Chapter SixTaking Educational Technology Innovations to Scale

Written ByWritten By

Mary Kolesinski, EdDMary Kolesinski, EdDEvelyn Nelson-Weaver, EdDEvelyn Nelson-Weaver, EdD

Daryl Diamond, PhDDaryl Diamond, PhD

Introduction

The primary goal for digital solidarity within the educational arena is to identify and replicate innovative technology programs and models that have demonstrated the ability to motivate all students towards academic excellence and global competitiveness.

A part of the current challenge for the digital solidarity movement is to understand what is involved in taking pilot projects that are effective in one area and to scale them up so that they reach and positively affect more people 2

Scaling up is the ability for an innovation to be adopted and replicated in other venues such as schools

Defining Scalability

Scaling up refers to the expansion or replication of a program, practice or product.

Going to scale refers to the ability of an innovation to sustain itself over time and for those participating in the reform effort to ultimately assume its ownership. The result is to achieve reform in such a large number of schools and classrooms that the norms of the profession are altered, and the reformed practice becomes the new standard.

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Diamond (2007) identified a list of 39 attributes within five broad categories, along with seven contextual factors that are pertinent in bringing a technology innovation to scale.

Factors pertinent in bringing a technology innovation to scale

The five categories include:

(a)the design of the innovation, (b)time, (c)communication channels, (d)effectiveness and (e)leadership capabilities.

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Diffusion of Innovations theories explain the process by which an innovation is adopted by members of a certain community.

Surry and Ely’s (2001) diffusion model assumed that an innovation will pass through adoption, diffusion, implementation, and institutionalization before it can be widely accepted, and in effect, go to scale.

Scaling Up

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Scaling Up 

Researchers offer the following contextual factors to explain why educational interventions are unable to take hold. • The difficulty in changing the practice of

teachers and/or administrators who were embedded in a system of rules and regulations that did not support new practices

• Both the hierarchical mandates and the market forces that work in the private sector do not operate well on schools

• Characteristics of the intervention that affect implementation including comprehensiveness, ambitiousness, and elaboration

• Specific support required for implementation and sustainability also appear in the form of technical assistance, training, and resources.

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Going to Scale

Coburn’s (2003) analysis of scale confirmed the development of a growing body of research work addressing the theoretical challenges involved in creating a meaningful definition of scale that provides evidence for its multidimensional nature

According to Coburn, scaling up involved issues of spreading the reform to multiple teachers, schools, and districts while “sustaining change in a multilevel system characterized by multiple and shifting priorities” (2003, p. 3).

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The dimension of depth pertains to the nature of change in classroom practice, including indicators such as changes in teachers’ beliefs, norms of interaction, and underlying pedagogical principles.

An innovation has been adequately adopted at the classroom level when clear evidence exists of changes in the way instruction unfolds.

A second important component of depth involves classroom norms of social interaction. Coburn defined this as “teacher and student roles in the classroom, patterns of teacher and student talk, and the manner in which teachers and students treat one another” (2003, p. 5).

Going to Scale

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Spread involves the reform getting to greater numbers of classrooms and schools.

Spread should not be thought solely in terms of expanding the reform innovation outward to more schools and classrooms but should also pertain to the spread of “reform related norms and pedagogical principles within a classroom, school, and district” (Coburn, 2003, p. 7).

Going to Scale

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Going to Scale 

Sustainability seeks to determine whether or not, as well as how schools sustain reforms after the external partner or funding dissipates.

Dede, Honan, and Peter (2005) defined sustainability to mean “an effort can continue without special or external resources…that the effort can continue without the involvement of the researcher and developers who were involved in the initial classroom implementation” (p. 53).

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A Shift in Reform Ownership occurs when there is a move from external reform controlled by a reformer, to internal control with the knowledge and authority held by schools, teachers, and administrators who are capable of sustaining, spreading, and deepening the reform principles themselves. Coburn (2003) predicted that “shift in reform ownership may be a central element in sustaining and spreading reform in the face of shifting priorities, changes in funding, and challenges to policy coherence” (p. 8).

Going to Scale

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Alignment of Theoretical Frameworks on Scale

 

Coburn

RogersKNOWLEDGE----PERSUASION------DECISION------IMPLEMENTATION-----CONFIRMATION GAP

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Law was first passed during the Johnson administration as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)

Starting in 2002-03, states were required to furnish annual report cards showing information about student achievement.

Rebranded No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) after its overhaul in 2001 by President George W. Bush

Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education  

NCLB created a competitive-grant program, Reading First, designed to set up “scientific, research-based” reading programs for children in grades K -3 .

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By the 2005-06 school year states were required to begin testing students in grades 3-8 annually in reading and mathematics.

Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education  

By 2007-08 states had to test students in science at least once in elementary, middle, and high school.

Through the use of executive powers, the Obama administration made sweeping changes to the law in March 2010, offering states some relief from its toughest parts.

By the end of 2005-06, public school teachers had to be deemed “highly qualified” in each core content subject taught.

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As the proficiency date rapidly approaches, the decade old law has been derided for its “obsessive focus on test results, which has led to some notorious cheating scandals” (N.Y. Times, 2012, July, para.3). Also found unjust was the law’s system of rating schools which labeled so many of them as failing that it “rendered the judgment meaningless” (N.Y. Times, 2012, July, para. 3). Evaluation of teachers and schools are still attached to student achievement and standardized tests, which is a departure from the original law.

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Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education  

Ladner and Lips (2009) suggested that NCLB, like previous federal reform interventions failed to yield meaningful improvements in students’ learning.

Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education

The report found that State's scores varied wildly. Reasons for this could be that some states give harder tests, while other states have high numbers of immigrant and low-income children. These numbers provided evidence that the NCLB law is “‘too crude a measure’ to accurately depict what is happening in schools” (Associated Press, 2011).

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A report from The Center on Education Policy shows more than 43,000 schools — or 48% — did not make "adequate yearly progress" in 2011 (Associated Press, 2011).

Johnson’s (2012) research posited that the one undisputed success of No Child Left Behind was its focus on student achievement.

Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education

Neill (2010) concluded that Congress’ inability to admit to the ineffectiveness of NCLB stems from a “de facto alliance among corporate groups… a growing list of high-tech and hedge-fund billionaires, a few large foundations (Gates, Broad and Walton among them), Duncan's Education Department, and major national media” who have invested millions of dollars to promote their educational ideas.

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The result is that the very groups of students for whom the law was designed to protect and support (poor, of color, speak English as a second language, the disabled) are not getting a good enough education and are victims of these policies.

Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (2004) outlined the various types of technology access issues inherent in the implementation of NCLB as federal educational policy.

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• Issues dealing with students’ abilities to get to use a wired computer somewhere, at some time

• Quality of access issues referring to the gap between high speed access and dial-up access with its much slower connectivity

• Issues of technological literacy and the degree to which students know what they are doing while being online, the types of software applications they know how to use while online, and their ability to learn and utilize new software applications

Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education

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The NCLB Act of 2001, while not explicitly designed to address the digital divide, included “substantial resources that could be used to improve children’s access to technology (p. 7).

The NCLB Act “created and absorbed a range of programs with potential relevance to the digital divide” (p. 8). The Enhancing Education through Technology (EETT) block grant program addressed the digital divide most directly. Its primary goal was to “improve student academic achievement through the use of technology in school” (p. 8).

Many believed that too big an involvement could “stifle innovation in the telecommunications sector” (Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004, p. 6).

Leave No Child Behind The Federal Government’s Role in Education

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Additionally, the country saw (a)An economy that moved from surplus to deficit, (b)Philanthropic and other types of equipment donations dried up,(c)foundation endowments disappeared and with it the reduction of support from the non-profit sector regarding advocacy and programs, and (d)the laying off of workers while sending technology jobs overseas.

The first decade of the new millennium saw the end of the technology boom and an economic downturn which had disastrous effects on many digital divide programs being implemented in collaboration between the government, and the telecommunication and private sectors.

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Common Core State Standards and Digital Solidarity

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Common Core State Standards and Digital Solidarity

The two standards documents for Mathematics and English Language Arts address technology skills very differently (Skills for 21st Century, 2010).

The English Language Arts (ELA) Standards document has more to say regarding technology and in several different sections.

Research and media skills are blended into the Standards as a whole rather than treated in a separate section.

The math Standards suggest when a student is proficient in mathematics they should be able to identify relevant external mathematical resources such as digital content on a website, and use that information to solve problems.

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Common Core State Standards and Digital Solidarity

Questions?Questions?More More

Information?Information?

www.digitalsolidarity.cowww.digitalsolidarity.comm

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ReferencesReferences

Associated Press (2011). Report: Half of U. S. schools fail federal standards. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-15/schools-federal-standards/5149126/1

Bodilly, S., Glennan, T. K., Galegher, J. R., & Kerr, K. A. (2004). Expanding the reach of education reforms: Perspectives from leaders in the scale-up of educational interventions. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Retrieved from http://www.sreb.org/programs/hstw/publications/special/MG248ch12.pdf.

Coburn, C. E. (2003). Rethinking scale: Moving beyond numbers to deep and lasting change. Educational Researcher, 32(6), 3-12.

Dede, C., Honan, J., & Peters, C. (2005). Scaling up success: Lessons from technology based educational improvement. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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ReferencesReferences

Diamond, D. (2007). Attributes that enable a virtual high school to go to scale. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A, 68(05), (UMI No. 3264771).

Ladner,M. & Lips, D. (2009). How “No Child Left Behind” threatens Florida’s successful education reforms. Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/01/how-no-child-left-behind-threatens-floridas-successful-education-reforms

Neill, M. (2010). Why won’t Congress admit NCLB failed [The Answer Sheet]? Retrieved from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/why-wont-congress-admit-nclb-f.html

N. Y. Times, (2012, July). No Child Left Behind Act [Times Topics]. Retrieved from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/no_child_left_behind_act/index.html

Schmidt, W. H. & Burroughs, N. A. (2012). How the Common Core boosts quality and equality. Educational Leadership, 70(4), 54 – 58.

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ReferencesReferences

Surry, D. W. & Ely, D. P. (2001). Adoption, diffusion, implementation, and institutionalization of educational innovations. In R. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends & Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (pp. 183-193). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Retrieved from http://www.southalabama.edu/coe/bset/surry/papers/adoption/chap.htm.

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