Office of Educational Technology (OET)

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The Office of Educational Technology (OET) is located in and supports the Office of the Secretary (OS). OET provides leadership for powering education at all levels of learning with technology. OET develops national educational technology policy and ensures that Department programs take advantage of the productivity and learning opportunities technology can provide. OET supports the Department's Mission and the President's and Secretary's priorities by leveraging the best modern technology to support:

progress toward college and career-ready standards;
the development of assessments that will improve both teaching and learning;
better connections for teachers with the data, tools, resources, experts and peers to ensure all students have access to highly effective teaching;
turnaround of low-performing schools; and
improved student learning, teacher performance, and college and career readiness through enhanced data systems.

The Director of the Office of Educational Technology is Karen Cator.

National Education Technology Plan

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

On November 9, 2010, Secretary Duncan announced the new National Education Technology Plan as part of his keynote address at the 2010 State Educational Technology Directors Association Education Forum. This national plan was developed with comments, ideas, research and perspectives from the entire education community.

Current Activities

Understanding the Implications of Online Learning for Educational Productivity (January 2012). This report provides foundational knowledge needed to examine and understand the potential contributions of online learning to educational productivity, including a conceptual framework for understanding the necessary components of rigorous productivity analyses, drawing in particular on cost-effectiveness analysis.
Evidence Framework for Innovation and Excellence in Education (December 2011). This research project will explore how vast amounts of data generated by new learning technologies can be used to inform educational decisions. This work will expand thinking about sources of information and evidence, leveraging new technologies and learning analytics.
Distance Education Courses for Public Elementary and Secondary School Students: 2009-10 (November 2011). This First Look report from the Fast Response Survey System provides national data about enrollment in distance education courses, how districts monitor these courses, the motivations for providing distance education, and the technologies used for delivering distance education. One key finding is that during the 2009-10 school year, 55 percent of school districts reported having students enrolled in distance education courses. Of the 55 percent of school districts reported having students enrolled in distance education courses, 96 percent of districts reported having students enrolled in distance education courses at the high school level, 19 percent at the middle or junior high school level, 6 percent at the elementary school level, and 4 percent in combined or ungraded schools. This is the 3rd in a series of surveys designed to understand and measure various facets of distance learning in K12 education.
Learning Registry (November 2011). The Learning Registry project launched November 7 at the State Educational Technology Directors Association Leadership Summit. Presentations were made by Secretary Duncan, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, and Laura Junor, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness. The project helps provide educators, learners, innovators, and the general public with access to learning resources from across a variety of platforms—websites, community portals, and other repositories of digital learning resources. The Learning Registry supports educator voices helping define which resources are most relevant or useful. Please visit to read more about the project and join in the conversation!
Digital Promise (September 2011). On September 16, 2011, Secretary Duncan unveiled the new National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies (also called the Digital Promise), which was authorized by the Higher Education Opportunity Act (P.L. 110-315), passed in August 2008, as a 501(c)3 that will be able to accept contributions from the public and private sectors to support the R&D needed to transform learning in America. Its unique charter is to identify the key research and development challenges in the education field and coordinate the best combination of expertise for addressing them. Created by Congress, supported by Republicans and Democrats, and governed by an independent board of leaders in business, media, and academia, the Center will promote game-changing learning technologies that can help all Americans—and America—prosper in the 21st Century.
International Experiences with Technology in Education (August 2011). Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have become a critical element of modern society, and many countries around the world have invested in ICTs to improve and expand education. In an effort to learn from the experiences of other countries, the U.S. Department of Education funded this study, International Experiences with Technology in Education (IETE), which has collected timely information from 21 countries regarding their use of technology in education. Read the executive summary or full report.
The U.S.-China E-Language Project: A Study of a Gaming Approach to English Language Learning for Middle School Students (May 2011). The Department of Education and the Ministry of Education in China entered into a bilateral partnership to develop a technology-driven approach to foreign language learning that integrated gaming, immersion, voice recognition, problem-based learning tasks and other features that made it a significant research and development pilot project for study.
Startup America (April 2011). The Department of Education is engaging in Startup America in order to drive the investment in and development of new learning technologies to improve the opportunity to learn in a growing global network.
Race to the Top Assessment (April 2011). OET supports the work of the Race to the Top Assessment team and the work of developing the next generation of assessments as Secretary Duncan explained in this speech.
Interoperability (November 2011). The interoperability standards necessary for enabling the work of Race to the Top Assessment were recently addressed by this blog article requesting comment from the public. This article is based on responses from the field from an earlier RFI, and the Department's subsequent summary. Steve Midgley, Deputy Director of the Office of Educational Technology, is leading this work for the Department.
Connected Online Communities of Practice (April 2011). The Connected Online Communities of Practice project will steward a scalable, sustainable ecology of online communities in education to improve teacher and leader effectiveness, enhance student learning and increase productivity. Through more efficient and coordinated online participation, education professionals will be better able to share practices, access experts, and solve problems that require systemic solutions in order to improve the opportunity to learn. The first iteration of the project report is now available.
National Education Data Model (NEDM) (July 2011). NEDM provides a catalogue of data used in education and a description of the relationships among those data. NEDM contains all federal P-20 reporting requirements (including HHS, Labor, and Agriculture as well as ED), linkages among those data elements, and a functional view of data currently used in the teaching and learning process. NEDM has been updated by the National Center on Education Statistics and incorporated into the development of NCES' Common Data Standards which will be published in January 2012.