Technology Implications for State Leaders

Three important dimensions comprise teaching and learning: the written curriculum, the taught curriculum, and the assessed curriculum. California has focused on academic standards to define the idealized learning outcomes for students. In the standards-based system, these learning outcomes drive both the taught and the assessed components of the teaching and learning experience. The English Language Arts, Math Science, and Social Studies Standards were adopted by the State Board of Education in 1997 and 1998. It should be noted that, at the time, only 55% of schools and perhaps one-fourth of classrooms in California were connected to the Internet. 1998 was also “PG” (pre-Google). Google use grew by 70,000% just from 1998 to 1999 with a staggering 7,000,000 searches each day. By the end of the following year that number grew to over 100 million daily searches (Ingram, 2008).

The recent Williams settlement requires schools to use only those curricular materials that have been approved by the California Department of Education. Adherence to these adopted materials shapes the “taught” curriculum with defined instructional practices, allocations of time devoted to particular subjects, and common pacing guidelines. Political changes, such as the implementation of NCLB, have focused efforts on strategies and programs that we hope will improve students’ ability to demonstrate achievement on multiple choice tests.

The need for reforming the accountability and assessment system has been articulated by ACSA in a recent taskforce report (ACSA, 2010). The current model, in many ways, has narrowed our curricular focus such that personalized, open-ended, project-based, multidisciplinary efforts have fallen out of favor. Unfortunately, the combined impact of the standardized-test-driven accountability movement and the prescriptive nature of conventional textbook instruction have been impediments in terms of technological risk-taking, creativity and implementation in schools.

Recommendation for State Leaders:
• Revise content standards in all curricular areas to better reflect the necessary learning outcomes for digital-age learners.
• Revise standardized assessment methods to better represent the learning outcomes for digital-age learners, including meaningful feedback on challenge-based learning experiences as a component of the accountability system.
• Immediately allow flexibility with respect to the requirements of “seat time” as a driver for school attendance, financing, and reporting. Replace this with models that support various modes of online participation in schools.
• Expand instructional materials to include the use of mobile platforms and online information resources. This would establish a new model that would transform California and district adoptions to include online curricular series that integrate web-based, media-rich, adaptive materials aligned to state standards and 21st century literacy skills.