Washington's New Tech Czar

John Bailey looks less like the Bush administration's educational technology czar and more like a college football player—big, broad-shouldered, and surprisingly young. Only 29, he's worked in education since 1995, when he graduated from Pennsylvania's Dickinson College with a bachelor's degree in political science. Bailey quickly became a prime mover of school technology policy in Pennsylvania, where he made his name working for then-governor Tom Ridge. Ridge was appointed the government's Homeland Security director in the days following the September 11 attacks. Soon after, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) tapped Bailey as its director of the Office of Technology to advise Education Secretary Rod Paige on technology research and policy. Bailey says he's a proponent of "technology that makes a difference," such as the School Interoperability Framework, a new database language based on XML that makes it easy for educators to share student information throughout the school.

Bailey's mission is to promote technology under the Bush administration's education plan, "No Child Left Behind," which emphasizes reading and literacy, and he expects librarians to play a pivotal role in its success. "[Librarians] have become incredibly useful information guides on the Internet," he explains. "Now that becomes even more critical. The problem is not that we have a limited access to information. It's that there's too much information. Students and adults need [information literacy] skills to be able to determine what's credible."

Bailey must submit his ideas to Congress by January 2003. Although the plan is in its early stages, Bailey anticipates he will recommend which schools need to upgrade their online networks. His proposal will also target narrowing the "digital divide," so that economically disadvantaged students and their families don't miss out on the benefits of technology. Bailey will also incorporate President's Bush desire to promote distance learning by including ways in which teachers can hone their skills through online courses and students can gain access to advanced-placement and specialized classes.

Bailey plans to launch a five-year, $15 million study to identify the conditions under which technology works most effectively in school settings. When completed in 2006, the research project will tell educators and members of Congress which technologies help teachers teach better and children learn more. The study will demonstrate, says Bailey, how we can use technology to boost achievement.

IN PENNSYLVANIA, JOHN BAILEY worked extensively with libraries. In fact, one of his earliest projects at the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) was to develop an advanced interlibrary loan system for the state's college and university campuses. The education grant programs he coordinated, such as "Link to Learn," a plan that distributed $90 million to fund school technology purchases, often led to improved library media centers and services. Many Pennsylvania school librarians were surprised by how approachable and receptive Bailey was during his six years with PDE. "He listened," says Joyce Valenza, a librarian at Springfield Township High School in Erdenheim, PA, and he proved himself sensitive to the needs of the state's school libraries.

Bailey didn't simply listen; he went to bat for libraries. John Emerick, PDE's director of school library media services, says that Bailey, despite his youth, was able to attract the attention of decision-makers. "He was very supportive of bringing automation systems into libraries that didn't have them, and he could convince leaders to do the right thing for kids," says Emerick. "When districts received [the PDE grants], he got superintendents to say, 'We'll use this money to get better school library technology [rather than for some other purpose].'"

Holly Jobe, technology director for the Montgomery County (PA) Intermediate Unit, which provides services to local school districts, worked with Bailey throughout his tenure at PDE and agrees with Valenza and Emerick. "He had a very clear vision of what he wanted," says Jobe. "He listened to people in the field and responded to their requests. He had ideas of his own, but coordinated them with [those of] everyone he worked with." Jobe points in particular to the technology resources that Bailey developed for Pennsylvania's schools. For example, Bailey developed PDE's "eTechPlanner," an online tool that helps state districts and schools create their own technology plans and slice through the red tape involved in applying for federal E-Rate funding. "John saw a need and filled it," says Jobe. (To view the eTechPlanner, go to www.pde.state.pa.us/ed_tech and click on "Tools/Resources.")

Bailey recognizes that for technology to have a dramatic impact on education, teachers need to appreciate its value. "Teachers have not seen technology as a tool to help enhance their profession," he says. "It's often been something that's done to them rather than for them." Part of the answer, he says, is to provide educators with better training and in-service programs. That's why No Child Left Behind includes a requirement that at least 25 percent of the state education technology grant funds that DOE awards this year be used for professional development courses for teachers, media specialists, and administrators.

BAILEY HOPES EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY will enter students' homes, too. In a culture in which parents work wildly varying hours, and sometimes have difficulty connecting to the schools their children attend, Bailey hopes that online technology will serve as that connection. Many companies, including America Online and Yahoo!, offer "E-school" services that enable teachers to post assignments, grades, and other information online. Parents are able to access the information through individual password-protected accounts.

It remains to be seen how successful such systems are, however, mostly because busy teachers often find it difficult to find time to enter their assignments. If that's true, replies Bailey, it's because "we think about technology in terms of its potential—What can it do for people?—and we don't think about the extra work it adds." He points to the Grow Network (www.grownetwork.com), a company that provides online software for the New York City Board of Education. Bailey says the Grow Network "produces a report for teachers, but it also produces a report for parents. The additional report is no extra work for teachers. It's just automatically provided as part of the service, part of the technology." The company claims that its software and services help the city's teachers better use standardized test scores to help design coursework for the approximately 450,000 students in grades four through nine.

Bailey says he hopes by the time he leaves his job to have "produced some really solid research that shows that technology is making a difference—for students, teachers, and library media specialists." We need to know, he says, how to make all that hardware and software work better, so that teachers and parents will use technology rather than avoid it. "We're looking," says Bailey, "at increasing use—instead of just increasing access."