At whose expense: Many teachers lack computer training needed to do the job

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At whose expense: Many teachers lack computer training needed to do the job

Wednesday, February 02, 2000

By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau

Last in a four-part series

TAKOMA PARK, Md. - Patty LeBlanc, who's taught elementary school for more than 30 years, describes herself as "technology hostile."

"I don't like computers. Basically, I'm a Luddite," she says, laughing.

But LeBlanc, a first-grade teacher at Takoma Park Elementary School in suburban Maryland, has no intention of retiring any time soon. "And I knew that I just wasn't going to last in teaching without knowing how to use computers," she said.

Teacher Mary Jackson shows Kenneth Allen, 8, computer tips during a session with third-graders at Sunnyside Elementary School in Stanton Heights. (Douglass Oster, Post-Gazette)

Convinced she had to prepare herself, LeBlanc bought a friend's old computer and taught herself word processing two summers ago. And this year, LeBlanc is one of several teachers at Takoma Park Elementary taking computer training offered through a federal teacher training grant.

LeBlanc is one of the lucky ones. As the Clinton administration works to fulfill its promise to provide Internet access to every classroom in America, many teachers have never been trained in how to use the Internet in their teaching.

But this issue, important as it is, has almost been lost amid upbeat hoopla surrounding computers in the classroom. There's a new academic mania ignited by the E-rate, the federal education rate discount provided for in a new telephone tax to wire every school and every library to the Internet.

Principals brag about their new computers. Parents proudly tout their school's technological prowess. School boards cite the percentage of computers in their schools and cut industrial arts, art and music programs to make room in their budgets for more and newer technology.

In some cities, including Pittsburgh, computers are an important and key element in the educational mix. Langley High School in Pittsburgh, for example, was one of six schools highlighted by U.S. News & World Report several years ago because teachers there have been able to dramatically raise math scores through a special computer tutoring program created at Carnegie Mellon University.

But it takes teacher training - a good deal of it - to put all this new technology to its best use in schools, experts say.

"You can have all the technology in the world, but if you don't invest in teachers and help them acquire the comfort and know-how, it will be wasted," said Linda Roberts, head of the federal Office of Educational Technology, the agency that sponsors the grant now being used to train LeBlanc. "We need to find ways to help teachers be competent, confident and creative users of technology."

A 1998 study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that only one teacher in five felt "very well prepared" to integrate the computer into their curriculum. Another 37 percent said they were "moderately well prepared" to do so, 34 percent were "somewhat prepared," and 9 percent were "not at all prepared."

A new survey by Education Week, a magazine for education professionals, supports this data, noting that "the typical teacher still mostly dabbles in digital content, using it as an optional ingredient to the meat and potatoes of instruction."

Of the 1,407 teachers surveyed by Education Week, slightly more than half said they use software for classroom instruction, and 61 percent use Web sites. But nearly four in 10 teachers say their students don't use computers at all in a typical week; nearly three in 10 teachers estimate their students' average usage at one hour per week.

Almost two-thirds of those surveyed said they rely on software or Web sites for instruction "to a minimal extent" or "not at all."

Jennifer Klein, a second-grade teacher at Takoma Park Elementary, has had some training but calls herself a "beginner" when it comes to educational technology. Nonetheless, she adds that using computers in the classroom is no longer optional.

"I see it now as a basic part of the curriculum," Klein said. "I don't see it as an extra. Young kids are excited about learning in general, and the computer is just another tool to them. But it's an exciting tool."

The computer in Klein's room is hooked up to the Internet, and Klein spends time checking out good Web sites that match with her curriculum needs. But, like many teachers, she's much more likely to use the computer for word processing. Klein relies on the computer to type the handouts she gives to students and she also has students type their work on the computer.

In fact, teachers of the lower elementary grades say that wiring their classroom computers to the Internet is a boon for them, as far as finding interesting materials to spice up a lesson. But far fewer teachers of these grades may actually have their pupils use the Internet themselves.

"I'm just not sure how usable the Web is for kids at a first grade level," said LeBlanc. "I would certainly say that high school and junior high school should be first" at getting hooked up to the Internet.

Closing the gaps

But LeBlanc adds that having computers in the classroom, whether or not they are hooked up to the Internet, is a key step at balancing a very unbalanced situation between students who have computers at home and those who don't.

"I have a very grave concern that, unless we make computers accessible to all kids, the educational gaps between these kids will be horrendous," LeBlanc said. "That's why it is really important to have computers in the schools."

There's another gap, according to LeBlanc, between the teachers who can afford to buy computers for themselves and those who can't.

"New people are familiar with the technology, but that doesn't mean they own a computer," LeBlanc said, noting that teachers at Takoma Park Elementary line up each day for a turn on one of the few computers in the school that are wired to the Internet.

LeBlanc and her husband recently bought a new IMAC computer, and LeBlanc said she uses it to create student handouts, parent letters and class assignments.

"It's made it easier for me to produce work for kids," she said. For example, LeBlanc plans to put together students' essays on spiders into a typed book they can share.

In her classroom, however, LeBlanc has an ancient, pre-1990 computer, which sits in a corner of the classroom. Students use it, two or three at a time, to learn math via software games.

But like most schools, Takoma Park Elementary is constantly building its inventory of computers. In fact, the school will receive several new computers as part of the training that LeBlanc and several other teachers are undergoing.

Training the teachers

LeBlanc says her training already has made her more comfortable with using computers. But training teachers in technology requires a major commitment of time and money, educational experts say. It can take several years of training and in-the-classroom experimentation for a teacher to truly feel comfortable with computer-assisted learning.

Currently, school districts spend an average of 9 percent of their technology budgets on training, far below the 30 percent recommended by the U.S. Department of Education. An Education Department workshop concluded that most "ed tech" training for teachers "as it is currently conceived and delivered - one-shot seminars, an afternoon with an expert, or 200 teachers in a gymnasium - will not bring the profession up to speed with emerging school reforms."

Some states are moving to improve funding for this area as they begin to recognize that computers without trained teachers won't be worth much. For example, Pennsylvania awarded eight grants totaling $1.8 million this year for projects to develop online professional development resources and activities for teachers.

In addition, Pennsylvania approved $5.4 million last year to boost teacher preparation in technology. An Education Week survey showed that a typical teacher in Pennsylvania receives 13 hours of technology training.

The lack of teacher training is a major obstacle to the push for computer-assisted learning. A related problem is the lack of good software available for teachers to use.

Hunting for quality content

There's no dearth of educational software, but much of it isn't useful or doesn't help teachers in their quest to give students the information they need to do well on state-required tests. Searching for the right software, meanwhile, takes up more time than most teachers have, and only a few states have established software clearinghouses that rate the software for how well it helps students meet state educational standards.

But there is much less software for junior high and high school students than elementary students, despite the fact studies show that older students may benefit more from computer learning than younger students.

Still, there's a lot of money being spent in this area. Schools spent $340 million on stand-alone software and $218 million for comprehensive "courseware" last year, according to Simba Information, a business-information publisher based in Stamford, Conn. Another $13 million was spent on online subscriptions, since some teachers prefer to use Web sites on the Internet to supplement their curriculum.

The need for more teacher training and better ways of developing good software demonstrate an important fact in the ed tech debate: investing in computers for classrooms isn't a one-time or occasional expense.

Instead, it is an ongoing capital expense that school districts will need to commit to if they want to make the most of their ed tech investment, experts say.

The high cost of high tech

In a RAND Corp. report, "Fostering the Use of Educational Technology," authors Thomas Glennan and Arthur Melmed studied a small group of schools making extensive use of technology. They found that costs related to technology ranged from about $180 to $450 per student, compared with an average total expenditure per student in 1994-95 of $5,623.

"If $300 were viewed as a target level of funding per student for technology-related costs, about 5.3 percent of the current budgets of schools would need to be allocated to technology. On its face, this seems a level that should be attainable," Glennan and Melmed wrote.

"However, we estimate actual expenditures per student in 94-95 [for technology] to be $70. ... To support levels of expenditure equal to $300 per pupil will require reallocations of funds that have proven very difficult to achieve in public schools.

"Such allocation will be possible only if the public and the educational community come to feel that technology is essential to meeting their objectives for student learning."

To skeptics such as William L. Rukeyser, a former top education official in California, there needs to be more research proving the benefits of computer-assisted learning before ed tech becomes a bigger part of a school district's annual budget. Rukeyser and other ed tech critics believe funding for computers should be targeted to where research shows it can best be used.

Having lots of computers in every school "is an easy way for school superintendents to get bragging rights. Logically, a parent or reporter should have a follow-up question: 'Are the kids actually learning any more?' " Rukeyser said.

Most in academia echo the thoughts of Elizabeth Byrom, head of a southern states ed tech consortium.

"When all is said and done, we realize that the adoption of technology is similar to the adoption of other educational innovations; it is just more time-consuming, labor intensive, and expensive. Is it worth it? Probably. Do we have a choice? Not really.

"The risks of not using technology are too great when we consider the rapid pace at which knowledge is expanding and the need to communicate and compete in a global community."

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