The bad news is that the Bush Administration has proposed zeroing ($0) the Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) fund for next year. It isn’t the first time that our president has turned his back on modernizing schools in the United States, and we will hope, pray, and lobby Congress to reinstate a few hundred million dollars of the pathetically low original funding of the program.
This, when, in Saturday’s Weekly Radio Address, the president urged Congress to make his budget cuts permanent, while only weeks ago he signs a bill pushing the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion. That’s more than $30,000 for every U.S. Citizen, and one in five of them haven’t reached the age of 15 yet.
OK, enough sport with mr. president. The good news is that 37 state governors reported in their state of the state addresses…
…that their state budgets were projected to be in balance or with a surplus, according to “The Governors Speak: 2006,” a report from the National Governors Association (NGA) summarizing the 2006 state-of-the-state addresses from the governors of 44 states and Puerto Rico. (Ascione)
If you haven’t already, read the April 11 story in eSchoolNews, “State funding to the rescue?“. It will lift to your spirits, especially if you live in Texas, Massachusetts, Florida, Oklahoma, or several other states mentioned in the article for their intentions to invest in education technology.
So if money is beginning to grow again, what’s the case for educational technology. We know that it helps children learn. But lots of things help children learn, and its a hard sell, because it’s a complicated sell. I just don’t see legislators being interested in education strategy. My observations are that elected officials are interested in what’s in it for them and for their consituents. A few more computers, even if they are being carried into classrooms under the arms of every student, just doesn’t get there.
We need to sell a much larger vision of 21st century classrooms where students are learning twenty-first century skills and twenty-first century content, using twenty-first century tools. We need a simple, yet comprehensive picture of teaching, learning, and classrooms that inspires the imaginations of politicians and voters.
It’s a new story that leads to new goals of future citizens, future leaders, future prosperity — enthusiasm about a future so potent with possibilities that we just can’t wait.
OK, I’m getting kind’a carried away here. Tomorrow, I’ll post a slightly more practical examination of “The New Story”.
Ascione, Laura. “State Funding to the Rescue?.” eSchool News Online 11 Apr 2006. 17 Apr 2006 <http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryRSS.cfm?ArticleID=6258>.
It’s not just the cuts. It is also all the “strings” attached. With EETT you must spend 25% of it on professional development. Professinal develmpment is wonderful, but many of “our” school budgets require money to be spent on professional development for teachers. Sometimes you just need stuff. I belong to a small school district. EETT has been worth about $20,000.00 to my district. They may not sound like much, but my state initial technology allotment is less than that. (I get more state money through out the year, but it trickles in.)
We have spent our EETT on teacher stipends. (More of a token if you would see the amount) We have two teachers in each school that get these stipends for providing after school professional development , maintain their school’s website, and to help other teachers with technology problems as much as they can. Most of the time during their planning. Needless to say, we get a lot for our EETT dollars and spend way more than the 25% on professional development.
I have, and continue to, write our representatives and the President about EETT. I encourage others to do so. It really does help!
PS. I didn’t want to dilute the EETT thing with the “strings” attached bit, but folks need to know that sometimes when they see administrators spend money on things that don’t seem to be that important, it is because they are required to do so, or that is the only thing they are allowed to spend money on. It is fun to have money to teach teachers how to use a smartboard, when we don’t have the money to buy them one.
David,
First, since this is my first comment though I have been a “lurker/reader” for a while, you are doing a great job getting the word out about ed tech ideas and practices that matter. I will be at the Arizona WOW conference (AzTEA) and look forward to hearing you present there – I will also be presenting at the conference on Using Moodle in the Classroom while I’m there.
With respect to your blog post about E2T2 and the president. Here are some thoughts:
First, is that E2T2 with even 500 million dollars of funding is such an insignificant part of a 2 trillion dollar budget that I doubt very much the President gives it a second thought. In addition, as of 1999 (the latest year for which I could find figures) federal funding of public education only represented 7% of total expenditures. (source for this is: http://www.cbpp.org/11-7-02sfp2.htm)
I follow many EdTech bloggers and, almost without exception, they have blogged and blamed the President for cutting E2T2 funding, yet he is also slammed for the rising national debt (sometimes in the same article). Given the myriad of political priorities the President and Congress have to manage at a national level it seems like blaming him for cutting E2T2 funding is like criticizing a CEO for failing to warm up the coffee pot in the morning when he gets to work. It is a very small thing (even if very important to us) when compared with National Defense, re-election, and Social Security. The meat of the issue (and likelihood of success) I have to believe is at lower levels of government. It would seem too that the more we insulate school districts from dependency on national education funding the less likely they will be yanked around when the political “winds” of change start blowing.
My question is why does E2T2 seem so important when it seems we should focus (as you referenced in the eWeek article) on state (or local) funding as sources of EdTech money – both because there are many more education dollars being spent at that level and because they are closer to home?
Brett,
You make some very good points here, and I agree, and have said, that the $500 million that was the height of E2T2, was so pethetically low, that it’s hardly worth worrying over. That said, in my travels, I have run across school districts where that was the only money they were getting for modernizing their classrooms, and zeroing out E2T2 hit them very hard.
And here is the problem Although it does make sense to rely more on state and local funding, the challenge to retool our classrooms for the 21st century is a national problem, and it requires national leadership. Chopping E2T2, or allowing by proxy, the illimination of E2T2 indicates a complete and shameful lack of vision for investing in this country’s future. Now I could be wrong. I’m sure I’m not as smart as president bush and the men and women that he surrounds himself with. I’ve been proven wrong before. So has president Bush. I believe that he is wrong here for not standing on the mountains and saying that we must retool our schools, and we must be willing to pay for that investment.
I wish us better wisdom next time! — to be fair, I don’t hear anyone from the Democratic side issuing any real vision about education either — not even my neighbor, John Edwards.
I’m looking forward to the Arizona conference and will seek you out to continue this conversation. Thanks for writing!
David said, “that said, in my travels, I have run across school districts where that was the only money they were getting for modernizing their classrooms, and zeroing out E2T2 hit them very hard.
You hit the nail on the head there. If tech is so important to schools, why are federal funds the only source of funding? You’re quick to blame the president, but I don’t see you naming individual Governors by name for cutting funding over the last six years. Nor are you naming superintendents by name. My concern is that by placing the blame solely on the Federal government, you’re missing the more disturbing trends.
If you look at any of the education market data, you’ll see that the highest level of local district spending on tech was reached in 1998 and has gone down every year since. Why? Most likely because schools were supplanting their local expenditures with the federal dollars.
But let’s go along with your arguement and say that this is solely a Federal responsibility. Title I has increased by 45% since 2001 – from $8.8 billion to $12.7 billion. This is argueably the most flexible Federal source of funding. Schools can spend it on teacher salaries, books, computers, Internet access, training, podcasts, blogs – anything they want. Why aren’t schools using these funds for tech?
I am loving this conversation. I can rest pretty easily on either side of the argument. Larry, with his admirable command of the data, has pointed to true problems. There are certainly school districts that are taking advantage of Title I and convincing their communities to pay for contemporary information technologies and the staff development to make their teachers masters of those technology — while there are many other states and districts who have virtually ignored the changes that have occurred in the work place and in the evolving nature of information, and keep doing the same things, the same way, at the risk of their student’s futures and potential creative talent of all those minds who are being prepared for the 1950s.
And this brings me back to yesterday’s position, that this is a national problem. I am not comfortable with a continent sized nation with pockets of creative prosperity, and swatches of decline and desperation, because their people are virtually unable to participate in the global, networked, and digital economy. Certainly, it is every leader’s responsibility to face forward, establish a bold vision for a better and brighter future, and then sell that vision. But the easiest way to set that tone is at the top.
NCLB is a perfect example. The president and his minions have dramatically changed education in the past half-dozen years, and much of it for good. There are many children who are learning to read and perform math today who were not before. But we should have been investing in moving all children forward, rather than being satisfied with leaving no child behind. It was an opportunity with energy and impact, an opportunity for real vision, and it got wasted.
Again, I hope for more wisdom among the American people next time.