Week 2 Assignment, Part 2

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 required teachers, principals, schools, districts, states and even the federal government to be accountable for student achievement. After NCLB, it was no longer good enough to say that schools were doing a good job at education their students, the improvement had to be proven with assessment data. To assure that the goals of NCLB were being met and that students were benefitting from the federally funded technology programs, Texas created the Long-Range Plan for Technology, 1996-2020.

One area of the Long-Range Plan for Technology, 1996-2020 is Teaching and Learning where the goal is that the teacher serves as facilitator, mentor, and co-learner at the Target Tech level. In meeting the Target Tech level, students will have on-demand access to all appropriate technologies to complete activities that have been integrated into all core content areas. To meet this level, all Technology Applications TEKS are met in the kindergarten through eighth grade, high school campuses offer all Technology Applications courses and teach at least four courses. The vision of the Teaching and Learning key area is that Texas will meet the needs of its diverse group of students and that all students will benefit from communication, collaboration and access to online instructional resources.

At my campus level, we are currently at the Advanced Tech level where we have been for the last two years, although we were at the Developing Tech level three years ago in the Teaching and Learning area. As of 2007-2008, the Campus Statewide Summary by Key Area listed only 0.9% of the campuses in the state at the Target Tech level for Teaching and Learning with most of the campuses 69.7% at the Developing Tech level of progress. According to the U.S. Department of Education, technology is to be used as a catalyst for changing schools to support the acquisition of higher-order skills for all students and to provide real-world authentic classroom uses. For my campus to move from the Advanced Tech level to the Target Tech level, we will need to increase the use of technology in content areas, online learning, and patterns of classroom use. The trends at the local, state, and federal levels seem to be in creating learner-centered classrooms where technology is used as a catalyst for collaboration.

Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020.(2007, November). Retrieved November 28, 2009, from TEA website: http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/technology/lrpt/lrpt_lrpt.html

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/overview.html