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Education Technology

Technology gap: People, not devices

Kentucky School Advocate
September 2018

By Matt McCarty
Staff writer

A record total of $260 million was spent on education technology in Kentucky during the 2017-18 school year. But as school technology increases, the number of district technology personnel has decreased.

David Couch (pictured at right), associate commissioner for the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Education Technology, said that is an “alarming trend that has bad consequences.”

“I’m very proud of what we’ve done for 25 years. This puts it in jeopardy because we start having embarrassing things happening by having that type of gap,” he said. “And what I find is most superintendents and boards are not aware they have such a gap. They’re trying to do good things for kids and teachers so they’re going out and buying a bunch of stuff.”

Couch said the increase in technology spending has been driven by the increasing number of districts using one-to-one devices and more teachers seeing the added value of using technology in the classroom. The additional spending also includes money spent on networks and cybersecurity.

He said local board members need to “be aware of the people side of technology” because of the gap between technology and the staff to manage it.

“As you move to one-to-one, if you don’t buy or have more roles or people, it’s tough to keep that up and reliable. Also, if you don’t have digital learning coaches or someone playing that role, you’re probably not maximizing that investment. If you don’t have someone keeping up with the security of these electronic systems, you’re probably vulnerable,” he said.

Options
Couch said districts have three choices:

• If a district wants to maintain the same number of people on its technology staff, then it needs to start reducing the amount of technology in the schools to match.

• If a district wants to keep the staff the same and keep buying more technology, then it needs to lower expectations for its reliability, its instructional use and its security.

• The district can add the right number of technology staff to match the technology.

“The technology staffs in Kentucky are being overwhelmed,” Couch said. “They’re giving gallant efforts, many of them spending crazy additional hours because they love kids. But there’s only so much they’re going to take. They’re going to go, ‘Here’s what I get paid, I’ve not got an increase in pay in forever. Here’s the load that’s just been added on to me and I’ve got people screaming at me all the time because it’s not reliable. I’m not being put in a position to be successful.’”

In addition to the number of students and devices in the district, Couch said some factors that would necessitate additional staff would be big project implementations, having old equipment, not having standardized equipment, having staff with low skills and having staff take on roles beyond traditional technology.

Couch recommends districts consult technology staff before purchasing any kind of technology, including phone and video systems.

“The No. 1 complaint the technology staff has in Kentucky is with good-meaning people at the district level, school level – they go out and buy a bunch of stuff without considering what it takes to keep it reliable and maximized,” he said.

He also advises districts to examine their existing technology to see whether it is still being used. He said there are systems KDE has stopped because the metrics showed they weren’t being used by a lot of districts.

“(Technology) is a big financial investment to school districts. It should be maximized,” Couch said. “Our taxpayers should have the expectation that it is being maximized. There’s no doubt about it. And (districts) should have somebody to measure whether this stuff’s being maximized.”

Couch: Kentucky is the leader in education technology

David Couch, associate commissioner for the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Education Technology, said every other state is nearly 20 years behind Kentucky’s education technology system.

“What is unfortunate is virtually no Kentuckian knows we have the best education technology system in the nation,” he said. “The students don’t know it, the teachers don’t know it, the board members don’t know it, the superintendents don’t know it, our legislators don’t know it.

“For almost everything we’ve done, we were the first state to do it and were the largest to do it. … In most cases we’re still the only one to do it.”

Some examples:

• In 1995, Kentucky was the first state in the nation to connect all its school districts to the internet via high-speed network connections and the first to have email capabilities for all students, teachers and administrators.

• In 2000, it was the first to implement a common statewide student information system and the first to provide dedicated education technical assistance to all school districts.

• Kentucky was the first state to provide enterprise directory services to all districts, allowing secure access to the internet and web-based instructional materials in 2004. Six years later, it was the first to implement cloud-based K-12 email for every student, teacher and administrator statewide.

Couch’s department just developed its fifth major master plan covering 2018-2024.

The Kentucky Education Technology System Master Plan is created and implemented every six years to provide strategies that support the school districts’ education plans and digital readiness. Couch read through the technology plans for all 173 districts to help guide the newest master plan, which went into effect in June.

“I do think it’s the best K-12 master plan in the United States given that most other states don’t have a master plan. That makes it easier when they don’t have a direction, to say at least you have one. I don’t think higher ed has a better plan," he said.