BALTIMORE, MD (4/24/07) --- While Maryland’s public schools have made tremendous progress in terms of access to technology, the use of that technology to improve student performance in the classroom continues to lag, according to the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education (MBRT).

The results of MBRT’s 10th annual survey of technology in the state’s public schools, released today to the Maryland State Board of Education, show limited student progress in using technology for higher-level activities, such as manipulating and analyzing data or performing measurements.

Similarly, the survey indicates that teacher knowledge and skills have improved slightly, but are relatively flat over the past 3-4 years.

Every jurisdiction in Maryland deserves to be congratulated for doing an outstanding job in making technology available to students, but technology alone is not the answer," says MBRT Executive Director June Streckfus. "Technology is a tool and in order to leverage the advantages that tool offers, teachers and students should fully integrate technology use into more classroom activities.”

To that end, the new MBRT survey recommends establishing key performance indicators to measure the use of technology in the classroom and then correlating that data to student achievement measures. The survey also calls for identifying and implementing best practices to maximize the use of technology in the classroom, and aligning professional development to classroom needs.

"Research suggests that while we have come a long way, teachers’ integration of technology into instruction is sporadic, and there is a sharp contrast between students’ reliance on technology in their outside lives and their limited use of technology in school," notes Robert Marshall, President and CEO of AWS Convergence Technologies and Chair of MBRT’s Committee on Technology in Education.

Marshall’s company pioneered the online technology survey in conjunction with MBRT and the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE).

According to the MBRT survey, 97% of teachers surveyed use technology regularly to communicate with staff members and other colleagues. Eight out of 10 teachers regularly use technology to maintain data on students, however, and only two-thirds regularly use technology to analyze and/or report student or school improvement data.

The MBRT survey also indicates that teacher knowledge and skill with respect to technology has risen slightly. Seventy-four percent of teachers rate themselves at an intermediate skill level or higher in the use and integration of technology, compared to 72% when the survey was last conducted in 2005; 72% rank themselves at an intermediate level regarding Internet use, compared to 70% in 2005.

Student proficiency with technology also appears to have stagnated, particularly in areas that research suggests should provide the greatest dividends for learning. The number of students using technology to manipulate and analyze data rose slightly since the previous MBRT survey, from 38% to 39%, while 30% of students reported using technology to perform measurements and collect data compared to 29% in 2005.

The new MBRT survey – like its predecessors – shows that a Digital Divide still exists between the use of technology in low-poverty versus high-poverty areas. The survey shows that the higher the poverty level of schools, the less frequently technology is being used for tasks that require higher-level thinking and meaningful application of knowledge and skills.

The new MBRT survey results are posted online at www.mbrt.org. or at www.marylandpublicschools.org. Survey results are available by county and by school.

# # #