Over the past two years, the CEO Forum on Education & Technology has focused on helping K-12 educators understand, plan for, and assess their progress in integrating technology into their schools. The 1999 Year 2 report, Professional Development: A Link to Better Learning, included a series of recommendations to help ensure that teachers are well prepared to guide today's students to future success. While several recommendations in that report focused on continuing professional development of teachers, the very first recommendation highlighted the importance of building a strong foundation of technology expertise in the initial preparation of all new teachers. Their most recent product, The Teacher Preparation STaR Chart for schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs) is an outgrowth of those recommendations.

The CEO Forum reports that currently less than half of the nation's teacher preparation institutions require students to design and deliver instruction using technology. Even fewer require technology use in the student teaching experience. Less than half of the faculty in teacher preparation programs incorporate effective use of technology in their courses.

A 1996 study by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) found that in most SCDEs, the ratio of students to computers is approximately 10 to 1, higher than the 7 to 1 ratio in higher education overall and the 6 to 1 ratio now found in K-12 schools. Faculty have better access to a computer but still not every full-time faculty member in SCDEs has access. Furthermore, while close to 11 percent of higher education institutions require or strongly recommend PC ownership for students in specific disciplines or programs, less than 2 percent of those SCDEs responding to the AACTE survey require that their teacher education students purchase a computer.

In 1998, the Campus Computing Project (www.campuscomputing.net) conducted the National Survey of Information Technology in Higher Education that targeted chief technology officers (CTOs) at two-and four-year colleges and universities across the country. These results provide another assessment of technology in teacher preparation programs. When asked to compare their information technology components in programs across their campuses, CTOs ranked their education programs high in some areas, but near the bottom in others:

* Use of technology for scholarship and research: 2 out of 10;

* Use of Internet and Web resources: 6 out of 10;

* Use of technology for instruction: 7 out of 10; and

* Preparing their students with the technology skills needed over the next decade: 7 out of 10.

Concerned by this documented lack of technology preparedness in today's teacher education programs, the CEO Forum developed an assessment tool that would help teacher preparation programs chart a new course. The Teacher Preparation STaR Chart:

* Provides teacher preparation programs with a set of benchmarks they can use to measure their progress in integrating technology into their programs;

* Offers explicit goals that SCDEs are encouraged to strive towards as they move from "Early Tech" to "Advanced Tech;" and

* Draws national attention to the need for programs, policies, and funding to ensure that all teachers entering the classroom are competent and confident in their ability to use technology effectively to support student learning.