Congress Tackles Tech Ed Issue
     The lack of consensus on specifics has led the industry to generally support, but not actively lobby, Congress in its efforts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the nation's main education legislation targeted to low-income students. That act includes a number of targeted technology programs that currently are being fought over by House and Senate lawmakers in H.R. 4141 and S. 2, respectively. Democrats generally want to maintain targeted technology programs already in the law, while Republicans want to consolidate them into block grants for state and local education leaders.
     Most education groups have come out against the Republican proposals, saying they would stunt efforts to increase technology use in classrooms.
     Leslie Harris, an education lobbyist for Consortium on School Networking and the International Society for Technology in Education, said the House education technology bill would roll most of the targeted technology programs into block grants to the detriment of the programs.
     "There's a concern over whether we can build a national commitment to technology literacy if we do it in a balkanized way," Harris said.
     Republicans, however, say their proposal would give local school districts the chance to spend technology dollars where they most need them.
     "The big issue that separates the Republicans and Democrats will be control over those federal dollars," said Joe Karpinski, spokesman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in February when that panel voted along party lines to support the GOP-backed education bill. "Flexibility is important. Sometimes you might need hardware, and sometimes you might need training."
     It's that partisan fight that is keeping some companies on the sidelines of the federal education policy debate.
     "Most technology companies aren't wanting to get embroiled in that philosophical fight," said Julie Inman, Microsoft's federal government affairs manager for law and corporate affairs.
     Jenny Verdery, Intel's manager of education and workforce policy in Washington, DC, agreed, adding that her company and others in the industry want to focus on the issue of education rather than a fight over process.
     "It's very partisan," she said. "The whole issue of it being done one way or another is something we're not experts on."

Industry Crafts Solution
     Both Intel and Microsoft, along with other leading technology companies, are launching their own programs aimed at improving teacher technology training while Congress continues to fight over the best way to do it on a national level.
     Microsoft is donating $344 million in software and Intel is investing $100 million in cash for a three-year Teach to the Future program aimed at training 400,000 classroom teachers in 20 countries.
     Verdery said she hopes that programs like this, and others the industry is creating, will serve as models to federal leaders for what works in teacher training and student achievement.
     "We're taking it seriously," she said. "This should be a priority."
     While the federal government provides nearly 7 percent of education dollars to states and local school districts, nearly 25 percent of technology funding for K-12 students comes from Uncle Sam. That means the bulk of education dollars is coming out of state coffers.
     "Companies see more utility working at the state level and on their own projects," AEA's Stholer said. "That's where the money is. That's where the decisions are made—Olympia and Sacramento."
     Marjorie Bynum, vice president of workforce development for the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), said the industry is actively working on its own to develop training programs and create partnerships with local school districts as a way to build the IT workforce of the future. She said a number of ITAA members would rather work on their own to solve the problem than wait for a federal policy or program.
     "It's the whole culture of IT," she said. "They're used to addressing things right away. They can put their own millions into a project and not deal with a government grant program."
     Mark Schneiderman, director of federal education policy for the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA), said his group is one of the few tech associations on Washington to come out with a position on the ESEA reauthorization.
     "Obviously it's in the interest of business and industry to improve the education system," said Schneiderman, who came to SIIA two months ago from an education association, the Council of Chief State School Officers.
     SIIA supports the current federal technology programs as a way to leverage private dollars for the programs, but is urging some "surgical" consolidation of some programs rather than the GOP block grant approach.
     "We'd come out somewhere in the middle," Schneiderman said.
     Schneiderman said he understands industry's wariness about delving into the partisan education policy fight, and why it's been easier to organize around issues like Y2K liability reform and H1-B visas.
     "Whether it's industry or a trade association, they have only so much political capital and they have to prioritize," he said. "But if they're not active, they are missing some opportunity to do some good. We're hoping to make a positive impact on the federal level."

- by Rebecca S. Weiner