Positive Attitudes Mitigate Budget Threats

	Executive Summary Losing Ground in Technogy Spending Positive Attitudes Mitigate Budget Threats Recommendations Acknowledgements Digital Leadership Divide Report (PDF)

In this section:

• What Happens When Budgets are Cut?
• Visionary Leadership Sustains Technology Gains
• Benefits, Challenges Highlight Technology Needs
• Quick Guide to District Characteristics in this Survey Report
• The Key Challenge: People, Not Equipment
• Is Technology Available to Students?

A startling finding that pervades our survey results is the differences in attitudes about technology and the effect that attitudes have on technology purchases and use. Where there's a will to deepen schools' commitment to technology, there seems to be a way - and this seems to be more important than funding. This presents an enormous opportunity for schools to build understanding and support for technology both in the community and among educators themselves.

A majority of school leaders believe that their communities are more supportive of technology purchases for classroom use than they were three years ago - a good sign that the public increasingly understands that students need to be able to use technology during regular classroom activities. Three times as many school leaders (53 percent) say their communities are more willing to dedicate resources in this area than say they are less willing (18 percent).

Community attitudes toward technology seem to yield results in the bottom line of technology budgets. School leaders whose district budgets for classroom technology increased over the past three years are particularly likely to cite strongly supportive communities (70 percent). By contrast, school leaders whose district budgets for classroom technology have decreased over the past three years are the least likely to cite strongly supportive communities (38 percent).

Likewise, 40 percent of school leaders report that parent groups in their districts are more supportive of school purchases outside the school budget than three years ago, compared to 13 percent who say parent groups are less supportive. Again, the districts that have experienced increases in their technology budgets are most likely to report increased support from parent groups. These survey findings indicate a clear connection between community support and spending on classroom technology. There is a similar, albeit weaker, correlation between community support and technology budgets for administrative purposes. More than twice as many school leaders say their communities are more willing to dedicate resources in this area (42 percent) than say they are less willing (20 percent). School leaders whose districts have experienced recent budget increases for administrative technology and districts in the South are particularly likely to cite community support in this area. Again, school leaders whose districts have experienced budget declines for administrative technology are the most likely to say that community support has declined as well. Moreover, as noted on the below sidebar (What Happens When Budgets Are Cut?), some districts face technology budget cuts not by putting their plans on hold, but by repurposing other funds or even going out into the community to raise the funds they need. While this tack clearly is not an optimum long-term strategy, it can mitigate funding shortfalls in lean budget years. High-tech districts, which already are committed to technology and are likely to track their return on investments, are among the most likely to try these alternate funding avenues. These districts can, perhaps, make the best case to their communities for continued support of technology.

What Happens When Budgets are Cut?

Districts facing technology budget cuts have responded primarily by cutting back on equipment and supplies or postponing exploration of new hardware. They aren't likely to tap into reserves or engage in fundraising - with some key exceptions.

Eight in 10 school leaders whose districts have experienced declining technology budgets (80 percent) cut back on equipment and supplies. More than six in 10 (63 percent) say budget cuts have made them less likely to explore laptop programs - a marker, we believe, for disinvestment in innovative technologies under budget strains.

Nearly half (49 percent) of school leaders also report cutting staff in response to declining technology budgets. Seventy-three percent of school leaders in districts in the West, 67 percent in the poorest districts, 63 percent in large districts and 59 percent in urban districts report staff cuts because of technology budget decreases.

By contrast, only about three in 10 (29 percent) report that their districts tapped into reserves in response to technology budget cuts, while only 14 percent report engaging in new fundraising. Not surprisingly, school leaders in wealthy districts (26 percent) and high-tech districts are the most likely to engage in new fundraising in the face of budget cuts. However, nearly four in 10 (39 percent) of all districts have mitigated losses by repurposing other funds.

Visionary Leadership Sustains Technology Gains

Meanwhile, school leaders report that district technology leaders have by far the most influential voice in district technology decisions. Ninetythree percent of survey respondents report that district technology leaders have high levels of influence, compared to the superintendents (75 percent) and assistant superintendents (50 percent), the only other groups cited by as many as half of the respondents.

However, in high-tech districts and in districts where technology budgets are increasing, school leaders report that a wide variety of people are heavily involved in decision making as well. School leaders in high-tech districts are significantly more likely than low-tech districts to report that school boards (56 percent in high-tech districts compared to 45 percent in low-tech districts), classroom teachers (34 percent to 22 percent), the community (20 percent to 11 percent) and parents (20 percent to 8 percent) have high degrees of influence over technology decisions.

Further, school leaders in districts whose technology budgets have increased are significantly more likely than those in districts whose technology budgets have decreased to report high levels of influence on the part of superintendents (83 percent to 64 percent), assistant superintendents (57 percent in districts with increasing budgets compared to 40 percent in districts with decreasing budgets), school boards (60 percent to 36 percent), curriculum directors (54 percent to 42 percent) and assessment directors (28 percent to 18 percent).

These survey results strongly indicate that it takes school and community support, broad consensus and a shared vision to sustain funding for technology in schools. Yet more than a third of the school leaders surveyed from large districts (37 percent) report problems with district leadership viewing technology as an add-on rather than as essential to instruction. Nearly half of these school leaders from large districts (45 percent) also say a lack of technology understanding on the part of other district leaders they deal with poses a significant challenge.

In that light, it may not be surprising that school leaders surveyed widely identify leadership and vision (85 percent) as well as communication skills (51 percent) as key attributes for their profession. School leaders in high-tech districts (61 percent) and in districts whose technology budgets are increasing (58 percent) are especially likely to cite communications skills as paramount.

Indeed, school leaders view technical skills as far less important. Many more school leaders cite planning and budgeting skills (48 percent) and team building and staffing skills (39 percent) as key attributes than cite any form of technical proficiency. School leaders in large districts (48 percent) and poor districts (54 percent) are especially likely to see team-building and staffing skills as critical to the success of district technology leaders. Only about one in four (27 percent) identify education and training as key to success for district technology leaders. Only one in five (20 percent) cites systems management skills and only one in seven (14 percent) cites information management skills.

Benefits, Challenges Highlight Technology Needs

Most school leaders believe that technology provides their schools with a wide variety of benefits, especially on the administrative side. Indeed, school leaders see technology mainly as a tool to improve productivity and efficiency: 74 percent say technology provides timely data for decision making; 71 percent say it improves support staff efficiency; 71 percent say it increases administrators' productivity; 70 percent say it improves communications among parents, teachers and the community; and 61 percent say it increases teacher productivity.

School leaders do, however, also cite important benefits from technology that affect student learning. More than twothirds believe that technology motivates students (68 percent) and provides them with important life skills (67 percent). Smaller but majority percentages of school leaders believe technology levels the playing field for students in a variety of ways, including addressing the needs of disabled students (60 percent), helping educators individualize instruction (52 percent) and promoting academic equity (51 percent).

By contrast, school leaders in only four out of 10 districts (41 percent) believe technology helps raise student test scores. Leaders in key groups of schools do believe technology plays this focal role, including 50 percent of the poorest school districts, 50 percent in the South and 46 percent in districts where technology budgets are increasing.

Once again, regional differences surface with respect to perceived technology benefits. In general, school leaders in the South express stronger faith than their peers in other regions that technology is beneficial to their districts.

School leaders in nearly eight out of 10 districts (78 percent) also say they use data captured by technology to drive decision-making, including nearly nine out of 10 (89 percent) of large districts. Districts in the South (83 percent) are especially likely to use data-driven decision-making. Wealthy districts are somewhat less likely than poor districts to use data to make decisions -perhaps because they are under less pressure to improve test scores.

Half of school leaders (50 percent) cite lack of training as the most serious barrier to more effective data-driven decision-making. Lack of training is a particularly serious problem in the poorest school districts, according to 63 percent of school leaders in these districts, as well as in rural districts (55 percent) and low-tech districts (55 percent). More than half of school leaders in very poor districts (51 percent) also report that an absence of clear priorities has been a significant challenge. Thirty-nine percent of all school leaders also say a lack of understanding about what to do with the data is a key challenge.

More than a third of school leaders cite other barriers to data-driven decision-making, including incompatibility of computer systems (42 percent), lack of data collection priorities (36 percent) and/or lack of uniformity in data collections (35 percent). At least one in five school leaders also say outdated technology (31 percent), inaccurate or incomplete data (24 percent), timing issues (24 percent) and/or user interface problems (22 percent) prevent them from using data effectively.

Quick Guide to District Characteristics in this Survey Report

• Poorest Districts - Districts with 75 percent or more of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches
  
  
• Poor Districts - Districts with between 50 percent and 75 percent of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches
  
  
• Middle-class Districts - Districts with 25 percent to 49 percent of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches
  
  
• Wealthy Districts - Districts with fewer than 25 percent of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches
  
  
• High-tech Districts - Districts that describe themselves as tech leaders rather than followers and tend to report above average student-to-computer ratios, teacher technology skills and/or classrooms with wireless Internet access
  
  
• Low-tech Districts - Districts that describe themselves as tech followers rather than leaders and tend to report below average student-to-computer ratios, teacher technology skills and/or classrooms with wireless Internet access
  
  

The Key Challenge: People, Not Equipment

The key technology challenge schools face is integrating it into classroom teaching and learning. More than half of survey respondents (56 percent) identify integrating technology into the classroom or learning experience as their top technology challenge. The same percentage (56 percent) also cites teacher professional development as their top challenge, another way of looking at the main impediment to effective use of technology - people with inadequate training. Only 1 percent of all school leaders say technology integration is no problem at all, while only 2 percent say inadequate professional development creates no barriers.

Fewer than one in 10 school leaders (7 percent) consider their teachers' skills at integrating technology into the learning experience to be "very good" or better. Overall, school leaders give their teachers a failing grade (5.3 out of 10) on this measure of professional competence. Even in districts with seeming advantages, teachers' skills remain the Achilles heel. Only 16 percent of school leaders in high-tech districts - those with the most technology equipment and highest reported use of technology - give their teachers high marks in this area. Only 15 percent of school leaders in small districts and only 13 percent of school leaders in wealthy districts rate their teachers highly in integrating technology into classroom teaching and learning. The need for professional development cuts across districts nationwide.

Integrating technology into classroom teaching and learning is especially problematic for the poorest school districts; 64 percent of school leaders in these districts cite technology integration as their top challenge. Similarly, 61 percent of school leaders in low-tech districts cite technology integration as problematic.

Another frequently cited barrier to technology use in schools also amounts to a people problem - the lack of technical support, including hardware maintenance, updating and upgrading. This is a particularly acute problem for the nation's poorest and largest school districts; 66 percent of school leaders in the poorest districts and 56 percent of those in the largest districts point to lack of technical support as a key challenge.

Is Technology Available to Students?

Ninety-five percent of all classrooms nationwide now have high-speed Internet access, according to school leaders. Moreover, more than six in 10 (62 percent) report that every classroom in their district has broadband access to the Internet. Rural districts tie wealthy districts as the most thoroughly broadband-enabled demographics, with school leaders in these districts each reporting that 98 percent of their classrooms have broadband access. The schools least likely to have broadband access are those in large, urban and very poor districts - but even in these districts, school leaders report that as many as 93 percent of classrooms have broadband access.

Further, wireless Internet connections are an emerging trend in school technology access. More than one in five classrooms (21 percent) have wireless Internet connections, school leaders report, including more than a third (37 percent) in high-tech districts, more than a quarter (29 percent) in the Northeast, in small districts (27 percent) and wealthy districts (26 percent).

Despite this reported prevalence of computers and widespread, high-powered Internet access, however, more than half of school leaders (57 percent) say classrooms are the least likely points of Internet access for students in their schools. Instead, computers labs and media centers remain the major Internet access points for students. Nearly half of school leaders (47 percent) say students most often access the Internet in computer labs. Media centers are the second most common points of access, according to 49 percent of school leaders. Only about three in 10 of school leaders (29 percent) report that classrooms are the leading point of Internet access for students.

Surprisingly, school leaders in the poorest districts (42 percent) are the most likely to say classrooms are the most frequent point of Internet access, with relatively high proportions of school leaders in high-tech districts (37 percent) and districts in the South (34 percent) also reporting high degrees of classroom computer penetration. Districts in the West, large districts and urban districts have relatively poor student-to-computer ratios - and there are no significant differences in these ratios by district socioeconomic status.

These findings beg the question: Who is benefiting from the reported classroom computing power and speed? If most students have to go to computer labs and media centers to get online, Internet access does not seem to be an easy or everyday activity - underscoring the finding that schools have yet to fully integrate technology with classroom teaching and learning. The findings suggest that classroom technology is either widely underused or in need of maintenance, upgrading, expansion or replacement.