School Technology And Readiness Case Study

The School Technology and Readiness (STaR) chart (see Appendix A) was created by the Texas Education Administration in 2004 in response to technology requirements as set forth in No Child Left Behind, Title II, Part D. The STaR chart was designed to help schools identify areas in which to improve technology use, help determine professional development needs, assist with long-range planning, and determine technology funding priorities (Texas Education Agency, 2006). The STaR chart requires schools to self-report technology use in four key areas: teaching and learning, professional development, school leadership, and technology infrastructure. Scores are reported on a scale of 1-4: early tech (1), developing tech (2), advanced tech (3), or
target tech (4). Each key area is broken into six subcategories, which are defined below. Scores from the individual subcategories are added together to provide an overall score for each key task area. The overall score for each key task area is compared to the Key Area Ratings Range and each campus receives an overall rating of early tech, developing tech, advanced tech, or target tech in each key area. Technology use.
Key Task Area One is composed of six sub-categories: patterns of classroom use (1), frequency/design of instructional setting using digital content (2), content area connections (3), technology applications TEKS implementation (4), student mastery of technology applications TEKS (5), and online learning (6). Professional development. Key Task Area Two is composed of six sub-categories: content of professional development (1), models of professional development (2), capabilities of educators (3), access to professional development (4), levels of understanding and patterns of use (5), and professional development for online learning (6). School leadership. Key Task Area Three is composed of six sub-categories: leadership and vision (1), planning (2), instructional support (3), communication and collaboration (4), budget (5), and leadership and support for online learning (6). Technology infrastructure. Key Task Area Four is composed of six sub-categories: students per computers (1), Internet access speed (2), other classroom technology (3), technical support (4), local area network (5), and distance learning capacity
(6).
Data Collection
This study utilizes previously collected, publicly accessible data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA.
The specific data set accessed was the 2013-2014 Texas Campus Technology and Readiness Data (STaR). The 2013-2014 campus level data is the most recent, comprehensive data set available. Starting in the 2014-2015 school year, the STaR Chart became optional, and many schools have chosen to not report technology use to the state. Therefore, to ensure a non-biased sample, the 2013-2014 data set was used. Data was downloaded as a delimited file and imported into Microsoft Excel. Data was then sorted so any incomplete data sets could be identified and removed. Once all incomplete data sets were removed, data was imported into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), to be
analyzed.
Data Coding After the 2013-2014 STaR data was obtained, it was imported into Microsoft Excel so incomplete data sets could be identified and removed. Incomplete data sets were defined as any campus with a missing score in one or more key areas. The filter function in Microsoft Excel was used to display all campuses that had missing data in any key task category. One thousand seventy-eight campuses had missing data and were deleted. Data from the remaining 7,557 campuses was imported into SPSS to be recoded and analyzed. The overall scores in each of the four key task areas were initially reported in numerical values ranging from 6to 26. STaR chart guidelines state that key area totals should be used to determine the overall level of technology use for each of the four areas based on the Key Area Rating Ranges defined by TEA. The Key Area Rating Ranges are: early tech (6-8), developing tech (9-14), advanced tech (15-20), and target tech (21-24) (Texas Education Agency, 2016). The recode function of SPSS was used to convert key task area raw scores to one of the four technology levels. The data coding process is shown in Figure 2.