VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

Advocacy

Help Make Broadband a Reality for Everyone

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Broadband is the backbone of a high skilled, high-tech economy. Access to broadband accelerates all of Virginia towards economic opportunity, 21st century education, advanced health care, enhanced safety and security and can lead to a better life for everyone in Virginia.

In an effort to expand high-speed Internet access across the state, Virginia Tech's eCorridors program has launched Accelerate Virginia, a new broadband mapping project.

You can help! By sparing just a few minutes of your time to take the Accelerate Virginia Internet speed test, you will help encourage the expansion of affordable broadband services throughout Virginia.

Visit http://www.acceleratevirginia.org/speedtest today to take the speed test and get an instant review of your Internet connection and survey results of what others in your zip code are reporting about their broadband services.

If you do not have access to high speed Internet, please report your broadband dead zone at:http://acceleratevirginia.org/contact/ Your participation will help encourage the expansion of affordable broadband services in Virginia.

VA General Assembly Update

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The 2015 Virginia legislative session begins Wednesday, January 14. VSTE is working with the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (VAASCD) to become better advocates for education at the state level.

IMPORTANT UPDATE January 28, 2015

As you know the General Assembly is in session. There seems to be renewed interest in keeping the A-F rating system for schools, even though we expected it to be repealed this year. In order to move forward towards a better accountability system, we really need A-F to be repealed.  There are two versions of bills circulating right now. Both acknowledge that we are working to redesign the accreditation system; one includes a specific repeal of A-F and one does not.

These bills are still in Committee right now; if your legislator is on one of the education committees, now is a very important time to drive this message home. If your legislator is not on one of the committees, it’s still worth it to make a call or send an email, and we will ask you to do so again later when the bill comes before the full House and Senate. When you make your call, reference House Bill 1672 or Senate Bill 727.

Important Points To Make In Your Call:
- the Innovation Committee and the Board of Education agree that the accreditation system should be revised to include additional levels.
- these groups are working now to determine what these levels should be; VASCD, our partner, supports a “ladder-like” system that will not only show the rating of a school, but also trends (progress measures), areas of strength and areas for improvement.
- assigning a single letter grade as a school’s accreditation rating defeats these moves toward a better system before they have even had time to be developed.

There is momentum across Virginia to develop alternative assessments that provide a variety of ways for students to demonstrate what they know and can do. House Bill 1675 provides an option (this would be decided and approved at the division level) for students to earn verified credits under certain circumstances with less than 140 clock hours of instruction or by demonstrating mastery of SOL content and skills using an alternative assessment. This bill grew out of a recommendation of the Innovation Committee, and this morning even a legislator who is a member of that committee expressed concern about letting local divisions substitute alternate assessments for SOLs.  VASCD supports this proposal, which did pass out of Committee this morning after a nail-biter of a debate!  Please ask your House member to support this bill, understanding that the state will have guidelines to ensure the quality of the alternate assessments. Basically, our position is that once students can demonstrate the skills and are solid on the content of a course, they should not be prevented from moving on to more challenging, interesting, or relevant material while they mark time and wait for the test date to arrive. Again, under this legislation this would be a local option, not a requirement.

You can find information about how to contact your legislator on the Advocacy page.

Statement on Net Neutrality

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Supporting the Open Internet

May 2, 2014

You may have been hearing quite a bit about “net neutrality” in recent days. Net Neutrality is the concept behind what is often called the open Internet, which means that all lawful content and providers should be afforded the same level of access. Governments, internet service providers and others would not be allowed to discriminate by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication by providing more robust access to particular companies or applications. Many people consider net neutrality to be a fundamental piece of the Internet architecture.

In the United States, the Internet is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Net neutrality is not a new issue. In 2006, Internet2, an organization of world wide leaders in innovation, spoke to the US Senate about this issue: http://www.internet2.edu/vision-initiatives/policy-issues/

Net neutrality has been in the headlines in the last few weeks because new rules are being proposed by the FCC in response to a federal court decision that struck down the Open Internet Order in 2010. FCC Chairperson Tom Wheeler outlined his intentions for these new rules in a statement in February 2014: http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheeler-fccs-open-internet-rules

Recently, the text of the new rules that will be considered at the May meeting of the FCC began to circulate. While they require a baseline level of service, they also appear to allow Internet Service Providers to provide preferential treatment to some Internet companies. Net neutrality advocates are concerned that these special deals may bar small companies and organizations from being able to compete in an increasingly web-based world thus possibly stifling innovation. In addition, they believe that any limitations on net neutrality could make access more difficult for poor and marginalized populations. Educause, ALA and ARL issued a joint letter to Chairman Wheeler earlier this year addressing their concerns:  http://www.districtdispatch.org/2014/02/ala-arl-educause-re-engage-fcc-network-neutrality/ They are primarily advocating for the FCC to change the classification of broadband to common carrier so it could be subject to requirements related to equitable access .

At this time, it is not clear what the impact of these changes might be on schools in terms of both access and cost.

The Virginia Society for Technology in Education supports efforts to ensure that the internet remains open as a source of content for schools, students and educators.  We encourage the FCC to evaluate the impact of the net neutrality regulations on schools as part of their upcoming discussions to ensure that students and teachers have access to the fastest, most robust network available at the lowest cost.

The FCC has established an inbox for comments related to these new rules, which will be considered on May 15.  Please take some time to review the resources above and provide your comments: http://www.fcc.gov/page/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-internet-comments