Reeling from budget shortfalls from coast to coast and desperate for solutions that promise to save money while helping schools meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), education stakeholders arrived at the National School Boards Association's annual Technology + Learning conference short on money and long on skepticism.

It didn't help that the event--held Oct. 22-24 in Anaheim, Calif.--saw a sharp drop in attendance from previous years, with NSBA officials reporting 1,300 paid attendees and another 500 guests.

Even before the first wildfires ignited in southern California, organizers already were taking the heat for the show's weaker-than-expected attendance. The effects of a difficult budget year could be seen clearly in the conference exhibit hall, where vendors tended to outnumber educators.

"Traffic was a little light," acknowledged Ann Flynn, NSBA's director of technology, especially when compared with previous years. Still, that's to be expected in a time of financial shortfalls and reduced travel expenditures for schools, she added.

Despite a disappointing turnout, organizers along with many attendees and even some exhibitors voiced satisfaction with the show overall, which NSBA has shifted in recent years away from showcasing the latest whiz-bang solutions and more toward working with educators to establish a practical role for technology as it can be used to boost student performance under NCLB.

"This is a conversation a lot of schools still are needing help with," Flynn told eSchool News. "Today, it's really all about the end results, the proven results."

Though the challenge of funding remained a popular topic in the hallways, over dinner, and throughout the exhibit hall, attendees for the most part did more than complain about their troubles. Instead, many turned their frustrations into action by touching off conversations about the importance of technology in the classroom and by weighing alterative sources of funding, including the use of public-private partnerships, to help prepare their students for life and work in the 21st century.

Online assessment: Problems and promise

At one such discussion, more than 100 chief technology officers, business leaders, and stakeholders from across the country turned out to examine technology's role in assessment.

The joint forum--hosted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the State Educational Technology Directors Association--sought to confront the barriers presented by technology-based assessments in the classroom. Despite these barriers, proponents of online assessments believe they enable educators to make pedagogical adjustments based on real-time analysis of student performance data.

"This is an important topic, and it's one not often talked about," said John Bailey, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education (ED). During the forum, Bailey reminded participants that NCLB requires schools to be more proactive in identifying which students are falling behind--and online assessment advances the idea of data-driven decision making.