Texas STaR Chart Reveiw

I gathered data from the STaR chart results for Clear Lake High School in Clear Creek ISD for three years. There are four areas of measurement; Teaching & Learning, Educator Preparation, Administration & Support and Intrastructure. While each area is important for the examination of the success of technology advancements on a campus I will examine the area of Educator Preparation. According to the state standards 74.2% of all campuses reporting in 2007-2008 are at the Developing Tech level and 19.9% are at the Advanced Tech level. The advanced tech level adresses the integration of technology into teaching and learning and the regular use of online resources. On these campuses 60% of the educators meet SBEC standards and 20% to 25% of the budget is allocated for professional staff development around technology standards. Our campus was in the advanced tech level for all three of the years I examined the data. While I believe our district does a very good job encouraging the use of technology in the classroom, I see greater allocation of resources to equipment and support personnel than I do to teacher preparation and and development. What time and resources are dedicated to teacher training and development are done during a teacher's conference period which is not a time when the teacher can really focus on learning new task. I believe if our campus wants to move forward in this area, to the target tech level, we will need to make a more conscious decision to dedicate professional staff development days to teacher training in technology and to make that training appropriate to the level of the teacher's expertise. Our campus is very large and like most campuses we have teachers who love technology and are very tech savvy and we have those who muddle their way through. For a training to be effective you must meet the teacher where they are and move them forward, so some assessment of current level would be necessary before the training is developed and implemented.