If I Had A Million Dollars

We first started seriously discussing laptops for our students in the fall of 1999. At that time, the obstacles were cost and infrastructure (wireless), and not everyone was convinced that they would help students learn. Over the years the cost came down, the infrastructure began to be built out, and more and more folks were convinced that laptops would not only be helpful for students, but essential to their learning process. Yet still we didn't do it.

It took until the Fall of 2012 to pilot a program, and then the Fall of 2013 to roll it out for all Freshmen at AHS. We did it via a Bring-Your-Own-Device program, counting on a large percentage of our students to bring their own, and then we would provide laptops (netbooks) for those who couldn't afford one or didn't want to bring one. The district provided support in terms of helping us with a few netbooks and, more importantly, guaranteeing that if we didn't get enough students bringing their own, they would help us financially to make up the difference. It turns out that our students did bring their own in the expected amounts (roughly 65% that first year, and now well over 70%), but it was nice to have that insurance. Since then we've now rolled it out to two classes (this year's Freshmen and Sophomores), and next year will roll out it to a third class (Freshmen, Sophomores and Juniors), and possibly to our Seniors as well depending on a few things (more on that later).

Two weeks ago my school began receiving what will ultimately be 993 Chromebooks from our district. These weren't purchased because we've finally decided that laptops are important enough instructionally for our students to provide them, we're receiving them due to mandated state testing. Because both the PARCC and the CMAS tests are taken via computer, and because we can't sufficiently lock down the netbooks we had previously, the district decided to replace them with Chromebooks - and, of course, we had to add significantly more in order to test all of our students. After sixteen years of not being willing to spend money to support our students instructionally, we are willing (actually, forced) to spend money to support testing. Our Superintendent told us in a faculty meeting that district-wide more than $1 million dollars was being spent to purchase Chromebooks.

Now some folks might argue that I shouldn't complain, we are getting laptops that we will be able to use instructionally when we are not testing. (And, given this influx, this may allow us to accelerate our rollout to include Seniors next year - one year early.) I am certainly appreciative of this, and we will do our best to take full advantage of it, but I still think it's important to note the priorities of our national and state leaders, and what actually makes school districts spend money they otherwise wouldn't.

Since we have so many of our own students bringing their own devices, much of this $1 million will end up sitting most of the time in carts, unused (once we've rolled out Connected Learners to all four grades). So I wonder what else we could've spent $1 million on? I'm sure we could all come up with lots of ideas, but here's one pretty simple one: let's hire more teachers.

Now, I realize that $1 million doesn't go very far when you're talking about hiring teachers, but what if we did this. What if we hired eighteen teachers and provided six teachers each to three elementary schools in our district that we identify as being the most at-risk. Each school could decide how best to utilize those teachers. One school might decide to create one more class at each grade level (K-5), thereby lowering class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios across the board. Another school might decide to leave classes the same, but have one teacher work at each grade level, helping the existing teachers co-teach, or working with individual or small groups of students. Or a school might choose to place all six of those teachers in K-2, creating two extra sections at each level. How many of you think any of these ideas - or some permutation I haven't enumerated - would have a more positive effect on students than state-mandated testing? Which is more likely to change students' lives?

The problem with testing isn't limited to the dubious quality of the data we get when we purport to measure what's "important" for students to know. It's the opportunity cost of the testing. It's not just the $1 million spent on chromebooks that will often sit in carts instead of spending it on something that will help students learn. It's the tremendous monetary value of the staff time that goes into administering these tests including, but not limited to, a district assessment coordinator and their secretary, building-level assistant principals and counselors that spend an inordinate amount of time coordinating these tests, and the time that teachers spend in proctor training for these exams.

And then there's the value of the lost instructional time, not just the time students spend taking the tests, but the time taken in class to prepare for the tests (even teachers who don't do test-prep are very much encouraged to expose their students to the format of the test ahead of time), and the lowered quality of the instructional time that we typically have on testing days (where we test in the morning and have altered schedules in the afternoon).

And then there's the effect on students, both psychological and philosophical. Where they are stressed by the testing, and their motivation is decreased by constantly being told what they aren't good at. And it's the philosophical message we send to students, that being able to prove that adults are doing their job is more important than the students' learning.

If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you the opportunity for more learning, not more testing.

One-to-one With Our Freshman Class

My school crossed over what I think is going to be seen as an important dividing line this year - we went one-to-one with our freshman class. This is something we've talked about since 1999, so it certainly wasn't an overnight decision, and there's still a lot to do, but I think it's a step toward "what's next." I thought it might be valuable for other folks to hear a bit about the process we went through.

Last year we started a pilot we called "Connected Learners." Four sections (one each in Algebra, US History 9, English 9 and Biology) required laptops, with students either bringing their own or us providing them one if they chose not to. We felt like the pilot went well, with both students and teachers reporting back that they felt it made a difference in their learning (formal surveys twice during the year, and many meetings among the teachers for more anecdotal stuff). So as we looked at this school year we wanted to expand the program.

We surveyed teachers in the building to see who was interested in participating and got back a huge response, which was good. We initially decided to expand to nine sections, which would contain a little more than 200 of our freshmen (hard to tell exactly how many in advance because some kids would be in multiple sections). As we started to work through the logistics, I kept coming back to the same realization - going from nine sections to the entire freshman class really wasn't that big of a leap. (And, full disclosure, that's what I wanted to do in the first place and, well, I'm not terribly patient.)

So I went back to my administration and made the pitch. After some discussion - and with some very good and thoughtful questions asked by said administrators - we decided we wanted to move forward. For something this big, we needed district support, so we wrote up a proposal and submitted it. After further discussion, the district was on-board as well (and not just support for the idea, which was crucial, but also some monetary support if we needed it - which we might).

The only problem with all this discussion and changing our minds and going from nine sections to the entire freshman class was that by the time this decision was official, it was already the end of May (which is when school gets out for us). That's not an ideal time to try to get all the logistics worked out for an August start date, not to mention to get parents of incoming freshmen informed. (Ideally we would've let them know back in the fall during our Freshman Showcase, and then again as they went through the registration process this spring. That's what we'll do this year, which should help a lot.)

So we spent a very busy summer doing all the work necessary to get this up and running on our end, including developing material to share with the parents, and developed an online form (Google, naturally) for them to complete. We then sent this information out via email to all the parents (and phone calls when we didn't have an email) and started collecting the information on whether they would be bringing their own laptop or would like to use one of ours. (This was a key worry for us because we could only pull this off if a significant percentage of students brought their own, like they had during the pilot. So we included some verbiage indicating that we might have to back off of doing the entire freshman class if enough folks couldn't bring their own.) We also tried our best to answer questions from parents who - legitimately - were a little surprised to just be hearing about this now. (Again, that part should be much better this year.)

On our end we had to prepare an unknown number of laptops (netbooks running ubermix, although as a district we are headed toward chromebooks in the future), figure out a bunch of processes (distribution, trouble shooting, what happens when things break, etc.), and make a plan for supporting teachers. We've had on-going professional development for teachers in the use of technology in their classrooms, but clearly this was taking things to the next level, so we wanted to provide support. So, with the help of our district technology support personnel, we devised a very flexible professional development plan for this year.

We didn't want this to be a "one-size fits all" plan, yet we are constrained by the realities of people's schedules. So we wanted to create an opportunity that met teams or individuals where they were at, and try to take them where they wanted to go. This might look very different for a teacher of History versus a teacher of Algebra. So we presented to our Department Chairs and then had them share some basic information with their departments (including, but not limited to, this). We then requested that any team of teachers (or individual teachers if they wanted) contact us and set up an initial meeting so we could plan what this would look like for them. This is optional (after all, teachers are also going through a new evaluation process as well as new standards), but we were hopeful to get a decent response. So far we have teams from US History 9, Algebra, and Integrated Science (the "typical" social studies, math and science classes for our freshmen), as well as a team of Art teachers. We hope to get one or two more teams on-board later this fall.

We're almost a month into the school year and, all things considered, it has gone very smoothly. Over 370 of our freshmen are bringing their own devices (about 65% of our freshman class), and we are providing laptops to 185 of our freshmen. These numbers fluctuate some as students who we've given a laptop to decide to bring their own, or students who had been bringing their own have a problem with their laptop and decide to use of of ours. We anticipate that as the school year progresses the total number deciding to bring their own will increase slightly, but we'll see. We will be evaluating throughout the school year but, if things go well, our hope is to continue with this year's freshmen next year as sophomores, and add in next year's freshman class, and continue with that process until the entire school is one-to-one.

I started this post off saying I think this will be seen as crossing an important dividing line because I think this is a very necessary step to get to "what's next." I can't clearly define what "what's next" is going to look like, and I think it will look different in different schools, but in every vision of our school in the future I can (positively) imagine, having ubiquitous access to laptops and the Internet is a necessary (if not sufficient) condition for appropriate learning. The very fact that every student will have a device, and that teachers can begin to design learning opportunities knowing that is the case, is going to have some profound impacts on what we do and how we do it. The agency these devices give students, in turn, has the potential to transform school - and their learning - in equally important ways. I can't wait to see what happens "next".