The rollout of the Every Student Succeeds Act promises to offer greater flexibility for states on a variety of measures, and ed tech experts are considering potential opportunities for how new or re-utilized tech tools can be reconfigured accordingly.
According to Brendan Desetti, the education policy director for the Education Technology Industry Network of SIIA, service providers interested in pursuing new opportunities will need to be cognizant of how individual states approach their own accountability standards and how the need to offer accessible education impacts instructional approach.
“There’s going to be some more personalized learning opportunities…how do we help students and meet them where they are, growing them as much as they can?” he said. “There’s nothing within ESSA that’s going to be a game changer, I don’t think, but there’s going to be a lot more opportunity for flexibility for states to determine the needs of administrators.”
The ETIN’s mission is to support service providers of educational software, and Desetti said some of the core measurement markers for strong schools highlighted in ESSA — including college and career readiness and chronic absenteeism — were potential sources of opportunity for considering how ed tech can be used to broaden the law's basic mission, which, like its predecessors, is to offer a free and appropriate public education for all students, including those with special needs.
“It really comes down to school climate. What's the impetus for the absenteeism? Are there some mitigating factors contributing to chronic absenteeism?” Desetti noted as one potential point ed tech could target, including programs that might help curtail bullying or could alert parents immediately if a student doesn't arrive at school.
He also cited a need for tech tools that could assist school nurses or medical professionals in being more effective amid cuts that have seen fewer qualified staff serving a large group of students in many situations. There remain numerous tech advances in all of these fields, such as school telemedicine programs, which are becoming increasingly popular in schools.
Many of the ed tech opportunities for advancement, particularly in regard to assistive tech for students with special needs, weren't necessarily in regards to assessment, but were instructional in nature, according to Jacqueline Hess, director of the Center for Technology and Disability. The center is funded by the U.S. Department of Education Special Needs Program and provides free resources in regard to assistive tech for students, teachers, parents, administrators, service providers and vendors. Hess noted that the education world can often stray far behind the for-profit sphere and government as a whole in terms of being on the cutting edge of new tech opportunities, but she did note many ways in which tech tools could help schools assess and students learn.
Hess said moving assessments to a computer-based system for students could offer more substantive insight for districts and educators as to a particular student’s proficiency. ESSA, she said, enables schools to ask more questions above and below grade level as long as a student completes the appropriate number of grade-level questions. If a computer, for example, can purposefully intersperse below-grade level question after a student has difficulty answering those at grade level, it could offer more insight as to exactly where that student’s proficiency level is.
“In theory, it’s good news because ESSA refers to technologies and accommodations much more frequently than NCLB did,” she said. “So that’s good, whenever public policy starts catching up and makes an acknowledgement that schools exist in a world where technology is increasingly ubiquitous, and they’re encouraging you to use these technologies to meet the goals of the education.”
With ESSA encouraging schools and districts to utilize technology in the attempt to make education more accessible, Hess said one of the biggest benefits of the moment was that assistive tech is increasingly becoming a common consumer good. Tech that may have been extremely specialized in the past is now available on a smartphone, which makes the price point right for wider dissemination inside schools. For example, speech-to-text devices used to be difficult to procure, Hess said, but now it is a common feature of household devices.
Additionally, the increased ubiquity of tools also allows service providers to offer greater customization options for schools, districts and teachers, which will particularly benefit special needs students. Desetti said that while he was impressed by the flexibility ESSA could offer districts, and by extension their service providers, he cautioned that advocates needed to continue to be aware of funding concerns.
“I think everyone involved in education is optimistic about ESSA. All stakeholder groups are concerned about where funding goes. If schools are shortchanged by federal budget…schools won’t be able to serve students as well,” he said. “We’re optimistic about the flexibility, and we just want to make sure that optimism continues when we’re talking about appropriations for what was mandated under the bill.”
