My reaction to Wenglinsky’s views on technology and student achievement

My reaction to Wenglinsky’s views on technology and student achievement:

Discussions of how technology might influence student achievement are very important given the fact that, by many estimates, some one billion dollars was spent on just digital technology in all the nation’s K-12 schools in the last 3 years. Is this money being spent wisely? Wenglinsky’s book on this topic is welcome, given the relative dearth of studies on technology and student achievement; his study also helpfully draws attention to some of the inherent difficulties in measuring the effect of technology on student achievement. I read most all of the book by Wenglinsky, but will focus my comments on chap 4, given that we are to discuss technology and its effect on student achievement.

I liked the way that Wenglinsky included both anecdotal accounts of technology use (chap 3), and comprehensive numbers (chap 4). The former, as he says, puts a face on educational use of technology and also connects the researcher to the practitioner, so that the latter sees how the researcher is assessing the use of technology in classrooms. Quantitative, comprehensive data is needed so we can make judgments about technology’s overall effectiveness. The NAEP study sounds like a great study, including scores on student tests but also interviews with all stakeholders involved (administrators, students, teachers, etc.). Many of the results of the 1996 and 2000 studies laid out by Wenglinsky were intuitive, but it is good to see these intuitions confirmed—e.g., the fact that fourth grade teachers learn how to teach reading more through on the job training in contrast to how 8th grade teachers learn to teach a subject field like math or science, namely through their educational preparation. Other findings under the category of “non-technology instructional practices” also helpfully confirmed things like an ongoing need for teacher training in the area of special needs and cross-cultural understanding and the idea that students who test less (i.e., involved instead in project based learning) show more achievement on the NAEP (but how does this help us if we are constrained by PSSA requirements?).

In terms of technology use and its effect on student achievement, here are some things I found particularly interesting and/or helpful as a teacher. First, there continues to be a “digital divide” in the sense that poorer students have less access to computers an home. Due to increasing immersion of technology in all schools, all students have access to computers at school, but still not at home, but the latter where it seems to count most (see chart at top of p. 69). The student’s socioeconomic status still made the largest difference in effect on test scores. Second, teacher preparedness in his/her subject field (in the upper grades), teacher comfort with using technology, and class size seem to have a positive effect on test scores, as we have really always known. Third, the use of simulation, games, and data analysis tools seemed generally to have a positive effect on test scores. Computers do these things well, but the machine has to be made use of by the constructivist minded teacher, as Wenglinsky indicates (70). Specifically in the area of reading, word processing had a positive effect on test scores, but not the use of computers for reading stories (presumably, e-books or reading off the computer) or even spell checking. Fourth, frequency of computer use in school had negative effects on test scores whereas frequency of computer use at home had positive effects. Thus, teachers should be working with students directly during classroom time and saving the use of the computer as the medium for homework (but what if the student does not have a computer at home?). Finally, drill-and-kill exercises on the computer seemed always to have a negative effect on the 8th graders but had some positive effect for 4th graders, though I did not see the numbers in his charts. I want to think that drill and kill in some forms or at some ages still can be a good thing.