From:      Nancy Willard nwillard@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
To:        Sallianne Schagrin SSchagrin@ntia.doc.gov
Date:      Thu, Aug 8, 2002  4:16 PM
Subject:   Re: CIPA Comments

Hi Sallianna

I guess it is not everyone who reads Dr. Suess to members of a
Congressional appointed committee. ;-)

I am glad that someone with Greg and your background is doing this study. I
will express this more in written testimony, but the bottom line is that
CIPA has set schools way back in terms of doing what the NRC is now
recommending needs to be done. Had Congress simply limited the law to the
Neithborhood Children's Internet Protection Act Internet safety plan
requirements we would have been much better off -- especially if they had
waited until after the NRC report. I can personally compare this situation
to that when Congress established requirements for technology planning
under the Technology Literacy Challenge. Those requirements were similar to
the NCHIP requirements. With those requirements in hand, many of us with
expertise in the field were able to work with school districts to develop
good technology plans I helped over 40% of Oregon school districts develop
a good, accountable plan.

With CIPA, this did not take place. CIPA put the control into the hands of
the filtering companies. Look at the Internet Safety Plan recommended by
N2H2: http://www.filteringinfo.org/sample_school_erate.html. Now compare
this to the checklist that I was trying to get districts to focus on --
which is at the end of the constitutional analysis -- which is attached.

Now we have a report from NRC that indicagted that school officials whouls
not be using technology quick fixes as surrogates for the more important
responsibilities of education and supervision (you cannot know how good it
feels to be able to quote Dick Thornberg for the positions I have been
taking for years) and a 90+% penetration of the use of filtering in
schools. Once you have this rate of acceptance, the approach has basically
been "institutionalized." Trying to get school administrators to now focus
on what they really should be doing will be exceptionally difficult.

On the other hand, the National School Board Association publication
Updating School Board Policies will be publishing the overview of my
analysis of the constitutionality of the use of commercial filtering
software in their August issue. And NSBA's Technology Leadership News will
be publishing two articles that I wrote in their Sept issue. So there at
least continues to be interest, at some level, in doing the right thing.
Technology Leadership News also did a very good job in an article about the
NRC report in May.

I have attached:

Constitutionality (which ultimately be the leverage to get this issue on
the right track)
The Religious Connection (main report, if you want to see the individual
company reports I will also send them)
The NSBA TLN articles (1 and 2).

I will have to search for the other articles.

Nancy

Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.

Center for Advanced Technology in Education
University of Oregon, College of Education
E-mail: nwillard@oregon.uoregon.edu
URL: http://netizen.uoregon.edu

Responsible Netizen Institute
URL:http://responsiblenetizen.org