Charter School Technology Surveys

Information Renaissance
600 Grant Street, Suite 2980
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

(December 28, 1999)







SUMMARY

Information Renaissance has surveyed technology capabilities and needs at the four Charter Schools currently operating in Pittsburgh, PA. Although the schools differ in grade levels, student population and academic focus, they have a number of common needs with respect to technology. We summarize these needs and propose a mechanism for addressing them.

I. INTRODUCTION

In October, 1999 a team of interviewers from Information Renaissance visited the four Charter Schools currently operating in Pittsburgh to survey these schools’ technology capabilities and needs. The surveyed schools are as follows:

The school abbreviations listed above will be used in the tables which follow.

These four schools are all newly-formed charter schools. All are energetically engaged in the development of innovative programs which seek to serve diverse inner city populations including significant numbers of at-risk students. The experimental programs which are being carried out at these sites are thus of immediate relevance to the larger population of at-risk students in the Pittsburgh Public Schools and, by extension, to students across the state.

This report addresses several issues relating to the state of technology use at these schools:

• At what level is technology presently used in the Pittsburgh Charter Schools?
• What technology needs have been identified by the personnel in these schools?
• What steps should be followed to address these needs?

These issues will be discussed in the following sections.

To get an idea of some of the common features of the surveyed schools--and some of their differences--consider the following details:

One can readily draw the following conclusions:

• The schools are all of a similar small size.

• They are mostly new facilities which require at present a great deal of attention to infrastructure issues.

• They vary widely in the age levels of the students served.

• They differ dramatically in their educational focus.

These features can create problems for the support of technology. The small size of these schools makes it impractical for any one school to develop any high degree of technological specialization among its staff. The fact that we are dealing with a small number of schools makes it difficult to provide shared resources with any significant economy of scale. Furthermore, given the differences in age levels and educational approaches, there are few common features in terms of curricular applications. This means that it will be impractical for these schools to share curriculum-specific software. Nonetheless, as we shall argue, there are common tools which can be used in support of any curricular materials and for the support of administrative functions which are indeed common to all of these schools. And there are common technological facilities which the Charter Schools might share. We will describe such options in the final section of this report.

II. TECHNOLOGY USE IN THE PITTSBURGH CHARTER SCHOOLS

We have characterized the technology environment in the Pittsburgh Charter Schools in terms of an idealized setup which can be summarized as follows:

• Administrative Background. Technology plan developed as a collaborative effort with input from students, teachers, administrators, Board members and parents. E-Rate application filed to provide discounted telecommunications services. Administrators and Board members are comfortable with networking technology and use it to help administer school activities. Board members are familiar with the costs and benefits of technology and support realistic and sound educational applications.

• Computer Labs. Facility adequate to handle a typical class with one computer per student. Server to provide shared resources. High-speed Internet access adequate to support simultaneous network usage throughout the school.

• Classroom Computers. Networked computers in sufficient quantity to provide one device for every four students.

• Take-home Computers. Devices for every teacher and loaner machines for students as needed for curricular applications.

• File Service. Personalized storage space for every student and teacher. These files should be accessible from remote locations over the Internet.

• E-Mail. Individual e-mail accounts for every student and teacher. Mail should be readable from remote locations over the Internet.

• Web Site. School Web site to provide information to parents and the general public. Individual Web pages for teachers and for students, as needed in the curriculum. Domain name for school to identify the school and its programs.

• Software. Standard suite of productivity software, including word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation software--or equivalent as appropriate for grade level. Specialized curricular software, as needed.

The following table shows how the four Charter Schools fit into this general framework. A discussion of the material in the table and a comparison with the environment typical of the Pittsburgh Public Schools is given on the pages below.

We can summarize the findings in the previous table, relative to the ideal environment described previously and relative to what one finds in typical public schools in the Pittsburgh area. The following comments provide these comparisons.

• Administrative Background. None of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools has a thoroughly developed technology plan. This has to do with both the newness of the schools in question and the feeling of administrators that for schools of this size there is no need for the structure of a formal technology planning process. Board members at the Charter Schools do not make extensive use of networking technology. The Pittsburgh Public Schools, by contrast, have gone through an exhaustive planning process, which took several years to complete and led to Board approval of the funds necessary to implement this plan. Of course this was a master plan for a district with over 80 schools, and there are obviously many economies of scale in the development of a centralized plan. Board members have computers and e-mail access, and some of them use this resource extensively.
• Computer Labs. All of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools have one or more computer labs, with network access and a server. The bandwidth of the shared access tends to be low if the schools attempt any advanced network services, and some of the labs are too small to accommodate whole classes. The Pittsburgh Public Schools has focused upon a laboratory environment, with two large labs at each school in the district.
• Classroom Computers. Only one of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools approaches the optimal classroom configuration. The others have too few devices for teachers to be able to rely upon them for regular and extensive use by students. Not all of the schools have a local area network to connect these devices. This situation is comparable to that in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, where some schools are networked, and some schools have multiple devices in each classroom.
• Take-home Computers. Teachers at all of the charter schools have access to computers in their homes. None of these schools has any extensive program to provide loaner computers for students, although one school is doing some experimentation in this area. The Pittsburgh Public Schools provide devices for every teacher and have experimented with loaner machines for students.
• File Service. Only one of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools has implemented an environment with individualized file storage space. These files are not currently accessible from outside the school. The situation at this one school is comparable to that found in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
• E-Mail. Only one of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools has fully implemented e-mail for teachers and staff. None of the Charter Schools is providing e-mail for students. This situation parallels that in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, which provide e-mail for teachers and staff but not for students.
• Web Site. None of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools currently maintains a Web site to provide information on the school to parents and the general public. None of them provides the facility to publish student or staff Web pages. In contrast, the Pittsburgh Public Schools have a school district Web site, Web sites for individual schools and Web pages for individual students, teachers and staff members.
• Software. All of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools have some level of deployment of productivity software. This parallels the situation in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, which, however, has approached this question somewhat more systematically than any of the Charter Schools. Several of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools have specialized curricular software. Here cost has been a major deterrent in the purchase of more extensive collections of such software, as has been a lack of knowledge of what software is available and what titles are of the best quality and greatest utility. A similar situation exists in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

III. TECHNOLOGY NEEDS IN THE PITTSBURGH CHARTER SCHOOLS

A portion of our site surveys was devoted to perceived needs at each of the Pittsburgh Charter Schools. The following table summarizes what personnel at each site listed:

IV. SUMMARY

We can summarize our survey results on technology use and technology needs with the following general statements:

1. Neither the Pittsburgh Charter Schools nor the Pittsburgh Public Schools have succeeded in establishing an optimal technology environment. Great progress has been made by the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and the best of the Charter Schools has an environment comparable to that of the best of the public schools, but support issues remain to be addressed. The other Charter Schools must be viewed as works in progress with regard to technology implementation: their hardware facilities are not yet adequate; there is little integration of technology into the curriculum; teacher training has been spotty; and administrative support is fragmentary.

2. Although the Charter Schools receive their funding through the Pittsburgh Public Schools, they do not receive the sort of technology support that schools within the system do. This places the Charter Schools at a great handicap. Among the services routinely supplied to the public schools but unavailable to the current charter schools are the following:

   • Internet connectivity.
   • Equipment selection, purchase, installation and maintenance.
   • Staff e-mail.
   • Student file service.
   • Teacher training.
   • Technology planning.

   In the absence of any central provision of these services, the Pittsburgh Charter Schools must provide these services on their own. As we have seen, their response to this challenge has understandably been a mixed one.

3. The provision of a standard baseline system and a minimal level of shared technical support would greatly simplify the task of technology implementation at each of the charter schools. Among the common features that one can identify are the following:

• Local area network.
• High-speed Internet connectivity.
• School server with Web, e-mail and file services.
• Remote monitoring of the school LAN and attached devices.
• Training in the use of productivity software.
• Procedures to maintain user devices.
• Maintenance of the school server.

4. All of the Charter School sites would benefit from some mechanism for the review of available educational software.

5. There is a need for computers in the homes of students attending these Charter Schools.

6. Administrative software and procedures at the Charter Schools would benefit from some element of uniformity.

7. None of the Charter School sites are presently prepared for the next wave of network technology--a development which will lead to desktop video conferencing and will require external connectivity measured in tens of megabits per second rather than the present connectivity of tens of kilobits per second. The Pittsburgh Public Schools, by contrast, have made plans in this direction in conjunction with the City of Pittsburgh’s negotiation for renewal of the local cable television franchise. Charter schools have not been included in these discussions.

V. RECOMMENDATIONS

Based upon the findings in the previous sections, Information Renaissance suggests that the a technical support program be developed for the Charter Schools in Pittsburgh, extendable to other Charter Schools in Allegheny County. The recommended program should include the following elements:

• Software Evaluation. A common mechanism should be established to purchase or borrow demonstration copies of educational software of interest to the Charter Schools, to review the suitability of this software for classroom use and to publicize these reviews to Charter School teachers and administrators. This software test facility could make copies of the software available to Charter School personnel on a trial basis in return for further reviews that would be placed online for others to read.

• Network Connections and Support. As the Pittsburgh Charter Schools increase their use of network resources, all will find it necessary to seek Internet connections of higher bandwidth than they presently are using. A shared facility could provide such connections economically and could provide shared support for maintenance of local area networks within each school. This support could go down to the level of individual user devices, complementing the warranty support usually available for such devices through the vendors from whom they were purchased. The support could be provided through a combination of off-site monitoring, online information and on-site visits to repair specific problems or configure new hardware or software.

• Standard Server and Workstation Configurations and Setup. The computing environment in all of the Pittsburgh Charter School sites is very similar, but it is locally maintained in every case, typically with some sacrifice in functionality and flexibility. We propose the establishment of a common server and workstation configuration that will be suitable for all of these sites and to deploy mechanisms which would enable the Charter Schools to maintain these configurations automatically. This step would eliminate most of the need for local reconfigurations of machines, increasing functionality and reducing the burden on local staff time for machine maintenance and support.

• After-School Use of Computing and Network Facilities. Following a model currently used at sites in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, we propose to make school computing facilities available for use by parents and students after school hours. This will provide network resources to all families with children in these Charter Schools. Parents will better understand how their children are using technology in their school, and they will be able to use the technology to maintain contact with teachers and administrators in the school and to follow the course of their children's work.

• Home Use of Computers and Network Access. We propose the establishment of a program to loan computers to students in the Charter Schools, which can be used in these students' homes as a mechanism to extend the time available to students to work on school activities and to provide network access for parents to follow their children's progress at school and communicate on a regular basis with school teachers and administrators. The initial program could involve one or two classes at each Charter School, with a structure that will permit eventual extension to reach all students in these schools.

• Technology in the Curriculum. We propose that each of the Charter Schools develop mechanisms to weave technology into the curriculum. These projects would take different forms in different schools, depending upon the grade levels of the students and the educational philosophies of the administrators, as noted previously. Thus, in a school with a constructivist approach to learning, the project might involve the attachment of sensors to classroom computers so as to make use of the networked environment to support experimentation in school science classes. In a school with a more structured environment, the project might involve assistance in the testing, evaluation and selection of integrated instructional software and materials. In either case, the project should involve teachers in the selection and implementation of the chosen technologies.