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N.C. School District Pushes for Smarter, Effective EdTech
Union County Uses Data to Streamline EdTech Procurement, Evaluation and Selection
Union County Public Schools in North Carolina is committed to equitable access to resources, seeking alternatives to traditional (often chaotic and time consuming) edtech procurement processes in order to better personalize learning at scale and help students with college and career readiness.
Challenge
The quickly changing edtech marketplace presented Union County with an all too common challenge – each of the schools in the system had been adopting edtech on an individual basis without sharing information with the central office or other schools and without following a consistent, unified process. District leaders set out to retain site-based freedom for their teachers and principals while ensuring key student privacy and security compliance requirements are met, and investments were delivering value.
With the resources they had, schools had little to no visibility to what others were buying, or if any of the edtech was working for students and teachers. The district wanted to use technology to level the playing field and to support programs and instructional practices that worked for all students.
We discovered that we had a ‘wild west’ of products being used, to the point where we had some products that were charging schools different amounts. We knew we had to do something – it wasn’t equitable. So, we shut down tech purchases for a little while so we could get things in order and find a solution.
Casey Rimmer
UCPS Director of Innovation
UCPS sought a solution to support efforts to:
- Promote local control for teachers and principals while ensuring their edtech choices met student data privacy requirements.
- Provide district-wide visibility into edtech usage and licensing agreements to support more informed decisions across the district.
- Streamline all facets of edtech management with a single system configured specifically for the district’s needs.
Edtech Effectiveness System as a Solution
Using LearnPlatform’s edtech effectiveness solution, district leaders quickly implemented a centralized platform to manage a district library of approved tools and streamline product requests. This is saving teachers a significant amount of time, providing them with product insights from more than 100,000 educators across the country.
Configuring LearnPlatform for the District’s Needs
The district’s implementation of LearnPlatform focused in four areas:
We’re able to level-set procurement and product selection to ensure that we have a district-wide view of what we are buying, what we are using and, most importantly, what tools are driving student outcomes while meeting compliance benchmarks. Using LearnPlatform, we give teachers and principals the academic freedom they deserve, ensure students are protected and can even determine which edtech is best for our students based on outcomes.
Casey Rimmer
- Organize tools: The district identified spending and needs criteria, such as student data privacy requirements, achievement goals and school improvement plans. UCPS then started to see trends and opportunities to shift from unmanaged and/or non-compliant tools.
- Ask for teacher input on existing edtech: UCPS asked teachers for feedback on school- or district-level purchased tools – educator input was and continues to be essential to the district’s edtech ecosystem.
- Consistent communication and training support: Union County gave all educators access to its district product library with approval statuses, allowing them to quickly identify approved tools. The district also increased support and professional learning for district-supported tools.
- Streamline edtech request process: Teachers can now use the product request functionality in the platform to suggest products to be vetted for approval, notifying administrators when a request comes through. The district built essential elements, like data privacy requirements and interoperability, into the request process to increase efficiency and transparency.
Ongoing EdTech Evaluation and Management
With the sudden shift to remote learning in the spring of 2020, the district had a renewed sense of urgency in managing the digital tools used by students and teachers.
Using LearnPlatform, we give teachers and principals the academic freedom they deserve, ensure students are protected and can even determine which edtech is best for our students based on outcomes.
Casey Rimmer
When navigating edtech during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UCPS team refocused on the core reason they implemented LearnPlatform in the first place: identify and communicate district-supported products it could provide training for, ensuring each tool was safe for students and advancing their growth. Rimmer emphasized how their centralized product library and streamlined request processes was critical to this effort.
The UCPS team has also begun to facilitate data sharing and better allocate professional development and support resources based on edtech use and student outcomes. The district continues to improve processes that help them make more evidence-based decisions about edtech usage, resource distribution and support. This iterative nature of edtech evaluation allows district leaders to deliver the best learning opportunities possible for students and teachers quickly and efficiently.
Moving forward, the team plans to take the next step in building its edtech ecosystem: running rapid-cycle evaluations (RCEs) consistently and purposefully. Specifically, the UCPS team wants to dig into which tools to sustain using ESSER funding, timing RCEs with the beginning of budget season. The team will then work with LearnPlatform to interpret evidence and take action with what it discovers.
As a district, it was really hard to stay focused on what mattered the most. Teachers were inundated with [free or discounted offers for] products that usually cost more, but we as a district couldn’t sustain them all. We didn’t want to force people to do something in a time of uncertainty, but we emphasized that there were [tools] the district could support and provide training on.
Casey Rimmer
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