary magazines can review student writing. Professional animators can judge
online filmmaking competitions. Especially in contests and competitions, rubrics are useful
in communicating expectations to participants and external judges and in helping promote
judgment consistency.

Technology also has the potential to make both the assessment process itself and the data
resulting from that process more transparent and inclusive. Currently, only average scores
and proficiency levels on state assessments are widely available through both public and
private systems. Still, parents, policymakers, and the public at large can see schools’ and
districts’ test scores and in some instances test items. This transparency increases public
understanding of the current assessment system.


Technology Could Reduce Test Taking for
Moving Assessment Data From the Classroom
Accountability Only
to the State
Many educators, parents, and students are concerned with the West Virginia’s techSteps program is an example of
amount of class time devoted to taking tests for accountability an assessment system coordinated across levels of
purposes. Students not only are completing the tests required the education system. techSteps is organized around
every year by their states, but they also are taking tests of the six technology integration activities per grade level.
The activities are sequenced to introduce technology
same content throughout the year to predict how well they will
skills developmentally and in a 21st-century context
perform on the end-of-year state assessment (Perie, Marion,
and are largely open-ended and flexible, so they can
and Gong 2009). be integrated into county and school curricula.

Each techSteps activity includes a classroom
When teaching and learning are mediated through technology,
assessment rubric. After a student completes a
it is possible to reduce the number of external assessments techSteps activity, the teacher enters an assessment
needed to audit the education system’s quality. Data streams of his or her performance against the rubric
captured by an online learning system can provide the into the techSteps website. techSteps uses the
information needed to make judgments about students’ teacher-completed rubric form to identify the target
skills demonstrated by that student and uses this
competencies. These data-based judgments about individual
information to build the student’s Technology Literacy
students could then be aggregated to generate judgments about
Assessment Profile.
classes, schools, districts, and states.
Through techSteps, West Virginia is able to have
statewide student data on technology proficiencies at
West Virginia uses this strategy in its assessment of students’
each grade level without requiring a separate “drop-in-
technology skills. (See sidebar on moving assessment data from from-the-sky” technology test.
the classroom to the state.)

Prospects for Electronic
Learning Records
Much like electronic medical records in this country, electronic learning records could stay
with students throughout their lives, accumulating evidence of growth across courses
and across school years. A logical extension of online grade books and other electronic
portfolios, electronic learning records would include learning experiences and demonstrated
competencies, including samples of student work.

Many schools are using electronic portfolios of students’ work as a way to demonstrate
what they have learned. (See sidebar on how New Tech High School uses technology
to document student accomplishments.) Although students’ digital products are often
impressive on their face, a portfolio of student work should be linked to an analytic
framework if it is to serve assessment purposes. The portfolio reviewer needs to know
what competencies the work is intended to demonstrate, what the standard or criteria for
competence are in each area, and what aspects of the work provide evidence of meeting
those criteria. Definitions of desired outcomes and criteria for levels of accomplishment can
be expressed in the form of rubrics.

An advantage of using rubrics is that they can be communicated not only to the people
judging students’ work, but also to the students themselves. When students receive


assessment rubrics before doing an assignment—and
New Tech High School: Supporting Student especially when students participate in developing the
Use of Assessment Results Using Technology rubrics—they can develop an understanding of how quality is
New Tech High School in Napa Valley, Calif., judged in the particular field they are working in (for example,
has been using innovative technology-based an essay of literary criticism, the design of a scientific
assessment practices since the school was experiment, or a data analysis).
founded in 1996. Instruction at the school
emphasizes project-based learning, with students As with any other kind of assessment score, ratings derived
tackling complex, interdisciplinary problems and
from rubrics should be both valid (demonstrated to measure
typically working in groups. New Tech instructors
design these projects around both required
what they are intended to measure) and reliable (consistent
content standards and core learning outcomes no matter who the rater is). Before rubrics are used on a larger
that cut across academic content areas, including scale for assessments that have consequences for schools
collaboration, critical thinking, oral and written and students, their validity and reliability must be established.
communication, use of technology, and citizenship.

By using this common framework in assessing
student’s work across classes and grade
levels, New Tech teachers provide more useful Using Assessment Data to Drive
information than could be obtained from a
summary grade alone. Assessments of writing skill, Continuous Improvement
for example, are aggregated across all projects
and all courses so that teachers, parents, and the Once we have assessments in place that assess the full range
students themselves can get a view of strengths of expertise and competencies reflected in standards, we could
and weaknesses across multiple contexts. In collect student learning data and use the data to continually
addition, these assessments are made available to improve learning outcomes and productivity. For example,
students in online grade books that are continually
such data could be used to create a system of interconnected
updated so that students can see how they are
feedback for students, educators, parents, school leaders, and
doing not only in each course, but also on each of
the learning outcomes, averaged across all their district administrators.
courses. Electronic learning portfolios contain
examples of students’ work and associated The goal of creating an interconnected feedback system would
evaluations also across all classes and grades. be to ensure that key decisions about learning are informed
In addition to receiving performance ratings from by data and that data are aggregated and made accessible at
their teachers and peers, students at New Tech all levels of the education system for continuous improvement.
do postproject self-assessments on completion The challenge associated with this idea is to make relevant
of major projects. These assessments provide
data available to the right people, at the right time, and in the
feedback for the teacher who designed the
right form.
project and an opportunity for the student to think
about the project experience. The postproject
self-assessment template guides the student For example, assessment data should be made available to
in reflecting on how successful the project was students so they can play a larger role in directing their own
in terms of the material learned, engagement learning, as demonstrated by New Tech High and its use of
(interest, relevance), process (for example, how online grade books. (See the sidebar on New Tech High School).
clear project instructions were and whether
sufficient scaffolding for student work was
Assessment data also should be used to support educators’
available), and self (extent to which the student
fulfilled tasks assigned within the group and efforts to improve their professional practice. Data from student
showed a solid work ethic). assessments can enable teachers to become more effective
by giving them evidence about the effectiveness of the things
they do.


In addition, teams of educators reflecting on student data together
can identify colleagues who have the most success teaching
Using Technology to Make the Link Between
particular competencies or types of students, and then all team Assessment Data and Instructional Resources
members can learn from the practices used by their most effective
To encourage teachers to make formative use of
colleagues (Darling-Hammond 2010; U.S. Department of Education
assessment data, Fairfax County Public Schools
Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development 2010). Using (FCPS), Va., developed eCART (Electronic
student data in this way also could improve educators’ collaboration Curriculum Assessment Resource Tool). This
skills and skills in using data to improve instruction. At times, it might Web-based system allows teachers to access
be useful to have educators use common assessments to facilitate everything, from lesson plans to assessment
tools, all in one place.
this kind of professional learning.
eCART’s searchable database provides access
The same student-learning data that guide students and educators to district-approved resources and curriculum
correlated to specific standards, benchmarks,
in their decision making can inform the work of principals and district
and indicators. It allows teachers to create
administrators. Administrators and policymakers should be able to
assessments using varied combinations of FCPS
mine assessment data over time to examine the effectiveness of common assessment items.
their programs and interventions.
The eCART assessment items were developed
by district teachers and designed to provide
The need for student data plays out at the district level as well. diagnostic information. The assessments are used
Districts adopt learning interventions they believe will address to reveal student misconceptions and skills that
specific learning needs, but these interventions often rely on need to be reinforced.
untested assumptions and intuition. In a data-driven continuous Using assessment results for their students,
improvement process, the district could review data on the Fairfax teachers can follow links to a large
intervention’s implementation and student-learning outcomes after library of instructional resources, including
each cycle of use and then use the data as the basis for refining the supplementary materials, lesson plans, work
sheets, and Web links. Students can take eCART
learning activities or supports for their implementation to provide a
assessments online or using pencil and paper.
better experience for the next group of students. (See sidebar on
using technology to make the link between assessment data and Student eCART assessment results are stored
in the district’s data system so that classroom
instructional resources in Fairfax County, Va.)
assessment data can be viewed along with
benchmark assessment data and results from
As good as technology-based assessment and data systems state tests. Having a common set of formative
might be, educators need support in learning how to use them. assessments enables comparisons of student
An important direction for development and implementation of performance across classrooms and schools.
technology-based assessment systems is the design of technology-
based tools that can help educators manage the assessment
process, analyze data, and take appropriate action.

Advancing Technical and Regulatory Practice

Two types of challenges to realizing the vision of sharing data across systems are technical
and regulatory. On the technical front, multiple student data systems, the lack of common
standards for data formats, and system interoperability pose formidable barriers to the
development of multilevel assessment systems. For example, student and program data
today are collected at various levels and in various amounts to address different needs in
the educational system. State data systems generally provide macro solutions, institution-


level performance management systems are micro
FERPA solutions, and student data generated by embedded
assessment are nano solutions. Providing meaningful,
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
(FERPA) is a federal law that protects student privacy actionable information that is collected across multiple
by prohibiting the disclosure of personally identifiable systems will require building agreement on the technical
information from education records without prior written format for sharing data.
consent, except as set forth in 34 CFR § 99.31. FERPA
also allows parents and “eligible students” (defined
To assist with these efforts, the National Center for
as students who are age 18 or over or who attend
Education Statistics at the Department of Education
post-secondary institutions) to inspect and review their
education records and to request that inaccuracies in has been leading the Common Data Standards
their records be corrected. (CDS) Initiative, a national, collaborative effort to
develop voluntary, common data standards. The CDS
Advance written consent is generally required to disclose
student-level information from education records, such Initiative’s objective is to help state and local education
as student grades, if the information would be linked or agencies and higher education organizations work
linkable to a specific student by a reasonable member together to identify a minimal set of key data elements,
of the school community. However, schools may non- common across organizations and necessary to
consensually disclose basic “directory information” such
meet student, policymaker, and educator needs, and
as student names and phone numbers, if schools give
come to agreement on definitions, business rules and
public notice to parents and eligible students that they
are designating this type of information as “directory technical specifications, when possible, to improve the
information” and provide parents and eligible students comparability and share-ability of those elements. (Note:
a reasonable period of time after such notice has been Version 1.0 of CDS was released on Sept. 10, 2010.)
given to opt out. Another exception to the requirement of
prior, written consent permits teachers or administrators
As the reliance on data to inform decisions, the public’s
within the same school or school district who have a
demand for transparency and accountability, and the world
legitimate educational interest in the student’s record to
access personally identifiable student data. of technology grow exponentially, we must stay vigilant
in our efforts to protect student privacy. On the regulatory
In 2008, the FERPA regulations were updated to address
front, regulations such as the Family Educational Rights
the conditions under which FERPA permits the non-
consensual disclosure of personally identifiable information and Privacy Act (FERPA) serve the important purpose of
from education records for research. In this respect, protecting student privacy but also can present challenges,
the regulations were amended to permit the release of if not properly understood and implemented. Much of the
de-identified records and information, which requires the confusion surrounding research and data sharing posed
redaction of all personally identifiable information per 34
by FERPA in its original form was reduced or eliminated
CFR § 99.31(b). The 2008 final regulations also specified
through a 2008 revision of FERPA regulations. Still, varying
the conditions under which states or other state educational
authorities that have legal authority to enter into agreements interpretations of FERPA requirements and differences
for local educational agencies (LEAs) or post-secondary in district and state policies have made data sharing a
institutions may enter into agreements to non-consensually complex, time-consuming, and expensive process. (See
disclose personally identifiable information from education the sidebar on FERPA.)
records to an organization conducting a study for the LEA
or institution under 34 CFR § 99.31(a)(6). The updates to
Advancing the technical and regulatory practices to
the 2008 FERPA regulations also addressed the non-
consensual disclosure of personally identifiable information
ensure privacy is maintained and information is secure
from education records in a health or safety emergency in while aggregating and sharing data would facilitate
34 CFR §§ 99.31(a) (10) and 99.36. efficient use of data that are already being collected to
Source: U.S. Department of Education Family Policy make judgments about students’ learning progress and
Compliance Office 2010 the effectiveness of education programs.


Reaching Our Goal
2.0 Assessment:

Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what
matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement.


2.1 States, districts, and others should design, develop, and implement assessments that
give students, educators, and other stakeholders timely and actionable feedback about
student learning to improve achievement and instructional practices.

Learning science and technology combined with assessment theory can provide a
foundation for new and better ways to assess students in the course of learning, which
is the ideal time to improve performance. This will require involving experts from all three
disciplines in the process of designing, developing, and using new technology-based
assessments that can increase the quality and quantity of feedback to learners.

2.2 Build the capacity of educators, educational institutions, and developers to use
technology to improve assessment materials and processes for both formative and
summative uses.

Technology can support measuring performance that cannot be assessed with conventional
testing formats, providing our education system with opportunities to design, develop,
and validate new and more effective assessment materials. Building this capacity can be
accelerated through knowledge exchange, collaboration, and better alignment between
educators (practitioners) and the experts.

2.3 Conduct research and development that explores how embedded assessment
technologies, such as simulations, collaboration environments, virtual worlds, games and
cognitive tutors, can be used to engage and motivate learners while assessing complex skills.

Interactive technologies, especially games, provide immediate performance feedback so that
players always know how they are doing. As a result, they are highly engaging to students
and have the potential to motivate students to learn. They also enable educators to assess
important competencies and aspects of thinking in contexts and through activities that
students care about in everyday life. Because interactive technologies hold this promise,
assessment and interactive technology experts should collaborate on research to determine
ways to use them effectively for assessment.


2.4 Conduct research and development that explores how UDL can enable the best
accommodations for all students to ensure we are assessing what we intend to measure
rather than extraneous abilities a student needs to respond to the assessment task.

To be valid, an assessment must measure those qualities it is intended to measure, and
scores should not be influenced by extraneous factors. An assessment of science, for
example, should measure understanding of science concepts and their application, not the
ability to see print, to respond to items using a mouse, or to use word processing skills. Test
items and tasks should be designed from the outset to measure the knowledge, skills, and
abilities that the test intends to assess and not the students’ ability to read when assessing
mathematics skills or to self-monitor when completing a science task that includes several
steps. Assessment and technology experts should collaborate to create assessment design
tools and processes that make it possible to develop assessment systems with appropriate
features (not just accommodations) so that assessments capture examinees’ strengths in
terms of the qualities that the assessment is intended to measure.

2.5 Revise practices, policies, and regulations to ensure privacy and information protection
while enabling a model of assessment that includes ongoing gathering and sharing of data
for continuous improvement.

Every parent of a student under 18 and every student 18 or over should have the right to
access the student’s own assessment data in the form of an electronic learning record
that the student can take with them throughout his or her educational career. At the same
time, appropriate safeguards, including stripping records of identifiable information and
aggregating data across students, classrooms, and schools, should be used to make it
possible to supply education data derived from student records to other legitimate users
without compromising student privacy.


Teaching: Prepare and Connect

Goal: Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that
connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that can
empower and inspire them to provide more effective teaching for all learners.

Teaching today is practiced mostly in isolation. Many educators work alone, with little
interaction with professional colleagues or experts in the outside world. Professional
development typically is provided in short, fragmented, and episodic workshops that offer
little opportunity to integrate learning into practice. A classroom educator’s primary job is
understood to be covering the assigned content and ensuring that students test well. Many
educators do not have the information, the time, or the incentives to continuously improve
their professional practice from year to year.

Not surprisingly, half of freshly minted teachers leave the profession within the first five years
(Ingersoll and Smith 2003). These conditions exist because our education system and the
institutions that prepare educators often fail to give educators the tools to do their job well. Our
education system holds educators responsible for student achievement but does support them
with the latest technology the way professionals in other fields are supported. Although some
preservice programs are using technology in innovative ways (Gomez et al. 2008), widespread
agreement exists that teachers by and large are not well prepared to use technology in their
practice (Kay 2006). As a result, the technology of everyday life has moved well beyond what
educators are taught to and regularly use to support student learning.

Meanwhile, policymakers and education leaders point to a lack of effective teaching and the
need for greater accountability among teachers as the key to fixing education in America.
Although the expectation of effective teaching and accountability for professional educators is
a critical component of transforming our education system, we also need to recognize that we
must strengthen and elevate the teaching profession. This is necessary to attract and retain
the most effective educators and achieve the learning outcomes we seek for all learners.

Just as leveraging technology can help us improve learning and assessment, technology
can help us better prepare effective educators and increase their competencies throughout
their careers while building the capacity of our education system to deliver effective
teaching. Technology can do this by enabling a shift to a new model of connected teaching.


The Practice of Connected Teaching
In connected teaching, classroom educators are fully instrumented, with 24/7 access to
data about student learning and analytic tools that help them act on the insights the data
provide. They are connected to their students and to professional content, resources,
and systems that empower them to create, manage, and assess engaging and relevant
learning experiences for students both in and out of school. They also are connected to
resources and expertise that improve their own instructional practices, continually add to
their competencies and expertise, and guide them in becoming facilitators and collaborators
in their students’ increasingly self-directed learning (Figure 3). Like students in the learning
model described earlier, teachers engage in personal learning networks that support their
own learning and their ability to serve their students well.

Figure 3. Connected Teaching Builds New Competencies and Expertise


In addition, as learning environments become more complex, connected teaching supports
educators in managing the multiple dimensions of curricular instruction. Commercially
available and open-source learning management systems are already used widely in
universities, and their use is expanding in K–12 settings. Such tools allow educators to
coordinate course materials, syllabi, assignments, discussions, and more in a central
location for students.

Teachers at George J. Ryan Junior High School in Queens, N.Y., for example, saw improved
literacy outcomes in their first year of using an online writing workshop environment. The
environment creates virtual classrooms in which educators and students can interact in new
ways with course content and with one another. It features a room where students can post
writing samples, hold discussions, and find animated content objects linked to quiz data,
feedback, and grading. Face-to-face training provided to educators ensured that they could
use the environment effectively.

Other online environments also allow broader participation in a student’s learning. School
administrators can join virtual classrooms for a window on the progress of a given class.
Parents or members of other partner institutions can log in for a virtual tour through a class
project or contribute materials to the environment.

In connected teaching, individual educators also create their own online learning
communities consisting of their students and their students’ peers; fellow educators in their
schools, libraries, and after-school programs; professional experts in various disciplines
around the world; members of community organizations that serve students in the hours they
are not in school; and parents who desire greater participation in their children’s education.

Episodic and ineffective professional development is replaced by professional learning that
is collaborative, coherent, and continuous and that blends more effective in-person courses
and workshops with the expanded opportunities, immediacy, and convenience enabled by
online learning. For their part, the colleges of education and other institutions that prepare
teachers play an ongoing role in the professional growth of their graduates by partnering
with schools and organizations that provide engaging and relevant learning experiences
throughout the entire course of their careers.

Connected teaching also enables our education system to augment the expertise and
competencies of specialized and exceptional educators through online learning systems,
online courses, and other self-directed learning opportunities, providing effective teaching
where it is not otherwise available.

Connecting With Students to Personalize and Motivate Learning

Connected teaching offers a vast array of opportunities to personalize learning. Many
simulations and models for use in science, history, and other subject areas are now available
online, including immersive virtual and augmented reality environments that encourage
students to explore and make meaning in complex simulated situations (Dede 2009). To
deeply engage their students, educators need to know about their students’ goals and


interests and have knowledge of learning resources and systems that can help students plan
sets of learning experiences that are personally meaningful. For a more extensive discussion
of personalized learning, see the Learning section of this plan.

Although using technology to personalize learning is a boost to effective teaching, teaching
is fundamentally a social and emotional enterprise. The most effective educators connect to
young people’s developing social and emotional core (Ladson-Billings 2009; Villegas and
Lucas 2002) by offering opportunities for creativity and self-expression. Technology provides
an assist here as well.

Digital authoring tools for creating multimedia projects and online communities for sharing
them with the world offer students outlets for social and emotional connections with
educators, peers, communities, and the world at large. Educators can encourage students
to do this within the context of learning activities, gaining further insights into what motivates
and engages students—information they can use to encourage students to stay in school.

Connecting to Content, Expertise, and Activities Through Online Communities

Many of the technology-based learning resources available today prompt learners to
engage with advanced content and authentic activities, which are facilitated when educators
orchestrate access to content, experts, and activities of many kinds through online
learning communities.

Online learning communities break through educators’ traditional isolation, enabling them to
collaborate with their peers and leverage world-class experts to improve student learning.
Online learning communities also permit the coordination of teams of educators within a
school, between a school and homes, and among schools, museums, community centers,
and other settings that can support a student’s learning. Educators are no longer limited by
where they teach or where they lead, nor are they required to deliver teaching as
solo practitioners.

For example, through an online learning community, an educator can bring guest speakers
located anywhere in the world into student learning. The class can watch the speaker and
interact live while the speaker delivers a lecture, demonstrates a scientific experiment or
a musical technique, or leads a guided virtual tour of a museum exhibit. A recording of the
event can be archived for later viewing or uploaded to a website that hosts free educational
content. (For an example of an online learning community built around deep content
expertise, see the sidebar on connected teaching in K–12 mathematics.)


Connected Teaching in K–12 Mathematics

The Math Forum (http://mathforum.org) is an online community that supports a connected
teaching approach to improving K–12 mathematics education. The Math Forum, based at Drexel
University’s School of Education, receives between 2 million and 3 million online visits per month.

For educators, the Math Forum website provides valuable instructional resources, including Math
Tools, a searchable community library of interactive lessons, activities, and support materials.
Educators also can consult a library of articles on current issues in mathematics education and
discuss challenges in online forums (Teacher2Teacher). Educators pose questions, which are
answered by program associates, who then post the thread for public comment.

Parents can find information about math summer camps and get help explaining concepts.
Students can send letters to Dr. Math; between 200 and 300 trained experts are behind the
collective identity of Dr. Math.

Problem of the Week, a particularly popular feature on the site, is a subscription-based service.
Students around the world submit answers online to the Problem of the Week, annotating their
answers with step-by-step explanations. Expert mentors then reply to the submissions, guiding
students if necessary to find the right answer.

Math Forum also has been used to support preservice teacher education. In 2004, for example,
preservice teachers in two education programs in Oregon used Math Forum’s Problem of
the Week to practice responding productively to assignments submitted by middle school
students. As preservice teachers practiced giving constructive feedback to students, mentors
provided guidance and support to improve the feedback. Through this hands-on experience,
the preservice teachers learned what kinds of feedback most effectively guided students to the
correct answers.

Growth of such online learning communities that foster deep expertise has been limited
because they exist outside the formal structure of funding and certifying educator learning. So
even though participating in Math Forum may be better for educators than most of the other
professional learning experiences they are offered, time spent using online resources like Math
Forum does not relieve them of their obligations to attend other programs to meet district and
state requirements.

The principle that learning outcomes are more important than where and when the learning takes
place should be applied to educator learning just as it should to student learning.

Connecting to Serve the Underserved

Unfortunately, we do not have enough effective educators in many places, including those
where we need them most. The shortage of effective educators is especially evident in
the STEM areas that are vital to our economic prosperity. A prime example is high school
physics: More than 1 million high school students take a physics course each year. Of the
educators hired to instruct them, only a third hold a degree in physics or physics education.
Many of the other educators who are asked to teach physics (usually in addition to other
subjects) have not been trained in how to teach physics concepts and might have limited
understanding of those concepts themselves (Hodapp, Hehn, and Hein 2009).


Moreover, the least effective educators are most likely to be teaching in schools serving
students from homes that are economically and educationally disadvantaged. Limited access
to excellent teaching is a source of inequity in our education system (Darling-Hammond 2010).
A recent study found that students in urban and suburban high schools can choose from
between three and four times as many advanced mathematics courses (which typically earn
extra credit in the college admission process) as students in rural schools (Graham 2009).

Connected teaching can make it possible to extend the reach of specialized and exceptional
educators through online learning activities made available to students in every zip code.
When a school is unable to attract educators qualified to teach courses that its students need
or want, students should be given the option of taking the course online. Many schools have
found that K–12 students taking online courses benefit from having an educator on site who
keeps track of their progress and provides encouragement, however, that staff member does
not need the depth of content expertise of a person solely responsible for teaching a class.

Preparing New Educators and
Ongoing Professional Learning
Technology is a powerful enabler of learning, but educators still must teach. They must support
their students’ engagement with technology resources for learning, highlighting the important
subject matter content, pressing students for explanations and higher-order thinking, tracking
their students’ progress, and encouraging their students to take more responsibility for learning.
This requires deep transformations of teaching practices. These transformations must begin in
the places where our education system is preparing new professionals: colleges of education
and other teacher preparation institutions and organizations.

Young teachers are similar to their students in that they have grown up in a world where
laptop computers, cell phones, and handheld gaming devices are commonplace, and homes
are filled with computers, TVs, digital video recorders, and game consoles. They are as
comfortable interacting with digital devices and accessing the Internet as their students
are. Still, this does not mean they understand how to use the technology of their daily lives
to improve their teaching practices. Helping them develop this understanding is the job of
preservice teacher preparation programs.

The best way to prepare teachers for connected teaching is to have them experience it.
All institutions involved in preparing educators should provide technology-supported
learning experiences that promote and enable the use of technology to improve learning,
assessment, and instructional practices. This will require colleges of education and
postsecondary institutions generally to draw from advances in learning science and
technology to change what and how they teach when they prepare teachers, keeping in mind
that everything we now know about how people learn applies to new teachers as well. (See
sidebar on integrating technology into teacher preparation.)


The same imperatives for teacher preparation apply to
Integrating Technology Into Teacher Preparation
ongoing professional learning. Professional learning
should support and develop educators’ identities as fluent The UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin
is designed to bring more mathematics and science
users of advanced technology, creative and collaborative
majors into teaching. Participants enter the program in
problem solvers, and adaptive, socially aware experts their junior year and graduate with both a bachelor’s
throughout their careers. degree in a STEM field and a teaching certificate.
UTeach interweaves technology throughout its course
Research shows that U.S. teachers have less time in their and practicum offerings. Early in their course work,
workweek for professional learning than their counterparts UTeach preservice teachers use technology to find
information and to communicate with their professors
in countries where students have the best performance
and with each other. They post lesson plans online and
on international examinations (Darling-Hammond 2010).
take online assessments. More advanced courses build
Increasing the time for our educators to engage in on these experiences and involve the instructional use
professional learning will require processes that cross of technology within the content areas the preservice
time and space boundaries. teachers will teach. UTeach preservice teachers have
multiple opportunities to use technology with students in
the field both before and during student teaching.
Educators can be engaged in professional learning not
only when attending formal workshops or other activities A different kind of example comes from the alternative
outside the classroom, but also in the very act of teaching, teacher certification program at Northwestern University.
Northwestern’s program uses video and computer
which can offer a rich source of information to inform
technology to capture classroom interactions during
professional growth (Ancess 2000; Borko et al. 1997;
interns’ summer teaching placements. Peers, mentor
Kubitskey 2006). When interwoven with daily activities, teachers, and university faculty review video excerpts with
professional learning allows learning about techniques the teaching interns, providing analyses of the teaching
and materials for teaching that can be directly applied and learning and helping to scaffold reflective discourse
with students. In this process, providing continuous about classroom practice. In this way, technology helps
teaching interns make connections between the language
supports for examining, revising, and reflecting on
and concepts of the teacher education program and the
instruction is essential to improving educator practices
real practice that occurs in classrooms.
that affect student outcomes. Technology can help
provide continuous supports through models of educator
learning that blend face-to-face and online experiences.
Technology-supported informal learning communities can
connect teachers to university experts in content domains
and in pedagogy.

Connecting With Exemplary Practices

Technology can support professional learning by making the practices of exemplary
educators accessible to other educators (Fishman 2007; Richardson and Kile 1999). With
today’s video-sharing tools, for example, outstanding demonstrations of teaching practice
can be captured and annotated. Educators can view and analyze their practice and then
innovate and customize new ways to refine their craft in light of new insights. Resources
such as Teachers.tv can be used to make the act of teaching visible, helping the entire
community better understand effective teaching practices. (See sidebar on Teachers.tv.)


Connecting With Other Professionals
Teachers.tv

Teachers.tv is a collection of multimedia resources More than two decades of research has demonstrated
developed and disseminated in the United Kingdom with the importance of collaboration among teachers. When
the mission of spreading best practices in education teachers make their work public and examine each
as broadly as possible among the entire community other’s work, the quality of their practice and student
involved in student learning—not only those who work
outcomes improve (Lieberman and Pointer Mace 2010).
in schools, but also parents and district leaders.
Social networking technology provides a platform for
The station’s programming is available through a variety making teachers’ work public, with opportunities for both
of media platforms. It is broadcast via Internet all day,
local and global communities of practice.
everyday and via traditional television for a few hours
per day on several stations. Once a program has been
broadcast, the content is archived on the site in a Communities of practice provide a strong mechanism
searchable library of downloadable videos. Links to the for promoting ongoing growth from novice preservice
videos can be found on a number of frequently used educators through expert master educators and offer
websites, including that of the Guardian newspaper and opportunities for the engagement of a broad range of
both YouTube and iTunes.
participants from outside formal education (Wenger,
Programs ranging in length from 15 minutes to one hour White, and Smith 2009). Successful learning circles also
target different members of the educational community. can bring together educators and students to deepen
For example, broadcast content in the first week of
learning (Riel 1992).
December 2009 included programs on teaching math,
English, and science concepts at the primary or secondary
level, a program on effective uses of assessment, a PBS TeacherLine is one example of an online system that
program for district leaders on special needs students, engages teachers in collaboration and builds professional
and general-audience programs on Asperger’s syndrome, community. PBS TeacherLine, long a provider of online
healthy eating, and youth and crime. courses for teachers, is now focusing on making online
Teachers.tv seeks to show, not just tell, how and why courses more interactive to help educators build their
best practices work. The regularly scheduled programs own communities of practice. Online courses of 15 or
“Classroom Observation” and “Great Lesson Ideas” 30 hours are designed as interactive environments in
show K–12 teachers’ best practice modeled by first-rate
which an expert facilitator communicates best practice
teachers in the context of actual classroom instruction.
approaches and helps educators share ideas. Educators
Similarly, a program on special needs students takes
viewers inside schools that have been serving that in a course share resources by creating digital portfolios
population exceptionally well. and participating in facilitated discussions.

On the Teachers.tv website, users can log in to a
community portal where they can find and store the The Department of Education also is acknowledging
content most relevant for them and discuss their the need for communities of practice for educators
practices with other educators. Teachers also can by funding design research on online communities of
become “associates” of the station, serving as liaisons practice to learn more about what types of content and
between schools and parents and the station. The
interactions will compel people to participate and will
associates offer suggestions for topics and give first
provide useful supports for professional educators. This
feedback on content.
project also includes the development of at least six
online communities to leverage the use of educational
technology to improve teaching, assessment, learning,
and infrastructure in schools. Communities of practice
funded by the Department will scaffold best practices,
ensuring teachers are highly effective and connected to
data, resources, content, and expertise.


Career-long Personal Learning Networks

A transformative idea in the preparation and professional learning of educators and
education leaders is to leverage technology to create career-long personal learning networks
within and across schools, preservice preparation and in-service educational institutions,
and professional organizations. The goal of these career-long personal learning networks
would be to make professional learning timely and relevant as well as an ongoing activity
that continually improves practices. These networks and other resources would enable
educators to take online courses, tap into experts and best practices for just-in-time learning
and problem solving, and provide platforms and tools for educators to design and develop
resources and share them with their colleagues.

As we move into an era when colleges of education will be held accountable for the effectiveness
of their graduates, these institutions can use personal learning networks to provide ongoing
support once their graduates enter the workforce. An example of this is TFANet, a website
provided by Teach for America (TFA) for all its new educators. TFANet offers valuable resources
for educators and opportunities for TFA teachers to connect and share ideas. This resource
exchange also enables TFA teachers and alumni to share, rate, and download successful lesson
and unit plans, data-tracking tools, and classroom management strategies.

Using technology in these ways for ongoing professional learning for educators will
require rethinking the use of time-based measures of attainment rather than competency-
based measures. Strictly time-based measures do not allow professional educators to
take advantage of the many new opportunities that online learning offers by being able to
transcend time and space.

Growing Demand for Skilled Online Instruction

As online learning becomes an increasingly important part of our education system at all
levels, this creates both the need and opportunity for educators who are skilled in online
instruction and the demand for greater knowledge of the most effective practices. As we
implement online learning, we should make sure that students’ learning experiences address
the full range of expertise and competencies as reflected in standards and use meaningful
assessments of the target competencies. Crucial to filling this need while ensuring effective
teaching are appropriate standards for online courses and teaching, and a new way of
approaching online teacher certification that functions across state lines.


Closing the Technology Gap in Teaching

The technology that enables connected teaching is available now, but not all the
conditions necessary to leverage it are. Many of our existing educators do not have the
same understanding of and ease with using technology that is part of the daily lives of
professionals in other sectors and with this generation of students. The same can be said of
many of the education leaders and policymakers in schools, districts, and states and of the
higher education institutions that prepare new educators for the field.

This gap in technology understanding influences program and curriculum development,
funding and purchase decisions about educational and information technology in schools,
and preservice and in-service professional learning. Too often, this gap prevents technology
from being used in ways that would improve instructional practices and learning outcomes.

Still, we must introduce connected teaching into our education system rapidly, and for
that we must rely on the organizations that support educators in their profession—schools
and districts, colleges of education, professional learning providers, librarians and media
specialists, and professional organizations. We also must call on education leaders
and policymakers to remove barriers to connected teaching and provide incentives and
recognition for educators who demonstrate effective teaching in a connected model.


Reaching our Goal
3.0 Teaching:

Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that
connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable
and inspire more effective teaching for all learners.


3.1 Expand opportunities for educators to have access to technology-based content,
resources, and tools where and when they need them.

Today’s technology enables educators to tap into resources and orchestrate expertise
across a school district or university, a state, the nation, and even around the world.
Educators can discuss solutions to problems and exchange information about best practices
in minutes, not weeks or months. Today’s educators should have access to technology-
based resources that inspire them to provide more engaging and effective learning
opportunities for each and every student.

3.2 Leverage social networking technologies and platforms to create communities of
practice that provide career-long personal learning opportunities for educators within
and across schools, preservice preparation and in-service educational institutions, and
professional organizations.

Social networks can be used to provide educators with career-long personal learning
tools and resources that make professional learning timely and relevant as well as an
ongoing activity that continually improves practice and evolves their skills over time. Online
communities should enable educators to take online courses, tap into experts and best
practices for just-in-time problem solving, and provide platforms and tools for educators to
design and develop resources with and for their colleagues.

3.3 Use technology to provide all learners with online access to effective teaching and better
learning opportunities and options in places where they are not otherwise available and in
blended (online and offline) learning environments.

Many education institutions, particularly those serving the most vulnerable students and
those in rural areas, lack educators with competencies in reaching students with special
needs and educators with content knowledge and expertise in specialized areas, including
STEM. Even in areas where effective teaching is available, students often lack options for
high-quality courses in particular disciplines or opportunities for learning that prepare them
for the modern world. Online learning options should be provided to enable leveraging the
best teaching and make high-quality course options available to all learners.


3.4 Provide preservice and in-service educators with professional learning experiences
powered by technology to increase their digital literacy and enable them to create compelling
assignments for students that improve learning, assessment, and instructional practices.

Just as technology helps us engage and motivate students to learn, technology should be
used in the preparation and ongoing learning of educators to engage and motivate them in
what and how they teach. This will require synthesizing core principles and adopting best
practices for the use of technology in preparing educators. Technology also should be an
integral component of teaching methods courses, and field experiences rather than treated
as a discrete skill distinct from pedagogical application.

3.5 Develop a teaching force skilled in online instruction.

As online learning becomes an increasingly important part of our education system, we
need to provide online and blended learning experiences that are more participatory and
personalized and that embody best practices for engaging all students. This creates both
the need and opportunity for educators who are skilled in instructional design combined
with knowledge of emerging technologies. Crucial to filling this need while ensuring effective
teaching are appropriate standards for online courses and teaching and a new way of
approaching online teacher certification.


Infrastructure: Access and Enable

Goal: All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for
learning when and where they need it.

Although we have adopted technology in many aspects of education today, a comprehensive
infrastructure for learning is necessary to move us beyond the traditional model of educators
and students in classrooms to a learning model that brings together teaching teams and
students in classrooms, labs, libraries, museums, workplaces, and homes—anywhere in
the world where people have access devices and an adequate Internet connection. An
infrastructure for learning is necessary to support a learning society in which learning is
lifelong and lifewide.

Our infrastructure for learning is modeled on the cyberinfrastructure envisioned and
deployed by the National Science Foundation to encourage collaboration among scientists
and researchers, which was subsequently broadened to apply to learning in all domains
(National Science Foundation 2008b). The term “cyber” tells us that the time and distance
barriers of the physical world are reduced by virtual connections between people and
between people and technology resources and tools. “Infrastructure” reminds us that even
in virtual worlds, physical and organizational structures are needed to run a system.

The essential underlying principle is that the infrastructure includes people, processes,
learning resources, and policies and sustainable models for continuous improvement
in addition to broadband connectivity, servers, software, management systems, and
administrative tools.

Building an infrastructure for learning is a far-reaching project that will require the
participation and collaboration of individuals from all disciplines and types of institutions
across the entire spectrum of education. It also will require education, business, and
government as partners. And it will take leadership and a commitment to a shared
understanding of its importance to transforming U.S. education.


Revolutionary Opportunity for Change
Over the past 40 years, we have seen unprecedented advances in computing and
communications that have led to powerful technology resources and tools for learning.
Today, low-cost Internet access devices, easy-to-use digital authoring tools, and the Web
facilitate access to information and multimedia learning content, communication, and
collaboration. They also provide the ability to participate in online learning communities that
cross disciplines, organizations, international boundaries, and cultures.

Many of these technology resources and tools already are being used within our public
education system. We are now, however, at an inflection point for a much bolder transformation
of education powered by technology. This revolutionary opportunity for change is driven by
the continuing push of emerging technology and the pull of the critical national need for new
strategies to turn around a P–12 system that is failing to adequately prepare young Americans
for postsecondary education and the workforce and a postsecondary system that is failing to
prepare its graduates for success in life and work in a changing world.

Our model of an infrastructure for learning is always on and makes learning opportunities
available to learners, educators, and administrators regardless of their location, the time of day,
or the type of access devices. It supports not just access to information, but also the creation of
content and access to people and participation in online learning communities.

An infrastructure for learning unleashes new ways of capturing and sharing knowledge
based on multimedia that integrate text, still and moving images, audio, and applications that
run on a variety of devices. It enables seamless integration of in-school and out-of-school
learning. It frees learning from a rigid information-transfer model (from book or educator to
students) and enables a much more motivating intertwine of learning about, learning to do,
and learning to be.

On a more operational level, an infrastructure for learning brings together and enables access
to data from multiple sources while ensuring appropriate levels of security and privacy.
The infrastructure integrates computer hardware, data and networks, information resources,
interoperable software, middleware services and tools, and devices, and it also connects and
supports interdisciplinary teams of professionals responsible for its development, maintenance,
and management, and its use in transformative approaches to teaching and learning.

Unpacking the Challenge
Given the enormity of the challenge of building an infrastructure for learning, we should
approach it step-by-step, designing and implementing individual elements so we can take
advantage of their incremental benefits along the way.

Broadband Everywhere
A crucial element of an infrastructure for learning is a broadband network of adequate
performance and reach, including abundant wireless coverage in and out of school buildings.
“Adequate” means enough bandwidth to support simultaneous use by all students and


educators anywhere in the building and the surrounding campus to routinely use the
Web, multimedia, and collaboration software. The activities of the FCC (http://www.fcc.
gov/broadband) and the Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (http://
www2.ntia.doc.gov) to bolster the nation’s broadband provisioning are essential to learning
lifelong and lifewide.

In March 2010, the FCC released the National Broadband Plan to provide a blueprint for
connecting all Americans to broadband capability. The National Broadband Plan recognizes
the crucial task of improving high-speed Internet access for learners in schools and homes
and calls for a number of changes to the E-Rate that would dramatically improve learners’
access to broadband-enabled learning experiences. (See the sidebar on the National
Broadband Plan. For background information on the E-Rate, see the sidebar on balancing
connectivity and student safety on the Internet on p. 56.)

The National Broadband Plan and Education

The National Broadband Plan deals with many aspects of the nation’s technology infrastructure, including
the infrastructure for education. In the education arena, the plan calls for specific actions in three areas:
Supporting and promoting online learning. The plan calls for expanded access to educational digital
content, increased recognition of credits earned through online learning, refinements of digital data and
interoperability standards, digital literacy promotion, and research and development of new broadband-
enabled online learning systems.
Unlocking the value of data and improving transparency. The plan advocates the adoption of electronic
learning records and the modernization of privacy laws to protect student data while allowing its use to
improve learning outcomes. The FCC also calls for improved financial data transparency in education,
supported by online tools that make school systems’ spending visible and connect local education agencies
with product and service providers that meet their technology needs more efficiently.
Modernizing educational broadband infrastructure. Most critically, the plan calls for several changes
to the E-Rate that would increase learners’ access to broadband-enabled learning experiences. Proposed
changes to the E-Rate include the following:
• Raising the E-Rate cap to account for inflation, providing much-needed additional funding to schools

and libraries;
• Funding wireless connectivity to portable learning devices, allowing students and teachers to continue

learning beyond the school day;
• Providing more support for internal network connections, allowing greater student and teacher access to

high-speed connectivity in the classroom;
• llowing community members to make use of E-Rate-funded connections outside school hours, creating
A
new opportunities for job training and extended learning opportunities for adults;
• Encouraging schools and libraries to partner with state, regional, local, and tribal entities to establish

networks that increase broadband purchasing power;
• Streamlining the E-Rate application process to reduce the burden on schools and libraries that seek funding;

• Increasing E-Rate recipients’ flexibility to purchase the most cost-effective broadband solutions available in

their geographic area;
• Setting new minimum service goals for broadband connectivity that take into account the numbers and needs

of E-rate network users, providing sufficient bandwidth for learners to take advantage of engaging multimedia
tools; and
• warding some E-Rate funds competitively to promote innovation in technology-supported learning.
A
The full text of the National Broadband Plan’s recommendations and vision for education are available online
at http://www.broadband.gov/plan/11-education.


Access Devices for Every Student and Educator
Building a Statewide Infrastructure for Learning
Because an infrastructure for learning should support learning
In 2001, Maine kicked off the Maine Learning
Technology Initiative (MLTI), the first statewide in and out of the classroom, students and educators need
effort to provide students and educators across Internet access devices for around-the-clock use from any
multiple grades with 24/7 access to personal location. Internet access devices are continually evolving and
learning devices. A joint task force convened by today include desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, public
the governor and the state legislature assessed
access kiosks, mobile phones, portable digital players, and
Maine’s education needs and the infrastructure that
wireless readers.
would be required for implementation of one-to-one
computing, including hardware, software, internal
and external school networks and servers, technical Many districts say they face major challenges in providing
support, and educator professional development. access devices for every student and educator. Even with the
To be able to provide all aspects of the rise of relatively low-cost mobile devices and netbooks, most
infrastructure to support worthwhile uses of devices cost at least several hundred dollars and need to be
technology for learning while staying within replaced every few years. In 2002, however, Maine became
Maine’s budget parameters, the decision was the first state in the country to give every seventh- and eighth-
made to focus the first phase of MLTI on middle
grade student and educator a laptop for use both at school and
school students.
at home. Research on the effectiveness of the program shows
After pilot testing and training at “exploration sites” in that student learning has improved (Berry and Wintle 2009;
each of the state’s nine regions, Maine’s one-to-
Silvernail and Bluffington 2009; Silvernail and Gritter 2007),
one program was extended to seventh-graders in
and the program is now being expanded to high schools. (See
all state middle schools in 2002 and to all eighth-
graders in 2003. MLTI now equips each of Maine’s sidebar on building a statewide infrastructure for learning.)
243 middle schools with wireless Internet access Many K–12 students already carry mobile devices for personal
and provides each school with enough laptops use with greater computing power than the supercomputers
for every seventh- and eighth-grade student and of a generation ago. K–12 educators routinely own access
educator to use both in and outside school. Since
devices for use in their daily lives. Students at our nation’s
MLTI’s inception, more than 37,000 laptops provided
colleges and universities increasingly are arriving on campus
by the program have been used by over 100,000
educators and learners throughout the state. MLTI with powerful laptops and mobile devices of their own. The
also provides intensive professional development, presence of so many access devices and the precedent
implementation assistance, and technical support that has been established at colleges and universities are
to educators to ensure that the technology is fully prompting some K–12 school districts to explore having their
leveraged to support student learning.
students and educators use their own personal access devices
Maine believes that its investment in technology for as an alternative to purchasing them.
its middle school students has paid off: The state’s
eighth-grade writing proficiency jumped 12 percent
In the past, districts were reluctant to allow students to use
after statewide one-to-one implementation (Silvernail
their own devices in school because of concerns about the
and Gritter 2007). Laptop use also has been linked
to gains on statewide mathematics tests and unfair advantage of affluent students who are more likely to
improved retention of science course material (Berry have the latest devices and the risk of students accessing
and Wintle 2009; Silvernail and Bluffington 2009). inappropriate Internet content or using their connectivity to
Inspired by this success, Maine has expanded cheat on tests. However, districts are finding that a combination
its laptop initiative to all students in grades 9–12. of acceptable use policies and staff training makes student use
The state is committed to funding wireless Internet of personal digital devices both feasible and safe.
access in all Maine secondary schools and has
negotiated discounts for districts to provide their
students with laptops.


Middletown Public Schools in New Jersey, for example,
brought together elementary, middle, and high school Using Cell Phones to Support Teaching
educators to forge an acceptable-use policy that would allow and Learning

students to use personal cell phones and other computing After letting two students use the calculator
devices in school. Students then created videos to illustrate functions on their cell phones to solve the crisis of
acceptable and unacceptable uses for their peers. At Passage being two calculators short for a schoolwide math
exam, the principal at Passage Middle School, Va.,
Middle School in Newport News, Va., a host of student
decided that he might be on to something. Hoping to
and educator uses of cell phones to support learning was capitalize on students’ excitement when allowed to
unleashed when the principal decided to allow the use of cell use their cell phones in school, he instituted Phone
phones for instructional purposes during class. (See sidebar Fridays in math class and challenged students to
on using cell phones to support teaching and learning.) come up with ways to use their phones to enhance
learning. Students started using the phones’
calendar function to keep track of homework
Schools also can solve the equity issue—concern that affluent
schedules and the camera function to take pictures
students will have devices and others will not—by purchasing
of the notes on the classroom’s whiteboards.
devices just for the students who need such financial support. They created blogs and podcasts related to their
This is more cost-effective than purchasing devices for every homework and supported their math work both with
student. Districts can think about providing an access device the phone’s calculator and by using the stopwatch
and Internet access at home for those students who need function to time their speed at doing calculations.

them in the same way they provide a free or reduced-price Positive student reactions led the principal to invite
hot lunch for students who could not otherwise afford it. In other interested educators to join in the cell phone
choosing the devices to provide for students who otherwise experiment. Before allowing cell phone usage on a
broader scale, each educator had a discussion with
would not have them, districts need to make sure that all their
his or her students to set ground rules for usage. All
students have devices that support writing, analysis, and the the classes came up with similar rules, and a school
creation of digital content related to their courses, not just policy was developed: Cell phones could be used in
consumption of content created by others. class only for working on assignments. Text or video
could be sent only with the educator’s permission.
Allowing students to bring their own access devices to school No photographing or video- or audio-recording of
people was allowed without their permission, no
has been limited, however, by provisions within the E-Rate,
posting to websites was allowed without permission,
a federal program that supports connectivity in elementary
and online safety precautions were to be taken
and secondary schools and libraries by providing discounts when publishing from a mobile phone.
on Internet access, telecommunications services, internal
Teachers began using cell phone applications for
network connections, and basic maintenance to support
polling and to set up an online text messaging board
them. Schools’ eligibility for E-Rate money is contingent on to discuss homework. One educator used the cell
compliance with several federal laws designed to ensure phones while teaching, asking students to answer
student privacy and safety on the Internet. These include questions via text messaging rather than out loud.
the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires As student answers came in, they were displayed
on a screen at the front of the class, identified by the
the use of electronic filtering on school networks. In some
student’s cell phone screen name. English teachers,
cases, lack of full understanding of this requirement creates
in particular, found the cell phones useful as they
unnecessary barriers to the rich learning experiences that in- started using blogs to engage students in writing.
school Internet access should afford students. One class used Twitter to collaborate in generating
stories in class.
E-Rate provisions and CIPA requirements should be clarified,
and schools and districts should explore the ways that
student-owned devices can aid in learning. (See the sidebar
on balancing connectivity and student safety on the Internet.)


Balancing Connectivity and Student Safety
Open Educational Resources
on the Internet Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning,
E-Rate is a federal program that supports connectivity and research resources that reside in the public domain
in elementary and secondary schools and libraries or have been released under an intellectual property
by providing discounts on Internet access,
license that permits sharing, accessing, repurposing—
telecommunications services, internal network
connections, and basic maintenance. Schools, school including for commercial purposes—and collaborating with
districts, and consortia can receive discounts on these others. These resources are an important element of an
services ranging from 20 to 90 percent depending on infrastructure for learning. Originating in higher education,
their level of poverty and geographic location.
OER forms range from podcasts to digital libraries to
Schools’ eligibility for E-Rate money is contingent on textbooks, games, and courses, and they are freely
compliance with several federal laws designed to ensure available to anyone over the Web.
student privacy and safety on the Internet. The Children’s
Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requires any school that
funds Internet access or internal network connections with MIT’s decision to launch the OpenCourseWare (OCW)
E-Rate money to implement filters that block students’ initiative to make the core content from all its courses
access to content that may be harmful to minors, including available online in 2000 gave the OER movement a
obscenity and pornography. CIPA also requires schools credible start (Smith 2009). Other universities joined the
receiving E-Rate discounts to teach online safety to
OCW Consortium, and today there are more than 200
students and to monitor their online activities.
members, each of which has agreed to make at least 10
Ensuring student safety on the Internet is a critical
courses available in open form.
concern, but many filters designed to protect students
also block access to legitimate learning content and such
tools as blogs, wikis, and social networks that have the Equally important to the OER movement was the
potential to support student learning and engagement. emergence of the Creative Commons, an organization
More flexible, intelligent filtering systems can give that developed a set of easy-to-use licenses whereby
teachers (to whom CIPA restrictions do not apply) access
individuals or institutions could maintain ownership of their
to educationally valuable content. On the other end of the
spectrum, some schools and districts filter students’ online creative products while giving others selected rights for
activities with proxy servers that meet CIPA requirements using OER for noncommercial purposes.
but are easy to get around, minimizing their utility for
managing and monitoring students’ online activity.
Advances in our understanding of how to design good
CIPA also has posed challenges to accessing school OER are coming out of the work of the Open Learning
networks through students’ own cell phones, laptop Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University. OLI has been
computers, and other Internet access devices to support
developing state-of-the-art, high-quality online learning
learning activities when schools cannot afford to purchase
devices for each student. Applying CIPA-required network environments that are implemented as part of courses
filters to a variety of student-owned devices is a technical taught not only at Carnegie Mellon, but also at other
challenge that may take schools months or years to universities and at community colleges. The OLI learning
implement. However, districts such as Florida’s Escambia
systems are submitted to rigorous ongoing evaluation and
County Schools have created technical solutions and
refinement as part of each implementation.
accompanying acceptable use policies (AUPs) that
comply with CIPA regulations, allowing Web-based
learning on student devices to run on networks supported Many OER materials are available not just to individuals
by federal E-Rate funding. enrolled in courses, but to anyone who wants to use them.
Source: Universal Service Administrative Company 2008. Nearly half of downloads of MIT’s OpenCourseWare, for
example, are by individual self-directed learners
(Maxwell 2009).

Because OER materials are online, their development,
publishing, and consumption have crossed geographic
boundaries, enabling the movement to support a global


education community. For example, the OER Commons is a well-known global membership
network providing access to content that is free to use or share and, in some cases, change
and share again. In many cases, these materials also are licensed so they can be incorporated
into new courses and in new ways, even within a product that can be sold commercially.

The OER movement could be leveraged more fully throughout the education system and
across types of learners. Students in the P–16 systems and adults who are changing
careers or who simply have an interest could make use of these materials. Further, as we
transition from the static print-based textbook to a more dynamic digital resource network,
assets that are published as OER could be integrated into a new kind of “open textbook.”
For example, the development of a high-quality algebra textbook could be funded by a
consortium and then the textbook could made freely available for use, reuse, and continuous
improvement. A company could leverage these materials within an even better product for
schools to use. Traditionally, textbooks have been a significant portion of the K–12 budget as
well as the student-borne cost of higher education, and in budget-conscious times this is one
strategy that could be considered.

Interoperability Standards

Not all high-quality technology-based learning resources are open, and ideally individual
learners, teachers, schools, districts, and states could bring together an array of digital
learning resources from many sources—both open and fee based—to meet their needs.
Combining resources in this way, however, requires standards for interoperability so
the resources can be catalogued and work together. A number of efforts to develop
specifications for learning applications (SIF, SCORM, and IMS) have been underway for
years, but no single approach has become the standard.

Next-generation Computing

To help build out an infrastructure for learning, districts and schools should begin a transition
to the next generation of computing system architectures. Districts should consider options
for reducing the number of servers they run through consolidation using virtualization.
Virtualization allows a single server to run multiple applications safely and reliably, so that
districts can reduce the number of servers on their networks dramatically, cutting costs and
making the networks less complex and easier to manage.

Districts also can consider moving to cloud computing, which involves shifting from the
procurement and maintenance of servers in local datacenters to purchasing software as a
service (SaaS) and Web applications from datacenters running in the cloud.

Cloud computing is a catchy new name, but its principal outcome—utility computing—is not
new. Utility computing is the packaging of computing resources as a metered service similar
to how public utilities package and sell electricity through our nation’s power grid. What
makes cloud computing more desirable and possible is that we are nearing an inflection


point driven by technology advances and the need for more
North Carolina State University Cloud powerful and collaborative platforms at lower cost.
Computing Services

The Virtual Computing Laboratory (VCL) at North Cloud computing can support both the academic and
Carolina State University has been a pioneer in administrative services required for learning and education.
delivering secure on-demand computing services It can enable students and educators to access the same
for education institutions. VCL was using cloud
learning resources using different Internet devices anytime
computing before the term came into popular use:
and anywhere, both in and out of school. This will not happen
It has been doing research on virtual computing
since 2003 and began offering cloud services automatically, however. School systems and other youth-serving
in 2004. organizations—public libraries, public broadcasting, after-school
clubs, and so on—will need to engage each other and seek
The VCL academic cloud is based on open-
source technology and offers infrastructure as a common platforms or at least technical interoperability.
service, platform as a service, and software as
a service, including support of high-performance Cloud computing is still in a nascent stage with obstacles to
computing services. The advantages of VCL’s overcome to fully realize its potential. Still, now is the time to
cloud computing approach include consolidation
move forward with investments that contribute to the shift to
of computing resources and technical support
cloud computing, with the primary benefits being cost savings
services, delivery of applications that would be
difficult to install on student computers, and the and an ability for education institutions to refocus on their core
extension of computing services to education mission, educating students. (See sidebar on North Carolina
institutions that otherwise would have only limited State University.)
technology infrastructures.

As of 2009 VCL was serving more than 30,000
faculty and staff members. A typical user accesses Services Delivered From the Cloud
VCL through a Web interface, going through a
set of authentication and authorization steps Figure 4 illustrates the comprehensive nature of integrated
and then choosing the desired kind of computing software services needed for learning experiences and that
environment and time period from a set of pull-
can be delivered from the cloud.
down menus.

VCL can dynamically move resources from one At the top are the users of the services—students, educators,
application to another, producing increased
administrators, and parents—with a variety of Internet access
efficiency and lower costs. During semester
devices. With these devices, users can find a large and diverse
breaks, for example, when most students are not
using computing resources, the system assigns set of digital educational resources from both proprietary and
those resources to researchers with heavy open providers.
computing requirements for activities, such as
running complex models and simulations. Education resources and services could be used directly in
VCL now offers services on a pilot basis to seven a variety of educator- or learner-directed ways. They also
other North Carolina public universities, the North could be used as ingredients for derivative products that are
Carolina Community College System, and several authored, built, edited, disseminated, and managed as student
out-of-state universities including three in India.
projects or educator-author curriculum modules through
Possible extension of these academic cloud
services indicated in the adjacent cluster. In this model,
services to K-12 schools is being considered.
students and educators are both consumers and producers
of educational content, with the role of student and educator
sometimes interchanged. The framework of services also
includes the administrative services for operating the school
and school systems.


Figure 4: Framework for software services in a technology-empowered
learning environment

Users of Services: Students, Teachers, Administrators, Parents

Internet Access Devices

Resources and Applications

Education resources Authoring, editing, Administrative
services disseminating
(open proprietary) content management

digital textbooks • digital libraries text processing • audio/video scheduling • personnel/HR
• tutoring systems capture/edit • programming • plant/facilities
• simulations • augmented platforms • blogs• wikis management
reality • interactive visualization • instructional/course • procurement • attendance
• educational management • student records

Assessment and Reporting

Social Networking and Collaboration

Public and Private Network-connected Clouds – software services, data libraries repositories

Below the three types of services are cross-cutting integrated capabilities to support data-
driven assessment of individual students, individual educators, and the resources (content)
and processes serving teaching and learning. Included here are assessments for formative
and summative uses at time scales ranging from real time to decades. Also included are
rating, ranking, and recommender services for educational resources.

The resources, authoring, and administrative services all can be used by individuals for solo
work and also by teams of people working in various configurations of same and different
place and time, perhaps internationally, through social networking and collaboration services.
All the above rest critically on networking and middleware, with public and private cloud
computing as the underlying platform for computation, data, and digital object management.

Human Talent and Scaling Expertise

Building and nurturing an infrastructure for learning requires providers and users who have
knowledge and expertise in emerging technologies and a shared commitment to standards
and specialists with experience integrating technology into curriculum development and
assessment in meaningful ways.

The challenge of providing this level of expertise on the scale our education system requires
should not be underestimated. Already, for example, the number of computers per computer
technician in K–12 education is estimated at 612 compared with 150 computers per
technician in private industry (CoSN 2009). To an increasing extent, students and educators
are handling routine maintenance and troubleshooting of computer equipment themselves.


Programs have been developed to make the technical support
Using Students as Technical Resources and troubleshooting a learning experience for students as well
Generation YES as a cost-saving measure. Students can also develop both
technical and leadership skills through this experience. (See
Generation YES started in 1995 as one of the
sidebar on using students as technical resources.)
first 100 federally funded Technology Innovation
Challenge Grants. Its founder, Dennis Harper,
believed that there was a better way than trying Another level of support required is a professional educator
to train teachers in using technology with the who can engage with educators on leveraging technology for
expectation that they would then pass these skills improving their professional practice. Studies have found that
to students. His insight was to use students as the
educators are more likely to incorporate technology into their
technology experts, with each student assigned
instruction when they have access to this kind of coaching and
to a teacher as the technology consultant
responsible for helping him or her develop and mentoring (Strudler and Hearrington 2009). School technology
implement technology-based classroom activities. coordinators, librarians, and media specialists may play this
The learning goals for the student center on such important role. Innovative approaches to staffing in schools that
real-world skills as project planning, collaboration, take advantage of online learning resources may free resources
and communication. Since its inception, 1,200
that can be applied to fund on-site mentors and coaches who
schools and 75,000 students have participated in
can help educators make good use of technology resources.
Generation YES.

MOUSE
Over time, districts have evolved instructional technology
Since its start in New York City in 1997, MOUSE departments concerned with the use of technology in teaching
has had the dual purpose of providing technical and learning in addition to traditional information technology
support to help teachers integrate technology into
departments. Some districts have both kinds of IT departments
instruction and helping students (Mouse Squad
(under any variety of names), and some have combined the
volunteers) acquire the skills and attitudes they
need for college. Now operating in more than 200 two functions under a single leadership.
locations, MOUSE provides student-run technical
help desks. MOUSE Corps is a career readiness Even in the latter case, those in charge of IT for a district
program that offers professional internships, or state may find they are left out of deliberations on key
mentoring, and skill-building workshops to high
decisions in such areas as instruction, personnel assignment,
school students. Citigroup has estimated that
or assessment. Those responsible for instruction, personnel,
MOUSE volunteer labor saves the average school
$19,000 a year in technical support costs. and assessment, on the other hand, are often frustrated
by technology that does not meet their needs. Building an
infrastructure for learning will require close coordination
among all these functions.


Reaching Our Goal
4.0 Infrastructure:

All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning
when and where they need it.


4.1 Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate
wireless connectivity both in and out of school.

Students and educators need adequate broadband bandwidth for accessing the Internet
and technology-based learning resources. Adequate should be defined as the ability to use
the Internet in school, in the surrounding campus, throughout the community, and at home.
It should also include simultaneous use of high-bandwidth resources, such as multimedia,
communication and collaboration environments, and communities. Crucial to providing
such access are the broadband initiatives being individually and jointly managed by various
federal agencies.

4.2 Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and
appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content
creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school.

Only with 24/7 access to the Internet via devices and technology-based software and
resources can we achieve the kind of engagement, student-centered learning, and
assessments that can improve learning in the ways this plan proposes. The form of these
devices, software, and resources may or may not be standardized and will evolve over time.
In addition, these devices may be owned by the student or family, owned by the school, or
some combination of the two. The use of devices owned by students will require advances in
network filtering and improved support systems.

4.3 Support the development and use of open educational resources to promote innovative
and creative opportunities for all learners and accelerate the development and adoption of
new open technology-based learning tools and courses.

The value of open educational resources is now recognized around the world, leading to
the availability of a vast array of learning, teaching, and research resources that learners
of any age can use across all content areas. Realizing this value will require new policies
concerning the evaluation and selection of instructional materials so that digital resources
are considered and processes are established for keeping educational resource content up
to date, appropriate, and tagged according to identified content interoperability standards.


4.4 Build state and local education agency capacity for evolving an infrastructure for learning.

Building an infrastructure for learning is a far-reaching project that will demand concerted
and coordinated effort. The effort should start with implementing the next generation of
computing system architectures and include transitioning computer systems, software, and
services from in-house datacenters to professionally managed datacenters in the cloud for
greater efficiency and flexibility. This will require leveraging and scaling up the human talent
to build such an infrastructure, which should ultimately save money and enable education IT
professionals to focus more on maintaining the local infrastructure and supporting teachers,
students, and administrators.

4.5 Develop and use interoperability standards for content and student-learning data to
enable collecting and sharing resources and collecting, sharing, and analyzing data to
improve decision making at all levels of our education system.

Fragmented content, resources, and student-learning data siloed in different proprietary
platforms and systems, along with a lack of common standards for collecting and sharing
data, are formidable barriers to leveraging resources for teaching and learning. These
barriers exist because we lack common content interoperability standards and tools to
enable use of such standards. The lack of common standards affects the quality of tools
because developers limit their RD investments into narrow markets and are not able
to leverage overall market advancements in research and development. Interoperability
standards are essential to resolving these issues.

4.6 Develop and use interoperability standards for financial data to enable data-driven
decision making, productivity advances, and continuous improvement at all levels of our
education system.

Just as content, resources, and student-learning data are fragmented in disconnected
technology systems and throughout our education system, the same is true for financial
data. Therefore, we also need financial data interoperability standards and tools that enable
the use of these standards.


Productivity:
Redesign and Transform

Goal: Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take
advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more
efficient use of time, money, and staff.

To reach the president’s goal of regaining global leadership in college graduation rates by
2020, the United States must increase the percentage of citizens holding college degrees
from the current level of just under 40 percent to 60 percent. That is a sizable increase and,
considering that college graduation rates in our country have held steady for more than three
decades (OECD 2009a), a sizable challenge.

Add to this challenge the projections of most states and the federal government of reduced
revenues for the foreseeable future, and it is clear that we will not reach this goal simply by
spending more money on education.

In fact, over the last 30 years, the United States has increased its real dollar K–12 education
spending per student by more than 70 percent without a commensurate improvement
in outcomes (National Center for Education Statistics 2005; 2008). In higher education,
tuition costs are on the rise, yet just 21 percent of the increased revenue goes to instruction
(Vedder 2004) and spending changes have not resulted in higher degree completion rates
(Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner 2009).

More money for education is important, but we must spend education dollars wisely, starting
with being clear about the learning outcomes we expect from the investments we make. We
also must leverage technology to plan, manage, monitor, and report spending so that we
can provide decision-makers with a reliable, accurate, and complete view of the financial
performance of our education system at all levels. Such visibility is essential to improving
productivity and accountability.

At the same time, we must make a commitment to continuous improvement by continually
measuring and improving the productivity of our education system to meet our goals for
educational attainment within the budgets we can afford.


The Productivity Paradox
Improving productivity is a daily focus of most American organizations in all sectors—both
for-profit and nonprofit—and especially in tight economic times. Education has not, however,
incorporated many of the practices other sectors regularly use to improve outcomes and
manage costs, nor has it leveraged technology to enable or enhance them. We can learn much
from the experience in other sectors.

During the 1970s and 1980s, economists puzzled over what they called the “productivity
paradox.” Businesses were rapidly deploying technology in the belief that it would help
them perform better and more efficiently. But when economists looked for hard data to
demonstrate that U.S. economic output per unit of investment was increasing, they turned
up empty-handed.

In the 1990s, economists were finally able to find evidence of substantial improvements in
productivity related to technology (Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1998). They discovered that when
businesses first introduced technology, they tended to use it to automate existing processes
and procedures, without regard to whether they might be flawed or inefficient. Such uses may
have had some benefit in terms of accuracy or speed, but the cost and complexity of acquiring
technology, implementing it, and training staff in its use far outweighed its contributions.

Later still, in the 2000s, economists concluded that dramatic improvements in productivity
were the result of structural innovations and a thorough redesign of business processes made
possible by technology (Black and Lynch 2003).

What education can learn from the experience of business is that we need to make
the fundamental structural changes that technology enables if we are to see dramatic
improvements in productivity. As we do so, we should recognize that although the fundamental
purpose of our public education system is the same, the roles and processes of schools,
educators, and the system itself should change to reflect the times we live in and our goals
as a world leader. Such rethinking applies not just to learning, assessment, and teaching
processes, but also to the infrastructure and operational and financial sides of running schools
and school systems.

A Call to Action for Education Leaders
Redesigning education in America is a complex challenge that will require all 50 states, the
thousands of districts and schools across the country, the federal government, and other
education stakeholders in the public and private sector to come together to design and
implement solutions. It is a challenge for education leaders and policymakers, technologists
in both the public and private sectors, and for educators throughout our education system.

An appropriate role for the Department of Education is to identify strategies for improving
productivity in education and to work with states and districts to increase their capacity to
implement them. This will include encouraging states and local education agencies to make


changes to practices, policies, and regulations that prevent or
inhibit education from using technology to improve productivity. Leading for Learning

Taking advantage of technology to make
In addition, when learning is powered by technology, the role transformative changes in learning opportunities
of education leadership changes dramatically. Having leaders requires leadership. The number of aspects of
throughout our education system who understand the role the existing system that need to change make the
of technology is essential. For example, every state should effort both daunting and complex, but examples of
leaders working together to address this challenge
assign responsibility for educational technology to a senior-
are starting to emerge.
level individual who can provide a new kind of education
In Michigan, Mike Flanagan, the state
leadership by ensuring that planning for educational and
superintendent of instruction, was motivated to take
information technology is connected with the core functions
on educational transformation by the high dropout
of curriculum and instruction, assessment, professional rate in many school districts. Superintendent
learning, and administration. A senior-level leader equally Flanagan issued a Dropout Challenge, calling on
knowledgeable about education and technology also would districts to lower the number of students who leave
ensure that educational technology purchases are efficient school without a diploma. One of the first steps in
the Dropout Challenge work was to get accurate
and effective, both in terms of what is purchased and how
data on the number of students who had started
purchases are made. (For an example of one state that has
ninth grade who actually graduated four years later
learned a new way to lead, see sidebar.) so that Michigan districts knew where they really
stood with respect to dropouts. This understanding
was hard to come by with the old practice of merely
looking at the number of students starting 12th
Embracing Continuous Improvement grade who do not earn a diploma.

Next, Superintendent Flanagan reasoned that
The underlying principle of continuous improvement is that
schools need to measure and use indicators
we are unlikely to improve productivity until we can define known to predict dropping out—such as poor
and measure it. This starts with identifying what we seek in attendance, earning few course credits in ninth and
learning outcomes. It also requires getting a handle on the 10th grades, and failure to progress to the next
costs associated with components of our education system grade. These data were not part of the state’s data
and with individual resources and activities so that the ratio of system, and many districts did not keep track of
them. Michigan used $11.5 million in funding from
outcomes to costs can be tracked over time.
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
of 2009 to fund a Regional Data Initiatives grant
This plan devotes considerable space to the learning program to make these kinds of data available
outcomes we seek and measuring what matters in learning. It at the school level. More than 97 percent of the
also considers pragmatic such outcomes as successful high states’ school districts signed on to the initiative. In
school graduation, readiness for postsecondary education, addition, an online professional learning community
is focusing on best practices in using data for
and college degree completion.
dropout prevention.

As we establish new and more complete measures of The state legislature supported Superintendent
Flanagan’s Dropout Challenge initiative by raising
learning and pragmatic outcomes, however, quality matters.
the age at which a student can leave school without
A student who successfully completes algebra in one high
parental permission from 16 to 18. To provide
school may learn more, be better prepared for college-level alternatives for students who have dropped out or
mathematics, and be more inspired to pursue a career in who are considering doing so, Michigan also has
mathematics than a student who successfully completes begun expanding alternative programs, including
algebra at another high school. Even if we cannot accurately options for online instruction. Superintendent
Flanagan has given waivers to the state’s seat time
measure or easily remedy these qualitative differences, we
requirements to 21 programs, some of which allow
must consider them as we determine what to measure for
students to take all their instruction online.
continuous improvement.


Measuring and Managing Costs

The United States spends an average of about $10,000 per student per year on K–12
education. But for too many education leaders and decision-makers, visibility into the
costs of specific services our education system delivers to students is nonexistent. This is
because education accounting and reporting typically are done across large programs and
broad categories, such as instruction or instructional support. These accounting practices
are insufficient for tracking, benchmarking, and analyzing the costs of various services
individually or compared with one another—all of which are essential to making decisions
that lead to better outcomes and productivity.

A better approach to accounting for these purposes is cost accounting, which focuses on
recording, tracking, and reporting costs associated with specific functions or services. Cost
accounting can provide a complete picture of actual costs today and also serve as the basis for
projecting costs in the future. As part of a commitment to continuous improvement, states and
districts should adopt common cost-accounting standards for benchmarking and analyzing costs.

Using Data in Decision Making

An essential component of continuous improvement is making decisions based on data,
which will require fundamental changes in how we collect and use data and in the processes
we currently use for decision making.

For many years, school districts have been developing and using multiple data systems for
different purposes. As a result, many districts today have separate systems for finance data,
personnel data, required accountability information for special education students, school
lunch data, enrollment and attendance, and assessment data. Historically, linking data from
these different systems has been cumbersome or impossible.

Advances in technology and a recent policy emphasis on using data in decision making
have resulted in much improved data in many districts. Still, although almost all districts have
electronic access to such data as student demographics, attendance, grades, and test scores,
less than half have the ability to combine data from different types of systems so as to link
student outcome data to data about specific instructional programs, teacher characteristics,
or school finances (Gray and Lewis 2009; U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning,
Evaluation, and Policy Development 2010). Combining data from these different types of
systems will require at a minimum the development and use of content, student-learning, and
financial data interoperability standards. Over time, it will require designing, developing, and
adopting integrated systems for collecting the complex forms of data we need and for deriving
meaningful interpretations relative to what we want to measure.

In addition to fragmented data systems, the silos created by funding programs, tradition,
and interest groups present a major barrier to improving the productivity of our education
system. When those responsible for a given function are isolated from others within the
same organization, they tend to develop practices and procedures that are optimal only


from their own perspective. In addition, decisions made
in one portion of an organization may create tension with Using Data to Drive Improvement
decisions made in another. During the 1980s and 1990s, Maryland’s Montgomery
County Public Schools (MCPS) saw dramatic changes
To ensure better alignment in decision making, states and in their student bodies, with increasing numbers of
students living in poverty and coming from immigrant
districts should develop process-redesign teams that cut
families or historically underserved ethnic groups.
across functions and follow the process rather than looking When Jerry Weast became superintendent in 1999,
at work flow only within a given office (CoSN 2009). In he initiated an Integrated Quality Management System
addition, federal and state policies and regulations should (IQMS) as a strategy for identifying and closing
be reviewed to identify and remove barriers to more efficient achievement gaps. IQMS combines student information,
such as enrollment, attendance, grades, scheduling,
use of resources within schools and districts. Policies
and test performance, with data on professional
also should be reviewed to remove practices that keep development, finances, and human resources. An
technology functions isolated from the functions of teaching, Instructional Management System (IMS) was added to
learning, and assessment. These include separate funding give teachers online access to curriculum resources,
student performance on formative and summative
streams and restrictions on the use of funds that reinforce
assessments and various screenings, and curriculum
the isolation of the educational technology function. (See
guides and lesson plans.
sidebar on using data to drive improvement.)
A joint venture with a technology developer produced
software for a handheld computing device that allowed
teachers to do individual assessments of a student’s
Employing Iterative Design and Development literacy skills and capture the data for the student’s
electronic file. The electronic records enabled reading
As we embrace continuous improvement, we must coaches to look at data for individual students, identify
respect the complexity of our system and invest the effort students who were not making the expected progress,
and seek out the relevant teachers to offer suggestions
needed to evaluate educational practices in different
and support. The result was that district reading
contexts over time. Rather than expecting to find an ideal achievement rose overall, with especially large gains for
turnkey solution, states and districts should define, test, African-American, Hispanic, and low-income students
and refine new ideas on a trial basis and measure their (Childress, Doyle, and Thomas 2009).
implementation effectiveness and results. New educational More recently, MCPS has implemented a collaborative
practices should be adopted with the expectation that data-focused process it calls M-STAT. Community
there will be multiple cycles of implementation and superintendents come together and use data to
examine such issues as differential advanced course
refinement. States and districts also should partner with
enrollment rates within their high schools. The district
each other on process redesign pilots and programs to had long recognized the lower participation of Hispanic
leverage resources and scale up the best ideas. and African-American students in advanced courses
and had switched from using teacher recommendations
to using PSAT scores and other objective indicators
to counsel students into honors and AP courses.
Moving to Useful Metrics on the Use of Technology The M-STAT process revealed that Hispanic and
African-American students were less likely than other
Current data on the use of educational and information students to participate in the PSAT. The community
technology in our system consist of records of purchases superintendents started working with their principals
and numbers of computers and Internet connections. Very on such actions as meeting with African-American and
little information on how technology is actually used to Hispanic parents to talk about the importance of the
PSAT and making the examination more enjoyable
support teaching, learning, and assessment is collected
by providing snacks. By 2008, 88 percent of African-
and communicated systematically. Only by shifting our American and 84 percent of Hispanic students in MCPS
focus to collecting data on how and when technology is took the PSAT; more than 60 percent of African-
used will we be able determine the difference it makes and American and Hispanic high school students were
enrolled in at least one honors or AP course (Childress,
use that knowledge to improve learning outcomes and the
Doyle, and Thomas 2009).
productivity of our education system.


Employing technology on the scale proposed in this plan is new to education. Findings
from evaluations of technological adaptations demonstrate a range of effectiveness, from
low to high, depending on not just the specific technology but also the way in which it is
used, the training associated with it, and the effort applied to on-going refinement and
further development (Campuzano et al. 2009; Kulik 2003). The lessons learned from
previous efforts emphasize that the introduction of new or adapted technologies must be
accompanied, at a minimum, by a deliberate, often repeating cycle of implementation,
observation and assessment, and improvement. To truly build a knowledge base and ensure
that we are using our scarce resources wisely, formative research, which might often be
quite local in focus, should be accompanied by a more broadly coordinated program of
summative research that measures both effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Reorganizing Teaching and Learning
We have long known that whatever it is we are trying to teach, whether drawing or quantum
mechanics, individual students will vary in how much they know already, how they like to learn,
and the speed at which they can learn more. In a time when we have the capability to support
learning 24/7 and personalize the way a student interacts with digital content, it no longer
makes sense to give every 13-year-old the same set of 45-minute American history lessons.

How much could we save if students who are ready and interested in moving ahead in their
studies were allowed to do so instead of marking time until their classmates catch up? How
much more efficient would our system be if students who need extra support in reading
comprehension strategies had that support at their fingertips whenever they were reading
in the content areas? How many more students would pass their courses and not have to
repeat them? These are essential questions we must ask as we redesign education, and
answering them will require rethinking basic assumptions about how our education system
meets our goals.

One of the most basic assumptions in our education system is time-based or seat-time
measures of educational attainment. These measures were created in the late 1800s and
early 1900s to smooth transitions from K–12 into higher education by translating high school
work to college admissions offices (Shedd 2003) and made their way into higher education
when institutions began moving away from standardized curricula.

Time-based measures were appropriate in their day, but they are not now when we
know more about how people learn and we have access to technology that can help us
accommodate different styles and paces of learning. As we move to online learning and
learning that combines classroom and online learning, time-based measures will increasingly
frustrate our attempts to provide learning experiences that lead to achievement and the
pursuit of postsecondary education that our modern world requires.

Another basic assumption is the inflexible way we organize students into age-determined
groups, structure separate academic disciplines, organize learning into classes of roughly


equal size with all the students in a particular class
Making a School “Not School”
receiving the same content at the same pace, and keep
these groups in place all year. (See sidebar on making a The kind of radical rethinking of the nature of schooling
that technology makes possible is illustrated by
school “not school.”)
Westwood Cyber School, located just outside Detroit,
Mich. Launched two years ago as a dropout recovery
The last decade has seen the emergence of some radically and prevention program, the Cyber School is the first
redesigned schools, demonstrating the range of possibilities location in the country to implement a British model
for structuring education. For example, organizing known as the “Not School.”
education around the demonstration of competence rather Like its British prototype, Westwood Cyber does not
than seat time opens up a wide range of possibilities. The have traditional classrooms, academic departments,
first school district to win the Baldrige National Quality courses, or tests. Students use the Internet to work
Award, Chugach School District in Alaska, achieved almost entirely from home, reporting to the brick-and-
mortar school building for just two hours a week to
remarkable gains in student outcomes after mobilizing its
check in with school staff. The rest of the time they work
community to identify the competencies it wanted to see
interactively with school personnel and the school’s
in high school graduates and shifting to a performance- learning management system. Learning activities
based system in which diplomas were awarded on the emphasize project-based learning and incorporate
basis of performance on the district’s assessment of those multiple subject areas. Student projects result in an
competencies (NIST, Baldrige 2001). Since that time, 15 individualized portfolio of creative work that is tailored
to each student’s interests. Experts (state-certified
districts and 200 schools have signed up to replicate this
teachers) grade students’ portfolio work products using
systemic reform (Re-Inventing Schools Coalition n.d.).
grading rubrics closely tied to state learning standards
to ensure that students achieve mastery of required
New Hampshire is now moving to a competency-based material within their individualized learning programs.
approach to secondary education across the entire state.
The Westwood school district, which had been losing
The state’s governor asked his school board to come up enrollment, has increased enrollment by 33 percent
with the education reforms needed to meet the goal of since starting the Cyber School. The school itself has
having zero dropouts by 2012. The board focused on the retained 90 percent of its students.
issue of unproductive requirements that impede student
progress: Why, for example, can a student earn a high
school credit by attending gym class but not for the hours
spent practicing and performing as part of a gymnastics
team? Subsequently, the board changed state regulations
to give students the option of earning credit for graduation by demonstrating their competence
with respect to the standards stipulated by their school districts. New Hampshire districts are
still determining how to implement this system, including its implications for funding, teacher
training, and assessment practices. But a new high school position—the extended learning
opportunity coordinator—is emerging in schools across the state.

Technology can facilitate implementation of such a competency-based approach to
education. At the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School in Chicago, teachers use
a specially designed database to keep track of the proficiency ratings each student has
earned. Proficiency ratings are updated daily so that everyone—the student, the parent,
teachers, and the school leader—knows exactly where each student stands relative to the
competencies required for graduation. (See sidebar on competency-based assessment at
the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School.)


Another way technology can support the reorganization
Competency-based Assessment at Young Women’s of teaching and learning is by enabling more flexible
Leadership Charter School student-centered scheduling. At the Huyton Arts and
In 2002, the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School Sports Centre for Learning, a secondary school in the
(YWLCS) in Chicago instituted a radically new system United Kingdom, for example, learning activities are
for awarding course credit that is helping its students selected and scheduled to fit individual students’ needs
master course material, graduate from high school, and
rather than traditional academic periods and lockstep
enroll in higher education at rates far exceeding those
curriculum pacing.
of demographically similar schools. A nonselective
public school that serves primarily low-income minority
students, YWLCS graduated 79 percent of its students
in 2005, a figure 1.5 times higher than Chicago Public Extending Learning Time
Schools’ overall 52 percent graduation rate that year.

School leaders have implemented a system for student
Another strategy for rethinking how teaching and learning
assessment that moves away from tying credit to seat are organized involves extending the learning day, week,
time. Instead, the school recognizes the continuous or year. American students spend significantly less time
nature of student learning by awarding credit for specific in the classroom than students in many other countries,
competencies demonstrated at any point in a student’s and students—especially low-income students—show
high school career.
a marked drop in their mathematics and reading
With a commercial partner, the school developed a data proficiencies over the summer break. President Obama
system designed specifically for use in a competency- and other policymakers have questioned the logic of
based program. Throughout the year, YWLCS teachers
maintaining a three-month summer hiatus originally
evaluate student work and go to the system to assign
each student a proficiency rating of High Performance,
instituted so that students could provide needed farm
Proficient, or Not Yet Proficient for each key learning labor during the critical summer months.
objective associated with the class. Students earn credit
for classes in which they demonstrate proficiency on at Since 2006, Massachusetts has had an Expanded
least 70 percent of academic course outcomes. Learning Time Initiative under which schools in lower
The data system uses the proficiency data that teachers income districts are adding 300 or more instructional
enter to create a dynamic record of each student’s hours to the school year. A number of charter school
progress that is updated daily and is accessible to networks share the belief that extending learning time is
teachers, parents, and students. Teachers can use the key to preparing students from low-income communities
data system to target their instruction and remediation
for college, and they are instituting longer school days
strategies for current students. In addition, students can
use their own data to identify the courses they are not
and weeks. Yes Prep schools, for example, run from
yet proficient in and work with their teachers to develop 7:30 in the morning until 4:30 each day with additional
a plan for mastering unmet standards. sessions every other Saturday. Yes Prep educators also

If students demonstrate a competency after the end
support extending learning time by giving students their
of the year has passed, future teachers can update cell phone numbers so that students can call them during
students’ proficiency ratings in the data system to reflect the evening to ask questions about homework.
what they have learned since the conclusion of a course.

YWLCS compiles information from the data system
As we seek ways to extend learning time, in addition
into formal reports of student achievement, converting to considering the amount of time students spend in
proficiency ratings into grade point average equivalents, school, we should also look at whether we can provide
to ensure that its graduates’ competencies are engaging and powerful learning experiences through
recognized by colleges, sources of financial aid, other means. For example, we know that students’ lives
and other external parties. This competency-based
outside school are filled with technology that gives them
approach is producing results: 90 percent of YWLCS
students who graduated in 2009 were accepted to
24/7 mobile access to information and resources and
college or another postsecondary option. allows them to participate in online social networks and


communities where people from all over the world share ideas, collaborate, and learn new
things. Our education system should leverage students’ interest in technology and the time
they currently spend learning informally outside the regular school hours to extend learning
time in a way that motivates them even more.

One way to do that is through online learning, which allows schools to extend learning time by
providing students with learning on demand anytime and anywhere, dramatically expanding
educational opportunities without increasing time spent in school. With online learning,
students can gain access to resources regardless of time of day, geography, or ability; receive
personalized instruction from educators and experts anywhere in the world; and learn at their
own pace and in ways tailored to their own styles and interests. Moreover, it enables our
education system to leverage the talents and expertise of our best educators by making their
knowledge and skills available to many more learners.

In addition, all these benefits can be realized through online learning at considerably less cost
than providing students with additional in-person, classroom-based instruction by extending the
school day or year.

As schools implement online learning, they should ensure that students’ learning
experiences address the full range of expertise and competencies as reflected in standards
and use meaningful assessments of the target competencies. For example, online
collaborative environments or virtual worlds can facilitate the participatory nature of learning
in addition to providing opportunities for content knowledge. State education agencies can
provide leadership and technical assistance in this area, and educators also should look to
their peers for best practices.

Removing Barriers to Secondary and
Postsecondary Graduation
year of higher education or postsecondary career training. There is no way to achieve this
target unless we can dramatically reduce the number of students who leave high school
without getting a diploma and/or who are unprepared for postsecondary education. A
complex set of personal and academic factors underlie students’ decision to leave school
or to disengage from learning, and no one strategy will prevent every separation from the
education system.

Many students report that dropping out of school is a gradual process of disengagement that
can be reversed with more relevant learning experiences and social and emotional interactions
at school (Bridgeland, Dilulio, and Morrison 2006; Rumberger and Lim 2008). Technology-
based programs and resources, including online learning, tutoring and mentoring, and social
networks and participatory communities within and across educational institutions, can provide
both. They also can give students guidance and information about their own learning progress
and opportunities for the future. Specifically, students need to know what is expected of them


as they move from middle school to high school and from high
Expanding Opportunities Through school to postsecondary education. Other practices supported
Blended Learning with technology also can help address the problem.
Walled Lake Consolidated School District in
Oakland County, Mich., is turning to online learning First, there is the issue of identifying students’ difficulties
to offer students a wider range of educational early and providing extra support where needed. Support
opportunities very cost-effectively.
should start as early as possible, before children enter
In 2008, Walled Lake began offering its summer school, and should become intensified for those students
school credit recovery classes online. The district who need it as they move through school. From the point
enlisted the help of its teachers to review various
of high school entry, every student could have a learning
offerings and selected an online learning provider
dashboard indicating whether or not his or her course
whose curriculum was comparable to that of district
courses. Walled Lake enrolled 300 students in enrollments and performance are on track for high school
these online courses and also provided face-to- graduation and qualification for college entry. Such a system
face meetings with district teachers twice a week could make “smart” suggestions about options for fulfilling
to help students with course material and track requirements, including the possibility of earning credits for
their progress. This blended strategy lowered the
courses taken during the summer, in alternative programs, at
district’s costs of providing each summer school
community colleges, or online.
course by nearly 50 percent, reducing the cost per
student from $194 to about $102.
When prevention fails and students quit attending school
Inspired by this success and students’ positive
for a period of time, we must have multiple options for
experiences with online learning, Walled Lake
plans to begin allowing high school students to reconnecting them with the education system. Such students
take both online and classroom-based courses often become discouraged about their prospects for being
during the school year. Students will continue to able to earn the credits needed for graduation or have an
attend school at least four hours per day, but they aversion to returning to a school where they will be in classes
may elect to enroll in up to two online courses
with younger students rather than their original cohort. (See
each semester. As with its summer school courses,
sidebar on adult learning resources in the Learning chapter.)
Walled Lake students’ online learning experiences
will be supported by biweekly interactions with local
teachers. This blended learning arrangement will Increasingly, secondary students are taking courses online to
accommodate students’ diverse learning styles earn credit for courses they initially failed or missed because
and desire to work before or after school in they were not attending school. Such courses can be taken
ways that were not possible with full-time
under any number of arrangements—independently in the
conventional instruction.
evening, during summer sessions, in a night school, or during
Walled Lake is also partnering with a local the school day with a member of the teaching staff, who
community college to make postsecondary
provides encouragement and support as the student works
education a reality for more of its high school
with the online material.
students. Under the experimental agreement,
11th- and 12th-grade students may choose to enroll
concurrently in high school and college, completing In Walled Lake Consolidated School District in Michigan,
some college coursework online and some on the for example, students can recover course credits through
college campus, facilitated by the flexible scheduling online summer school courses. The summer credit recovery
system described above. The district will continue to
program has worked so well that the district is developing
claim full-time-equivalent funding for each student
a plan that will allow students to stay in high school while
and will pay students’ tuition for courses taken at the
community college during their high school years. working by attending class in their brick-and-mortar school
This arrangement will enable Walled Lake students for four hours a day and taking their other two required
to complete an associate degree just one year after courses online at their convenience. (See sidebar on
high school graduation. expanding learning opportunities through blended learning.)


Another example is provided by Tarrant High School in Alabama. Tarrant students are
taking advantage of ACCESS (Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, Students
Statewide), the state’s online learning program, to take courses before or after school or
in the summer in order to recover credits for courses they failed or to graduate earlier. The
school’s principal believes that ACCESS has been a significant factor in raising her school’s
graduation rate from 66 percent in 2006 to 80 percent in 2008. Research conducted in the
state of Washington has concluded similarly that online credit recovery can help increase
graduation rates (Baker et al. 2006).

Reaching Our Goal
5.0 Productivity:

Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage
of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of
time, money, and staff.


5.1 Develop and adopt a common definition of productivity in education and more relevant
and meaningful measures of outcomes, along with improved policies and technologies for
managing costs, including those for procurement.

Education has not incorporated many of the practices other sectors regularly use to
measure outcomes, manage costs, and improve productivity, a number of which are
enabled or enhanced by technology. As other sectors have learned, we are unlikely to
improve outcomes and productivity until we define and start measuring them. This starts
with identifying what we seek to measure. It also requires identifying costs associated with
components of our education system and with individual resources and activities so that the
ratio of outcomes to costs can be tracked over time.

5.2 Rethink basic assumptions in our education system that inhibit leveraging technology
to improve learning, starting with our current practice of organizing student and educator
learning around seat time instead of the demonstration of competencies.

To realize the full potential of technology for improving performance and increasing
productivity, we must remove the process and structural barriers to broad adoption. The
education system must work to identify and rethink basic assumptions of the education
system. Some of these include measurement of educational attainment through seat time,
organization of students into age-determined groups, the structure of separate academic
disciplines, the organization of learning into classes of roughly equal size, and the use of
time blocks.


5.3 Develop useful metrics for the educational use of technology in states and districts.

Current data on the use of educational and information technology in our system consist
of records of purchases and numbers of computers and Internet connections. Very
little information on how technology is actually used to support teaching, learning, and
assessment is collected and communicated systematically. Only by shifting our focus
to collecting data on how and when technology is used will we be able to determine the
difference it makes and use that knowledge to improve outcomes and the productivity of our
education system.

5.4 Design, implement, and evaluate technology-powered programs and interventions to
ensure that students progress seamlessly through our P–16 education system and emerge
prepared for college and careers.

year of higher education or postsecondary career training. Achieving this target will require
dramatically reducing the number of students who leave high school without getting a
diploma and/or who are unprepared for postsecondary education. A complex set of personal
and academic factors underlie students’ decision to leave school or to disengage from
learning, and no one strategy will prevent every separation from the education system.
Collaboration between P–12 and higher education institutions and practices supported with
technology are crucial to addressing the problem.


RD: Innovate and Scale

The model for learning presented in this plan assumes that we will develop, adopt, and
ensure equitable access to a technology-based education system that provides effective
learning experiences, assessments, and teaching and a comprehensive infrastructure for
learning to support both formal education and all other aspects of learning. It also assumes
we will incorporate many of the practices other sectors regularly use to improve productivity
and manage costs and will leverage technology to enable or enhance them.

In the past, we have relied on public education entities and private companies to develop
technology resources and tools for learning. In both these sectors, however, incentives are
provided for developing discrete products and services without regard for how they work
as parts of a system or for research on their effectiveness. Public education entities can
mandate use of their products and services. Commercial enterprises gain market share
through compelling value propositions, effective marketing, and broad distribution channels.
But research on the effectiveness of learning technology typically comes after products
and services have been deployed—when it is too late to result in major improvements—if it
comes at all.

If we are to achieve our goal of leading the world in education, we must be leaders in the
design and implementation of a more effective education system. To that end, this plan calls
for a new approach to RD for education that focuses on four areas:

• Continuing to provide competitive grants for scaling up innovative and evidence-based

practices through the Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund (i3).

The i3 program provides funding for grants that are awarded to schools and nonprofit
organizations for scaling innovations that improve K–12 education. There is a particular focus on
the identification of evidence and increasing the level of understanding of what strategies and
innovations work for what students under what circumstances.

• ransferring existing and emerging technology innovations from such sectors as
T
consumer, business, and entertainment into education.

The Department of Education will promote the inclusion of innovative thinkers in consumer,
business, and entertainment technology in federally funded convenings and collaborations
with educational technology specialists.

• Supporting and sustaining the education RD that is currently happening at the

National Science Foundation, especially through its cyberlearning initiatives.


In June 2008, the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning published Fostering Learning in the
Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge, a comprehensive report on
the role technology can and should play in STEM learning. For 2011, the NSF has established
a new multidisciplinary research program to fully capture the transformative potential of
advanced learning technologies across the education system. The Cyberlearning Transforming
Education (CTE) program’s investments will focus on anytime, anywhere learning,
personalized learning, and using technology to advance our fundamental knowledge of how
technology and learning sciences can come together in learning and assessment.

• Creating a new organization with the mission of serving the public good through RD

at the intersection of learning sciences, technology, and education (Pea and
Lazowska 2003).

The Higher Education Opportunity Act (P.L. 110-315), passed in August 2008, authorizes
establishment of the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital
Technologies (also called the Digital Promise). The center is authorized as a 501(c)3 that
would be able to accept contributions from the public and private sectors to support the RD
needed to transform learning in America.

The National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies would
support research at scale, facilitating the participation of educators, schools, and districts
as partners in design and research. It would also promote transparency and collaboration,
encouraging multiple researchers to work with the same data and interoperable software
components and services. Its unique charter is to identify the key research and development
challenges in the education field and coordinate the best combination of expertise
for addressing them. These characteristics, along with an emphasis on public-private
collaboration, distinguish the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital
Technologies from existing centers that help state and local education entities identify and
implement established best practices in learning technology. The center’s work would also be
distinct from field-initiated research on the effectiveness of technology-based interventions.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) offers an example of how
such a research agency can promote work that builds basic understanding and addresses
practical problems. DARPA sponsors high-risk/high-gain research on behalf of Department
of Defense agencies, but it is managed and staffed by individuals from both industry and
academia who are experts in the relevant research areas. DARPA program officers are given
considerable discretion, both in defining the research agenda and making decisions about
the funding and structuring of research.

In a similar manner, the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and
Digital Technologies should identify key emerging trends and priorities and recruit and
bring together the best minds and organizations to collaborate on high-risk/high-gain
education RD projects. It should aim for radical, orders-of-magnitude improvements by
envisioning the impact of innovations and then working backward to identify the fundamental
breakthroughs required to make them possible.


Through the funding of rapid and iterative cycles of design and trial implementation in
educational settings, the national center can demonstrate the feasibility and early-stage
potential of innovative tools, content, and pedagogies that leverage knowledge, information,
and technology advances at the cutting edge.

The center should also ensure that teams working on each individual project share
developments, progress, best practices, and outcomes with each other to take advantage of
key findings and economies of scale and to ensure integration and interoperability between
projects when desirable. The national center will need to work closely with representatives
of private industry to develop clear memoranda of understanding concerning the terms for
precompetitive fundamental research.

The national research center can focus on grand challenge problems in education research
and development. “Grand challenge problems” are important problems that require
establishing a community of scientists and researchers to work toward their solution.

American computer science was advanced by a grand challenge problems strategy when
its research community articulated a set of science and social problems whose solutions
required a thousand-fold increase in the power and speed of supercomputers and their
supporting networks, storage systems, and software. Since that time, grand challenge
problems have been used to catalyze advances in genetics (the Human Genome Project),
environmental science, and world health.

To qualify as grand challenge problems suitable for this organization, research problems
should be

• Understandable and significant, with a clearly stated compelling case for contributing to

long-term benefits for society

• Challenging, timely, and achievable with concerted, coordinated efforts

• Clearly useful in terms of impact and scale, if solved, with long-term benefits for many

people and international in scope

• Measurable and incremental, with interim milestones that produce useful benefits as

they are reached.

This kind of grand challenge problem strategy has driven innovation and knowledge building
in science, engineering, and mathematics. The time is right to undertake it to improve our
education system (Pea 2007).

The following grand challenge problems illustrate the kinds of ambitious RD efforts this
organization could lead. Notably, although each of these problems is a grand challenge in
its own right, they all combine to form the ultimate grand challenge problem in education:
establishing an integrated, end-to-end real-time system for managing learning outcomes and
costs across our entire education system at all levels.


1.0: Design and validate an integrated system that provides real-time access to learning
experiences tuned to the levels of difficulty and assistance that optimize learning for all
learners and that incorporates self-improving features that enable it to become increasingly
effective through interaction with learners.

Today, we have examples of systems that can recommend learning resources a person might
like, learning materials with embedded tutoring functions, software that can provide UDL
supports for any technology-based learning materials, and learning management systems
that move individuals through sets of learning materials and keep track of their progress and
activity. What we do not have is an integrated system that can perform all these functions
dynamically while optimizing engagement and learning for all learners. Such an integrated
system is essential for implementing the individualized, differentiated, and personalized
learning called for in this plan. Specifically, the integrated system should be able to

• Discover appropriate learning resources;

• Configure the resources with forms of representation and expression that are

appropriate for the learner’s age, language, reading ability, and prior knowledge; and

• Select appropriate paths and scaffolds for moving the learner through the learning

resources with the ideal level of challenge and support.

As part of the validation of this system, we need to examine how much leverage is gained
by giving learners control over the pace of their learning and whether certain knowledge
domains or competencies require educators to retain that control. We also need to better
understand where and when we can substitute learner judgment, online peer interactivity and
coaching, and technological advances, such as smart tutors and avatars for the educator-led
classroom model.

2.0: Design and validate an integrated system for designing and implementing valid,
reliable, and cost-effective assessments of complex aspects of 21st-century expertise and
competencies across academic disciplines.

The multiple-choice tests used in nearly all large-scale assessment programs fail to meet
the challenge of capturing some of the most important aspects of 21st-century expertise and
competencies. Past attempts to measure these areas have been expensive and of limited
reliability. Technology offers new options for addressing the multiple components of this
challenge. For example, technology can support

• Systematic analysis of the claims about student competence (including competence

with respect to complex aspects of inquiry, reasoning, design, and communication)
intended by academic standards and the kinds of evidence needed to judge whether or
not a student has each of those aspects of competence;

• Specifying assessment tasks and situations that would provide the desired evidence;

• dministering complex assessment tasks capable of capturing complex aspects of
A
21st-century expertise through the use of technology; and


• Developing and applying rules and statistical models for generating reliable inferences

about the learner’s competencies based on performance on the assessment tasks.

Promising RD applying technology to each of these components of the grand challenge
is ongoing, but the pieces have yet to be integrated into a single system that is applicable
across content domains and that is cost-effective to implement. In addition to system
development, solving this grand challenge problem will require studies to demonstrate the
validity of the new assessments and their usefulness for both making formative instructional
decisions to improve learning and summative evaluative decisions for purposes of
establishing competency and accountability.

3.0: Design and validate an integrated approach for capturing, aggregating, mining, and
sharing content, student-learning, and financial data cost-effectively for multiple purposes
across many learning platforms and data systems in near real time.

To meet the education and productivity goals articulated in this plan, learners and their
parents, educators, school and district leaders, and state and federal policymakers must
use timely information about student-learning and financial data to inform their decisions.
Today, these data are maintained in a variety of digital formats in multiple systems at local
and state levels. As the processes of learning, assessment, and financial management and
accounting move into the digital realm, education data systems and education research
have become exceedingly complex in terms of scale, heterogeneity, and requirements for
privacy. Still, we must create systems that capture, curate, maintain, and analyze education
and financial data in all scales and shapes, in near real time, from all areas where learning
occurs: school, home, and community. This must be done in a manner fully consistent with
privacy regulations.

Although underlying technologies for exchanging data sets exist, education does not yet
have the kind of integrated Web-enabled data-sharing system that has been developed for
the health-care, telecommunications, and financial sectors. Such a system must be capable
of dealing with both fine-grained data derived from specific interactions with a learning
system and global measures built up from that data, and it must be able to collect, back up,
archive, and secure data coming from many different systems throughout a state. It must
also be capable of integrating the financial data essential for managing costs. Addressing
this challenge will require:

• data format to represent learning and financial data;
A

• service to discover and exchange data;
A

• data security standard for the service;
A

• specification, test suite, and reference implementation of the service to ensure vendor
A
compliance; and

• Best practices to guide the deployment of such services.


4.0: Identify and validate design principles for efficient and effective online learning systems
and combined online and offline learning systems that produce content expertise and
competencies equal to or better than those produced by the best conventional instruction in
half the time at half the cost.

Research labs and commercial entities are hard at work developing online learning systems
and combined online and offline learning systems that support the development of expertise
within and across academic disciplines. Although we have isolated examples of systems
producing improved learning outcomes in half the time, we have yet to see this kind of
outcome achieved within the K–12 system and particularly in those schools where students
need help the most. In addition, in both K–12 and higher education, we have yet to see
highly effective systems that can be brought to scale.

We have evidence that learning can be accelerated through online tutoring, restructuring
curricula, and by providing guiding feedback for improvement throughout the learning
process. Further, we know that the current “packages” of learning that define semester and
yearlong courses are generally arbitrary and a result of long-standing tradition rather than of
careful studies. Achieving twice the content expertise and competencies in half the time at
half the cost through online learning systems seems very possible, but it will require careful
design, development, and testing.


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Appendix A.
How This Plan Was Developed

The U.S. Department of Education initiated the development of Transforming American
Education in spring 2009 to capitalize on the opportunities created by technological
advancements and new research on learning that have emerged since the publication of
the last national education technology plan in 2004. The Department’s goal was to create a
vision for the strategic application of technology throughout the education system in support
of student learning and achievement and consistent with the administration’s broader
education and economic priorities.

In accordance with the White House’s Open Government Directive, public participation,
transparency, and collaboration were key considerations in developing this plan. Web
2.0 technology greatly accelerated the plan development process and enabled tens of
thousands of individuals to learn about and contribute to it through webinars, online forums,
and an interactive public website through which all interested parties could contribute
resources, statements, and comments.

Plan development began with interviews with a dozen leaders across the Department of
Education and at the White House Office of Science Technology Policy to build a deep
understanding of policymakers’ priorities, goals, and insights into how to make the next
national education technology plan most effective.

Outreach began with an extensive series of events built around the National Educational
Computing Conference (NECC) in June 2009. The National Education Technology Plan
development team led by SRI International conducted five focus groups with teachers,
school administrators, and members of the Consortium on School Networking (CoSN) and
the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA). Fifty chief technology officers and
chief information officers from school districts across the country participated in a forum on
the new plan.

In addition, more than 300 leading educators and educational technology experts
participated in the ISTE Leadership Symposium. Leadership Symposium participants drafted
vision statements and action steps that became the basis for the initial Web-based outreach
event that generated 263 public comments over a two-week period from June 29 to July 12,
2009, on the National Education Technology Plan temporary website.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology A-1

The input gathered was presented to a technical working group of educators, researchers,
and state and local policymakers who contributed an extraordinary range of expertise
to the vision, research, and writing of Transforming American Education. The Technical
Working Group convened in person at three two-day meetings to craft the plan’s vision and
recommendations. In addition, technical working group members participated in discussions
with guest experts during five two-hour webinars to incorporate additional expertise in critical
issue areas for inclusion in the plan.

A second version of the National Education Technology Plan website was launched on
Aug. 29, 2009, to give the public a sense of the themes being considered by the technical
working group and to allow a wide range of stakeholders to contribute their own resources
for consideration. During the three-month input period, 22,876 individuals visited the site
and contributed 572 reports, technology tool examples, case studies, and personal or group
statements on the plan. The site’s 2,582 registered users included classroom teachers (235),
students (48), school administrators (48), other school staff (117), district administrators (13),
professors and other higher education staff (123), educational technology organization and
nonprofit professionals (118), researchers (52), education consultants (116), technology tool
and service providers (153), and state and national policymakers (2).

Hundreds of other stakeholders provided valuable input to the national education technology
plan team throughout the summer and fall. The plan development team held webinar
discussions with the members of educational technology organizations SETDA, CoSN,
and NCTET, as well as with education philanthropy leaders. The plan development team
presented at several education forums and conferences including iNACOL’s Virtual School
Symposium, NCTET’s Policy Forum, the National Center for Technology Innovation
Conference, and the Redefining Teacher Education for Digital Age Learners Invitational
Summit. In addition, two technical working group members led a face-to-face open forum at
the University of Michigan and a virtual public forum in Second Life.

Finally, to gather perspectives and insights from industry into ways to promote
unprecedented innovation in education research and development, Assistant Deputy
Secretary for Innovation and Improvement Jim Shelton and the plan development team
convened top thinkers from 24 leading technology and educational content providers in a
day-long summit in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 21, 2009.

A draft plan was released on March 5, 2010, and posted for online feedback on http://www.
ed.gov/technology. After two months of public comment, all input was reviewed by the plan
development team and used to inform the final revision of Transforming American Education.

The Department extends its thanks to the thousands of individuals who shared their expertise
in developing this vision for transforming the future of American education with technology.

A-2 Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

Appendix B. Contributors

We extend our deepest thanks to the members of the National Education Technology Plan
technical working group for their extensive contributions to the plan’s vision for the future of
education:

Daniel E. Atkins, University of Michigan
John Bennett, Akron Public Schools
John Seely Brown, Deloitte Center for the Edge
Aneesh Chopra, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Chris Dede, Harvard University
Louis Gomez, University of Pittsburgh
Margaret Honey, New York Hall of Science
Yasmin Kafai, University of Pennsylvania
Maribeth Luftglass, Fairfax County Public Schools
Roy Pea, Stanford University
David Rose, Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)
Candace Thille, Carnegie Mellon University
Brenda Williams, West Virginia Department of Education

Plan development was directed by Barbara Means of SRI International with the support
of Marianne Bakia, Kate Borelli, Judy Brooks, Ed Dieterle, Austin Lasseter, Hannah Lesk,
Jeremy Roschelle, Linda Shear, Susan Thomas, and Andrew Trotter. Linda G. Roberts
served as a senior advisor to the plan development team.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology B-1

Appendix C. Acknowledgments

We extend our appreciation to the thousands of individuals who participated in the numerous
discussions, focus groups, presentations, webinars, public forums, and Web-based comment
events that were held throughout the plan development process. A summary of the activities
through which stakeholders contributed input is provided below. Our special thanks go to those
who organized outreach efforts that helped gather valuable insights from across the field.

Policy Interviews
Joseph Conaty, Director, Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Programs
Tom Corwin, Director, Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Vocational Analysis Budget Service
John Easton, Director, Institute of Education Sciences
Cheryl Garnette, Director, Technology in Education Programs, Office of Innovation and
Improvement
Alan Ginsburg, Director, Policy and Program Studies Service
Laura Johns, Office of Educational Technology
Jenelle Leonard, Director of School Support Technology Programs
Martha Kanter, Under Secretary
Ray Myers, Office of Educational Technology
Hugh Walkup, Office of Educational Technology
Joanne Weiss, Director, Race to the Top Fund

White House
Aneesh Chopra, Associate Director and Chief Technology Officer, White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy
Kumar Garg, Policy Analyst, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

National Organizations
Anne Bryant, Executive Director, National School Boards Association
Michael Cohen, President, Achieve
Dane Linn, Education Division Director, National Governors Association
Gene Wilhoit, Executive Director, Council of Chief State School Officers

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology C-1

Technical Working Group Webinar Discussants

Equity Issues in Technology-supported Learning
Mark Warschauer, University of California, Irvine

Open Educational Resources and System Redesign
Michael Horn, Innosight Institute
Elliot Maxwell, Consultant to the Committee for Economic Development

Reconceptualizing Assessment
Robert Kozma, Kozmalone Consulting

Enhancing Productivity
Rich Kaestner, Consortium on School Networking (CoSN)

Supporting Teachers with Technology
Bill Penuel, SRI International
Ann Renninger, Swarthmore College
Steve Weimar, Math Forum

Outreach Events

State Educational Technology Directors Grantee Meeting
May 5, 2009
142 registered participants

ISTE Leadership Symposium at the National Educational Computing Conference
June 28, 2009

ISTE CIO/CTO Forum at the National Educational Computing Conference
June 29, 2009
50 participants

Focus Groups at the National Educational Computing Conference
June 29-July 1
59 participants

SETDA Member Webinar
Aug. 24, 2009

C-2 Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

Silicon Valley Industry Summit
Sept. 21, 2009

Agile Mind, Linda Chaput
Apple, John Couch
Blackboard, Jessie Woolley-Wilson
Carnegie Learning, Steve Ritter
Cisco, Ned Hooper
Dell, Mark Horan
George Lucas Educational Foundation, Steve Arnold
Google, Maggie Johnson
IBM, James Spohrer
Hewlett-Packard, Phil McKinney
Intel, Eileen Lento
KC Distance Learning, Caprice Young
McGraw-Hill, Randall Reina
Microsoft, Stephen Coller
NeXtAdvisors, Michael Moe
Teachscape, Mark Atkinson
Oracle, Clare Dolan
Pearson, Doug Kubach
Scholastic, Margery Mayer
SMART Technologies, Nancy Knowlton
Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy
Texas Instruments, Melendy Lovett
VIP Tone, Robert Iskander
Wireless Generation, Larry Berger

NCTET Policy Forum
Sept. 25, 2009
30 participants

CoSN Member Webinar
Oct. 6, 2009

Webinar with Philanthropy Leaders
Oct. 6, 2009

Cisco 21st Century Schools Initiative, Bill Fowler
HP Global Social Investment, Jim Vanides
Intel Foundation, Wendy Hawkins
MacArthur Foundation, Craig Wacker and Connie Yowell
Microsoft Partners in Learning, James Bernard and Mary Cullinane
National Geographic JASON Project, Caleb Schutz
New Tech Network, Monica Martinez
Oracle Education Foundation, Bernie Trilling
Pearson Foundation, Kathy Hurley and Mark Nieker

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology C-3

Public Forum at the University of Michigan
Oct. 21, 2009
75 participants

NCTET Member Webinar
Oct. 26, 2009

Exploring New Modalities for Learning Conference
Oct. 30, 2009

SETDA Leadership Conference
Nov. 1, 2009

Second Life Public Forum
Nov. 5, 2009
200 participants

ISTE100 Meeting
Nov. 9, 2009
25 participants

iNACOL Virtual School Symposium
Nov. 16, 2009

National Center for Technology Innovation Conference
Nov. 17, 2009

Summit on Redefining Teacher Education for Digital Age Learners
Dec. 8, 2009

Technical working group members Daniel E. Atkins, Barry Fishman, Roy Pea, and
Brenda Williams played an important role in reaching out to various stakeholders. We
also extend our deep thanks to those who helped convene and gather input from the
community, including Patricia Anderson, Karen Billings, Leslie Connery, Christine Fox,
Tracy Gray, Jenelle Leonard, Don Knezek, Keith Krueger, Susan Patrick, Paul Resta, Mark
Schneiderman, Irene Spero, and Mary Ann Wolf.

C-4 Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

The Department of Education’s mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for
global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and equal access.

www.ed.gov

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