ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the state of educational technology. It argues that educational technology poses challenges of two primary types. First, there is the "profound problem" of technology. The second problem is that scholars lack ideal mechanisms for evaluating and deploying educational technology. Race to the Top initiative (RTTT) was a $4.35-billion-dollar competitive federal grant program designed to encourage states to enact innovative educational reform. One of the unfortunate aspects of RTTT was that it unleashed an array of complex technological changes into schools more or less simultaneously. The most significant of these was the widespread adoption of: the Common Core State Standards (CCSS); standardized tests aligned to the Common Core; new teacher evaluation tools that often used Value-Added Modeling (VAM); and longitudinal data management systems. RTTT's promotion of VAM in teacher evaluations has now been thoroughly critiqued on both scientific and political grounds.
