JOINT MEETING HOUSE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES STANDING COMMITTEE SENATE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES STANDING COMMITTEE March 20, 1997 3:05 p.m. HOUSE MEMBERS PRESENT Representative Con Bunde, Chairman Representative Joe Green, Vice Chairman Representative Al Vezey Representative Fred Dyson Representative J. Allen Kemplen Representative Tom Brice HOUSE MEMBERS ABSENT Representative Brian Porter SENATE MEMBERS PRESENT None SENATE MEMBERS ABSENT Senator Gary Wilken, Chairman Senator Loren Leman, Vice Chairman Senator Lyda Green Senator Jerry Ward Senator Johnny Ellis COMMITTEE CALENDAR PRESENTATION: EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY PREVIOUS ACTION No previous action to record WITNESS REGISTER Alan C. November, Senior Partner Educational Renaissance Planners P.O. Box 812380 Wellesley, MA 02181 Telephone: (847) 475-3250 POSITION STATEMENT: Provided information on education technology. ACTION NARRATIVE TAPE 97-20, SIDE A Number 0001 CHAIRMAN CON BUNDE called the joint meeting of the House/Senate Health, Education and Social Services Standing Committees to order at 3:05 p.m. House committee members present at the call to order were Representatives Bunde, Green, Dyson, and Kemplen. Representatives Vezey and Brice arrived at 3:08 p.m. and 3:11 p.m., respectively. Members absent were Representative Porter. Chairman Bunde noted the absence of all Senate committee members due to a legislative caucus. CHAIRMAN BUNDE announced the first order of business was a briefing on educational technology by Alan C. November. Number 0067 ALAN C. NOVEMBER, Senior Partner, Educational Renaissance Planners, opened his remarks by stating that approximately a year ago he conducted a three-hour workshop on the same topic at the National Speakers of the House Conference, where their number one issue was "What is the Intersection of Education Technology and the Economy." He announced that he would focus his remarks on what has happened in the economy in terms of technology and skills, as well as how education technology can help position the state of Alaska to be competitive in the global economy. Number 0217 MR. NOVEMBER referred to a cover story from the September 19, 1994, issue of Fortune Magazine entitled "The End of the Job." The jist of the story is that a hundred years ago, 80 percent of the population in the United States lived and worked on farms but today, it is down to 1.9 percent. Technology - the tractor and other accompanying agriculture technologies - surplused most of the people in the economy the United States used to have. The tractor salesmen probably didn't understand that the very tool they were going to sell to the farmers was going to wipe out the community and send the children away from the farm. Most likely people didn't understand what was going on while it was happening. Only now in hindsight can the pattern be put together and it's still going on. He explained that last year, John Deere put global positioning satellite technology on their tractors. This will eliminate the need for the farmer to drive the tractor around the field because the satellite will know exactly where it is at and will move itself. Number 0312 MR. NOVEMBER noted that Fortune Magazine says there is currently enough technology in the United States to do to the job what the tractor did to the farmer. He shared that in the 1970s, IBM built a 50-story tower in Chicago for 10,000 workers. A few months ago, 80 percent of the 4,000 people left were told to go home and that IBM was selling the building. He interviewed the personnel director to find out what the impact is on people when told the building is going to be sold, the structure of work is being taken away, and they have to go home. Number 0380 CHAIRMAN BUNDE asked Mr. November to clarify what he meant by "have to go home." MR. NOVEMBER responded the people were still employed, but would work at home. He explained that IBM has a profit motive, besides quality and it has been their experience that when people are sent home to work, productivity goes up between 20 percent and 100 percent for the people who can make that transition. However, there are a number of well-educated, highly-successful people who become paralyzed when told the organization where they have worked is being taken away and they have to become self-directed, self-managed and int year, it will be the policy of the Motorola Corporation to move 40 percent of their workers in Chicago home. Number 0461 MR. NOVEMBER encouraged committee members to think about the impact of technology on society. He asked, "Is this end-of-the-job concept real? Is it possible that IBM and Motorola -- and by the way, you can throw in AT&T, also -- is it possible that we really do have enough technology so that an overwhelming majority of people in the United States are not going to be embedded in a higher (indisc.) structure of work, but will be required by the global economy to be independent, self-directed, self-managed and responsible for the quality of their own work? And I'm here to make the case that this is at least good enough to criticize - and I actually believe it.... The end of the job is why I think we've got to take a good, hard look at schools and technology." MR. NOVEMBER referred to an overhead and said that in 1973, 16 percent of 18- to 24-year-old individuals could not earn a sustainable job of $14,483, inflation adjusted to 1993. In 1994, that number jumped from 16 percent to 41 percent. He asked how many committee members knew of an 18- to 24-year-old person living at home. He noted there were plenty of jobs available in the service economy, but the problem is that many of those jobs are low-waged. Research indicates that 80 percent of emerging jobs will not require a university degree, but more than high school; e.g., community college, technical college, et cetera. However, around the Chicago area, 37 percent of all students enrolled in community colleges already have a university degree; the national average is 30 percent. He suggested that committee members research the statistics for Alaska, as he didn't think the Alaska State Legislature wanted to support higher education at the university level and then pay to educate kids again at the community college level. He said it wasn't originally set up that way, but because the economy has changed, community colleges in the United States tend to be much more responsive to changes in the economy than the university system. Number 0714 MR. NOVEMBER referred to a book published by an organization of national superintendents which states that "truly educated people of the next century will not apply for a job." This is a departure from what was said a few years ago. He said there is a problem however, and explained that schools are designed to prepare children to eventually get a job by telling them what to do, when to do it, where to do it and how well they're doing it. Because of the changes in the global economy, people who can create their own work now have an increasing window of economic opportunity and people who have only been educated to apply for a job, have a decreasing window of opportunity. He stressed that it's not about simply adding technology to schools; the economy has fundamentally changed in terms of the structure and the social contract of what is now called work. He believes that Fortune Magazine is correct - the job is finished as a social contract for work just as the farmer was finished - the difference being that now there's enough data available to predict what's going to happen. Number 0835 MR. NOVEMBER stated that his next remarks would be based on education technology and the concept called "The End of the Job" which he felt was the biggest phenomena in terms of the global workforce, that is a function of all these technologies. Teaching children computers is very important, but only teaching them computers would be the equivalent of teaching tractor literacy in the 1940s. It's now about giving children a much broader, deeper education than ever before. Number 0889 REPRESENTATIVE JOE GREEN asked if people were going back into the community college system because they were taking skills jobs versus knowledge jobs? MR. NOVEMBER responded that based on conversations with community college presidents in the Chicago area, many of the people were going back to community colleges to get technical skills, which he thinks could have been gotten in high school. REPRESENTATIVE GREEN asked, "If that's the case, if that's where they're finding work rather than going to the job market, by increasing the amount of education and depth - I think was the broader spectrum and a little deeper - what happens to this market that has shifted from skills that they could have learned in high school? What's causing this?" MR. NOVEMBER cited the example of his secretary, whom he has seen once in the last five years. She lives in Massachusetts and he lives in Illinois; she does not have a college education, but has a computer, modem, printer, fax machine and other equipment at home. She previously worked as his secretary when he was working with the public schools of Wellesley, Massachusetts, and she now knows enough about information technology to manage her own business. While she made $8.00 an hour when she had a "job" job, she now bills her time at $25.00 an hour and has clients up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Number 1008 MR. NOVEMBER said another example is the John Deere Company which almost went bankrupt in the 1980s. Added technology didn't quite make the difference, so they put the assembly line workers in charge of the quality of their own work and fired the middle managers. The quality at the John Deere Company has skyrocketed and the company is making more money. When a welder was asked why he didn't work as well before, his response was, "They used to tell me what to do, when to do it - I parked my brain at the gate and then went in." The difference is that now he's responsible for the quality of his own work. REPRESENTATIVE GREEN commented that the new world of jobs does not necessarily require deeper and broader college education, but rather more innovation at high school and junior college levels. MR. NOVEMBER responded that 80 percent of the jobs in the United States will not require a university degree. Number 1106 CHAIRMAN BUNDE referred to Mr. November's remarks that people won't need a college degree but will need more than high school and said, "I'm not sure we can do this vocational and still establish basic literacy in high schools." MR. NOVEMBER stated it was his opinion that a great deal of community college courses can be taught in high school. He spoke of the concept called "middle college" where potential eighth and ninth grade dropouts are given a community college experience at that age rather than waiting for them to drop out of high school. Research on the "middle college" indicates that it's one of the best investments a state can make. He believes there should be a fax machine in every kindergarten classroom and that five-year-old children should be taught to draw their questions and how to use information technologies to seek information beyond the four walls of the classroom. Number 1216 MR. NOVEMBER related that he works at Dalton (ph) School in New York City which is one of the richest private schools in the United States. Students are engaged directly with the Hubble telescope through the Internet, and are getting massive amounts of information about the universe. The expectation in physics is that students at Dalton (ph) School should be able to map parts of the universe that no one has even mapped, with high end astrophysics tools generated by the federal government. Number 1248 MR. NOVEMBER continued, "What I'm proposing is that if schools had access to information technologies -- and by the way, I want to frame this as carefully as I can. The real revolution is not technology; it's information and communication - what's flowing through the technologies - that's what is important. The quality of the information and the quality of the communication and what we do with it ... So, the question I asked is, 'What information do you want students in Alaska to have access to in K-12? What tools do you want them to have access to? What relationships?'" Number 1315 MR. NOVEMBER stated, "What I'm suggesting is if you look at this revolution as one where people get access to information that they've never been able to access before, with the tools to make meaning out of that information, we can move down the expectations that we used to have in graduate schools or universities." Number 1333 CHAIRMAN BUNDE interjected that at one time a high school diploma was a requirement simply to keep people off the job market because there were so many applicants and so few jobs. So everyone got a high school diploma. Then a college degree was required. Based on Mr. November's comments, he felt there will be a lot of frightened people because they won't be able to compete. He didn't know if society will accept that. MR. NOVEMBER acknowledged that may be true and added, "But not to prepare this generation to compete in the global economy -- give them powerful information and communication skills -- using your same dollar rather than using dollars over and over again, I think would be a loss for the state of Alaska." Number 1395 REPRESENTATIVE GREEN commented that one of the problems with a student advancing beyond their grade level, was their scientific background or ability to do things far exceeded their maturity level. He recognized there are certain young people who are extremely intelligent and capable, but the masses are not. He wondered if most people were mature enough at 18 or 19 years of age to even know what they were seeing in terms of the Hubble and other technologies. MR. NOVEMBER interjected that it is maintained that children in the "middle college" do much better because they are treated as adults. He said states like Ohio and Texas are spending $.5 billion and $1.5 billion respectively, in educational technology, but ironically it's being driven by the business community not by education because the business community feels compelled to have a prepared workforce. Number 1500 REPRESENTATIVE FRED DYSON asked how much band width per student, classroom or school should be provided to meet the needs of the next 25-30 years? MR. NOVEMBER responded, "I can tell you what I think you're going to need in two years.... I'm going to be meeting at Stanford with a company called Net Schools, which is a spinoff of a bunch of IBM people, and here's the latest technology today. It's infrared. A lot of laptops now come standard with infrared built in.... The industry knows that a room like this is going to have an infrared antennae in the ceiling. Infrared goes 30 feet and so the emerging model is every kid having a laptop with infrared - and by the way that's 4 megabytes of band width which is more than a T-1 which is 1.4 megabyes - so this company, Net Schools, already has schools in the United States lined up to buy a laptop for every student to be able to get them access to information all over the world. Just as a point of reference, 1.4 megabytes allows you two-way interactive videoconferencing -- four of them concurrently. That's probably not enough. It's 4 megabytes from infrared to the antennae. What will slow you down is the connection from the school to the Internet. So a T-1 line is not enough. Today, we would probably be talking about a T-3." In response to the question about the needs 30 years from now, he said the basic assumptions of Microsoft, in terms of design, is that band width is unlimited. REPRESENTATIVE DYSON reaffirmed that T-3 for every school would meet the needs in two years. MR. NOVEMBER said that Alaska's schools and districts are extreme because of the rural nature, but he thought that T-3 would meet the needs. Number 1650 CHAIRMAN BUNDE observed that hardware was the easy part even though it cost money, but the concept that Mr. November was speaking to was an "entrepreneurial spirit" and he questioned how that could be taught or injected. He maintains that for some people there is a need to "interface"; in other words, to touch, feel or have some personal contact, which is work for a number of people in our society. MR. NOVEMBER said that many of the people interviewed with IBM professed to having more social interactions after leaving IBM than when they were working the conventional job with IBM. For example, when a person goes to work everyday with the same people, their social interactions are limited to the same group. Conversely, when a person goes home to direct their own work, they are now responsible for visiting their clients and interacting with people around the world on the Internet. Therefore, their face-to-face interactions are more numerous and their social skills on the "nets" also have to expand. He supported what Chairman Bunde was saying and believed that social skills in terms of communication for children need to increase, both face-to-face and indirectly. He referenced the Phoenix Program in the Juneau School District as an example of the "entrepreneurial spirit." Number 1821 REPRESENTATIVE J. ALLEN KEMPLEN commented he had heard that society is actually moving back to the "farmer-type" model whereby citizens are engaged in self-sufficient homesteads - information homesteads. He explained that it's going back to the roots of America and the Jeffersonian model which was self-sufficient farmers being independent citizens. Bringing that around to the information age, he said the opportunity presents itself to create the same vision that our Founding Fathers had for a self-sufficient citizenry engaged in independent and self-reliant craftsmanship or the "infostead" so to speak. He believed that as a state and as public representatives, it is important to play a role in establishing the means of moving information and communication, just as the farmers found it important to establish the means by which goods and services could be moved from homestead to homestead. REPRESENTATIVE KEMPLEN said he is a strong believer in the private sector providing resources and delivering the needs of people, but given that Alaska is a sparsely populated state, the volume of information of traffic may not warrant the private sector investing in the kind of technology that is needed in order to provide the roads to the independent "infosteads". He suggested the state of Alaska look at partnering with another entity to create its own satellite in order to provide access for all Alaskans through the information grid, regardless of location. He asked if in Mr. November's opinion, that was something that merits further consideration. Number 1960 MR. NOVEMBER said he was of the opinion that the private sector wants to make money. He noted that telephone companies and cable companies are his largest client base and he, as well as the companies, believe it is in their best interest to provide cable, fiber and satellite wherever they can as long as they secure their profit margin. If they can't secure their profit margin, then it's a questionable call. Regarding the boundary line between the private sector and the state's responsibility, if an individual believes that the state is responsible for infrastructure - roads, communication, etc. - then any state has an obligation to examine what the private sector is providing for all of its citizenship to secure equity. In terms of the satellite, Motorola, Microsoft and British Telecom are all competing to launch low orbiting satellites. With respect to Alaska owning its own satellite, he said there are a number of options available and he would be interested in knowing whether it's cost effective. MR. NOVEMBER concluded, "I was fascinated by your Jeffersonian analogy. When Jefferson was there with the Founding Fathers, he said you have to have three things for democracy: you've got to have a free press; you've got to have free libraries; and you've got to teach every citizen how to read and write and do some arithmetic. I'm convinced that if Jefferson were alive today and he were founding our country, he would say every citizen has got to have access to information - the Internet. It's the equivalent of libraries in the seventeen hundreds." Number 2079 CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked Mr. November for providing a new spectrum for committee members. ADJOURNMENT CHAIRMAN BUNDE adjourned the joint meeting of the House/Senate Health, Education and Social Services Standing Committees at 3:45 p.m.