The (New) Basics in Modern, Connected Schools

Post ESSER Funds, These 4 Types of Edtech are the Most Likely to Stick Around 

Nearly $200 billion in federal COVID relief funds for the nation’s public schools has officially dried up, with the final deadline for obligating the funds now passed. School administrators and district leaders across the nation are preparing for a 2024-25 that’s smaller budget than the past four years’ have been — and many are facing decisions on what programs will be scaled back or eliminated. 

A new survey of superintendents shows that tech tools used in classroom learning are not likely to be first on the chopping block; districts are more likely to cut tutoring vendors or after-school programs first, and non-teaching support staff hired during the pandemic will likely be high on the list as well. 

With tighter budgets, though, schools are likely to pare down spending on edtech tools sooner or later. And that means, at a minimum, considering which edtech tools are foundational in the modern connected classroom, and how to use those tools most efficiently and with the biggest impact on learning outcomes.

“With educators and students using so many tools in and out of the classroom, district leaders need to consider the scale, efficiency, and effectiveness of their tech,” writes LearnPlatform in its annual EdTech Top 40 report. “Centralizing where and how you manage edtech can have a considerable impact; rather than using a large collection of technologies for very specialized purposes, districts need to build ecosystems rich with the key technologies that are critical in driving learner outcomes.”

Another recent survey of educators showed that they most desired additional time for training and finding ways to best integrate existing technology into their classrooms. 

The Big Four: Foundational Edtech

Edtech tools in these four categories have become crucial to the modern classroom and are most likely to survive even the most extreme post-ESSER budget cuts:

1. LMS: A learning management system such as Canvas LMS provides school districts with a centralized platform for course management, content authoring and delivery, reporting grades and data, and communication between students, teachers, families, and administration. In its annual EdTech Top 40 report, LearnPlatform says an LMS should spell out its data collection and protection practices and should be extensible and integrate with the school’s other instructional tools. 
2. Digital operations: Classroom management, online safety, and IT management platforms such as classroom.cloud or NetSupport School combine core tech monitoring and device safety duties into one package while protecting students and maximizing learning time. classroom.cloud, for example, allows teachers to keep students’ devices on the same assignment or website — and students on task — both in-class and remotely, all while automatically monitoring for bullying or other safety threats and allowing IT staff to remotely manage devices, and manage the district’s trust environment and more. 
3. Instructional content: Courseware platforms, such as ESSA evidence-backed i-Ready and IXL Learning, are those which include an entire set of curriculum products selected and taught in a sequence, aiming to be foundational and comprehensive to achieve state curriculum standards and learning goals. Supplemental instructional platforms, on the other hand, like Khan Academy or Discovery Education, allow students to actively engage with topic-specific educational content. Supplemental platforms’ content may or may not follow a firm course progression, typically focusing instead on providing content that “boosts” student learning on a given subject or study topic.
4. Classroom response and assessment: This category, sometimes called “formative assessment,” covers diagnostic tools used to provide ongoing feedback to educators, allowing them to adjust their teaching methods based on a student’s learning style and ability, according to LearnPlatform. Think multi-format, easily edited quiz and survey tools like Kahoot!, which is the most widely used response and assessment tool that is also backed by ESSA evidence, according to LearnPlatform. 

Beyond these four crucial types of tech tools, educators and school leaders will need to closely analyze the efficacy of the edtech tools their schools are using, warned Edunomics Lab Director Marguerite Roza and the U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. Roza has predicted that on average districts will have to cut spending by $1,200 per student in the 2024-25 school year.

Deciding how to measure an edtech tool’s impact is a work in progress, notes AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Its annual report calls on researchers and policymakers to help K-12 districts develop key performance indicators based on pandemic relief spending outcomes — a massive data analysis that researchers have just begun to undertake. “When evaluating the success of ARP there is still much to learn,” AASA’s report said. 

Schools’ spending on technology “needs to have clear evaluative measures,” according to a NetSupport report on educators’ feelings about edtech usage. “When the qualifications for purchasing technology are specific such as ease of implementation, student data privacy compliance, interoperability, learning outcomes and alignment with standards, then the question is not who made the decision but how the technology will meet student needs. From that point, a watershed of improved utilization and outcomes ensues.”