Progress Report on the Long-Range Plan for Technology: 2010

Texas uses the STaR (School Technology and Readiness) chart to monitor the progress of school technology implementation and application as a way to improve student proficiency and achievement. The domains include: Teaching and Learning, Educator Professional Development, Leadership/Administration Support, and Infrastructure. Additionally, this report summarizes the activities and progress of the Educational Service Centers (ESCs) across the state toward helping schools improve technology application.
For the Teaching and Learning domain, most schools are in the developing stage, but there are drastic improvements from 2009 in the advanced stage. These improvements are, in part, a result of the availability of grant money for districts/schools to use for teacher training so they can more effectively use technology in their classroom and provide various forms of support for students. Additionally, programs like TxVSN have helped students access school content outside of the school and helped with the proliferation of distance learning opportunities.
Educator professional development has improved slightly over the past year as well. Most schools are in the developing stage, but have shown improvements and increases in the advanced stage as well. ESCs have done a great job of providing increasingly relevant professional development opportunities for teachers to effectively integrate technology into lesson delivery and assessment. Also, collaboration training through programs such as Project Share have increased teacher resources to help with technology implementation.
In the domain of Leadership/Administrative support, most schools have progressed into the advanced stage and over the last year shown increased numbers in the target area.