Education Week Tech Confidence Index: Teachers and Ed Tech

This first-ever Education Week Tech Confidence Index examines teachers’ perspectives on the present and future status of educational technology in K-12 schools. The Index uses results from eight different questions in an Education Week Research Center survey to gauge teachers’ confidence in this sector. Four of the survey items ask respondents to rate their current degree of confidence in key areas: performance, funding, the policymaking environment, and public support. The remaining items prompt respondents to assess their level of optimism about the future direction of those same areas over the next year.

Index results are determined by coding responses on a 0-100 scale with 0 representing the most negative and 100 the most positive response category for each survey question. The overall score for the Index is calculated by averaging results for all eight questions. The overall score this year is 49 out of 100. But teachers have more confidence in the future than the present. The average score for the four items measuring current confidence is 43. By contrast, the average for the four future-oriented questions jumps to 55, indicating that teachers expect progress in the year ahead.

This year’s results on the Index will provide baseline data as we continue to track confidence in educational technology in future reports.

Results differ across the eight survey items making up the Education Week Tech Confidence Index with funding emerging as the area in which respondents express the least confidence.

Related: Teachers Still Struggling to Use Tech to Transform Instruction, Survey Finds