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Research and guidelines on schools' use of the Internet |
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Guidelines for school leaders and communities
In light of the survey findings, school leaders must consider how they can stretch the capacity of schools and educators to achieve better educational results. Here are some guidelines.
- Treat technology as an integral tool for instruction and administration — not as an add-on. Technology is not a frill, it's essential to effective instruction and school vitality.
- Use the Internet for core educational priorities that matter most to student achievement. School district leaders report strong interest in online opportunities that match federal, state and local pressures, including standards, assessments and test preparation. School decisionmakers should be informed by these priorities as they make choices. At the same time, schools should understand that they can harness the power of the Internet to create and support diverse learning communities.
- Invest significantly in professional development for school leaders and teachers. A broad theme emerging from survey results is that teachers need help incorporating the Internet into regular classroom instruction. For new and veteran teachers alike, the Internet is a new frontier — and one that many have little time or training to explore. Teachers need technology training to be able to use the Internet as an effective, interactive tool for teaching, learning and communicating. Teachers also need to be prepared to guide and assess students in different ways.
- Anticipate and plan for the changes that increased use of the Internet will bring to schools. Technology and the Internet are changing the way teachers and students interact - and ultimately, the culture of the school. These changes in roles may yield benefits for both students and teachers as they learn and explore technology — and academic subjects — together.
- Broaden community involvement in school technology policies and practices. Educators and school board members may need to look beyond the school system to find models for creative uses of technology, online learning communities and collaborative communications. One possibility: School leaders can arrange for teachers, administrators and school board members to visit local businesses to find out how the workplace is incorporating technology into daily routines. Businesses also can invite educators to corporate workshops for technical training.
Likewise, schools can open their own doors for parents and community members to use computers and the Internet — and, in the process, build community support for technology investments. Additionally, schools can involve technology users — parents, teachers, students, principals and community members — in developing technology policies and priorities.
Methodology
On behalf of Grunwald Associates, Rockman et al, conducted interviews with 811 technology decisionmakers of public school districts. Interviews took place between December 12, 2001, and February 12, 2002. Staff conducted computer-managed, 30-40 minute interviews with both open-ended and fixed-choice questions. Tabulation was conducted by Rockman et al; analysis was by Rockman et al and Grunwald Associates.
To qualify as a technology decisionmaker, a respondent had to perform a majority of the following duties:
- manage/purchase technology used for instruction;
- manage/purchase all technology used for management and administration;
- build/support technology/telecommunications infrastructure;
- purchase technology, Internet and telecom products and services for the district; and
- coordinate technology with curriculum.
Sample
Stratified random sampling was used to select districts for this study. Responses were aggregated by size of district to provide a comprehensive picture of the nation's public schools. To ensure adequate representation by district size, community type and geography, we did the following:
- Removed alternative education districts with fewer than 600 students.
- Removed districts located in Guam, Japan and the United Kingdom.
- Categorized districts by size, based on the total number of enrolled students. This yielded three categories: large, medium and small.
| Large districts: |
More than 25,000 students |
| Medium districts: |
2,500 to 24,999 students |
| Small districts: |
600 to 2,499 students |
- Included all of the large districts to capture a large group of the student population in the United States.
- Randomly sampled 50 percent of each student range to ensure adequate representation of the medium and small districts.
- Added an additional 20 percent stratified random sample of the medium districts to obtain the target of 400 completed interviews. This was necessary due to the difficulty in contacting and scheduling interviews with medium districts.
- Differences in the number of respondents resulted from some questions being added once interviewing had begun, in response to interim results from the survey itself. In addition, logic/skip patterns cause some questions to be relevant only to a subset of respondents.
Data source
Researchers sampled data from the Common Core of Data (CCD), the Department of Education's database on public elementary and secondary schools for all U.S. school districts. The CCD contains information on school districts, including administrator name, address and phone number. Statistical information is collected annually from approximately 16,000 public school districts.
| A market research report based on this survey, including detailed cross-tabulations and analysis of interest to industry, is available from Grunwald Associates at http://grunwald.com. |
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