Shocking News: Unused Technology Has No Impact on Learning

Reading Program Didn't Boost Skills: Here's big news. If you buy an expensive software program and then fail to allow teachers the time or opportunity to use it, the impact on learning will be minimal. Seems that one of the largest school district's in the nation, Los Angeles Unified, learned that lesson the hard way after spending $50 million on a software program to teach reading to younger students. No one seems to dispute that the software has great potential, and that it has been used successfully elsewhere, but competing priorities, lack of clear direction, lack of support for hardware, and most importantly, failure to give teachers the time needed to implement the program led to its failure. I found this to be especially troubling:

....two district evaluations found that teachers didn't have enough time for the demands of the computer program as they struggled to cover a rigorous reading curriculum, introduced by the district only a year before. Teachers were forced to devote most of their mornings, and some afternoons, to those scripted lesson plans.

So while one group at the district office is promoting and planning their project, a different group is rolling out their own initiative. Caught in the middle? Kids, teachers, and taxpayers.

Typical.

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