Technology Empowered Transitions: Curriculum, Teachers' Practices, and . . . Change?

Introduction Meet Joshua (pseudonym), a ninth grade student attending a rural community school in a rural state. Joshua is die oldest of three children living at home with his parents in an impoverished neighborhood. Neither his father (a Native American), nor his mother (of Anglo descent) have completed the 12th grade. Both parents hold minimum wage jobs, thus the daily tasks of putting food on the table and taking care of their children occupies their energies. Due to their lack of educational experiences, Joshua's parents have little understanding of what they can do to help their child complete high school and attend college. Joshua's school counselor has over 200 students to oversee. Joshua has no vision about the high school he will enter, let alone college. No one has articulated it for him. He is passive in school, with low self-expectations. Now that he has completed middle school, his parents are talking to him about getting a job and helping the family. Slowly, the societal expectation of completing high school and going to college diminishes in Joshua's day to day reality. While his teachers see his lack of commitment, they are faced with other students in similar situations. Because of lack of professional development training, teachers do not make the appropriate connections within the curriculum to help Joshua and his classmates become successful in school and move on to college. Joshua is unprepared for die rigorous curriculum needed to prepare for college. This fact combined with the lack of support from home for the needed rigorous high school program, Joshua may just slide by in school or worse yet, drop out. Joshua's story is representative of the at-risk student population who were served by the Technology Empowered Transitions: From High School to Higher Education grant. This grant obtained in March 2003 from a state Department of Education was designed to help high schools with high poverty populations in the state adjust their curriculums so teachers could instruct to both state and ACT objectives. When combined with the other state initiatives, students in this state have school curriculums that better prepare them for higher education. The following objectives were identified for the Technology Empowered Transitions (TET) project: 1. School personnel will implement a revised appropriate curriculum(s) based upon the results of the EXPLORE and PLAN portions of ACT's Educational Planning and Assessment System. 2. School personnel will identify problems classroom teachers experience when implementing curriculum changes, and explain how these problems were overcome. 3. School personnel will identify and document changes in student learning based on the implemented curriculum changes. 4. School personnel will identify exemplars of "best practices" associated with the implementation of curriculum changes. It was hypothesized by the researchers that once those objectives were met, target schools would have a curriculum enabling students to become more successful in school. Grant Implementation TET was designed to help secondary schools with high poverty populations improve instruction for their students by helping teachers learn to align their curriculums with ACT and state objectives. Fourteen school curriculum lead teachers from eight rural school districts with high poverty populations were involved in graduate study designed to accomplish the stated program objectives. Instruction for the curriculum lead teachers, provided by university professors - knowledgeable in the areas of curriculum design and alignment, state and ACT objectives, and the state approach to NCLB requirements - was designed to occur in three different settings: traditional classrooms, online instruction, and the use of interactive educational television (IETV). Using a "turn key" organizational management plan, curriculum lead teachers then instructed their faculty using multimedia programs and equipment (laptop computer, LCD projector, Polycom 128 and 32" television, 2 mobile carts) purchased through this grant. …