Date: March 30, 2021
To: Ohio Department of Education
From: Katie Ritter
Subject: Allocate ESSER Funding to Instructional Technology Coaches
Executive Summary:
There is a severe shortage of support for K12 educators in Ohio regarding technology integration and training in the classroom. Teachers need more job-embedded training through coaching to ensure they understand and apply shifts in pedagogy to provide meaningful opportunities for their students to engage with technology. Ohio schools received $489 million during the first round of ESSER funding in April 2020 and another $1.99 billion in ESSER II funds in January 20211,2. The state should allocate enough ESSER funds for every school district to hire a full time (30+ hours per week) technology integration coach for every 150 teachers and require districts to provide ongoing professional development to their integration coaches.
Context:
The digital use divide is the increasing disparity in how students are using technology. Some students are merely passively consuming information through their devices, while others have opportunities to actively create original products, connect with the world around them, and gain access to much-needed assistive technologies.3 The digital use divide was already a serious problem in schools across the world prior to COVID-19 global school closures, and COVID-19 has exacerbated the lack of teacher preparedness when using technology even at a basic level. Providing teachers with access to technology integration coaches will help close the digital use divide. School leaders know this is important, yet many districts still do not provide this support position.
Technology integration coaches are often confused with IT helpdesk support, yet the roles are dramatically different in the same way your driving instructor and car mechanic serve two completely different roles. One teaches you how to use the tools when it’s working, and the other builds it and fixes it when it breaks. It is paramount that all teachers in Ohio receive access to both IT support and regular technology integration support for instruction.
Ohio has approximately 108,000 teachers across 610 districts,4 but there is no information regarding the number of technology coaches across the state anywhere on the Ohio Department of Education’s website. Most districts only have one part or full time technology coach, if they have a coach at all. We can roughly estimate that there are no more than 610 technology coaches across the state, keeping in mind many school districts operate without a technology coach.
When schools do provide a technology integration coach, they often move a tech-savvy teacher into the role without providing them any professional learning opportunities around coaching, working with adult learners, or clarifying their role expectations. This leaves coaches unclear about their job responsibilities, ill-equipped to support adult learners, and left to find all of their own professional learning opportunities outside of the district5. When coaches are provided with training and support specific to their role, their impact is amplified across the educators they serve.
Analysis:
Instructional coaching is one of the most impactful forms of professional development that results in improved teacher instruction and student achievement in a K12 setting6. As the former President of ISTE’s Edtech Coaches PLN, a Future Ready Schools Instructional Coaches Thought Leader, and someone who oversees a team of 14 Instructional Technology Coaches in Southeast Ohio, I see firsthand how dramatically an instructional technology coach improves classroom instruction through job-embedded support and professional development. Digital Promise recently found that 90% percent of technology coaches are being used more during the pandemic than ever before.7
Ohio received $2.48 billion in the past two rounds of ESSER funding and anticipates another $4.7 billion in ESSER III funds after the recent passing of H.R.1319. This totals $7.18 billion infused into education systems across the state of Ohio in less than a year and a half. Instructional technology coaches fit categories G, N, and K of the ESSER fund guidelines.
The average teacher salary of $59,713 from 2019-208 will be used here to estimate costs of coaches due to the lack of data around coaches salaries. If employee benefits are calculated at 30% of the coaches salary, the loaded cost of an instructional technology coach can be estimated at $77,626 per year.
If the state were to direct funds to support a technology integration coach for every 150 teachers across the state, it would only be $55.9 million of the $7.8 billion in received funds. That is less than 1% of all funds received.
Providing coaches with ongoing professional learning opportunities can take many forms. Research shows that an opportunity to network with other experienced educators is particularly helpful for those who have mastered a skill set, such as instructional coaches.9,10 The best way to connect coaches to other coaches would be to pay for membership to professional organizations, such as ISTE, and send them to local, state, and national conferences. This type of ongoing professional learning for a coach would cost approximately $10,000 per year.
The alternative is to allow districts not to fund a technology integration coach position, or ensure their coaches are provided with high quality instruction. This will result in continued inequitable experiences in the classroom for students, which will ultimately result in an under-prepared workforce, leaving the highest paying jobs unfulfilled within our communities across the great state of Ohio. Providing well-prepared technology coaches is the most cost effective way to ensure we close the digital use divide in Ohio.
Conclusion:
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) needs to allocate $55.9 million upon receiving ESSER III funds to provide one technology integration coach for every 150 teachers across the state. Additionally, ODE should require districts to provide their technology coaches with high quality professional learning directly related to their work as an instructional coach. This funding should be seen as a long term investment in the growth and development of all educators in the state. This will ensure we close the digital use divide in Ohio and provide all our students with equitable opportunities in the classroom.
References
1. Ohio Department of Education: CARES Act funding. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Reset-and-Restart/CARES-Act-Funding
2. US Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education: Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://oese.ed.gov/offices/education-stabilization-fund/elementary-secondary-school-emergency-relief-fund
3. National Education Technology Plan: Learning. (2015, December 10). Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://tech.ed.gov/netp/learning
4. Ohio Department of Education: Facts and figures. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from http://education.ohio.gov/Media/Facts-and-Figures
5, 10. Stoetzel, L., & Shedrow, S. (2020). Coaching our coaches: How online learning can address the gap in preparing K-12 instructional coaches. Teaching and Teacher Education, 88.
6. Kraft, B. (2018). The Effect of Teacher Coaching on Instruction and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 547–588.
7. COVID-19 and the Value of Edtech Coaches. (2020, August 11). Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://digitalpromise.org/2020/08/11/covid-19-and-the-value-of-edtech-coaches/?fbclid=IwAR05_wo8KCK0t8J5z5kMMYgwkgmNBv712g2YB5MAhTo5gQm7IBH9vyN_2Pg
8. National Center for Education Statistics: Digest of Education Statistics (2020, September). Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.asp.
9. Frank, K.A., Zhao, Y., Penuel, W., Ellefson, N., and Porter, S. (2011). Focus, Fiddle, and Friends: Experiences that Transform Knowledge for the Implementation of Innovations. Sociology of Education, 84(2), 137–156.