Join the conversation

Last month I learned that I had been appointed to the Recommendations for Education and Advancement of Learning (REAL) Agenda Commission whose job is to recommend an initial research and policy agenda for Digital Promise by producing a report to be delivered in April to White House Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra. Digital Promise is a national center created by Congress to advance technologies to transform teaching and learning.  The Commission is chaired by Dave Belanger, from AT&T, Arden Bement, from Purdue University, and Tracey Wilen-Daugenti, from Apollo Research Institute, and its membership includes representatives from technology companies, some of whom have been doing business with K-12 schools for some time and some of whom have not.  The commission is managed by TechAmerica Foundation and facilitated by Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow.   The only practicing K-12 educator on the commission is Maribeth Luftglass, CIO in the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.  I represent the remainder of the K-12 education community….a huge responsibility.

At the first REAL Commission meeting last week in Washington, DC, Aneesh Chopra and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed the group to emphasize the importance of the work at hand.  The Secretary talked about jumpstarting education improvement and accelerating change that will improve student outcomes.  Mr. Chopra spoke enthusiastically about the potential for data to change the way we determine, deliver and monitor student educational progress.  On completion of their respective motivational speeches, they exited the meeting and the Commission  got to work by dividing into four working groups each of which will produce a chapter on the area of responsibility that is theirs—Content/Curriculum Systems, Delivery Systems, Big Data Systems, and Synergies among systems.

I want to be clear that I’m grateful to be at the table and participating in this activity.  Having said that, I’m reminded of the quote from that great philosopher, Yogi Berra, that this is “Deja vu all over again.”  I have been involved in advocating for improved K-12 teaching and learning supported with appropriate technology for 25 years, and I have colleagues who’ve been working in the field longer than that. 

So, the first research priority for Digital Promise is an exhaustive scan of the work that has already been done, and serious outreach to the practitioners, researchers and corporate partners who have been involved in much of this work.  As Commission co-chair, Arden Bement, pointed out in his introductory remarks, in his experience the technical solutions are far easier to address than the human systems. 

In addition to initially focusing the work of Digital Promise on the knowledge base already in existence, it’s my hope that the Commission acknowledges not just the entrenched nature of locally run and financed public schools, but also the lack of working capital for states and their school districts to make large scale investments in system-wide technology supports and solutions.  Public dollars (also known as taxes) are simply not currently sufficient to effect the scale of change we’d all like to see and support.  This doesn’t indicate unwillingness on the part of educators to meet the needs of their students in the 21^st century; it’s just a statement of reality.

The second research priority should be a dispassionate look at age-appropriate technology supports for teaching and learning that examines the level of in-person interface to remote knowledge access at different developmental levels and learning styles.  Since technology offers the opportunity to customize approach and provide real time feedback on achievement, we should also learn what’s appropriate for different maturation levels and learning styles for students involved in what we label K-12 education.

While the work of the Commission has just begun, it has a short timeline to complete the assignment. To the extent the Commission frames its recommendations in the context of the reality of public schools the work will, indeed, be REAL and not just window dressing for a re-election campaign or ambitious business plan.  The time has come to get it right for the benefit of all of us.