Are You Accountability Ready?

Data Lends a Helping Hand

Because education has been "understood" for over 100 years, there has been little need to "prove" or "account" for decisions made by education professionals. Indeed changes were so few and far between for educators that change efforts were limited to the interests of "trailblazers" and rarely impacted the rest of the system of school. As a result, innovative efforts have been left mostly unquestioned because school was able to remain basically the same over a long period of time. But today the "sandbox" called school is being reshaped in unprecedented ways by the quantity and speed of changes. The rate of change has now exceeded the public's understanding of school. The public's response is an increasing need to have communication and accountability as they grapple with their understanding.

Collecting data is fast becoming a mechanism for bridging this gap of understanding while responding to public concerns. For groups beginning their data collection process, the visual map of Grappling's Six Steps to MAPPing NextSteps might be useful. This map frames the step-by-step process for accountability as a tool in restructuring school with technology.

Accountability is not a punishment. It is the school system's assurance to the public that there is a process in place to assess the results and progress of technology's implementation over time. Schools will need to assess two types of accountability: a system analysis and an instructional analysis. If schools are to move from optional uses of technology to making progress with issues of equity and instructional results, they need to make also sure they are "Accountability Ready."

Rather than ranking these indicators as good or bad, the data collection and analysis process uses critical qualities and ranking guides to assess 1) Not in Place 2) Emerging 3) Developing 4) Optimal. These twenty-four indicators are clustered into four general areas called "Grappling's Four Cornerstones" (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader). They form the basis for force-field analysis, gap analysis and goal setting activities. All four areas, readiness for change , teaching and learning, technology deployment, and system capacity, need to have equal attention when setting goals and resourcing implementation strategies if technology benefits are to be realized for students. If any of these four areas are weak, no amount of equipment will be able to yield by itself the results nor the accountability expected by parents, community, and staff.

I. Readiness For Change - there is strategic planning and then . . . there is strategic timing. Using technology in classrooms is new and unfamiliar to our adult population. Critical attention is needed to "good ideas" having "fertile ground" with attitude readiness, energy readiness, and commitment readiness for any hoped-for changes and new possibilities.

II. Teaching and Learning - when everything is said and done, all the efforts around technology should be explicitly centered on students and their learning possibilities. Are the school goals targeting technology fluency, teacher-centered or student-centered practices? Download Grappling's Technology and Learning Spectrum. Many times the words and actions of technology efforts focus heavily on "equipment stuff" rather than the learning. In all learning environments visitors ought to feel students first, learning second, and resources, like technology, third. Are newspaper headlines, staff development titles, school reports and teacher talk about stuff or about learning?

III. Technology Deployment - this cluster is becoming increasingly technical and complex needing very competent staffing. CEO Forum, 1999 reports that 90% of the billions of dollars spent on education technology has been focused on the acquisition of hardware and software. While this area is important, our capacity to organize accountability has been impaired by our naïve, myopic attention to the Technology Deployment Cornerstone at the expense of not equally putting the other Cornerstones "in place." Educational purposes and goals rather than acquisition must guide these decisions. Intentional distribution and focusing of these resources towards instructional expectations or student benefits will maximize our ability to deliver the accountability.

IV. System Capacity - a system can tolerate up to 30% "foreign" or new ideas without snapping back. This elasticity surprises groups whose first efforts yield results and then a "wall" of resistance stops the forward movement. The indicators in this cluster are critical when moving from optional teacher use of an innovation to full expectation of teachers using technology for the benefit of all students. The success of this cluster of indicators will yield equity across the system.

All Four Cornerstones need equal attention when setting goals and resourcing implementation strategies if technology benefits are to be realized. If any of these areas are weak, no amount of equipment will be able to yield by itself the results nor accountability expected by parents and staff.

Second: Conducting an Instructional Analysis

If your schools are ready to shift from optional uses of technology to focusing on equity and accountability issues that will deliver instructional results, then instructional goals and assessment processes are needed in order to measure learning progress in the classrooms. There are three distinct categories of technology use with learning, each requiring differing access and staff development approaches. (See Grappling's Technology and Learning Spectrum) The goal is not just to integrate technology, which loosely translates to "use the any technology for anything." Doing technology is not the goal; the goal is to use the technology effectively for intentional, worthy, measurable student benefits.

"Organized Goals for Results Analysis" helps groups form and prioritize goals that are student focused rather than equipment focused. Stakeholders are involved in crafting the goals, expected results and assessment strategies prior to implementation. This creates mutual responsibility for answering the question of technology's value in schools. It also targets all activities, decisions and resources on specific student outcomes with pre-determined tools to conduct intermittent assessment.

Leaders form whole-school teams rather than loosely letting each teacher individually find their way. Expectations and support systems are put into place for all teachers to effectively use and measure classroom use in specific ways. No one gets out of this. No more signing up just the "trailblazers" who elect to use technology effectively with their student's while other students fall victim to their teachers' personal practices of choosing not to use the technology or just not managing to develop their skills enabling them to use the technology effectively. This is about students being able to expect their learning potential to be expanded with technology resources.

Interim reports of student results are funded and expected regularly. Documentation, analysis, and communication of the progress are regularly conducted for all school staff (leadership, curriculum departments, and technology committees) as well as for the community who funded this work. This feedback loop is directly related to results/benefits for students which informs the system of accomplishments and what is needed next.

Closing Thought

Successful technology planning can be a robust vehicle for impacting every level of a school system. Unlike other planning committees, for example, social studies or math task groups which tend to focus on a single part of the system, technology planning requires looking at the "big, complex picture" of the whole system to ensure success. More than vision and good ideas are necessary when an innovation as dynamic as technology is implemented into the school system. It is this complexity that challenges technology committees and planning teams. See the product page for the newly released Grappling with Accountability 2002: MAPPing Tools for Organizing and Assessing Technology for Student Results. It is a comprehensive licensed text and CD-ROM resource, that guides planning groups with a step-by-step process to develop and implement their own data collection process. This 250+ page text and digital resource provides tools and processes to support schools in organizing accountability at the system level and classroom level ensuring technology investments really are able to make the most difference possible for students.