Think Papers - Digital Infrastructure Report

Technology Forcing Transition:
The Future of Education in Chicago
Clarisse Croteau-Chonka, Ph.D.
Chicago Consortium for Higher Education

Overview
Any assessment of the future of the Chicago region must include a careful examination of the quality of its educational systems and their relationship to the development of the technological resources of the area. Strong educational resources provide for informed citizens and quality workers. The development of a skilled workforce essential to the continuing technological growth of a community is dependent, in large part, on the depth of educational options for students. (1) The necessity of providing students with educational background that offers them a strong basis for lifelong learning and an ability to continually face the new learning challenges posed by life in a rapidly changing society is the central issue facing the educational systems of Chicago. (2)
In turn, technology offers the possibility of enhancing the educational resources of this region. Technology, and in particular, computer enhanced learning and the Internet as a learning venue, can expand the learning options available to the local school. Where once the elementary and secondary schools of this area were dependent upon local resources to provide and enhance education, today schools may connect to a world of information. Where once a student was taught by a single teacher, now the option exists of providing students in a single classroom with exposure to a variety of different teachers and of learning exercises. Where once a student with special needs frequently faced the necessity of traveling some distance to find a school, now it is possible to customize educational programs for such students while still keeping them in schools close to their homes.
Technology is forcing education to undergo a profound transition. Computers, the Internet, interactive video and other technologies are not just the latest fads in teaching tools, but rather are shaping the very process of education. Technology is changing the everyday life in which education takes place and to which it responds. Education is also required to assimilate these new information tools. Teachers and students alike are facing the expectation that because more information is available to them, they will assimilate new ideas rapidly and continuously. Of still more importance is that fact that technology is shaping quality employment which is a desired outcome of education. The educational process as a result needs to balance exposing students to the background and history of ideas with giving them the opportunity to master the skills and processes of a technological society. (3)
A Status Report on Education in Chicago
The Chicago area is in a unique position as a community of contrasts when it comes to education. It is home to research universities recognized throughout the world for their quality and has elementary and secondary schools identified as among the least functional in the country. (4) The school reform process undertaken by the Chicago Public Schools has been hailed as a model of local input in education (5), yet many schools in the metropolitan area are still considered marginally effective. (As an example, Chicago Public Schools statistics show that only 30.3% of students test above the national norms in reading and mathematics. (6) ) Some schools in this region are noted for the depth and breadth of their educational programs while others are singled out for a failure to retain students. (7) Private and public elementary and secondary schools here are noted for their innovative educational practices and for achieving measurable results with little funding, still the cost of public education continues to rise, resulting in local and state funding issues. (8)
Disparities in educational conditions are most notable for students in the Chicago public schools. The study Chicago's Public School Children and Their Environment indicates that a greater percentage of all Chicago public school students live in poverty than students in New York or Los Angeles. Over 1/3 of those students live in households headed by an unemployed individual. (9) Since household technology use is generally correlated with income, these young people are entirely dependent upon their schools for their exposure to technology.
Schools throughout the area vary widely, as well, in their local access to technology. In partnership with business and industry, some schools have been able to develop model programs using computers for teaching. (10) At the same time, nearby schools may not even have sufficient electrical wiring to support the use of video or computer technology. (11) From one part of the Chicago region to another the differences in school funding for technology vary widely. Naperville has just built a state-of-the-art technology high school, yet Harvey is facing a shortage of even the most basic educational technology. Chicago Public Schools are moving toward having a Wide Area Network linking all of their schools to a central "information backbone", while the Archdiocese Catholic Schools expend much less on information technology.
Looking at educational outcomes also results in a profile of contrasts in metropolitan Chicago. A significant part of the population has not graduated from high school or obtained a GED and fully 18% of Chicago residents are unable to read. (12) By contrast, the state of Illinois ranks fourth in the country in granting Ph.D.'s. (13) The vast majority of those degrees are awarded by Chicago area institutions. This contrast between the educationally advanced and the educationally marginalized has grown over the last ten years. (14)
One other educational issue parallels the "school gap" in the Chicago area. This is the disparity between the technically affluent and those whose contact with technology is minimal. For example, according to recent survey data 27% of the households in Chicago own a computer. That figure is somewhat deceptive as it represents the fact that some neighborhoods will have few, if any, homes with personal computers and others will have access to abundant computer and technology resources. Perhaps a more telling statistic from the same survey is that 18% of all households in the survey have fallen behind in their utility payments within the last year. (15) If a family cannot pay its basic utility bills, how will it support the energy needs of technology?
There is, obviously, a link between the income level in an area and the amount of interaction the population will have with technology. That is not, however, the only factor shaping the "technology gap". The region has a substantial African American and Hispanic population. Neither group has developed a history of working with computers or information technology. African American and Hispanic people have a lower percentage of computer use and ownership than would be expected based on their economic status. According to figures developed by Ameritech only 6% of the African American population use household computers. (16) The culture of technology has not previously appealed as strongly to these communities. (17)
Education in the Chicago area exists in an environment of contrasts. Technology , well implemented, may reduce those disparities. Without thoughtful implementation, however, technology will only make the differences between those who have and those who have not all the more striking.
New Educational Initiatives Resulting from Technology
Technology is fostering a number of new initiatives in local education.
Local teaching is being supplemented by expert input. Through the use of computers the local teacher has access to additional expert information to share with students. Unlike the experience of using books as "experts", this reliance on technology frequently allows students the option of interacting with the teacher, scientist, explorer or artist at the remote site. The Teachers' Academy for Mathematics and Science is providing students interested in the voyage of the Amistad with the opportunity to follow along with the recreation of that historic voyage. (18)
Chicago, like other parts of the nation, faces a shortage of qualified and certified science teachers. Through the Internet and interactive video, museum and laboratory scientists are meeting with school children. Chicago area students interact regularly with experts from such local institutions as the Chicago Academy of Science, the Adler Planetarium and Fermi lab. (19) They can, as well, communicate with scholars at MIT or the Jet Propulsion Lab or a thousand other science centers throughout the world.
Different styles of teaching and learning can be used in a single class. 80% of the information we gather as people comes through sight. (20) Traditional classroom teaching relies heavily on hearing what is said. Computer and video technologies allow us to see as well as hear about a variety of topics. As an example, The Chicago Historical Society has a web site on the Great Chicago Fire that enables students to see its resources on the fire without having to leave their classroom. (21)
Scarce resources are being shared. Technology allows multiple schools to share the same instructor. Where once a shared teacher spent much of the workweek moving from school to school, now computer and video systems allow an instructor to teach to students at multiple sites at the same time. In the Chicago region students at different campuses of National Lewis University share a single class with an instructor teaching in an interactive video environment.
Specialized educational needs are met more easily. Technology expands the ability to provide services to all segments of the educational community. Remedial and gifted program offerings can be enhanced without further taxing the local educational system. (22) Computer programs can repeat as often as a student needs in order to learn or can move ahead as fast as a student wishes. Special cultural offerings can be brought to a large group of schools from a single originating site. (23) Educational resources are brought to children who cannot attend school on a regular basis.
The potential to provide field trips, process modeling, and print resources to local students has also expanded. Nationally known companies from Crayola to Chrysler have educational links on the World Wide Web that enable students to "visit" their companies. (24) Manufacturing, research, and engineering processes can be accessed by students over the Internet so that students can have direct experience with processes that are too expensive or too dangerous to replicate in local schools. (25)
Individualized education is a reality. The ability to create individualized learning programs for all students so that their personal strengths are enhanced is vastly expanded in a technology rich environment. Without the direct intervention of the classroom teacher, a student's work can be paced so that the basic educational skills are developed in a way that will allow for the greatest student retention.
The world is a classroom. Education has moved from its historic place in the school, college or university to a world classroom. Degree programs are no longer limited to students who can move to a university campus. Local schools like the Illinois Institute of Technology deliver educational programs to students throughout the world. In turn, Chicago area students are enrolled in programs in other states or countries. Elementary students often share learning experiences with student groups in other states or countries.
Much of local education retains its roots in quality classroom teaching, but it is increasingly being impacted by the quality and variety of educational opportunities provided through technology. All of the promise of technology comes with its own challenges that this metropolitan region must face.
Educational Challenges from Technology
As the Chicago area becomes an even more influential area in terms of national and international technological development, we face some particular educational challenges: Literacy comes first. Even with the advances in technology, it is almost impossible to use computer-based technology without being able to read. A local initiative to expand the literacy of the area citizens would provide a sound foundation for expanding the options for technological growth in Chicago.
The disparity between the "techno elite" and the "techno poor" must be narrowed. All citizens of the Chicago area must have access to information technology. Providing computers and networks to the schools as a first priority must be supplemented with providing information resources to underserved areas through their community centers, libraries and churches. All people must have secure and available places to use technical equipment they cannot afford or maintain themselves. In that way, all members of the community have the opportunity to use public technology education resources.
Schools need support in deciding how to allocate economic and personnel resources. Educators, parents, the community and business all need to consider how educational allocations are best spent in a time of technological transition. The number of educational specialists on the local level may have to decrease if we are to have universal access to the experts that come to us via technology. This more equitable distribution of educational opportunities may require slowing the growth of resource use among the schools and colleges that are already at the forefront of technology. At the same time the growth of information technology must not come at the development of fundamental learning and the development of wisdom, activities long the province of local education.
Teachers must receive appropriate training and support. We must enable Chicago's educators to develop the skills to match learners with outside resources as well as to teach them the basics "on-site". Programs to get educators more familiar with technology, its promise and potential are essential if students are to use technology to its fullest. A first focus for such a program of teacher enhancement should be on existing master teachers who are reluctant to incorporate technology into their classrooms. Second, a program for introducing student teachers to technology needs to be developed for use by local colleges and universities where many of Chicago's educational leaders are being trained.
Partnerships are becoming an essential element of education. Historically, schools have benefited by the involvement of social, business and religious interests. Today, these groups are joined by business and industry in helping to shape education. This is particularly the case in the development of technology-enhanced education as such development requires teams of people for its implementation. Putting our efforts into the development of balanced partnerships for education will require us to hear and assess the competing desires of different groups. It will also require us to ask all participants in the educational activities of this area to contribute to education in a direct way.
Local control and international information must find a balance. As the Chicago area becomes more involved in using technology to enhance education we will confront the need to re-examine the issue of local control of education. The Chicago area has become noted for the involvement of parents and local communities in education. This type of engagement will change as more and more educational opportunities come from outside this area. Questions about the use of certain web sites, the perspective of educational materials shared with students and the origin of information will take on new meaning.
This region will also need to consider the impact of the global marketplace on what students are taught here if we want them to be able to hold quality jobs in an era of increasing global mobility of employment. As a result remote and local teaching have to become complementary, both meeting local and global needs.
Summary
Chicago is an area with unique potential for growth as a vital center for the development of technology. That development requires that we expand educational opportunities for all people in this area. Our first task is making sure that all segments of the local population receive quality education. In turn, technology is changing the shape of education in the area. In this time of educational transitions, we must focus our attention on maximizing the benefits of technology for our students while recognizing the limitations that technology brings to the learning process. In that way we can have both a literate and a technologically enhanced workforce.
1. "Elements Required for Technology Sector Growth", Office of Richard J. Durbin, United State Senate, Private Publication, January 10, 1998.
2. The skills that workers need in a knowledge-based economy to ensure continued employment have been labeled as diverse and continually evolving. "No nation [city] can operate a 21st-century economy without a 21st-century electronic infrastructure, embracing computers, data communications, and other new media. This requires a population as familiar with this informational infrastructure as it is with cars, roads, highways, trains, and the other transportation infrastructure of the smokestak period." Alvin Toffler, PowerShift: Knowledge, Weath, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 369.
3. Technology for All Americans: A Rationale and Structure for the Study of Technology, www.scholar.lib.vt.edu/TAA/Execusumm.htm. See also Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: The Free Press, 1997) for an extended discussion of how storytelling, a basic educational skill, is enhanced and transformed by technology.
4. As recently as the January 2, 1998 issue of The Wall Street Journal, ("School's Eager Parents Overcome Meager Sums") the Chicago Public School system was characterized as "widely regarded as the worst in the nation". By contrast, President Clinton proclaimed the Chicago Public Schools as "a model for the nation" in an October 28, 1997 speech at Oscar Mayer Elementary School in Chicago.
5. Parental and community involvement, long a hallmark of private and suburban education, is now consider integral to urban education as well. Evidence the growth of local school councils both in the city and throughout the region.
6. Statistics provided by the Chicago Public Schools, www.cps.k12.il.us.edu.
7. Note by contrast the virtual certainty of graduating from high school in other parts of the state (90%), or from local private schools, with the 52% public school graduation rate in Chicago. Chicago Public School Fact Sheet www.ibm.com/IBM/IBMGives/k12ed/chifact.htm.
8. Increased expenditures for technology in suburban schools are frequently cited as contributing to the widely varying per pupil costs in the region and throughout the state.
9. Urban Educator, www.egcs.org.newslett/educator/1996/jan-feb/a11.htm
10. One example is the "Knowledge Network" sponsored by IBM through a $2 million grant to the Chicago Public Schools. Likewise, the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools benefit from business partnerships through the "Big Shoulders Campaign".
11. Significant infrastructure expenditures in Illinois schools over the last two years have corrected many fundamental wiring problems, but many schools are still unable to provide electrical or phone wiring to individual classrooms as contrasted with placing computeres in central locations in computer laboratories.
12. United States Census, 1990.
13. Durbin, op. cit.
14. Urban Educator, op. cit.
15. See longitudinal survey data compiled from 1991-96 by the Metro Chicago Information Center, www.mcic.org.
16. Clarisse Croteau-Chonka, "A People Left Out: African Americans and Technology," privately circulated.
17. Hank Dungy, Dungy Consulting Group.
18. www.iit.edu/~tams/
19. E-mail exchanges with experts are especially good at generating enthusiasm for science as scientists share their passion for discovery with students. This approach stands in contrast to that of teachers who are just teaching the content of science because they are teaching outside their subject area.
20. Clint Potter, Leadership Technology Workshop, Northwestern University, January 10, 1998.
21. www.chicagohs.org
22. "Hard Lessons", The Wall Street Journal Reports, September 17. 1997, R4.
23. While Internet applications are a prime example of this type of delivery, stand alone computer programs allow for both delivery from a single source and options for customization.
24. The number of these sites has proliferated to such a degree that the difficulty lies not in finding them, but in deciding which ones are truly beneficial for a given educational environment.
25. For the first time numerous students from elementary school through university have access to telescopes, scanners, satellite observatories and electron microscopes. As an example, see www.chickscope.com.