Doug Johnson

What Gets Tested Gets Taught
Head for the Edge
April 2006

Why does no one seem to take teaching information and information technology literacy skills very seriously? Oh, maybe a few teacher-librarians have the true faith, but come on, who else in your district really cares about this true 21st century skill set? Or can even define information literacy?

Here’s just one piece of evidence that IL/IT skills are not being taught:

College students and high-school students preparing to enter college are sorely lacking in the skills needed to retrieve, analyze, and communicate information that is available online… only 13 percent of the test-takers were information literate. The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 17, 2006 <chronicle.com/daily/2006/10/2006101701t.htm>

To most teachers, adding “one more thing” to an already over-loaded curriculum is painful, even if information literacy is as necessary a skill in today’s information age economy as the basic R’s have been in the past. Yet schools that do not recognize the need for students to be able to use information and technology to solve problems and answer questions are negligent. How do we get all schools to recognize this critical skill set and give it the importance it deserves?

First, we need a single, nationally recognized set of IL/IT standards. No one – teacher-librarians, technology teachers, or classroom teachers are well served by our current dueling professional standards. The AASL/AECT guidelines, Information Power: Building Partnerships for Student Learning and ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Students have a good deal of overlap. Both would be stronger if combined.

As currently written, Information Power standards are format neutral, neglecting to even mention the technology skills needed to be skillful information problem-solvers. As long as technology is new, sexy, and not well understood by adults, standards that address the mastery of technology will be viewed as important. And really, how information literate is a person without good technology skills?

The NETS standards lack pedagogical gravitas. Simply knowing how to operate technology without know what to do with it is meaningless. NETS seem to give as much weight to knowing how to operate a mouse as they do to using technology to problem solve. And the NETS tend to be a laundry list of discrete skills, rather than a fundamental process to be mastered.

(As of late 2006, both sets of standards are under revision. A chorus of voices from ISTE and AASL members might make the leaders of these organizations work on a joint set of standards. Might.)

Second, in the coming NCLB revision, schools must be held as accountable for teaching and assessing IL/IT standards as they are for reading, writing and math. Yes, there is the toothless provision for “technology literacy by all 8th graders” in the current Title IIB language, but it is not being enforced.

Look, I am no great fan of federal mandates. Local control, I've always felt, is the best control. It can be argued that NCLB is more about discrediting public schools than about educating kids. But if NCLB can be a tool for making information and technology skills “basic skills,” I am for it. It's the smart thing to do. Why?

•    Dollars will follow requirements. If there is a lesson to be learned from NCLB, schools WILL fund educational efforts when there is the force of law behind them. While only partially funded at best, schools have ante-ed up for the planning, testing, materials, and staff development needed to meet the requirements of making sure all children can read, write and compute on at least a minimal basis. Should NCLB also recognize that information and technology literacy is so vital to our children's success that schools be held accountable for all students' mastery of it, the funds needed to make it happen will follow. And, in all schools across the country

•    Lobbying by our professional organization can be done from a higher moral ground. Our professional organizations are too often seen as self-serving, self-promoting. We "advocate" for technology use, for libraries, for schools. We should be advocating for students and the benefits that they will receive as a result of better technologies, better libraries, and better schools, and the result - students who are better prepared for 21st century work.

•    More educators may get politically involved. If ISTE and AASL lobby not just for dollars, but for standards, educators from schools that rarely, if ever, qualify for federal grants dollars might get excited about supporting us.

A mandated curriculum of IL/IT skills is not the perfect solution. Questions of funding, of equitable assessment and of prioritizing these skills with other basic skills can and should be asked. But after 30 years of ineffectually using charm to get all educators to take this 4th R seriously, it’s time to appeal to a higher power.