Education Department to study technology, learning

Black Issues in Higher Education, March 25, 2004 by Ronald Roach

WASHINGTON

The U.S. Department of Education is undertaking a study to determine the effectiveness of educational technology lot reading and math, and to measure how technology can improve student achievement in those subjects. The $10 million study, to begin during the 2004-2005 school year, will be funded by two divisions of the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences and the Office of Educational Technology, according to officials.

The study is part of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act and will involve testing the effectiveness of 16 different software products in the areas of early reading, reading comprehension, pre-Algebra and Algebra. The study will be conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and SRI International, two independent research companies who will assess student achievement gains over three years using a random-assignment study design.

Although the study is aimed at K-8 learning, its results will help establish benchmarks for the overall effectiveness of educational technology, officials say.