Assessment and Broadband Access – Avenues to Equity?

Thanks to everyone for visiting this online discussion. We’re especially grateful for the tweets, comments, cross posts, alternate lists, and additional education priorities you’ve shared. Your contributions are important and timely!

How timely? Here are just a few of the key issues we’re tracking:

• In the US, we’re expecting national plans for education technology and broadband to launch soon; President Obama’s budget is also due soon, and we’ve urged him to allocate $500m for the EETT program in FY11, directing funds to support innovation, relevance, and digital equity in our schools.

• In the UK, the government has just announced new investments in a broadband and laptops program for 250k+ poor families. We’re very eager to hear about these exciting policy developments from ISTE’s new affiliate in the United Kingdom.

Now, back to our countdown. Our next two educational priorities focus on #8, assessment, and #7 broadband access.

Like many of you we’re looking for better, richer, and more diverse assessment measures. Assessments that provide early feedback in the learning process, not just high-stakes bubble tests in a few content areas that don’t really evaluate the skills students will need. We can do better than this, and we must.

We call for a strong national commitment to broadband access. Like the UK government, we believe such access is a matter of economic justice as well as educational equity. We must provide high-speed bandwidth to our nation’s classrooms and focus on the school-to-home connection so that all students can succeed and their families can better participate in the increasingly digital economy.

What’s your take? What do you think should happen with assessment measures and broadband access? Are they central to digital equity?

See also:

The full text of ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10 is here, the press release is here, and a list of web conversations as of January 15 is here.

ISTE’s UK affiliate, the National Association of Advisors for Computers in Education

Similar Posts:

• Supporting Expertise and Integration of Tech. Skills into Teacher Evaluation
• Do ISTE’s “Top Ten in ‘10” Ed Tech Priorities Reflect Your Issues?
• ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10: Teacher Prep. & Access to Technology Named Top Priorities
• ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10: Final Priorities for 2010
• Tell us How Your School will Spend ARRA Dollars