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Empowering LEAs to Leverage Effective
Technology for Learning
How Utah Provides LEAs with Tools to Select, Implement and Evaluate EdTech that Supports Learning
In 2016, the Utah Digital Teaching and Learning Qualifying Grant Program (DTL Program) was created to help school districts and charter schools best leverage the power of technology for learning. The DTL Program was created in accordance with a State Senate bill that, among other things, requires K-12 institutions to report on student achievement related to digital teaching and learning. The program calls on districts and charter schools to submit a state-aligned, 5-year plan that must be approved by the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) in order to receive funds.
Challenge for Local Education Agencies
At the creation of the DTL Program, local education leaders in Utah voiced their gratitude and excitement, but also that they were unsure of what next steps to take to reach some of the requirements.
USBE wanted to give local education agencies (LEAs) the support and tools they needed to comply with statute. One requirement in the Senate bill speaks to the monitoring of education technology, as well as demonstrating how effective tools are in helping students and teachers reach their goals. The state wanted districts and charters to be able to more easily answer questions like:
- How do we organize our edtech tools?
- How do we analyze the data we have from our programs?
- How do we make changes based on what we are seeing?
We heard that [districts] didn’t have the capacity to monitor, look at [edtech] data and adapt based on that data. They asked for support, and LearnPlatform was identified as a key partner to help support LEAs in that effort.
Todd Call
Educational Coordinator Digital Teaching & Learning
Balancing Respect for Local Control with Advancement of the State Goals
The state recognized that LEAs have a lot going on, which is why it strategically chooses partners like LearnPlatform to help ease the burden of compliance in edtech reporting and evidence.
USBE’s partnership with LearnPlatform initially focused on edtech tool monitoring, and making informed decisions and changes based on data received. LEAs (school districts and charter schools) could opt-in to using the platform for a variety of purposes, depending on their local needs. This part is key: the goal for USBE was to build capacity for edtech effectiveness and reporting at the local level, ensuring LEAs and charter schools were the driving force behind how they chose to use LearnPlatform. Schools and districts have distinct student populations, and the state wanted to make sure to give them a tool that could support them in whatever way was best for their contexts.
For some districts in the state, it’s about the organization of edtech tools and being able to communicate approved tools to educators (what’s vetted and what’s not). For others, it’s about offering professional learning around best practices for implementation of a given edtech tool, and giving educators a voice through feedback. Some districts focus on the importance of communicating with families about which tools students are using.
LearnPlatform helps with the key areas of the state’s master plan, whether it’s professional learning, identifying tools that are being used or not used, purchasing decisions and more.
Todd Call
Moving Forward: Evaluating EdTech Effectiveness
USBE’s partnership with LearnPlatform has evolved in the past six years, from a sole focus on monitoring to beginning to drill into if tools are actually impacting student outcomes. Particularly during the shift to hybrid/remote learning and the exponential increase of digital tools, LEAs and charter schools have shown a growing interest in understanding which tools are proving effective for students, and how to target professional learning for educators around those tools.
A key example of this is a cohort of school and district administrators running rapid-cycle evaluations (RCEs) using LearnPlatform’s RCE engine, IMPACT™. The cohort, called IMPACT Fellows, participated in a professional learning and certification opportunity designed to build school and district administrator capacity for evidence-based decision making related to edtech effectiveness. The selected district leaders in Utah joined a larger group of administrators across the country working to better measure effectiveness of edtech interventions and take action based on their findings.
Going forward, USBE will encourage LEAs and charter schools to take what they’ve learned about their edtech ecosystem during hybrid/remote learning and apply it to how they make decisions in the future. Educators have more experience using technology than ever before, and USBE wants to build educator and district capacity to generate evidence on what is and isn’t working, ultimately providing more meaningful learning experiences and better supporting students.
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