American Association of School Administrators

Witnesses testifying before a congressional commission charged with articulating a comprehensive policy "road map" on the use of the Internet to improve education and achievement told members to focus on equal access and quality issues.

Martha Dean

Martha Dean, superintendent of the Wetzel County, W.Va., public schools, told members of the Congressional Web-based Education Commission on Feb. 2 that the E-rate program was helping rural districts such as hers get connected. The program provides discounts of 20 to 90 percent on telecommunications services, Internet access and internal connections.

Dean used the program to help provide each teacher and student in one high school with personal laptop computers. Connectivity for students is through infrared ports mounted in ceilings in every room. "Now every classroom is a computer laboratory and students can use their laptops in the cafeteria or the hallways, anywhere they can be in range of the infrared," she said. Batteries allow students to use the computers in the field. They also can take their computers home and access the Internet through a dial-up at the school, she said.

After only six months with the laptops, 80 percent of students are using the Internet daily, compared with 26 percent last year, she said. Internet use at home has increased from 37 percent to 70 percent, she said.

"Students who lack access to technology and the Web will become the second-class citizens of the future," she said. "We should not permit any student to be denied the essential opportunity to access information."

U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley added that largely because of the E-rate, 89 percent of the nation’s schools—and 51 percent of its classrooms—are now wired to the Internet.

The 15-member commission intends to recommend to the president and Congress policies to assist education leaders at all levels incorporate Web-based learning strategies to improve learning and achievement. The commission will review pedagogical and policy issues affecting the development and use of Web-based content and learning strategies and possibly recommend changes in regulatory authority and quality assurance processes. It also will focus on what can be done in Congress, chiefly through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to encourage high-quality Web-based content and learning strategies.

Both Dean and Riley stressed the need for teachers to be adequately trained in using the Web for instructional purposes. In his 2001 budget he is scheduled to present Monday, President Clinton will ask for $380 million in grants to show new teachers how to use technology effectively.

"All teachers must be trained to use the tools and must be given both educational support and technical support," Dean said. "Until teachers are comfortable with the integration of the use of computers and the Internet, they need support to help implement their ideas appropriately in the classroom."

Riley called quality "one of the thorniest problems of the Web—ensuring that the quality of what is retrieved is high, or at the very least ensuring that users have the intellectual capacity to discern when it is not." He noted the Web’s potential in providing resources and classes to students in rural or disadvantaged locales. "Students who live in rural areas or go to less affluent schools can link up with world-class libraries and museums and participate in distance learning programs," he said. "And many disabled students have used learning technologies to open doors to resources that might otherwise have been closed to them."

He acknowledged that "no one expects a medium as free and unchecked as the Web can be completely monitored, or for that matter, of completely high quality. But we can work to ensure that when it is used for education, students and others will know how to make well grounded intellectual choices."

Riley offered four suggestions to the commission:

Continue to focus on equal access;

Focus on and endorse the reauthorization of ESEA, which is a primary way of targeting technology support to the neediest schools;

Establish guidelines to improve access and do away with regulatory barriers to Internet access for students;

Focus on the quality of Web-based resources and the delivery of Web-based instruction. Riley suggested the commission come up with a self-assessment guide for users—common language that could be used to evaluate the quality of a Web site or Web-based instruction.

Commission chairman U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., said he hoped the commission would avoid mandates and instead offer guidelines that keep decision-making at the local level. As an example, he said it should remain with local districts to decide whether and which Internet-based courses are accepted for credit within individual systems.

The commission plans to conduct several more hearings this year and hopes to report its findings to the president and Congress by November, Kerrey said.

Natalie Carter Holmes, Editor