These challenges-securing funding, ensuring teachers have the skills to integrate applications into the curriculum, and obtaining quality courseware-will set the pace of implementation for many schools. Over time, the market for courseware will develop, teachers will build skills and experience, and determined school districts will find the funds for deployment. As case studies demonstrate, leading-edge schools are already clearing these hurdles, even in relatively poorly funded districts. But facing down competing demands for scarce budget dollars, motivating teachers to make fundamental changes in their approach to teaching, and making creative use of courseware and the Internet, all demand one thing: strong leadership.
And it must be leadership sustained over time. It will take several years, perhaps a decade, for most schools or districts to bring all the necessary elements-infrastructure, funding, professional development, and courseware-into alignment. Through every stage of that deployment period, dedicated leaders will need to provide direction and maintain momentum. This will probably be the single most important factor determining not only the pace of deployment, but also the level of success in capturing the educational benefits of the NII.
Connecting schools to the information superhighway involves a systemic process of change, demanding new styles of teaching and learning and new priorities for funding and resource allocation. To launch and sustain this process, leaders need to provide a compelling vision of success and a sense of urgency, pull together funding from multiple sources, create an environment where teachers can learn and be rewarded for using the technology, and ensure adequate support for both initial deployment and for ongoing operations.
Leadership needs to come at many levels, from both the public and private sectors. There is no "blueprint" for deployment nor single set of national policies that can meet the diverse needs of every school district. For this reason, deployment requires a local, "bottom-up" approach. At the same time, individual schools clearly need top-down help in marshaling the resources to overcome these challenges. In the schools we visited, the district superintendent often has taken the lead role, bringing together community leaders and school boards, teachers and administrators, as well as private industry and government leaders to make change happen.
Local community and school leadership is the most powerful and important source of energy for driving deployment. Without the commitment of teachers, administrators, and parents, little change can happen in the classroom or the school. School boards, superintendents, principals, and other community leaders need to establish a clear vision and agree on concrete goals. They need to redefine teachers' job requirements, reward risk-takers, drum up volunteers to donate services or equipment, secure funding, and guide deployment programs around the snares of the budget and procurement processes.
Some form of public-private partnership lies at the center of many successful community leadership models. In Carrollton, Georgia, for example, active proponents on the school board and senior executives from local businesses drove the deployment process. They helped procure affordable equipment, convinced technical support groups to donate time to run wiring through school facilities, and provided ongoing funding to the school district. At the Dalton School in New York City, parents have supported the effort by endorsing and encouraging the new teaching methods. Columbia University has also provided free connections to its own network and has established a partnership for joint courseware development.
Teachers, too, are critical agents of change. They need to take the initiative to use new teaching techniques and make creative use of the technology. They are the first to encounter the obstacles of inadequate support and courseware, as well as the first to realize the benefits of more engaging learning tools and improved communications. Teachers play a pivotal role in informing, assisting, and coaching their peers, thus building the momentum for change. Innovative teachers often need to be mavericks, giving their own unpaid time to training and finding ways around bureaucratic obstacles.
However, local school and community leadership is necessary but not sufficient to meet the goal of nationwide connection to the NII. Not all school districts have the ability or desire to make deployment a top priority; no individual school or community alone can stimulate the courseware market or legislate new federal funding. Leadership at the state and national level-in both the public and private sectors-is also necessary to help speed deployment and ensure that it is equitable.
Many states are developing technology plans that help prioritize uses of state funds and offer suggestions for funding and infrastructure deployment at the school level. Some states, such as North Carolina, have even justified infrastructure build-outs by combining network requirements across several government functions. As discussed above, federal programs currently provide an important source of technology funding. Government agencies also play an important role simply by endorsing the importance of the NII, communicating "best practices," and advocating key initiatives in public forums.
For example, the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy has assisted Gary Beach, the publisher of Computerworld, in creating Tech Corps, a national, non-profit organization of technology volunteers dedicated to helping improve K-12 education at the grass roots level. The mission of Tech Corps is to recruit, place, and support volunteers from the technology community (primarily at state and local levels) who advise and assist schools in the introduction and integration of new technologies into the educational system. An early test of the concept began in Massachusetts in March of this year and involved 12 school districts with over 300 volunteers signed up to assist. Based on this success, the program is now expanding to 40 districts in the state. (54)
In addition, public-private partnerships at the state or national level can complement local efforts and government mandates. Purchasing cooperatives, for example, are a powerful way to secure discounts or terms that individual school districts could not negotiate on their own. Private foundations or not-for-profit groups, perhaps with government seed money, can spur courseware development and help publicize successful models for deployment. And, as several of the case studies demonstrate, private industry can have an incentive to fund "experiments," such as Bell Atlantic's involvement with the Christopher Columbus Middle School in Union City, New Jersey, in which Bell Atlantic installed computers at the school and the home of all 7th grade students and teachers, along with local and wide area networks to link them. Private industry partners could also be encouraged to play ongoing roles as deployment progresses.
Finally, educational institutions-especially teacher colleges-have an important role to play in revamping their curricula and providing more robust in-service training support to teachers and other school professionals in light of these new technology training needs. They need to advocate changes in teacher certification requirements and to support courseware development efforts by establishing guidelines and quality standards. They can also sponsor conferences and educational forums, bringing together teachers, administrators, courseware developers, and potential funders.
There is no magic formula for pulling together the leadership and commitment to change across all these diverse organizations. It is clearly a process, though, that will build on its own momentum. As costs decline, hardware and software evolve, and more teachers become experienced with technology, the perceived risks of deployment will decline. And as more success stories emerge from the growing ranks of innovative schools, documenting the benefits of connection and demonstrating deployment models that work, the enthusiasm and desire to make the change happen will spread from community to community.
Footnotes
54 Interview with Gary Johnson, Executive Director of Tech Corps, September 1995.