Keeping Watch Over the K-12 Industry

Moonlight Tech is keeping watch over K-12 education industry throughout the United States from the perspective of how state and federal legislations directly affect those vendors which service the technology side of education.  Software and hardware vendors.

If you are interested in having MT look over your state, send an email to askmt@moonlight-technologies.com.  Let us know if there is specific legislation recently passed or coming up and how you think it might impact your state's education system. We'll look it over and let you see how it looks under the moonlight.   

With the advent of NCLB (No Child Left Behind for those of you who might have been off planet for the past 5 years), state education commissioners have been scrambling to comply to keep all that federal money coming in (just kidding, there isn't that much of it coming in.) 

Parents are demanding better education for their children and more accessibility to their records. Yet these same parents are not nearly as willing to spend a day in school as parents were 40 years ago. They expect the school to teach their child discipline and ethics, yet sue the school district when a teacher applies even the most reasonable discipline standards. 

Teachers want more money and security in the classroom and administrators don't want to get sued. 

All this together means more data collection and statistical reporting that really has very little to do with actually teaching a child to read. What they are doing now is proving they taught the child to read and basing how a teacher gets paid on how well the child reads. This means accountability for all concerned.

Have I mentioned the students yet?  These kids are coming up totally  technology saavy.  Today's worst student could be tomorrow's best hacker.   Students need access to e-boards, homework assignment, teacher availability, but schools must keep student records secure. This can and will be a daunting task. 

What about state-wide mandated software systems, like financial and student accounting applications?  So far, I have a negative opinion of state mandated software of any sort when it comes to initial data collection. In Texas we have "independent school districts" (ISDs).  Where is the independent if the state mandates such things as software applications to be used?  Seems to me like they are playing to the least common denominator.  That is, nobody gets exactly what they want, they get what the state tells them they need.  So, unless the software is designed to be a full fledged solution that will be usable by the smallest districts with very little staff up to Houston and Dallas ISD, they will either not use it at all, or begin adding little stand alone modules to make up the difference.  To me that is a step backwards from using a fully integrated software solution that it selected by the district based on its own particular needs.   Let each district use the tool they are most comfortable with and is most suited to the skills of their local staff.   

On the flip side, I have great respect for the state-mandated reporting systems such as PEIMS (Texas), CSIS (California), EMIS (Ohio), etc.  These provide the states with all the information they need. School districts run the software they want and report to the state detailed information in a state-mandated format. This is successful and provides a wealth of information to educators at every level. Even the state-mandated programs surprise me though. Texas introduced PEIMS in 1987/88 school year.  Other states are coming out with state reporting requirements every year.  They are NOT using SIF, they are NOT mimicking other state requirements.   They just go off and do something completely different from everyone else.   Isn't this what SIF was created in the first place?