Thomas Sawyer: “Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Boehner-Miller amendment and I urge my colleagues to consider the crucial…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Boehner-Miller amendment and I urge my colleagues to consider the crucial importance of ensuring that students have access to tools of learning that have the greatest potential for increasing student achievement. The capabilities of educational technology are practically limitless. Just 20 years ago, schools were organized around the mastery of basic skills. Today, that is simply not enough to keep pace with the rapid pace of change. To learn the kind of skills they will need in the future, students need to synthesize and analyze vast amounts of information. They need to learn how to keep learning. They will not be able to do that with today's textbooks, and although the delivery of updated curriculum through textbooks is improving, they will never have the power--and the relevance to the lives of students--that educational technology does. The measure I sponsored in H.R. 6 recognizes a simple reality--that is, if we are going to require that students meet world-class content and performance standards, they ought to have the tools they need to meet them. Students and schools do not have those tools now: More than 50 percent of computers in classrooms are 5 years old, which means they cannot process video or graphic information. Only 10 percent of teachers have a phone line in their classroom. Only 4 percent have modems which link computers with phone lines.”