- Policy Issues
- Design Issues
Policy Issues
- Background
- Strategic Issues
Sunnydale's Digital Divide
Sunnydale school district's superintendent, Jocelyn Harris, stared in dismay at the Sunday paper headline facing her; 'Sunnydale School District Creates a Digital Divide in Our City'. The story quoted statistics from the newly released MCAA (Michigan Criteria Achievement Assessment) that highlighted female and minority students under-performance in technology education. At first the scores didn't look bad; 15 of the 22 schools showed improvement over the previous years scores. However, a different picture emerged once the scores were separated by race and gender; all girls under-performed boys by 20 to 50 percentage points in the area of computer science; and when compounded with race, the statistics reflected a further disturbing dimension; African-American and Latino children trailed their counterparts by a 30 percentage point margin overall.
Public Outcry
In response to the heightened public pressure caused by the article, the School Board called an emergency meeting with the Superintendent to determine a solid course of action to address the gender and race gap issues both from short and long-term perspectives. Jocelyn's meeting with the School Board was tense. The School district had equipped all schools in the district with new, state of the art, multi-media equipment two year's ago. A private grant from a local corporation had funded the purchase and provided funds for the upkeep of the technology. However, now both the corporate funders and the public were demanding answers to address the lack of girls, and minority performance despite apparently equal access to the technology-rich classrooms. The School Board was looking to the Superintendent for answers as to what went wrong, and how to reverse this disturbing trend. The pressure was on Jocelyn to provide a concrete plan of action to address the School Board, the general public, including angry parents, and corporate funders who are threatening to withdraw their funding from the programs.Perplexing problem
Jocelyn was perplexed over the situation. She thought the schools were adapting to the new technology environment well. There were new courses in Advanced Computer Programming in each school. Teachers received a two-day, in-service training on how to integrate technology into their classrooms. After-school computer clubs were featured as extracurricular activities in most schools. Yet MCAA scores continued to reflect a decline in girls and African-American and Latino boys' overall enrollment in classes and higher-level achievement in computer science. Jocelyn told the Board she would hire a Harvard consultant to conduct an independent review of the school district to assess the situation. They will report back to the Board with recommendations on the appropriate course of action.
