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February 1999
News of U.S. Educational Technology Policy and Legislation
provided by the
International Society for Technology in Education.
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Compiled, written, and edited by
Phil Ugelow,
Leslie Harris, and
Adeena
Colbert.
Copyright ISTE, 1999.
If you use excerpts, credit ISTE. |
Contents
1999 E-Rate Deadline extended
With many schools and libraries across the country still waiting to receive
their funding commitments for the 1997-98 E-Rate program, and the deadline for
the next cycle of E-Rate funds looming, the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD),
which administers the program, has extended the application window until 11:59
PM on April 6,1999. That means that 1999 applicants submit their initial requests
(Form 470) by March 9th at the latest. Because the SLD requires a 28 day waiting
period between receiving Form 470 requests and the submission of the complete
application (form 471), applicants should seek to get their form 470s in before
March 9th, preferably by March 5th so that applicants can be assured of completing
the process on time and minimizing the risk of paperwork delaying their applications.
States and School Districts Lobby SLD To Extend Expenditure Deadline
E-Rate participants around the country have called on the Schools and Libraries
Division (SLD), the FCC, and the Vice President to extend the June 30 deadline
by which 1998 E-Rate funds must be spent. Because congressional intervention
has delayed the disbursement of funds, schools and libraries are asking for
an extension on the expenditure deadline, which was set in the expectation of
funding becoming available long ago. Particularly at risk are funds for internal
connections, which as of now have to be spent by June 30th. If the deadline
is not extended, E-Rate participants will have less than 5 months to use their
new funding in its entirety - and may not be able to allocate funding towards
projects that must be completed over the summer. By all accounts, the FCC is
taking this issue seriously. Chairman Kennard has directed the Universal Service
Bureau to write new rules for consideration by the full Commission that would
extend the deadline at least for internal connections from three to six months.
It is not clear when the FCC will consider and issue the order.
SLD Releases More Commitment Letters
The SLD released its largest wave of funding commitment letters thus far in
January, issuing almost 4,500 commitments alone in Wave Five of the notification
process. The SLD has already sent commitments to more than 13,000 applicants,
totaling over $427 million in funds for schools and libraries across the country.
This latest wave of notifications includes at least $120 million for internal
connections for the neediest applicants, and overall, more than 85% of the funds
committed in this wave will benefit the schools and libraries that qualify for
the greatest discounts. The SLD is preparing two more waves for imminent release,
as well as others that could be sent later in the month.
SBC Withdraws From Universal Service Lawsuit
Two of the three primary plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the legality
of the FCC's universal service program have now withdrawn their appeal from
the case. Telecommunications giant SBC chose to remove itself from the lawsuit
in late December, just weeks after co-plaintiff BellSouth also decided to withdraw
its appeal. GTE remains the lone telco left in the lawsuit, which is still pending
before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Although SBC and BellSouth
have withdrawn their objections to the E-Rate program itself, they continue
to argue in the suit that all universal service subsidies are an illegal tax.
Along with GTE and CellPage, the four telco's are still planning to fight this
issue in court. GTE however is now alone in raising specific legal objections
to the E-Rate program.
Representatives To Offer Legislation Ending E-Rate
On January 26, freshman Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) circulated a joint
Dear Colleague
letter with Reps. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Ed Royce (R-CA) promising
to introduce
the "E-Rate Termination Act," legislation that would end the subsidy
program
that provides affordable telecommunications to more than 30,000
schools and
libraries across the country.
The letter describes the E-Rate as a "backdoor tax" and appears
aimed at garnering
cosponsors for the proposed bill. The E-Rate Termination Act would
eliminate
the program in its entirety. The legislation's backers contend that
the existing
Department of Education funding for technology could replace E-Rate
subsidies,
yet they do not propose expanding the Department of Education's budget
to compensate
for these new expenditures.
More troubling, however, is the joint effort of Sen. Conrad Burns
(R-MO) and
Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA) to replace funding for the E-Rate program
with a percentage
of the federal excise tax. While the bill is has not yet been
introduced, it
seems clear that the influential lawmakers plan to offer legislation
that would
halve the excise tax and dedicate the remaining $2 billion to E-Rate
subsidies.
Opponents of this legislation argue that any attempt to shift the funding
structure of the E-Rate will inevitably result in future budget cuts for the
program. Moreover, the bill restructures the E-rate into a grants program run
by the Commerce Department and directs that the program start over in determining
eligiblity and covered services, a move that opponents argue would throw the
recently revamped program into chaos.
U.S. Department of Education Releases Technology Evaluation Guidelines
The U.S. Department of Education recently released a handbook to help administrators
and educators assess the impact of new technologies in the classroom. The 100-page
manual entitled "An Educator's Guide to Evaluating the Use of Technology in
Schools & Classrooms" is designed for those who have little or no formal training
in research or evaluation. It addresses questions about the integration of technology,
collection of data on Internet use, and resources for further study. The complete
guide can be found online at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdTechGuide/.
Copyright Office Holds Hearing on Distance Learning; More Hearings To
Follow
The U.S. Register of Copyrights held its first hearing on potential
new copyright
exemptions for distance learning in late January. As part of the
Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, the Copyright Office was instructed by Congress to
study whether
any changes in copyright law should be made to "promote distance
education through
digital technologies." At issue is whether current copyright laws ---
which
now provides some exemption for distance learning through video, ought
be updated
to include copyrighted material used in distance learning that is
distributed
through digital networks.
At the hearings, library and education representatives argued that
this "modernization"
is necessary for any practical distance learning program to be
possible, whereas
industry representatives maintained that the ease and availability of
licensing
for copyrighted materials eliminates any need for new legislation.
Education
representatives, however, noted that the distance learning exemption
has long
been based on Congress' belief in balancing copyright protection with
educators'
needs - not on the unavailability of educational materials for
purchase or licensing.
The Copyright Office will hold further hearings in Los Angeles and in Chicago
on February 12. Any parties interested in submitting comments to the Copyright
Office should do so by February 5, and replies to those comments can be submitted
as late as February 24. All testimony and written comments will be available
at the Copyright Office web site, http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/disted/.
McCain Introduces New Filtering Legislation
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC) have jointly
introduced
legislation that would require the use of filtering or blocking
software at
any school or library that receives E-Rate discounts. Dubbed the
Children's
Internet Protection Act (S. 97), this bill seems strikingly similar to
S. 1619,
legislation that Sen. McCain failed to pass in the last Congress.
Under this legislation, libraries would be required to use filtering
software
on one or more computers, ensuring that at least one computer is
"appropriate
for minor's use." Schools, on the other hand, would be compelled to
install
a blocking system on all computers. Schools or libraries that do not
comply
will no longer be eligible to receive any universal service discounts
for Internet
access.
S. 97 would grant local school and library administrators the authority to
choose which filtering or blocking software is most appropriate for their community
standards - a provision that the educational community has adamantly demanded.
Furthermore, it mandates that the federal government will have no authority
to make qualitative judgements about the software that administrators choose
or the content they decide to filter. While the consensus among the educational
community is that no federal mandates are needed, many have argued that if Congress
were to pass any legislation at all, it should call for the creation of local
use policies (LUPs) instead of the sweeping federal mandate that McCain and
Hollings propose. Rep. Bob Franks (R-NJ) also introduced a similar bill in the
House of Representatives this week.
Judge Blocks Enforcement of COPA
A federal judge in Philadelphia issued a last minute preliminary
injunction
against the Justice Department, again blocking enforcement of the
Child Online
Protection Act (COPA). The February 1 decision prevents the
legislation, fashioned
after the 1996 Communications Decency Act (which was overturned by the
Supreme
Court), from being enforceable until the court makes a ruling on its
constitutionality.
Although COPA was written more narrowly than the CDA, many argued
that the
bill would have enormous first amendment ramifications - and could
possibly
prevent minors from accessing web sites that focused on sex education,
breast
cancer, or other potentially "explicit" educational information.
Preliminary
injunctions, such as this, usually signal that there is a strong
likelihood
that the challenge will succeed in court.
The full text of the decision is available online at http://www.cdt.org/speech/copa/990201ACLUvsRENOdecision.shtml.
President Clinton Announces FY 2000 Education Budget
In late January, the White House released President Clinton's FY
2000 Budget
Request including proposed changes to the nation's educational budget.
President
Clinton will ask Congress for a 3.7% increase in overall education
spending
for the year 2000.
This budget represents a significant increase in spending on many
educational
initiatives - including the use of technology in classrooms - but also
eliminates
and reduces many established programs.
In FY 2000, federal technology funding will top $800 million for the
first
time - a 15% increase from last year's budget. New programs for
technology include
middle school teacher training, software development, and technology
implementation
in reading and math. Other non-technology beneficiaries include school
modernization
and construction costs, class size reduction initiatives, adult
education, community
learning centers, and incentives to improve standards at
low-performance schools.
The budget, however, does terminate the Title VI innovative strategies program,
reduces support for libraries and Impact Aid, limits funding for new Title I
programs, and freezes funding beneath inflation levels for a variety of state
and federal grant programs. The FY 2000 budget also calls for limited increases
in student loans, falling far short of the maximum authorization for programs
like Pell grants.
White House Announces Plans For Digital Library
President Clinton unveiled a $30 million initiative to create a national library
of texts, images, multimedia, and other resources that will be available online.
The digital library will be divided into three components: America's Treasures
Online, a collection of national artifacts and records from the Smithsonian
and National Park Service; Digitizing the classics and museums online, a record
of renowned literary and artistic works in the public record; and the Digital
Library for Math and Science Education, an initiative including tools for students
and teacher, as well as interactive educational content for math and science
studies. The Administration hopes to partner with corporations, libraries, museums,
and foundations to supplement funding for the project.
The Latest Modem Tax Scare
For the last few months the Internet has been buzzing with talk of
skyrocketing
prices for Internet service because of a recent FCC decision that
changes the
way telephone calls for Internet use are classified. Fortunately for
consumers,
these rumors are overblown. This reclassification will affect very few
Internet
users, and it should not raise the bills of residential customers.
Essentially, the FCC decided that it makes more sense to classify
telephone
calls to Internet providers as interstate calls instead of local phone
calls.
The FCC made this distinction to ensure equity in competition for
local phone
markets, not to create any additional "taxes" for consumers. Current
FCC rules
mandate that when a customer of a local phone company calls a friend
who lives
across town (and uses another phone company), the caller's phone
company must
pay the recipient's phone company a fee to complete the call. This
arrangement
is called reciprocal compensation, and it works quite well as long as
there
is traffic going both ways.
Today, with growing numbers of calls being made to Internet
providers (ISPs),
some local phone companies have found ways to manipulate these FCC
rules to
make large profits at the expense of other local telcos. Because ISPs
receive
significantly more calls than they make, a local phone company that
serves an
ISP is allowed to charge a fee to the other phone companies whose
customers
subscribe to that ISP. For example, if phone company B serves an ISP,
but all
the ISP's users are customers of phone company A, phone company A ends
up making
large payments to phone company B. Needless to say, phone company A
isn't likely
to be very pleased with the arrangement.
By reclassifying calls to phone company B's ISP customer as
interstate traffic,
however, those calls are no longer subject to reciprocal compensation
rules.
Instead, phone company A and phone company B must work out a
different, more
equitable relationship, (hopefully) fairly compensating one another.
So what effect will this have on consumers? Well, if you're like 99% of us,
there's no competition in your area for local phone service anyway, so it's
not an issue. If you are in an area with competitive phone service, your competitive
local exchange carriers' rates may rise slightly. However, contrary to the rumor
mill, you should not be forced to pay interstate charges to make that local
call to your ISP.
Prepared by Leslie Harris, Adeena Colbert, and Phil Ugelow
On behalf of the International Society for Technology in Education.
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