Currents in Electronic Literacy  Spring 2000(3),  
 <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/spr00/slatin.html>  

Introduction: K-12 Education in Transition

2. At a press conference in January, 1999, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley cited what he called the greatest challenges facing teachers in the public schools: raising standards of achievement; accommodating learners with special needs; adapting to the changing racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the student population; and using technology effectively (http://www.ed.gov/Speeches/01-1999/990128.html).  In Texas, as in the nation generally, education systems face massive, simultaneous change on three fronts.  The first is demographic, the second is technological, and the third is curricular. 

Demographic

3. The school-age population of Texas is growing rapidly and its composition is changing. In 1999-2000 there were more than 3.9 million students in Texas public schools.  The majority of these students were non-white.  Approximately 11.6 per cent were classified as “disabled” in some way—a figure not far below the number of African-American students in the school population (see the Texas Education Agency's "Snapshot '99," http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/snapshot/99/index.html). The new minority status of the Anglo population will become even more pronounced over the next 10 to 20 years. As time goes on, therefore, the existing gap between the ethnic and racial makeup of the public schools and the ethnic and racial makeup of UT Austin's student body (which is currently more than 60 percent white) will widen further without effective and systemic intervention.  The University's response must go far beyond the well-intentioned "10 per cent solution" instituted by the 1997 session of the Texas Legislature, which automatically grants admission to any student who graduates in the top 10 per cent of his or her high school class but does nothing to prepare those students for success  once they reach the University. The most rapid population growth is occurring in the most economically distressed regions of the state, where the lack of qualified teachers is most acute. 

Technology

4. Short of thermonuclear war, there is no conceivable scenario for the future in which information technology does not play a more important role in education than it does today.  The Federal Communications Commission's E-rate program makes Internet service available to public schools at a steep discount; the nationwide value of these E-Rate discounts is estimated at approximately $1.43 billion.  The U.S. Department of Education has issued a number of technology-related grants, including challenge grants to be administered by state education agencies.  Here in Texas, the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board (TIFB) and other state and local programs and private-sector initiatives are directed at providing Internet connections for Texas schools, public libraries, not-for-profit healthcare facilities, two- and four-year colleges, and universities.  The TIFB is expected to distribute approximately $1.5 billion by 2005.  (For more information, see the TIF Board Web site at http://www.tifb.state.tx.us.  For information on the E-rate, see http://www.fcc.gov/learnnet/.) 
5. Using these federal and state monies to supplement their own initiatives, Texas' 1,044 independent school districts are investing several hundred million dollars per year in information technology. Most are concentrating on acquiring equipment and establishing Internet connectivity, and on providing very narrowly focused skill-training for teachers.  This pattern is typical of the very early stages of technology integration.  But the narrow focus actually increases the burden on teachers, who will be expected to integrate this expensive technology into the curriculum despite a lack of appropriate training—and despite an acute shortage of qualified support personnel. 
6.  Teacher training has repeatedly been identified as a critical factor in successful technology integration and curriculum reform, and the problems resulting from the lack of appropriate training have been widely discussed.   On the national level, said Secretary of Education Richard Riley in introducing a report on teacher quality prepared by the National Center for Education Statistics (1999),

New and veteran teachers alike say they do not feel very well prepared to teach effectively to the four fastest changing aspects of the nation's schools - raising standards in the classroom, students with special needs, students from diverse cultural backgrounds, and use of technology. The fact that newer teachers report as much unease as their veteran colleagues indicates that teacher education and professional development programs are not addressing the realities found in today's classroom. (Richard W. Riley, “Remarks.”  Washington, D.C., January 28, 1999. http://www.ed.gov/Speeches/01-1999/990128.html )

7. A  report by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to the state Legislature in 1999 indicates that the situation is very similar at state level.  Although roughly 90 per cent of Texas schools had at least one Internet-connected computer in every classroom, theTEA found that in 1997-98 only six per cent of Texas school districts reported that teachers used technology for instruction on a daily basis.  The report cited an “acute need” for additional technology training. (Kathy Walt, “Lack of training wasting schools' computer outlays: Teachers' ‘fear of technology' becomes statewide problem.” Houston Chronicle, 11/29/99, p. A21) 

Curriculum

8. The challenges presented by demographic and technological change are compounded by the fact that the curriculum itself is changing.  The new Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) frameworks, which went into force in September 1998, represent significant changes in every area of the curriculum, including technology.  The TEKS frameworks (available at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/) call for a learner-centered, inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning that differs sharply from familiar “stand-and-deliver” teaching practices.  Implementation of the TEKS frameworks will therefore demand significant changes in the way teachers are trained and in the kind of work they and their students do in (or out of) the classroom. 
9. The new curriculum will also require a massive investment in new textbooks and other materials.  This in turn puts additional pressure on schools to make good on their investments in technology. In 1997, the Texas Legislature authorized a Computer Network Study Project to investigate the challenges involved in making K-12 curriculum materials available online on a statewide basis.  In May 1998, Dr. Jack Christie, then the Chairman of the Texas Board of Education, organized a one-day conference to dramatize the significance of his call to lease a laptop computer for every student in Texas at a cost of about $1.8 billion, the amount earmarked for textbooks.  As I argued at a meeting of the Computer Network Study Project Advisory Committee in August 1998, the proposal to replace textbooks with computers would, if interpreted literally, mean a tragic waste of money.  Transferring textbook content from the printed page to the LCD screen would only make the material harder to read while highlighting its essentially static, presentational character.  It would not address the need to transform pedagogical practice and learning behavior-- the need to reinvent the function of the textbook in the context of new environments for teaching and learning. 

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