National Education Technology Plan

The Obama administration has set out to improve our learning outcomes in schools by focusing on the use of technology to achieve student readiness for college or a career path. The plan has 5 main goals: Learning, Assessment, Technology, Infrastructure, Productivity. The purpose of these goals are to improve our percentage of college graduates from 39% to 60% and to prepare all graduating high school students for college or careers. The goals themselves outline the path in which the United States hopes to achieve the college graduate and high school readiness goals. The intention of the plan is to improve and enhance the way we use technology to teach our students. By using technology to improve learning we can help students to be prepared for careers that involve technology or college preparation in which students will use technology for higher education. The use of formative assessment will also be directly linked to the technology plan in both the ways we administer assessments and the data that results from these assessments. Technology will provide avenues for assessments to be taken online and that data can be directly uplinked for grading and analyzing. The infrastructure will also need continuous improvement as the U.S. prepares to improve on the connectivity for student learning across the country. The result of these efforts will hopefully bring about more productivity as far as jobs and economic profitablility is concerned. The unfortunate issue that we face as is noted in the plan is the funding for projects such as this. We are in difficult times and it takes federal and state dollars to accomplish a task as large as this plan. It is imperative that we find ways to fund initiatives such as the NETP so that we can stay on the cutting edge of educational excellence.