My Opinion on Educator Preparation and Development of the STaR Chart

It is clear when looking at the Long Range Plan set forth that we as a state, district, and campus have a lot of work to do. When looking at the area of Educator Preparation and Development it is clear that in order to teach the technological information to students, we as educators need to modeling and encouraging it's use. In this area many factors come in to play: content of professional development being offered; focusing on skill integration, the capability of teachers; what SBEC standards are they applying daily, access to professional development; are they participating, and do the teachers even understand technology basics and how to use the productivity tools.

Progress is being made both nationally, statewide, and locally, however it is very minor. Out of all four areas of the Long Range Plane for Technology 2006-2020, Educator Preparation has the lowest Advanced Tech level score of only 19.9%. What this tells us is that many teachers are using the use of technology for administrative tasks and classroom management, and only 40% meet the SBEC standards. Only 6-24% of technology budget is being allocated for professional development.

A trends that may cause this is a lack of accountability on administrative part. Many students have more computer savvy than teachers and because of this, teachers don't want to compete. Many feel that if they are not "required" to integrate the technology on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, why do it? It is more hassle than it is worth. On our campus, our faculty felt more confident with technology in the year 2006-07 with a score of 16 points. By the next year, we had fallen four points and only gained on back by the year 2008-2009. This shows me that technology is growing, but our teachers are not with it. Although there may be a campus technology plan, until the funds are allocated to train our educators and assure them that they will have the support, we may find ourselves having a hard time meeting the goals and objectives for the Long Range Plan by 2020.

My recommendation for improvement in this area as an instructional leader is to really push the importance of technology. I have to say that many teachers, are not really aware of the importance of the STaR Chart nor was I aware of the Long Range Plan. Because they are not educated, many teachers answer the STaR Chart questions without a care... they just want to get it over with. Therefore, I am not sure how acurate it is; at least at my school. I believe that we need to explain the plan, the process, and the importance in the same to staff and make technology and the use of it part of the PDAS grading so that more educators will embrace the use and importance in technology growth in the classroom.