Three edgy components for a technology plan that can usher in even greater results for your school district
Pennsylvania School Boards Association
Advocating for Excellence In Pennsylvania Public Education
?Want to make your district’s technology plan an agile, living document? Review and update it regularly because technology never stands still.?
Technology plans serve as a lighted pathway guiding your administration as they connect available technologies and resources to the needs of classrooms, offices and workshops. Plans typically spell out the allocation of resources, technical standards and professional development.?
It’s never too early for a refresh. Don’t let your plan fall behind the innovation curve. Think bigger. As a policymaker, board member or senior administrator, you are in a pivotal position to ask questions, imagine more for your schools and advocate for the marginalized.?
Knowing your district so well, you’ll have many new ideas. For a jump start, consider these often-overlooked components of a technology plan that will give your schools a beneficial edge as you seek even more outstanding results.?
1. Measurement and evaluation?
Three problematic issues of assessment include: the lack of a control group, neglect of key performance indicators for business and operations in favor of attention on instruction, and anecdotal information serving as a confirmation bias.?
Control group?
Just because students increase their performance on a standardized test does not mean that the result can be attributed to a new learning management program, 1-to-1 computing devices or interactive whiteboards. Variables must be isolated. Microdata should be compared to macro data. Control groups help isolate variables.?
An imaginative way to create control groups is to give freedom to a group of champions, critics, naysayers and traditionalists to forego the adoption of a new technology. Then measure their results against adopters.?
Neglecting key indicators?
Because academic achievement is our primary product, it is natural that we want to measure our instructional success and the impact of our tools. In the process, we often forget to measure the use of technology in other domains.?
Often these groups are underrepresented in the technology plan. For example, think facilities, special education and purchasing. Is that new electronic work order system shortening the time from a leaky faucet to a dry sink? That's measurable. A return-on-investment report can justify that latest facilities software and make taxpayers happy.?
One intermediate agency abandoned paper purchase orders and integrated a streamlined e-commerce approval workflow into its financial system. Now 80% of requisitions are turned into purchase orders within 24 hours. That’s measurable. Desktop software to record special education providers’ time on task can boost Medicaid reimbursements back to the school district. Is that kind of measurement in the plan? How much did Medicaid reimbursements increase??
Anecdotal information?
Let’s say you, in your school director role, visited several school sites and heard teachers raving about their new electronic library resources. “We can pull down books right in the classroom,” one teacher says. “We can access books and videos we don’t have physically in the media center – no waiting and copies for all.”?
You leave happy and satisfied with your support of that aspect of the technology plan. You’d vote for a budget increase. But that’s based on anecdotal information. Stories should be illustrative of data that have been documented statistically whether by survey, tests or accounting. Don’t let anecdotes taint your decision-making.??
“It’s a fact that publicity of dramatic events affects your recall of events in a formidable way,” says a tip book for school administrators titled No One Ever Told Me That. “Get real facts and figures. Isolate the variables and make an informed decision,” it suggests.?
2. Cooperative contract standards?
If you were silent on how you intended to procure your hardware and software in writing your technology plan, revisit your document.?
Without a prescribed procurement strategy, your staff will be tempted to go it alone, soliciting your own bids and quotes – tactics fraught with danger. You can end up with less-than-stellar vendors, brands that pretend to meet your standards then fail, and delays of 30, 60 or 90-plus days just to execute a purchase order.?
Instead, name a specific purchasing cooperative that meets best-practice procurement standards. What criteria should you require??
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Four simple differences that will help you choose a cooperative?
First, choose a cooperative whose contract terms qualify vendors under federal Uniform Guidance requirements. That means you’ll be able to use federal grants safely and co-mingle federal monies with local and state funds on a single purchase order.?
Second, name a cooperative program that specifies business-class equipment, network compatibility, the availability of parts and ease of maintenance – not cheaply built consumer products that quickly end up in recycling bins.?
Third, look for a transparent co-op administration that makes line-by-line comparisons among the thousands of prices submitted by bidders, issues awards to the lowest bidder, complies with the idiosyncrasies of your state’s unique purchasing laws and stands unafraid to post the ceiling price of contracted prices.?
Finally, decide upon a co-op with a historical commitment to post-award management. It’s one thing for a cooperative to simply award a contract. It’s another to devote its resources to managing the contract for the length of its term. How? By monitoring prices, reviewing purchase orders for accuracy and hiring a third-party accounting firm to verify the ongoing accuracy of vendor prices compared to their original bid submissions.?
3. Exceptions and exit strategies?
No matter how well your thoughtful technology plan promotes student achievement and operational efficiency, real life will throw you curves – think of unintended consequences, emergencies and changes in technology – not to mention outright failures.?
Include guidelines for the management of exceptions and failures in your plan so that administrators feel comfortable changing course under challenging circumstances. Always plan for a way out of a program gone awry.?
Start by asking “what if” questions?
What if federal funding stops??
What if your learning management software tanks student achievement??
What if supply chain problems delay acquisitions for 18 months??
What if you are threatened with a ransomware demand??
What if your computer standards inadvertently push some under-served groups to the margins??
What if art programs, special education assessments and vocational education are neglected and end up with outdated tools??
After brainstorming calamitous scenarios, chart a likely decision path. Spell out procedures that will:?
When systems and programs fail, one of the most common debates centers on whether more money will solve the problem. Say you’ve already spent a million dollars. You do not want to appear to have wasted a million bucks. Will a vote for more money be throwing good money after bad? That thinking pollutes the rationale for a good decision. Here’s a decision-making tip: Pretend your previous investment was zero. Now is it sensible to make a further investment to solve the problem? Or should you start with a new strategy??
About PEPPM: Now celebrating 40 years of service to Pennsylvania school districts, PEPPM is the technology purchasing cooperative operated by the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit (CSIU). With more than 400 awarded technology contracts, PEPPM helps schools execute their technology plans by seeking bids for technology so school districts don’t have to conduct bidding themselves. PEPPM then awards contracts to the lowest-cost bidders who are responsible, responsive companies. There’s no membership fee or extra cost for public agencies to participate. The result? Millions of bid-protected technology products that schools can buy immediately without the red tape. Find PEPPM contracts at www.PEPPM.org.?