[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 76 (Thursday, June 5, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5353-S5354]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BINGAMAN (for himself and Mrs. Murray):
  S. 839. A bill to improve teacher mastery and use of educational 
technology; to the Committee on Labor and Human Resources.


                    the technology for teachers act

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today, with the support of 
Senator Murray from the State of Washington, to introduce legislation 
that will increase the effectiveness of our efforts to improve 
education in the country. I send to the desk the legislation and ask 
that it be referred to the appropriate committee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill will be received and appropriately 
referred.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, the bill is entitled the Technology for 
Teachers Act. Its purpose is to increase the ability of millions of new 
and current teachers to use technology in the classroom.
  Every school day in my home State of New Mexico and across the 
country, computers are being purchased, are being unpacked and are 
being delivered to classrooms in the hope that the teachers there will 
do wonderful things with those computers to assist the educational 
process. Sometimes that happens, but most of the time, the computer 
that is delivered and unpacked is just one more challenge to that 
teacher, one more demand on that teacher's time and one more drain on 
the energy of that teacher, because no one has given the teacher the 
training necessary to be able to do wonderful things with the computer.
  Most of the teachers in our public schools today started teaching 
before the era of personal computers really began and was established.
  The problem begins with low standards for the preparation of teachers 
to use this new technology and for the licensing of new teachers. This 
is reflected in a chart I have, Mr. President, that I would like to 
call attention to. This chart demonstrates the following. On the left-
hand side, we have the States that now require one course in education 
technology. You can see that the red area indicates that 32 States now 
require a course in education technology. Eighteen of our States 
require no instruction in education technology today.
  But the more problematic part of this chart is the right-hand side, 
where we try to depict the new teachers who feel prepared to use 
technology in the classroom.
  You can see that the green area indicates that 90 percent of our new 
teachers do not feel prepared to use technology in the classroom. That 
means 90 percent have not had adequate training, including the 90 
percent who have had that one course that is required in those 32 
States. So there is a serious problem.
  We also have a disturbing imbalance between the high investment we 
are making in equipment on the one hand and our inadequate investment 
in teachers on the other. Let me show a couple of other charts to make 
that point.
  This chart tries to make the distinction between the high 
availability of computers in our schools versus the low amount of 
teacher training to use them. Ninety-eight percent of our schools today 
are equipped with some computers. So, clearly, that is a major step 
forward from where we were, for example, 5 or 10 years ago. But if you 
look at the teachers who took more than 1 day of training in a single 
school year on how to use those computers, it is 15 percent of our 
teachers. Clearly, that imbalance exists.
  We are investing in the hardware; we are not investing in training 
the teachers to use that hardware effectively.
  Let me show one other chart to make the same point. This is 
connections to the Internet. This shows a 1997 estimate of the percent 
of schools that are connected to the Internet. About 65 percent of our 
schools have at least some connection to the Internet. When you look, 
though, down at the classroom level, you see that only 14 percent of 
our classrooms actually have a connection to the Internet.
  Only 13 percent of schools require some kind of advanced training for 
teachers so that they would know how to take advantage of that hookup 
to the Internet. And teachers who are actually using the Internet to 
help with their instruction is only 20 percent. So, again, we have a 
major imbalance between the investment in the equipment on the one 
hand, and the inadequate investment in training our teachers on the 
other. The experts say that 30 percent of the total investment we make 
in education technology should be used to train teachers, but right now 
we spend only 9 percent on teacher training. In my own State of New 
Mexico, only 4 percent of the $33 million spent on education technology 
goes for training teachers. That's less than half the national average 
and less than one seventh what we should be spending on teacher 
training.

  I am not saying that the Federal Government has not invested in 
teacher training as a part of school reform. There is a lot of money 
which is available for this, but also for a great many other needs. 
Clearly, this chart shows that. When we talk about general reform of 
education, there are four large programs that the Federal Government 
has. Of course, Title I is by far the largest, Title VI, Goals 2000, 
the Eisenhower Professional Development Program--all of those programs 
have funds that arguably can be used for training of teachers in this 
respect but, in fact, there are other great demands on those funds.
  When you look at technology for education, we now have the Technology 
Literacy Program that is funded at $257 million. The request from the 
President and the agreement in this year's Budget Resolution is to 
substantially increase that in the coming years. But when you look at 
technology training for teachers, there is absolutely nothing planned 
for that or required to be spent on that. This legislation tries to 
correct that deficiency.
  There are no Federal programs today devoted exclusively to technology 
training for teachers--either technology training for new teachers that 
are being trained, or technology training for current teachers in the 
work force.
  Let me briefly describe what our bill would do, Mr. President. This 
bill has two parts. One would improve the technology training that 2 
million new teachers will get while they are in college during the next 
decade to try to ensure that as they begin their teaching careers, they 
have had this instruction.
  The other part involves the technology training that millions of our

[[Page S5354]]

current teachers will need throughout their teaching careers.
  For both parts, our legislation provides that the Department of 
Education would make competitive grants to the States, to the States' 
departments of education that are responsible for the licensing of 
teachers and for maintaining high teaching standards. Those States' 
departments would then set up competitive grant programs, one to go to 
colleges of education for innovative programs to train new teachers to 
use technology; the other set of grants would go to local school 
districts for innovative professional development of current teachers.
  The bill would require that the States' departments of education, the 
colleges of education, the local school districts, and the education 
technology private sector all work together to create these innovative 
teacher training programs. This bill would be a major step forward in 
providing the necessary training to our teachers so that they can 
benefit from new technologies and integrate those new technologies into 
their instruction.
  There are some very good examples, happening in a few places, of what 
should be happening all over the country. For example, the University 
of Missouri has a program that issues a laptop computer to incoming 
freshmen in their College of Education. It has built telecommunications 
links to K-through-12 schools throughout the State of Missouri.
  This bill would also support some innovative programs similar to the 
program we have in New Mexico called the Regional Education Technology 
Assistance Program; it trains five teachers from each of the school 
districts in my State. In fact, we have only reached out now and gotten 
the involvement of 52 of our 89 school districts. But the idea here is 
to get a cadre of teachers who are comfortable with the use of 
technology who can then work in their school district to train other 
teachers so that they, too, can be comfortable with the use of that 
technology and not have the technology just be a frill which is put 
over in the corner of their classroom for people to use when they don't 
have other more important activities to pursue.
  Mr. President, I think this legislation is particularly important 
because it tries to deal with the very real resource constraints that 
some of our school districts face. In my home State, we have a school 
district in Cuba, NM, where they have had to give up their music 
instruction, they have had to give up their home economics program, in 
order to acquire technology to try to enrich their curriculum. This 
would provide some additional sources of funds for them so that they 
could get that technology, they could get the training for the use of 
that technology. That is the great need that we have at this particular 
time.
  I hope very much that we can get a hearing on this bill this summer, 
move ahead with it, and enact this legislation before the conclusion of 
this session of the Congress. I think this is a step forward.
  We have seen significant progress over the last few years in Federal 
support for technology and the use of technology in education. The one 
great deficiency today is that we do not put enough into training 
teachers so that that technology can be used effectively. This 
legislation will help to correct that problem.
  I thank Senator Murray for cosponsoring the legislation. I hope other 
colleagues will do so as well.
                                 ______