Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Major

Education

Major Professor

Mary Jane Connelly

Committee Members

Norma Mertz, Lloyd Davis, David Brodsky

Abstract

This study examined the impact of major technology funding, specifically the 1995 Georgia Innovative Technology Grants, on English and mathematics standardized achievement scores on the Georgia High School Graduation Tests. The study tracked, over three years, the scores of 11,083 eleventh-grade students, in four high schools that received innovative technology grants of more than $100,000 and in 12 similar high schools that did not receive such major technology funding, comparing one group with the other. The study evaluated instructional technology funding based on objective, validated measures of academic achievement that are recognized and understood by policymakers who allocate educational funding to schools. The study made no attempt to evaluate grant program goals or software effectiveness. Study strengths included a large number of students, diverse student populations from 16 high schools in 15 systems across the state of Georgia, the use of a pre-test to compare experiment results, and the use of a control group to compare experiment results. The study found no significant difference in test scores among schools in the year prior to funding through the innovative technology grants. The difference in the means of English test scores between the experimental group and the control group grew significantly in the first two years of technology funding, ending in the third year of the study with a significant t value of .003. There was no statistically significant finding that technology funding made a difference in the math scores in the experimental group after two years of technology funding. The main conclusion of the study was that technology funding appears to make a significant positive difference in English achievement test scores after two years, but makes no significant difference in mathematics achievement test scores after two years of technology funding. Recommendations included extending the study for another three years to determine if future results support this study's conclusions; conducting a study of instructional technology goals in the experimental schools; conducting a study in the same schools, looking at the type of technology used and the software application(s) applied to the experiment; conducting a study of cohort groups over a similar period of time, using both experimental and control schools in the study; looking at specific populations within these schools to see the differences in scores among special needs' groups such as gifted, English to Speakers of Other Languages, and special education; looking at ethnic groups within these schools to see the differences in scores by ethnicity; studying the effectiveness of state curriculum-based "exit" tests; conducting a similar study to look at technology funding in relation to SAT scores; conducting a longitudinal study of cohort groups using the Georgia-required, nationally normed Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) in the third, fifth, and eighth grades; and, conducting a similar study including the science and social studies portions of the Georgia High School Graduation Tests, beginning in 1996-97, the first year individual student scores were available in both these areas.

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