Technology in Education: Bang for the Buck?

The lead article in tonight's (August 15) Madison Daily Leader quotes some area school superintendents on the need for more funding for public education. ("Hear hear!" cries this public educator.)

In the course of the article, Dr. Carl Fahrenwald, superintendent of the Rutland School District, talks about finding the funding to provide laptops for all seniors and eventually to expand that program to similarly equip the juniors and sophomores.

A few notes on Rutland:

• Rutland is a very small school struggling to survive in a rural area whose population is trickling away to larger urban centers and job markets. They are waging a valiant fight against the sentiment expressed by our governor that our smallest schools ought to consolidate to save money (as if saving money is the primary goal of our schools).
• Full disclosure: I worked for the Rutland School District four years ago as a substitute teacher. Dr. Fahrenwald is a good superintendent, very actively engaged with his students on a daily basis.
• Rutland doesn't have a lot of money. If they had more, I might be working in Rutland today. After my subbing experience at Rutland, I interviewed for a full-time math teaching job. Dr. Fahrenwald offered me the job, but I had to decline: an English position in Montrose, a larger school district, paid $7000 more annually.
  

Given Rutland's size and resources, the district's commitment to providing their kids with good technology is commendable. And they are not alone in increasing their investment in technology. My own school district purchased a traveling laptop lab for use in various classrooms. Some districts like Watertown and Mitchell put laptops in the hands of every student.

Now I love computers, to an extent. I require all my students, grades 9-12, to type their English papers. The Internet offers an invaluable research tool for my English students and especially for my debaters and extempers. And at the end of the semester, I enjoy boggling my students with the infamous online Mega Vocab Quiz.

However, in this age when everything we do in education is driven by financial pressures in our districts and standardized test score pressures from Washington, we have to ask: are we getting a sufficient return on our technology dollar in terms of academic achievement?

Consider the money side first: Figures will vary from district to district, and I encourage readers to go to their local school district business manager and ask for a copy of the budget with technology expenditures highlighted. All those machines cost money up front and then lock the school into software, update, repair, and replacement costs for years to come. Most schools, like most highly wired businesses, have to hire an IT staffer. The Watertown School District shows the photos of four friendly techies dedicated to handling their "Learning with Laptops" program. In some districts, the IT person may also teach a computer class, but even in my relatively small school district, we have found it more effective to contract with another district to bring in a person who works strictly on the computers.

Thus, throughout South Dakota, we have a growing corps of computer specialists in the employ of our public schools, earning salaries at least equivalent to what teachers earn (I'd be surprised if It people would work for less than that, considering they can easily make $40-$50 or more per hour in the private sector), but never teaching anything. The IT people don't directly teach our kids anything; they just keep the machines running that we use to teach the kids. How much more could our kids be taught if, instead of hiring IT people, our schools hired more teachers, or even diverted that funding to increase teacher pay and keep talented teachers from leaving (or becoming IT people)?

The above question is moot, of course, if one can demonstrate that all this well-funded and well-maintained computer technology improves academic achievement. But can anyone show that the last fifteen years of increasing investment in computers, Internet connections, and other techno-gadgets have produced a corresponding increase on standardized test scores, graduation rates, college admissions, post-high-school earning power, or any other conceivable measure of academic success? Nationally, while nearly every school has gained Internet access in the last decade -- an enormous increase in accessible information -- standardized test scores have shown no remarkable upward swing. One limited study in the Fall 2004 Eastern Economic Journal shows course web pages and online multiple-choice quizzes producing no significant increase in final exam performance (at least in an introductory college economics course). Do we have the evidence to justify the investment?

Even if we cannot prove that increasing investments in educational technology directly improves academic achievement, perhaps we could fall back on the workforce argument: exposing kids to the best computer technology available gives them the job skills they will need to compete in the hi-tech global economy. But how relevant will today's best technology be to our graduates in their jobs five, ten, or twenty years from now? The hardware and software I used in high school and college have been almost completely replaced. Churn in the technology industry means that for the most part, workers will learn most of their essential technological skills on the job, with little reference to the particular hardware or software they may have used in high school.

We come then to an issue of priorities: given a finite amount of time and an infinite amount of knowledge, what information and skills do we choose to pass on to our children in our high school curricula? Do we invest heavily in specific technological skills that innovation and market forces will render obsolete in a decade? Or do we concentrate on more universal ideas and skills that students can then apply to whatever unpredictable equipment and situations they may encounter in their unforeseeable futures? Do we teach kids how to use the 802.11 wireless protocol to transfer files to a Gateway 400E laptop? Or do we teach them critical thinking skills so they can troubleshoot the new equipment they have to buy to handle revamped wireless protocols? Or do we teach them political history and the Constitution so they can understand the laws that will be proposed to govern the sharing and surveillance of data on whatever new waves of information technology emerge throughout the 21st century? Sure, if we have the time, we should teach kids all those things (and oodles more!), but there are only so many days in the school year and so many dollars in the budget.

I do not wish to suggest that Rutland should get rid of it laptops and hand the money to their teachers. Nor do I wish to suggest that our IT people should all be replaced with classroom teachers. (I like my IT people -- heck, I need my IT people!) I wish only to point out the price of all this vaunted technology. Computers can do wonderful things... but we should always remember that teachers were doing wonderful things long before classrooms had so much as a light bulb to guide their students toward the future.