"Education technology and school construction go together. Modernization, updating education facilities, and making a capital investment in education are all included"
About this Quote
Major Owens links the tools of learning to the places where learning happens, arguing that technology policy is inseparable from bricks-and-mortar policy. He treats schools as critical infrastructure: not luxuries that can be patched with short-term grants, but public works requiring sustained capital investment. Modernization is more than putting laptops on old desks. It includes wiring that can handle bandwidth, reliable electrical systems, safe ventilation, adaptable classrooms for labs and project work, and facilities that meet accessibility and safety standards. Without these foundations, educational technology becomes window dressing; devices and software cannot overcome leaky roofs, crowded rooms, or dead zones without broadband.
As a Brooklyn congressman and former librarian, Owens spent years pressing for federal support to wire schools and libraries and to rebuild aging buildings. His stance grew from an equity insight: affluent districts can issue bonds and renovate; poor districts cannot. Federal investment, through programs like the E-rate and school construction initiatives, narrows that gap. When the physical plant and the digital network advance together, students in under-resourced communities gain real access, not just promises.
He also implies a systems view of reform. Technology, facilities, curriculum, teacher training, and maintenance must be planned as one ecosystem. A new science program demands labs; digital learning requires quiet, flexible spaces and steady connectivity; teacher development depends on reliable equipment that will still be there next year. Capital spending, then, is educational strategy, not only fiscal policy.
Events since Owens made this case have proved his point. The push to wire classrooms in the 1990s faltered where buildings could not support it, and the pandemic exposed ventilation failures and household broadband gaps. Renewed infrastructure funding aims to correct both. Owens points to a durable truth: if a nation wants 21st-century learning, it must build 21st-century schools, treating them with the same seriousness as roads and bridges and measuring success by access, health, and opportunity as much as test scores.
As a Brooklyn congressman and former librarian, Owens spent years pressing for federal support to wire schools and libraries and to rebuild aging buildings. His stance grew from an equity insight: affluent districts can issue bonds and renovate; poor districts cannot. Federal investment, through programs like the E-rate and school construction initiatives, narrows that gap. When the physical plant and the digital network advance together, students in under-resourced communities gain real access, not just promises.
He also implies a systems view of reform. Technology, facilities, curriculum, teacher training, and maintenance must be planned as one ecosystem. A new science program demands labs; digital learning requires quiet, flexible spaces and steady connectivity; teacher development depends on reliable equipment that will still be there next year. Capital spending, then, is educational strategy, not only fiscal policy.
Events since Owens made this case have proved his point. The push to wire classrooms in the 1990s faltered where buildings could not support it, and the pandemic exposed ventilation failures and household broadband gaps. Renewed infrastructure funding aims to correct both. Owens points to a durable truth: if a nation wants 21st-century learning, it must build 21st-century schools, treating them with the same seriousness as roads and bridges and measuring success by access, health, and opportunity as much as test scores.
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| Topic | Learning |
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