BATON ROUGE, La. – According to a recent report, Louisiana is a national leader in its application of technology to enhance both learning and teaching.

Education Week’s 2009 “Technology Counts” report gives Louisiana a perfect score of 100 and an A in its Use of Technology in the classroom. Eight other states – Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia – also earned perfect scores and therefore share the number one designation with Louisiana.

“Our student population is extremely comfortable with technology, and in fact is heavily reliant on technology to communicate and function in most areas of their life,” said State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek. “With that in mind, we are working to leverage the potential classroom applications that technology offers us as a resource for both teachers and students. We are pleased that the findings of the report validate our existing programs, and we will use this information to help guide future decisions and improvements around the use of technology to raise student achievement.”

To derive at each state’s grade in the Use of Technology, Education Week evaluated whether or not states had established a virtual school and if and to what degree states are including technology in student standards, testing students on technology and offering computer-based assessments. In the same category last year, Louisiana scored a 90 and was ranked 5th in the nation with 11 other states.

In the Capacity to Use Technology category, Louisiana earned a B grade. And along with 12 other states, Louisiana earned a score of 86.3 and ranked 4th behind Georgia, West Virginia and Kentucky. This is the same grade and ranking the state earned in this category last year, although the state’s 2009 score was slightly higher than its 2008 score of 86. The national average grade in the category for Capacity to Use Technology was a C-plus.

Policies evaluated under Capacity to Use Technology include: incorporating technology in teacher and administrator standards; including technology in initial teacher license requirements and initial administrator license requirements; including technology in teacher recertification requirements; and including technology in administrator recertification requirements. Louisiana has all of the policies in place with the exception of requiring technology in initial administrator licensing and teacher recertification.

A third category, Access to Technology, was not included in the 2009 edition of “Technology Counts” because of a lack of consistent data across all states. Therefore, overall grades and rankings were also discontinued this year. The access category may be updated in coming years to measure not only access to computers, but use of whiteboards, access to high-speed internet and other technology in classrooms. Last year, when the access category was still computed and overall rankings were determined, Louisiana was ranked 8th in the nation overall and earned a grade of B-.

The “Technology Counts” recognition is not the only acclamation Louisiana has received recently for technology in education. Late last year, the Center for Digital Education ranked the state’s virtual school 5th in the nation for its policies and practices for online learning. The Louisiana Virtual School was established more than nine years ago and has continued to build on the standards-based high school courses it initially offered – growing from 24 courses offered the first year to more than 60 courses this year.

“Computer technology will never take the place of a highly-qualified and supportive teacher, but used in an appropriate way, technology can undoubtedly enrich the educational experience of our students as well as the opportunities available to them,” Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Keith Guice said. “I am reassured by this report that we are utilizing technology in the right ways to benefit our students and support our teachers and staff.”

In addition to the perfect score Louisiana received for Use of Technology, some of the other significant findings in the report include:

• Louisiana is one of only 13 states that tests students on technology.
  
  
• The Louisiana Virtual School is one of 29 in the nation.
  
  
• Out of 50 states and Washington, D.C., Louisiana is one of 21 states that include technology in initial teacher license requirements.
  
  
• In 2007, 85 percent of school districts in the nation reported having interactive whiteboards. The 2008 “America’s Digital Schools”report, cited in “Technology Counts,”projects that by 2010 that statistic will have increased to 95 percent.
  
  
• The same report says 27 percent of school districts across the country had a 1:1 student to computer ratio for computing in 2007, but that number is projected to increase to 50 percent by 2010.
  
  
• In the United States, the number of K-12 public school students using online courses increased by 47 percent from the 2005-2006 school year to the 2007-2008 school year. More than 1 million students took an online course in 2007-2008. And, unlike years past, online, virtual courses are being targeted at advanced students and struggling students across the country.
  
  
• One of the biggest growth trends has been in the number of states that offer on line credit recovery for students who have failed or not completed a course needed for graduation. Louisiana is among the states offering credit recovery through virtual learning.

The “Technology Counts”report is available online at www.EdWeek.org.

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