New technology will allow educators to track the performance of students in suburban D.C. school districts daily and with unprecedented precision
Teachers who traditionally have relied on late nights marking papers and charting which students missed what concepts, and how badly, will now have that data at the click of a mouse, said Maribeth Luftglass, Fairfax County Public Schools’ chief information officer.
Then, instead of scrambling to put together individualized lesson plans based on each student’s strengths and weaknesses, Luftglass said, teachers can tap into a giant database of lessons and tests to make sure lagging kids keep up and excelling students advance.
In Fairfax County, a $3 million program is “one of the most exciting things we’ve done since I started in 1999,” Luftglass said. In Montgomery County, the district spent thousands of dollars on “smart board” chalkboards that allow teachers to pull up Web pages, draw charts and ask questions of students who then answer on hand-held devices. Teachers can gauge student understanding as the lesson proceeds.
“Many teachers have gone gray trying to assess every student and get appropriate activities for each learner,” said Don Knezek, chief executive officer of the D.C.-based International Society for Technology in Education.
“The ability to have and to manage information about each student, about the topic, gives the potential addressing if not all, then very close to all of the levels of achievement,” Knezek said.
Some experts, though, questioned the reality of individualized instruction in public school systems where gifted students, special needs students, non-English speakers and average students sit side by side in one classroom.
“No computer system or level of tracking can make a single system of public schooling address the unique needs of individual students,” said Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
