Former Education Official Links Up With Tech Program

In Leonard Wibberley’s novel The Mouse That Roared, a tiny country declares war on the United States, with comic results. In New York City, Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools and Education, known as Mouse, has declared war on technological illiteracy, and the results are no joke.

It has been six years since Mouse volunteers began hooking up some of the poorest schools in New York to the Internet, using wires and computer equipment donated by the city’s then-thriving downtown “Silicon Alley” companies. Since 2000, the organization has been developing so-called Mouse Squads — taking the old audio-visual club and moving it into the 21st century — in which students provide technology support for computers. Mouse has emerged at a time when computer-networking skills can mean high-paying jobs, and a lack of technical specialists in schools can mean that teachers might not be able to instruct a class.

Now, Mouse has a new voice. Carole Wacey, a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education under President Bill Clinton, has become the organization’s new executive director. While she was a student at Vermont Law School, Ms. Wacey, 36, worked to get Mr. Clinton elected. After he became president and she joined the Education Department, she found herself working on what is quietly considered a key, albeit controversial, accomplishment of the Clinton White House: a Federal Communications Commission program called E-Rate, which has helped to connect thousands of schools and libraries to the Internet.

Ms. Wacey’s lack of a background in technology did not stop her from embracing the administration’s advocacy of placing computers in schools. Both Mr. Clinton and his education secretary, Richard Riley, saw computers in the classroom and, eventually, home Internet access as great equalizers for students, regardless of their economic backgrounds.

She stayed involved in education and technology after President Clinton left office, going to work for the Markle Foundation, in New York, as the director of the Interactive Media for Children program, which explored ways to use interactive tools for education.

Ms. Wacey is moving to an organization whose style has also been strongly influenced by another major force from the last decade — the entrepreneurial technology company. Mouse has always kept its projects tightly focused, and it owes much of that approach to its board, which is made up largely of high-tech entrepreneurs who want to apply their skills to a philanthropic endeavor.

Ms. Wacey will have an opportunity to figure out what Mouse’s next project will be. She firmly believes, however, that the organization needs to retain its entrepreneurial approach to philanthropic endeavors. “Especially in the space of technology, it changes so quickly, we have to be aware of things, always looking ahead,” she says.

In an interview, Ms. Wacey discussed her new position:

Can you fix a computer?

Not like the students in the program can. I am going through training in the fall. I’m going to become one of the students. I hope I don’t embarrass myself.

What impresses you about Mouse?

They’ve really positioned themselves not only to fill a real need, and have a great plan to implement it, but to provide a cost savings to the people they serve.

They’ve been flexible. They saw that all this wiring is going to happen in the schools, there were a lot of programs to get the hardware into the schools, there were the hardware and the connections, then there was this idea to create the Mouse Squads. The program addressed a need coming down the pike, educated kids, got them to understand the value of technology, and it did tangential things, like build relationships between students and teachers and have them run a small business. In the school, they can work as a team, be relied upon.

What’s next for Mouse?

We want to move into the teaching and learning side of technology. We know kids are capable of creating and sharing content. Given the information available on the Internet, the teacher needs to be a very different type of person these days. That’s happening in high schools — they are looking at how information is created and shared. Kids are taking data, analyzing it, sharing the results. We would be remiss if we didn’t explore that in our program.

You have been involved in interactive media. Why is it important?

We know kids are spending about five hours a day with interactive media, devices that incorporate some kind of interaction, be it the Internet, instant messaging, video games, or other hand-held devices. We’re trying to build the research into future product development, because that’s a lot of time to be spending with these devices. There’s real potential for kids to understand, to learn.

After so many Internet start-ups failed, what is the future for Internet-backed charities?

The way in which the Internet situation affected us is that we had a lot of investors who came out of that space, so it’s definitely affected our fund-raising efforts. But while our programs had an entrepreneurial element to them, we are a nonprofit — and we’re not taking unnecessary risks.

Are nonprofit groups or government more important in realizing classroom technology goals?

I would never say one is more important than the other. We want to see leadership as far as dollars, policy, and expertise from the government. Nonprofits can support government programs, and can be the instrument for trying out new initiatives. We get to try things out and build programs that can be scaled up across the country, like Mouse Squad. We had a three-year pilot, and now we’re taking it out of New York.

ABOUT CAROLE WACEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MAKING OPPORTUNITIES FOR UPGRADING SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION

Education: Earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from American University, a law degree from Vermont Law School. Has also studied public international law at the University of Oxford, and corporate environmental leadership at Yale University.

Previous employment: Oversaw the Interactive Media for Children program at the Markle Foundation; served as deputy director of the Office of Educational Technology and as senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education.

Last book she read: Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier.