STaR Chart

Technology in school districts is a job that most view as relatively easy, but in the last 5 years, I've seen our technology director become one of the major leaders at my district. With the constant changes in technology, school districts must stay on top of the changes. One way to help technology directors or coordinators see what educators think needs improvement is by taking a survey. On designed by the state to help rate target areas is the STaR Chart.

In looking through my districts 3 years of reports, I found that the area that consistently rates as an advanced tech is area 4, Infrastructure for Technology. For this area to qualify for advanced there must be 4 or less students per computer, direct connectivity to internet in 75% of classrooms, web-based learning, LAN/WAN, and one teacher per computer. In comparing our district with the state, 57.2% of educators in the state of Texas were qualified as advanced tech for Infrastructure for Technology.

One area that I did see within key area 4 that was rated consistently low over the past 3 years was Distance Learning Capacity. Our school district does not offer any courses that could be taken online. It could be beneficial to our school districts to look into what other surrounding school are offering to their students in terms of distance education. Two areas that I did see that rated consistently high were Internet Access Connectivity Speed and Local Area Network/Wide Area Network. In the past two years, our Technology directors has been working very hard to make sure our students can connect to the internet and download important videos and/or documents very quickly. Our LAN does at times slow down, but they are quick to get it back up.

The STaR Chart does a good job at showing the district and state what schools are doing to keep up with the changing times in the technology world.