The path forward- taking strides not small steps! January 22, 2009
Posted by ajackl in Education, Educational Technology, Enterprise Architecture, Schools Interoperability Framework, SIF.Tags: Education, Enterprise Solutions, Recommendations, Stimulus Package
trackback
I have been thinking about what we will use the economic stimulus package for. Particularly the parts impacting education.
I am going to not address tools that would be purchased singly by a teacher or school, but, rather, enterprise solutions- with economies of scale- that would be implemented at the district or state level.
Here is my initial list. I hope you are listening Arne Duncan!!! 🙂
1. Flexible, SIF-enabled, unit-record-level(student, staff, course/section, building, district), data quality-enforcing data collection systems.
2. Semantically-tagged, multi-purpose, longitudinal, flexibly periodic, data storage
3. Enterprise Directory-enabled Portal solutions that provide authorization down to the parent, student, teacher level and provide security for both access to applications and resources but also constrict viewing parameters on reports. Centralized management and indentity services but decentralized control
4. Inside these portal solutions Communities of Practice (data providers, teachers, families, program providors), with collaboration and file sharing capabilities as well as access to reports designed specifically for them, and workflow tailored for them.
5. Learning Standards Repository and National Data Model and NCES Handbooks all available in referencible form and allowing free access to the date through a variety of APIs.
6. Working with SIF and PESC and others to construct Transcript standards and templates for the whole country
7. Mature the SCED specification to include elementary school and more metadata.
8. Mature the SIF specification to provide more value and out of the box interoperability to systems all through pk12.
9. Provide Best Practices for maturing systems that are not driven by a single solution-providor but by healthy, standards-linked functionality.
Reading the Tea Leaves 
At the request of the House Education and Labor Committee, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has produced estimates regarding what the
Economic Stimulus package means for individual school districts. Please visit http://edlabor.house.gov/selected-allocations-for-school-districts-under-the-american-recovery-and-reinvestment-bill/index.shtml to see the state-by-state listings of districts.
Specifically, the document estimates what each school district in the country would receive under the bill’s program allocations (not including the $80 billion State Stabilization Fund) for Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), and K-12 School Modernization ($14 billion) over FYs 2009 and 2010.
So, new federal monies will soon be on their way to districts. Hopefully some of that $14 billion for modernization will support the adoption of enterprise-level technology solutions.
I should hope so since only a very tiny portion of that money correctly applied will make a huge difference on that front. I hope decision-makers have the vision and courage to act on that…