Posted by:
Sheila Cory
University
Chapel Hill, NC

Topic:
Sheila Cory: Vision and Evaluation

Message:

For over a decade, public and private investment in educational technology in the United States has steadily increased. During this period, few comprehensive attempts have been made to measure whether this investment has in fact improved administrative efficiency and the quality of teaching and learning in the public schools. Today, however, public and private funders demand accountability and the burden to justify the investment in educational technology has fallen to principals and superintendents. Unfortunately, the majority of these administrators lack the training and experience to respond authoritatively to funders' legitimate inquiries.

One reason for this deficiency is that, in the past, technology-related professional development focused primarily on teachers rather than administrators. Another reason is that the aim of early technology-related professional development was to help educators learn how to use technology (e.g., how to operate a spreadsheet program), rather than to explore leadership issues vis-à-vis educational technology (e.g., how to employ technology resources to improve the educational experience schoolwide.) A third, more current reason is that standards addressing general school leadership (e.g., those established by the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium) do not provide adequate guidance for designing professional development programs or performance assessment models related to technology leadership.

Recently, two significant national efforts were initiated to help administrators become technology leaders in their schools and school districts. First, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a $100 million State Challenge Grant for Leadership Development "to help provide every superintendent and principal in public and private schools across the nation access to quality professional development, with a focus on whole system improvement and creating a high-performance learning environment through technology integration." The foundation's goal is to award grants in all fifty states by 2002. This effort should generate high-quality models and curriculum materials to help administrators develop substantive technology-related goals and plans for their schools and/or districts. Second, a large-scale collaborative effort, coordinated by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), is currently underway to develop a set of standards related to technology leadership. Once in place, these standards may form the basis for effective pre-service or in-service training.

Two leadership issues that are difficult to address are those of vision and evaluation. Tools to help school leaders develop in these two areas are needed. Few videos or other materials are available that show what it looks like when technology is used well in a school setting. More tools are also needed to help school administrators understand the current status of technology use in their schools.

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