Comment by Tom Loveless
[Federal Support for Technology in K-12 Education]
I enjoyed Gary Chapman's paper on federal policy promoting technology in education. The paper summarizes the role of technology in the growth of the American economy, offers an exhaustive account of current federal programs, and presents, in a balanced fashion, the arguments for and against a larger role for technology in American schooling. Chapman concludes by splitting the difference between advocates and critics of technology, endorsing middle-ground proposals that include increased aid to low-income and rural areas, an emphasis on teacher training and technical support, a national clearinghouse for software, the establishment of community technology centers, and a "computer civics" program that would teach responsible use of technology and its historical and social context.
No one will argue that technology is a rapidly growing component of the economy. The dawn of the "new economy" is truly remarkable. In the spring of 1999, for example, the total market value of stock in America Online (AOL) reached $150 billion, three times that of General Motors. In June 1999 the contribution of Internet-related business to the nation's gross domestic product was estimated at more than $300 billion, roughly equivalent to the auto industry. Considering that it took the auto industry almost the entire twentieth century to grow to this size and that most Internet companies are only a few years old, the industry's rate of expansion is astounding.
Enter the policy problem. Chapman cites a Department of Commerce study that the United States will need ninety-five thousand technology workers annually through the year 2005. Studies of this sort were used by the Clinton administration to campaign for several technology programs in the 1990s. Essentially, the administration argued that a federal effort would help prepare children for employment in the twenty-first century. I am not an economist, but I am suspicious of using projected economic trends as a rationale for new education programs. After all, the founders of AOL, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Amazon.com, and today's other high-tech companies seem to be doing well without the benefits of [End Page 343] such an initiative when they were in grade school. Moreover, a recent study by the Labor Department estimates the greatest employment demand in the next several years will be not for technology workers but for home health aides, human service workers, and personal home-care aides. This study also estimates that, in sheer numbers, more sales clerks will be hired than any other occupation, about 700,000 of them between now and 2005. The point is that labor economists are not unanimous on what the labor market will look like two or three decades out. Technologically savvy workers will be in demand, but workers with other skills will also be needed.72
Paul Krugman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology observes that technology can have the paradoxical effect of lessening demand for specialized skill. He notes that the value of an innovation typically increases when it makes complex tasks more simple. In the 1980s, for example, most skilled computer users possessed at least a cursory knowledge of computer operating systems. High school computer courses taught students DOS protocols and programming in BASIC. Not anymore. The Macintosh and Windows environments rendered this knowledge obsolete. And yet accurate and speedy keyboarding remains indispensable. In "Technology's Revenge," Krugman describes what this selective obsolescence may mean for future labor markets: "The time may come when most tax lawyers are replaced by expert systems software. But human beings are still needed--and well paid--for such truly difficult occupations as gardening, house cleaning, and the thousands of other services that will receive an ever-growing share of our expenditure."73
Chapman accurately points out that a federal technology program rekindles a long-running dispute over the purpose of education, whether schools should emphasize giving students marketable skills or disciplinary knowledge. The history of the school curriculum suggests that society should proceed with caution. Whenever vocational ends have assumed the same urgency as knowledge in mathematics, science, literature, and history, the intellectual underpinnings of the school have been undermined. In 1917 a landmark document, known as the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, elevated vocational training and satisfying students' personal interests to the same status as disciplinary knowledge. Educational progressives believed these pursuits would make schools more relevant and interesting to students. Historians David Angus and Jeffrey Mirel have shown how the widespread application of this idea precipitated [End Page 344] a decline in the rigor of academic coursetaking extending over several decades. Not until the 1980s, when Americans awoke to the fact that students were leaving school without a basic grasp of academic subjects, was the trend reversed and disciplinary content recognized as important again.!IR"74"
A fundamental principle of policy analysis is at work here. How policymakers define "the problem" technology is intended to solve will affect how it is used. Chapman takes the eminently reasonable position that computers and the Internet should be regarded as means to an educational end, not as ends in themselves. I would specifically apply this logic to the school curriculum. If schools use technology to improve the teaching of traditional knowledge, it may yield benefits for education, but to emphasize students' technological competence for the sake of future job preparation is a questionable enterprise.75
Even if a consensus is reached that schools need more technology, the question arises whether the federal government is the best vehicle for getting more of it into schools. During the 1980s, it did not take long for the percentage of schools with personal computers to skyrocket. This was accomplished without federal intervention, although Chapman is correct that Title I monies had much to do with the purchase of computers by schools serving poor children. Chapman offers an excellent summary of current federal efforts, but I wish he had cast a more critical eye on how these programs are administered within the federal bureaucracy. Take the issue of fragmentation. Ten federal programs are described, several housed within the Office of Educational Technology in the Department of Education. Programs are also run by the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Federal Communications Commission, and the National Science Foundation. Doesn't spreading programs over this many agencies make a coherent federal effort more difficult? How can officials be held accountable for producing concrete results when this degree of overlapping authority exists?
Questions pertaining to federalism are equally important. Why run a program involving schools and classrooms out of Washington? After all, states and localities finance 93 percent of K-12 education in the country; the federal government, only 7 percent. Simply identifying a good idea for educational funding is not enough to warrant federal action. More analytical thought is needed about the areas where federal involvement is justified and where it is not, not as an ideological exercise, but from [End Page 345] the practical standpoint of finding out which level of government can deliver services most efficiently.
Chapman endorses federal intervention to ameliorate "market failures," when the private market cannot provide technology to certain segments of the population, such as low-income or rural communities. This is an argument for using policy to redistribute educational resources, a mainstay of federal policy since the 1965 passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--in particular, Title I of that act. ESEA channels funds to communities lacking the resources to acquire technology on their own, which makes sense. As a simple matter of fairness, why should children in poor communities be left behind while middle-class and wealthy children experience the wonders of scientific discoveries and new inventions? A big federal technology program is not necessary for redistribution to occur, however. Augmentation of the Title I program would accomplish the same objective. Washington could also assist local governments in issuing bonds to build a technological infrastructure--laying cables and wires for broadband Internet access, upgrading the electrical wiring of buildings, installing the hardware needed for distance learning.
It is a different matter, however, for the federal government to get involved in deciding how schools use technology. I doubt that Washington is the best place to find answers to these questions. If I were looking for the nation's top experts on technology, I would look in Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston, or the D.C. suburbs, not in the Department of Education. If I wanted to find experts on teaching, I would talk to successful classroom teachers. So I do not agree with Chapman's call for teacher training and technical support, a national clearinghouse on software, community technology centers, and a computer civics course--or, at least, I have not seen compelling evidence that the federal government should be the one to initiate these projects. These programs might be appropriate in some local districts, but each district should be left to decide the relative need for each reform. Some might need hardware, some might need technical support, and others might decide that they have more pressing concerns than technology. Many high schools do not offer a civics course, let alone a computer civics course.
There is a deeper problem. Micromanaging instruction through policy has never worked, no matter what level of government has tried it. Teachers respond to the practical--and particular--circumstances of their [End Page 346] classrooms, including the characteristics of students and curricula, the demands of parents and administrators, and the reality of local resource constraints. By necessity, policy is based on generalities, what happens to most people most of the time. It also reflects an idealization of what should happen if everything is just right, instead of the messy circumstances in which teaching and learning typically occur. These gaps are evident anytime policymakers attempt to regulate classroom instruction. When the regulation comes from Washington, and is based on the latest fads instead of careful science, the policies are not only intrusive, they are also unhelpful.
Unfortunately, the camel's nose has already slipped under the tent. Federal reports on technology in education show a propensity for condemning "traditional" forms of teaching and endorsing "progressive" pedagogy. The basic tenets of progressive education have been around for a long time, but every generation of educational thinkers puts its own spin on four or five key planks. Frowned upon are basic skills, learning through memorization and practice, and curriculum organized by separate disciplines. For example, the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in the United States, issued by the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in 1997, laments that teachers use computers for "individual instruction in isolated basic skills, most often in a 'drill and practice' mode" and that lessons are "focused on a single content area rather than on the integration of a wide range of skills to solve complex problems."76 The irony is that PCAST goes on to cite research showing that computers are effective when used in the same way that it condemns--providing basic skills instruction, often through drill and practice, in discrete disciplinary subjects.
Today's progressive education is known as constructivism, the guiding philosophy of the PCAST report. Constructivists believe that students construct their own knowledge, instead of that knowledge exists in an objective form, independent from the learner. If PCAST had its way, technology would be used to completely revolutionize classrooms, with student-centered instruction, cooperative group work, and multidisciplinary projects assuming prominence. The report admits that constructivism's ideas are largely untested. And Chapman is right that constructivism is extremely controversial, questioned especially by parents and teachers who value traditional forms of education. Although it [End Page 347] is not appropriate to debate the merits of constructivism here, a critique of the science cited by advocates of constructivism was offered by John R. Anderson and other Carnegie Mellon researchers in Brookings Papers on Education Policy 1998. It offers an important lesson for technology policy. Federal pronouncements on how technology should be used in classrooms is an iffy proposition to begin with, but PCAST has compounded the error by endorsing a set of practices that are dubious at best and potentially even counterproductive to academic achievement.
