then the committee will come to order i want to welcome everybody to this morning's hearing this is the first in a series of hearings on the future of learning in this economy it is more important than ever to ensure that every student in every classroom has the opportunity to grow thrive and achieve to their fullest potential this is becoming increasingly important as our competitiveness abroad has shifted several years ago speaker pelosi asked us to come together around and innovation agenda we went to stanford university and talked to the best in the high tech biotech and venture capital fields we talked about innovation discovery believing that discovery and innovation are really the only sustainable sources of economic growth in the world today would have all from these conversations was an interesting definition of the kind of person employers would want to bring to their companies they want workers who can work across companies across countries and across the continent they want to they want that most diverse workforce in history to assemble solutions to emerging problems stemming from the most stemming from the most diverse client base in history unfortunately this is not sound like what we're preparing today's kindergarten students to participate sixteen years from now or even twelve years from now this is not today's education system in america but to quote secretary duncan we now face the opportunity of a lifetime to work with our schools and other partners to build an education system that benefits students families our economy our cars and our country for generations to come for quite some time i've been  cataloguing all the reports that acknowledge that we're running an industrial base education system for an agrarian society on an agrarian kwok you might not believe but it's been very interesting it acknowledges a fundamental fundamental mismatch that we have and that we haven't paid much attention to other than the rather clever anecdote from time to time acknowledging that fact today students use technology in almost everything they do from the moment they wake up from the digital alarm clocks listening to the integrated into classrooms and used by digital savvy staff it can improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement and reduce the dropout rate and as my grand kids tell me a lot more fun we call that engagement take for percent in math scores by fourteen percent a dionne warwick institute in east orange new jersey fourth and fifth grade students wrote and recorded educational raps about civil rights leaders for a black history project this project also helped them demonstrate technology can substantially increase student engagement re student achievement graduation rates and prepare our students for college in the workforce then we must do everything we can to support these types of innovation our classroom but this is about more than just the future of our workforce i about the future of our democracy the options opportunities available technology can be in the classroom must be available to everyone and i am extremely encouraged that we that we expanded this access we will make more progress in closing the achievement gap i'm encouraged that we're taking steps in the right direction congress has already endorsed several important pillars of reform including the american recovery and reinvestment program particularly as secretary duncan is race to the top which has i'm president potential to shape the future of learning in our nation it also includes six hundred fifty million dollars for education technology state grants and i believe this money can be well spent in any industry is considered smart business planning to look to the future and how a company and energy will change grow and adapt if we are serious about creating world class schools and regain our competitive edge when it's time we start thinking about education the same way today's hearing will explore how innovation technology are changing the way teachers teach and students learn we will see first hand how transformational power of technology can unleash th talents of our our teachers and students so they will in fact be able to use discovery and then evasion to assemble solutions to the problems that future generations will face i'd like to thank our witnesses for being here and i look forward to your your testimony now i'd like to recognize c man castle for the purpose of making an opening statement good morning and thank you chairman miller for holding today's hearing i am pleased that the committee is exploring the timely issue of how technology is transforming our nation's public schools more often people are using different technologies to gather and disseminate information i believe that in today's technologically driven world the states of schools us throughout the country have the opportunity to use these new technologies to improve academic achievement and help america's children compete in a world where new technology is the norm not a novelty in many instances this is already happening in schools today the international society for technology and education and the consortium for school networking a study of the impact of technology in schools they have found that technology can help students improve in reading writing and math technology also can improve a student's critical thinking problem solving and communication skills technology can help children with disabilities interact with their peers and better understand the subject matter the technology can also provide accommodations for the assessment process giving these children the opportunity to learn and achieve and demonstrate their success success just like everyone else in the class children in remote and rural areas benefit technology to they're no longer limited to the few books available down the road the county library through technology they now have access to all the libraries in the world right in their homes and for children in rural communities who schools are not making adequate yearly progress technology opens up a new world of tutoring options that were not available before the year at the internet interactive online learning technology makes more parental options available to supplemental education services under no child left behind to students who might not otherwise have access to them simply because of geography but technology helps more than the students studies have shown that administrators can use technology to improve efficiency productivity and decision making at their schools technology also helps teachers me professional requirements so they are qualified in their subjects they also can use networks to learn and share the latest teaching techniques even parents can benefit to internet based programs they can monitor their children's attendance homework and performance technology is a wonderful and necessary addition to our schools but it hasn't come for free over the years congress has invited hundreds of millions of dollars to schools to acquire and use technology and that's before the additional funding provided in the recent american recovery and reinvestment act in fact it's the school year two thousand and nine the education technology state grant program received approximately two hundred seventy million dollars technology can be a transformative force in our classrooms and i am a strong supporter of innovative innovation and creativity however as we examine new technologies and hear from this just english panel witnesses on how the new technologies may be incorporated into the classroom to improve student achievement we must remain mindful of these trying economic times and assure all federal funds for education technology serve a purpose and improve opportunities for students i look forward to learning about what's happening in classrooms at the cutting edge hopefully exposing other educators of the types of tools and resources available of course i welcome the witnesses here today and just just a word of caution a concern of mine is as we deal with technology i worry that we get too far ahead of ourselves sometimes in terms of what's next is how to incorporate what's there to make sure it's working correctly and hopefully we can just out today to thank you chairman miller you'll back thank you and i'd like now to through interactive science lessons that require students to demonstrate their comprehension of science content technology tools students of the diverse learning needs including the english language learners able ryall is a student at east carolina university where he is studying nursing prior to entering college was a student greene county north carolina a rural community that uses technology and teaching core curriculum areas to improve student achievement he credits the end of a dive in structural approaches that he was able to expose to  helping him to earn a college scholarship is the first family to attend the university scott kenney is a vice president outreach and professional development of discovery education he manages a large portfolio professional development efforts that also serves the educationally isn't for public policy co author multiple articles about use of technology as a tool to help differentiate instruction jennifer berglund is a chief technology officer at the byron independent school district prior to becoming technology officer ms berglund spent seventeen years teaching social studies the brian independent school district has recently was it was recently honored with a consortium of school and school networking team awards which is presented each year to the district that  chairman i would like to welcome dr wayne harsh new to the panel dr harsh you is a executive director of the dollars center for educational technology within the delaware department of education is also a member of the state education technology directors association board of directors currently serving  hundred eighty in his time at the delaware department of education the dollar center for educational technology wired every public school classroom in the state of delaware for internet access between one thousand nine hundred six and one thousand nine hundred eight making delaware the first statement nation to wire every classroom the state for this effort the center receives a computerworld smithsonian award wages also receive the council state government's innovations award on behalf of d c e t which is the center for educational technology wayne has a bachelor's degree in mathematics in arizona state university's master's of science and school computer studies from northwest missouri state university a p h d in curriculum and instruction with a specialty and educational media and computers from arizona state university are coming to delaware wayne taught and coach the union high school  who joined education online learning as his chief financial officer in february two thousand they became the general manager and in june two thousand and nine prior to educate online mr mcauliffe was the senior vice president chief financial officer thomson prometric the world's largest computer based testing organization welcome to the committee for all of you we're going to begin with you mr chopra when you begin speaking you won't see it because it's not in front of you but you have to pay attention to it than ok a green light will lee important subject as a father of two young girls i can assure you that today's topic is both a professional and a personal priority for me president obama understands that in order to renew american competitiveness we need to harness the power and potential of technology and innovation to revamp our educational system you said it very well yourself in your opening remarks mr chairman we will need a greater proportion of our population with college degrees and increased pipeline of students that are selling in the science technology engineering and mathematics disciplines and breakthrough strategies to uncover the hidden talent that we know resides throughout our country i am pleased to share my experiences on the role of technology and  meaningful progress against these challenges as we look to the future of learning beginning on the framework for educational innovation and like to share with you a few perspectives on where the president has put his emphasis we are committed to ensuring that all students are trained to use technology to research analyze and communicate in any discipline however we must integrate technology into the classroom in ways that research would demonstrate is truly helpful in the process of student learning promising approaches include facilitating public private partnerships in the development of new curriculum incorporating emerging technologies integrating technology throughout the classroom to transform the method by which we teach deploying collaboration tools to support teachers in the sharing of best practices and developing better student assessments to allow teachers and parents to make data driven decisions on how to improve performance we're making great progress on these priorities and we'll continue to evaluate their impact we're very proud of the fact for example that the o e c d recently ranked united states as number one in broadband access to schools as it's built upon the two point two five billion dollars in annual contribution to the program i've seen the promise of an investment in technology as virginia's secretary of technology when properly deployed it can serve as the foundation for technology led educational transformation with your permission i'll hit the highlights on several of what i consider to be nearly a dozen innovative proof of concept initiatives that might help you understand better the realities on the ground as i believe congressman castle you asked for three brief examples in virginia  your panel of scientists convened at the governor's request in two thousand and seven to evaluate our science physics chemistry engineering curriculum more specifically led by a retired nasa scientists or federal collaborator  we uncovered a number of opportunities for improvement in the content itself and this group of experts came together in issued a report basically calling for some very basic changes the idea that our classrooms should encourage more lab work that we should incorporate emerging technologies into our curriculum aligned with the commonwealth's overall strategic goals from an economic development standpoint and that we facilitate the sharing of ideas across the science technology engineering and mathematics community for best practice sharing traditionally such reports then sit in a policy making process for review but in the opportunities of technology in the potential for transformation governor kaine asked that the superintendent of public instruction alongside my colleague the secretary of education work together to bring together a collaboration at no cost to the taxpayers that would help get the community to write the physics chapters that would align to the commonwealth's future modeling and simulation as an economic discipline has great potential for job creation as does the field of nuclear physics both of which didn't have content developed in the classroom all of that now in less than six months using a web based wiki like platform allowed for teachers from all over the country to join in writing technology chapters that could be used for free by any classroom across the commonwealth one such school is deploying a netbook platform that will have a pretty big all of this curriculum on it you c still print a hard copy if you will for a few bucks at the local print shop but a technology platform that actually is cost effective by deferring some of the costs of the upgrade on textbooks that wouldn't have had some of this content involved i'll share a number of other stories with you perhaps by my written statements in light of the time but simply want to end with one final comment we do see the great power and potential of these capacities to improve with learning with students with disabilities and see tremendous opportunity uncover that hidden talent across this country and i thank you for the opportunity to continue the dialogue on this important subject thank you the short welcome i just stated to members of the committee our panelists some will be demonstrating some of the technology they're using the be going back and forth their written statements explain what they're about what they've done and what they have what they have accomplished that you feel free to proceed in the manner which you're most comfortable here we're adapting here this is adaptive technology you would in the old days you'd have thought that this is a glitch this is adaptive technology put it all away and up until this year the only thing i've had to capture their attention has been a chalkboard overhead projector type of technology in my classroom for one year but i can't imagine walking into a classroom without one now thank you thank you very much  company discovery communications is the number one nonfiction media company in a world with networks such as the discovery channel animal planet and the science channel discovery education our goal is to provide the most up to date instructional content in an interactive and engaging format in a sense bringing the world to their world and this is our students world according to the kaiser family foundation study students spend an average of six and a half hours a day with media since they don't take weekends off that's forty five and a half hours a week the equivalent of a full time job the national school board association commissioned a study in which they found that ninety six percent of all students engage in some form of social networking my space for a country would be bigger than france germany and the united kingdom given that the way our students prefer to consume information interact with content today is no longer acceptable for us to ignore that when we choose instructional materials when we do look at the way they interact with information our own research of discovery education to show multiple times that this has a positive impact on student achievement when used effectively media technology in the classroom makes a difference we've looked at several types of schools whether it's l a unified or schools in r  ginia we've looked at different grade levels whether it's math social studies or science we looked at grades three six and eight and regardless of the type of school the grade level or subject when used effectively student achievement increases so in addition to that we should also be providing th at after countless years of research and multiple studies we know that students learn differently from one another and yet in many places we continue to teach them as if they all learn the same this short animation on the same concept if that doesn't reach children we can show much short video can test hypotheses quickly isolate manipulate variables in a very safe environment and we provide media and technology to students and let them construct their own meaning they want  hometown hero is a documentary created by a high school student in north kansas city schools in ohio that looks at the impact that their town had on world war two and for the first time we're seeing a small number of progressive states encouraging this transition in the state of indiana for example the state board of education sent a letter to all school districts which and i quote encourage them that they should feel no obligation to utilize the standard form of social studies  changed their language that defined the structure materials to include electronic media and computer course where software that service a basis for instruction for each student on the eighth of this month governor schwarzenegger announced a new initiative in california which  stated high school students will have access to science and math digital textbooks by the beginning of the school year similar language has been proposed in texas as well the only caution i would introduce today though is that this is fundamentally a change in the way we're asking teachers to engage students it is imperative that along with this change we provide high quality ongoing professional development to teachers as we embark on this new way of learning our own data suggests that there is a great degree of variance between districts that utilize ongoing professional development versus those who do not one of the reasons that discovery will support the discovery educator network a global community of teachers that we bring together both online and in person who learns share and collaborate the best uses of media technology and share that with others thank you for your time today appreciate your attention to this incredibly important matter thank you  were thank you chairman miller and the committee for inviting me to testify my name is jennifer burglar technology officer for brian independent school district in bryan texas we have over fifteen thousand students in our district of which seventy one percent are considered economically disadvantaged and sixty one percent are considered at risk i want to tell you about how technology to empower you to do things that you never thought were possible in two thousand for stephen f austin middle school which our teachers and how they feel about how this has transformed their teaching and their learning in their school thank you good morning sharon miller and congressional committee members i thank everyone for the opportunity to lunches thankfully greene county is changing schools to a one to one laptop program and it's now home to what in my case is a portal to a new life unfortunately narcotics began to tear my family apart when i was nine years old by the time i was ten years old my father had been in prison at least three times and i've yet to hear from him my mother was left with four young kids to look after and with no education she was forced to work in the fields from sunrise to sunset farm labor job did not adequately provide for us and unfortunately she eventually started drug trafficking as well tom i was eleven years old my two older brothers dropped out of high school and at least begin to help support the family and my mom finally made a commitment to stop doing drugs a month after my thirteenth birthday i received a blow that would change my life forever my mother was incarcerated a year in high school forty six absences rapidly dropping grades no parents torn family and plans to soon drop out of school by the age of sixteen years i was bella my brother detention center for traffic violations there my junior year i met my health care instructor and mentor to help me change my ways if lisa wilson inspired me and shared with me how the use of technology tools that open doors technology helped spark interest in school and provided many other resources that i liked at home at the time i didn't really understand the school's new educational model or the hundreds of hours of training that my teachers had attended all they knew that i had a laptop and that i use technology in every classroom which also provided access to my teachers and classmates twenty four hours a day seven days a week soon it didn't matter that my home life was a mess or that greene county was so isolated they enter gratian of technology open the world to me by my senior year a place first to health and regional health care clothes speech competition and top ten in the state i was also varsity soccer team captain homecoming king president o the campus and had perfect attendance plus our two to three jobs at home there was no inspiration and i truly dreaded the bell at the end of the school day at least i knew that when i left campus i would be able to answer in message and email my teachers and classmates of questions since green county schools provide a change with a one to one program school was very different additional high school than my brother dropped out of students working groups they were challenged by a project and the best everyone participates in addition to a laptop student use digital cameras video cameras and interactive whiteboards are prepared for college and twenty first century careers for example in my physical science class i demonstrated elevated distance i provide a visual image for my classmates in chemistry i was able to manipulate elements on the periodic table it's a necessity most important the student body is now optimal performance today we aim beyond high school diploma and very minimal to a bachelor's degree through the use of technology our teachers are preparing us with skills for our journey to successful careers before laptop program seven years ago the average college gone rain green county was twenty six percent tom i graduated in two thousand and eight our college going rate increase and four percent our school record in the past for rural county was far below the national average now we are above average about thirty four percent in addition increased college ball rates we have increased access to honors and a p classes and our teen pregnancy rate has dropped from number eighteen to number eighteen from number two our events mean it's all thanks to technology and great teachers who integrate tools into their lesson thankfully we are not alone and there are other students in north carolina and across the county there are also benefiting from similar programs i've just finished my freshman year at carolina university with a major in pediatric nurse and also receive the national arts college scholarship i'm currently so employed as a certified nursing assistant to receive my nurse's assistant credentials as part of my school curriculum although this may seem like a most ordinary story something that's already happened along the way technology technology helped me to create learn scholars program applications were all completed online without technology there is no way i would be here testifying today honestly i would probably be another job out there are many students across the country just like me that only need a chance or opportunity to change their future much mr hart dr archer good morning thank you chairman miller representing the key and the committee for inviting me to testify today i would like to especially thank delaware representative castle for his long time support of education and educational technology i am way hard to executive director of the delaware center for educational technology part of the delaware department of education when i consider how technology is transforming our public schools i realize that our digital world no organization including education can achieve results without incorporating technology into its everyday practices to truly realize the effects of technology can have on education we need to consider those everyday practices and determine how technology can support i'll discuss three of those practices and how we are addressing technology implementation in delaware the first and most important is curriculum and instruction through our program the second is professional development in delaware and the third is student assessment data through our development of the delaware comprehensive assessment maximizing the impact report states it's time to focus on what students need to learn and on how to create a twenty first century education system that delivers results delaware's done a good job of the what by developing content standards and aligning curriculum to meet those standards to address the how we've committed no child left behind title two part to the implementation of the program based on the long term results from missouri and the replication from other states provides a model that is innovative and provides exemplary approaches to combine instructional strategies technology and professional development with proven results of increasing student achievement the model drives a transformation of the learning and arment providing a high tech classroom that emphasizes inquiry based cooperative learning and the development of higher order thinking skills  delaware's delaware's implementation of the learning for educators initiative a project funded through the federal ready to teach grant and a collaboration between ten state education agencies and associated public broadcast  stations delaware uses a web based model to provide effective professional development opportunities that lead to gains in teachers content knowledge improvements in their teaching practices and an increase in the levels of their students since the spring of two thousand and six we have built our state wide capacity to deliver online professional development by training online courses cilla taters and developers and implemented a course management system to deliver the course we've delivered over one hundred thirty online courses to over two thousand delaware educators and developed online courses related to delaware recommended curriculum and required science training such as an earth history course the earth history professional development courses been a notable accomplishment  in collaboration with science personnel produce supplementary video segments that are an integral part of the online course concept we are following the same model of producing and incorporating video segments into the delaware  the state of delaware is redesigning its student assessment program the current delaware student testing program in place since one nine hundred ninety eight will be replaced by the delaware comprehensive assessment system in the two thousand and ten eleven school year why am i talking about assessment when you're here to talk about how technology is transforming public schools the delaware comprehensive assessment system is an entirely online assessment delaware's moving to an on line assessment because we want to provide immediate results provide diagnostic reports to teachers within two days provide students with multiple opportunities to pass and be able to assess student achievement from an entire school year this can only be done with online assessment another driving factor is the desire to increase student access to technology with the implementation comes a four year replacement cycle for computers and the computers we use for instruction whenever testing is not greater access to technology and integration into our critical if we are to prepare students for the workplace system are the good news is that we have made positive strides forward in delaware by using technology to transform our public schools this is seen at the curriculum and instruction level the professional development level and the statewide assessment level learning delaware just two of many examples of how technology is transforming education in public schools unfortunately as is the case in most states we still have pockets of excellence rather than systemic transformation with our transition to the delaware comprehensive assessment system we are moving towards systemic transformation the bold move of taking all statewide assessment online will also drive an increased use of technology in curriculum instruction as well as professional development and conclusion we hope these efforts to use technology to transform our public schools will be seen as a catalyst of change even an accelerator of change thank you for time and your support of technology and education for our nation's children i would like to thank chairman miller and the rest of the committee for allowing me the opportunity to present here today hearing and seeing these other technologies and stories are truly inspiring to us that educate online educate online as america's leading of live personalized online tutoring services we have successfully served more than fifty thousand students in two thousand and two and currently serving students at almost two hundred school districts across the country all of our tutoring is done by certified teachers and delivered online to students in their home students are able to access this tutoring computer and internet access provided by online before i get into a little bit more detail on our technology i wanted to make a couple of points number one if you seen here today technology is truly transforming the way education is provided throughout our country it's expanding the learning day week in the year it is redesigning the traditional classroom and is vastly increasing student achievement how do we know this because our program has been independently tested and shown that its title one student who starts our program one grade level below can catch up to their peers after just twenty four one hour sessions of our tutoring in the case of english language learners and other at risk students gains or even greater this is also in our opinion just the first step how this technology can be used second because of the good work of the members of this committee and others in congress we can supply these tutoring services free of charge for title one students through the supplemental education services program that you created the students are the ones most in need in the story you just heard gives you an example of what can happen when the use of technology can help drive student achievement we'd like to thank you for that opportunity of service now for a few facts about our program we use us based certified teachers with bachelor's degrees and at least two years of teaching experience more than one third of our teachers have master's degrees and five percent have ph d proximately nine percent are certified to work with  students and forty our certified to work with students with disabilities all of our instructors also go through eight hours of instruction related to our curriculum our technology our proprietary method and how to maximize student motivation and participation our curriculum is research based and nationally recognized we have more than twelve thousand five hundred digital lessons created by third party educational publishing companies and an internal con we also recognize that the key role that parents teachers and principals play in educating the students as a result we provide both a parent and principal porter are updated for each student after each lesson to ensure data is completely as i stated previously our program has been independently evaluated to measure demonstrating significant academic gains we have also demonstrated evidence of increased performance in the two thousand and seven school year two hundred  fifty south dakota middle students predominantly native americans during from educate online ninety one percent of the students all gain on the south dakota state assessment with an average of eighteen  i would like to now show you a demo of our technology at work is this technology that drives our success we also believe as i stated before this technology has many more applications which i will talk about a can see the technology is at the heart of what we do but it also has far reaching application this platform should allow us to address many needs in particular were specialty labor shortages are depriving students in the several examples of the speech therapist reading specialists and guidance counselors in fact we are running a pilot in pennsylvania where we are matching students with speech therapists online we are also investigating how we can partner with community colleges to target recent high school graduates th at may need remedial classes to be successful in college our plan would be to provide tutoring during the summer prior to them entering college making sure they are ready for college level work in conclusion i would like to again thank the chairman and members of the committee for you could both address part of this question and that is you both allude to the impact of this on professional development and also the ability to professional development technology in your content area in order to be able to use the technology to different learning styles obviously if you don't know your curriculum very well you're not going to be able to describe it in multiple ways in order to reach different students do you do you have the ability to fill in in terms of subject matter content for teachers present in the material but you text or match you can use animation and video and audio and so the teacher doesn't have to have a deeper knowledge of that specific content they do have to have the knowledge of utilizing that resource in a way that best meets those children's instructional needs so i we how do we minimize schools getting locked into proprietary systems over a long period of time that may not work out or suggested both in virginia and i think the governor's call in schools that is a terrific question and i think the key to the question is how do we govern content that is not traditionally seen as a single textbook one of the benefits of our move towards a data driven environment an education is the ability now or as we make these investments to focus on what content works in the classroom by the various experiences so short might have a set of a compilation of lesson plans and  perhaps a chapter of some that she's used to convey the value of a particular plan hopefully will be able to understand the fact that the content itself was useful in presenting that that concept as long as there is a thoughtful way at the state level to govern the quality of that content that was at the heart of the pilot we had seen in virginia so a rigorous quality review on content organized in new ways when we think about the old compaq desk we would buy a disk  it have lots of content on it today we buy songs and they have discrete individual components i think in the same way educational content is now being in a similar fashion chunked up by these compilations of video clips and chapters of learning so the core question of yours about proprietary vs open is so long as the content can be evaluated i believe the marketplace can decide what's the most effective means to deliver that content it might be on a  proprietary hardware platform like book reader that might take this content make it available we would invision a wide range of innovations in in the devices in the method by which that's dispensed so long as we have thoughtful understanding of which differently or do you have any thoughts about that thank you but just not at the highest level i think what you have is is a policy priority of the president that you saw in real life witnessed today on these phenomenal  panels some sort of humbled to be aside them and i do believe we need a dialogue in ways to best leverage the capacity of technology but focusing on its use in the classroom so i think to the extent that we engage in concepts around how we can better value a success and sort of a thoughtful research based way on the use of the technology we might be in a better position to ensure a societal return on investment i intend to work very closely with my colleagues across the ministration obviously secretary duncan and jim shelton in particular to bring some rigor to the thought process and to be supportive in what i hope will be a dialogue over the coming weeks and months on making this even more effective thank you perhaps the short mystery are the ones who provoked this question but others may want to answer it and that is the the question of how much are we really improving as far as the use of they're truly doing better i mean i can tell you that the teachers i disliked going to classes the most of the ones who probably were the best there were two women who were teachers of mine who were just mean and hard i look upon them now as having actually taught me something i never told them that unfortunately they passed on but i just worry that this all may seem to be working because it's engaging students was a truly working in terms of improvement levels and can we document that in some way or another traditional high school you could always hard are like the teacher doesn't like me i'm just going to quit whereas now so many people are doing it there's always a competitive edge in high school especially high school is always such a competitive you know what number you in your class range what your situations as well as you know school resources and that's where i got a lot of the knowledge that i got about one of the universities i wanted to go because i couldn't go on tour so i got everything online and everything about the where to go online whereas before it was just word of mouth twelve percent of my students so it went down significantly but i don't know you can't compare it last year the students were in seventh grade they had a different science teacher they have me it's different content it's really suggest that we grapple with this issue in virginia one of the ways in which we evaluated success is actually flipping the model around what problem are we trying to solve when we looked across the challenges in our test scores we found that sixth grade algebra pre algebra frankly had been our worst performing subject and in fact had been in the sixty eight percent range order of magnitude of success so we took that problem and then issued a challenge to technology developers to build mobile applications in fact that contest is underway now it's going to expire at the end of june to say help bring about innovations through technology that will help us close what is a performance gap in this narrow subject  identified through our research on fractions proportions and so forth so if we flip the question and said what is our policy or educational outcome objective and then challenge the technology industry to help adult of develop applications and strategies to meet it we're going to hopefully see ourselves in a better position to assess the marginal value of that particular initiative and i think that methodology might be helpful as we move forward  the i'm going to follow through on your question you know when i taught school forty years ago i was considered advanced technologically because i knew how to read the movie projector and having good pedagogy that still take some time so we're still working on that i think the education departments in the university but they're learning a lot of their content from college professors that are still standing and their comprehensive development needs to make sure that we provide ongoing plans that are multi year to make sure that people are effectively using the classroom because even if people know how to use attack technology i think your point is right on using it for instructional purpose system they learned started and you have kids coming in and you want to have a teacher whether they're been teaching one year or twenty five years a teacher who moves with the use of the new technology and the materials that go with it and will both teacher training institutions and the school system has to push those teachers to use the new technology and don't fall into the carter glass syndrome the other comments on yes i would like to comment on technology allows you to do many things one the fear of child being nervous about technology you should worry about that but that's usually the easiest the problems the teachers in our program get trained eight hours so that they become very familiar with the technology in addition to them being trained on the technology they're also trained on student participation and motivation to make sure that they make use of the technology easy for those students to address a couple of the other questions if i may very quickly technology also allows you to do pre assessments and post assessments to very effectively measure a student's academic progress they are on our program the pre assessment will dry up prescriptive individualized learning plan that will  respond all the parent communication yes parents are definitely involved even in my school with a diverse population they are involved i've had various scenarios this year where my students have been called add line and then within an hour a parent emails me back and says thank you very much we have everything show have a for you the next day that's incredible it's incredible and our students and parents have access to ad line on a daily basis they can monitor their grades they can check to see when homework assignments are due and when when their next assessment will be  o i thank you for that question in fact rural communities i think are a great source of potential of the next generation innovation if we can connect those communities in more meaningful ways so we had a very high focus on on that aspect this particular initiative is sort of the necessity is the mother of all invention the school district was facing budget shortfalls and tried to find ways to save money the technology department said hey we think we could actually get more with less and they said look we we could put together a compilation of tools that would improve parent communication teacher to teacher sharing student engagement and we could cobble together a series of tools that are available more freely and let low cost in the market and assemble them in this little district governor kaine and giving them a little grant to document all the work they had done so it could be replicated in communities all across and frankly the country including a web your r l for the virginia open classroom initiative  open classroom dot org anybody can download the tools that they they've been using effectively in their school district it is extraordinarily cheap in fact in most cases free and they're focusing on the resources that will actually empower all of us the components that you've heard talk about here today so we can keep the infrastructure as modest in their expenses possible take advantage of broadband which we haven't spoken as much of today to ensure that we have the kind of capacity for resource sharing in our rural areas and most importantly focus on new content that we think could help address some of the longstanding challenges around educational attainment we have in our most rural communities very low rates of educational attainment and incremental ideas are not making the kind of breakthrough change we need and so we took for example the old ged curriculum for adults and mashed it up with microsoft's learning academies for technology and projects that would give students a chance to experiment and we  think boldly that in six months a dropout could be a technology worker and we're going to try those kind of experiments and i look forward to working with you on trying to find game changing ideas to support our rural communities is critical for our success of the work we've done that and just more innovation into the marketplace so i could produce facts and figures on the cost of a laptop for every child maybe four or five years ago and that would have presumed a certain cost today we don't know what the device is going to look like the kids are going to have in their hands to be able to interact and learn that device might cost fifty bucks or a hundred bucks and we might naturally find ways to find operational savings to cover that cost i think the bigger challenge for us is ensuring i think to congress and castle's question where the value in being more rigorous about how we present the outcomes that we're trying to improve on math and reading and all the various things you've heard anecdotally describe today the more rigor we have around what the quote unquote killer application is that would drive performance i'm confident our private sector will innovate to bring new products devices and tools into the marketplace and therefore drive prices down and make it easier for us to be successful that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look for creative ways to p  it became fun my husband and i was also a teacher there is an unspoken competition as to who could have create the best foot charge other teachers even our veteran teachers who have been teaching the same curriculum  necessarily the same curriculum thirty years but they've been teaching at the same manner they became excited to use the technology as well they were coming to professional development they were coming to other teachers who were using it u nfortunately we weren't able to take our staff development and walk into other people's classrooms to see them use the technology efficiently and we kind of need that back happens with the teacher you need to start with the administrators because the ones that can empower the teachers to do the things that need to be done and it needs to be the administrators at the campus at all levels but it also needs to technology program is that we are building up capacity within state departments of education to facilitate some degree of thoughtful evaluation and support and in virginia i don't know how many other states have a similar model technology investment choices we do some of this around we do some of this by sharing through professional development training professional development the technology resource administrators that many states have and we have nearly twelve hundred of them across the commonwealth of virginia that are funded largely by the state but supplemented by federal resources that network helps to ensure that the decisions that are made are fair affective and that they're being properly  deployed my hope is that as more and more of our research thinking goes into the evaluation of the quality of various interventions that will help to drive the market towards better and better results but we're still further down the  road for that activity one of following up with the gentleman from illinois talked about rural areas one of the advantages in technology is you can never virtual teacher who can teach courses for which there is not a critical mass of student our virtual teacher as effective as regular classroom teacher what can we do to make sure they're more effective it's virtual ms short i would imagine it would be very and we've seen fairly dramatic increases in grade level performance we also make sure that all of our teachers are certified have taught in the classroom for at least two years so they're familiar with the teaching environment and we take the time to train them on the technology i think the beauty of of our of our model is the fact that you tap into a teacher whether whether it be on the weekends whether it be so i think in the bigger picture i think i have to answer to that i think it's important i think those kids that don't have that are not playing on the same integration specialist that worked at our one one campuses and they would go in and play and with the teachers they would model teach for the teachers and then you also want to embed that technology into the training they see this as a key element of their work going forward and again this notion of having a resource available to state local question in large part how they organize themselves for this this kind of investment i was it is a huge investment and states like virginia are taking that step i don't know as much about the other states in terms of how they build but but a network of twelve hundred professionals in the classrooms across the in this example one state certainly helped to mitigate against the risk of fear on the technology and the poor decision making about what you buy and how you use it and having that kind of capacity certainly in our experience in virginia was successful on too early to have audience and to others that beginning at twelve and there will be demonstrations of this technology and much more from from apple from carnegie learning from cas from discovery education for me chalk explore learning thank you mr chairman a quick question for mr chopra following on mr attorney's line of questioning in this six hundred fifty million dollars that i believe is available under the so called stimulus funding for educational technology are there plans in the administration to either make that money or other money available for teacher professional development specific plans in light of what you were all saying just a moment ago well first of all congressman i'm from pla yes i know you are here the department is actively working on the programs for for stimulus and i believe they are focused on opportunities to tackle the issues that we've outlined i don't have specifics about the particulars of where that dollar funding will go but clearly we'll get back let me out of that and i would greatly appreciate that feedback back on that's one of the advantages that several of you have talked about in connection with the educational technology is the ability to have immediate feedback formative teaching experiences and other words getting back to the teachers and changing outcome by changing the teaching within hours or days or  first what do you see are the impediment to getting this kind of using the educational technology assessment feedback working with the teachers to fill in the gaps to address the conceptual problems that are identified and so forth what are the impediments to actually getting that applied throughout the country well obviously it's infrastructure and you know funding to have the equipment available to the students we been very successful in delaware doing what we call benchmark testing where every student will sit down over a period of two weeks they will be able to have a window about two weeks to run all the students of the school through you know their math and reading assessments how they do that varies by schools depending upon the infrastructure that they have obviously you need the number of computers available to the students to do this and as we look at that the biggest impediment probably at that point is probably the data interpretation of s another student level be another student levels and how you address those issues that you know the differentiated instruction concept in that but the bottom line is we're trying to give the teachers as much information about the student where that student is that so that they can address those individual needs of the student well let me turn to make sure that if there's time to others you talk about being able to record individual student or anonymous student how do you decide how how much of this is used for individual assessment how much of it is used to guide you as a teacher and for this to be applied throughout the school how what impediments do you see to using the information that is gained about individual students individual inference ability as well then we can target students on just that ability or if they're unable to target the main idea we can do that as well in our math curriculum or in our reading curriculum we have the voluntary state curriculum that is broken down into different indicators that you can focus on so you can use that we actually have use that information throughout the past year we break it down we bring it to our instructional leadership team and all of that data is looked at and assessed and we try to determine strategies on how to develop programs and  the level of data and analytics vailable for them to know if i buy milk on wednesday that they should not tell me that oreo cookies because of my historical patterns the level of analytical rigor in those kinds of decision making by the retailing sector if you compare that with this very basic question that we're asking today does student performance improve by the video clip that discovery showed or the lesson methodology that mission or describe for a particular day or a chapter of content that is going to be taught over a course of weeks it is very difficult when i look at what i see happening in other aspects of our economy where we have measured to the nth degree the best value of resources against challenges it is it is challenging for me to think about where we are in the ability to cross content quality teacher quality all the various elements in order to make th kind of management decisions necessary to improve student performance i hope as we move forward in the initiatives that are underway we will see a more attention focused on how we can think more broadly about these analytical capabilities and i think there's great potential if we were to do that correctly that kind of addresses the other part of this question and that is how how do we how do we measure i think that and evaluate the populations like  anyone or is that a benefit end i think the to what end part of still an open question in other words what particular package of technology based educational content or innovation you want to describe it is actually the key to the performance we're trying to achieve well let me ask a question the middle of it so wouldn't it depend on the grade level and what they discuss the classes teaching and so there's a basic level of understanding with with technology in the classroom that presumably we are in the pipeline learning more and more about and there is a gap by pre shared that that sentiment but the bigger question is as we study the impact of what exactly is it about what michelle was doing with the interactive whiteboards if we understood the nature with which used that tool to deliver performance then it is the training and professional development about the use of the device not so much the  how do you flip the switch and make sure that the buttons work but the methodology by which she incorporated it into the classroom is a slightly different question that i think even if someone is familiar with the technical hardware i would still imagine  peers would welcome professional development to learn how she chose to integrate the tool into the actual coursework itself so it's not so much i know how to use my cell phone it's now i'm thinking about the meaningful applications for the use of that happen to happen to be using the telephone but will deliver educational performance but but doesn't that replace then the ongoing professional development that we provide educators anyway i mean it doesn't have to be more  it right that part and parcel with how you teach the ongoing work of profession development integrated into that curriculum i hope would be opportunities to take the best learning we've seen and have that be blended as one it's not a technology unto itself it's that it's aligned with an educational outcome go well i want to add that add one more thought and then anybody that wants to respond to it while i still have time devices spoil like making a general hypothesis that over time a greater share of the school's operating budget might involve technology maintenance an operations and as that's happening in every sector of our economy candidly and so to the extent that there are best practices whether it's in health care energy sector you name it there are strategies that thoughtful i t leaders have deployed to think about ways to keep technology fresh staff trained mitigate security threats that is a capability that schools will be building up over time there will likely be a school's gap into the into the capacity and i'm sure there will be some broader discussions at state and local levels all over the country on how to best practices and i t management governance but i'm confident there are models that are there we  certainly have explored them at the federal level there are opportunities at the state local but i wouldn't imagine a unique perspective in education in those areas that's that's really a broad discipline thank  when we look at general education is always a concern about the basic foundation being developed in the elementary setting are there any insights you can provide in terms of just what may be best to do to help those students who may not link to technology early on in that elementary setting or are there particular things that are being done to cultivate the best outcomes in that beginning setting exactly what you were asking well ok the issue of technology becomes very important as you move through middle school and high school are there particular problems or connections that you see that need to be addressed in the elementary grades pre k through that some students don't take to math or science are there students not taking to technology and if so how do you reach them are there concepts that you've highest users of technology and even the higher in technology are elementary children they're doing the virtual world they're not using a place called second life they're not using that but they're school than they are even our kids at the middle school and high school i think that the assumption that maybe how do we engage them i think that's already happening stated it's surprisingly adaptive the children are the technology that being said i'm sorry is one thing that i think one of the cautions not to separate the conversation of technology from teaching and learning so we know a lot in this country about how students learn we know that students learn differently and that we can reach them in different ways all the better if they collaborate with learn from each other we know that they interact with content good things happen instructional and so i think even at very young age i have a first grade daughter who just recently is now going to second grade but is in a media generation i mean she's on web video i pod she gets assignments from her school that takes her online and so i think that even at those very young ages we can capture them using those tools but really not just to use the tools but to capture them in a way that we know we can do if in fact we need the parental involvement to maximize the success rate what are some of the programs that you do to incorporate parents into technology literacy are there certain concepts you use that you're given situations that incorporate the parents and help them to keep the especially the pre k through five crowd is ahead of the curve everyone how do you keep pace with that and how do you bring parents in so they can be anywhere and anytime inherently good or bad with regard to the of online education but just a number of things that challenge the status quo in ways that hadn't really been addressed before my first question is for mr mcauliffe with regard to jurisdictional issues and whether you've had any experience dealing with serving students that reside in other school districts other states with programs based in different states and whether there is a to any degree a policy framework recommendations you have around some of those jurisdictional issues that inevitably will increase as online education gains popularity thank you yes we do run into several obstacles in various states there are a couple of states like connecticut do not allow online providers to provide supplementary education services there are others in our instance will now not allow the use retaining the computer under our program the students they complete the program get to keep the computer that we provide up question and that is that the state itself or as a district by district in the states you mention in connecticut situation that's the state in other situations it could be the district the other big issue is signature requirements being an online provider if you're required to get parents signatures on attendance forms when you're not there in the state that creates a problem yet we have attendance reports that document the time in the timeout or the s  federal policies that are currently preventing or barrier to the implementation of new technology or even more specifically online education cross the country i can tell you that the department is very committed to this concept and to ensure that we're moving in this direction i think a lot of what you've heard in testimony today is a lot of what the department is focused on so i don't have any specific barriers or roadblocks identified but a commitment that we will work together and right supplemental is that correct or do you have students for the whole day as well the predominant amount of work that we do is with supplemental education students we do do what we call in school where students will be taken out of the classroom to get additional tutoring during the school day we also provide that you know then then by way of commentary leading to a quick question we in colorado have about three thousand students that are exclusively enrolled online so the taking all their courses online for a variety of reasons some of them are homebound some of them feel unsafe at school some of them are move at a pace that's either too fast or slower than the traditional classroom so there's a variety of of  basically taking all their courses online and whether you think that that's something that we need and a separate accountability and we're out of time so i just that's all just added that's something that we should consider that there are also our students we're going to be inheriting children and i think from all social economic levels they may not have a computer at home but they can borrow their i touch from somebody else who are going to become more and more proficient with the complexities of integration and the embedding of technology in the instructional day that these students are going to turn out now the problem is that they're there mastering more and more complex  technologies and whether the school budgets and our ability to do to integrate assembly said don't separate the technology from the from the education we never thought of separating the textbook from education we just assumed they went together risk assessments develop particular proficiency get advice from their friends how to how to develop those proficiency what what is the way that you can master this lead well what is the way you can game this level so you can get around it to go somewhere else educational opportunities for the students with with this technology that really in many ways mr reale pointed out brings out all of that potential all of that excitement of learning  and there are some big mismatches obviously across the country and states and local districts and individual schools and vigil classrooms huge mismatch between the potential and the opportunity of technology  and the resources available either to manage it or to use it or to learn from it i think this is a very exciting moment for american education i think the ability and and the kinds of resources that  exciting to have that kind of real time assessment i know very often we go through this idea that teachers are afraid of this they don't like it's not the way they did business the what we see is when we really have a first class opportunity to  these other opportunities for students and what it tells us about their their skills their talents and their their abilities and how we continue to try to match up this i think that hopefully  this will be integrated into part of the we now have this national taskforce working on common standards to be internationally benchmarked and how do we adapt technology so that the fact that will flow back through the through the schools i think it's students and for families to participate in these in these educational opportunities in teaching moments as we say so thank you very much for your for all of your participation if you don't mind as we continue  might double back and ask you for some advice and help on our actions in this committee again i'd like to remind the audience and members that are in the for air just down the hall here will have