Teachers Want Hard Questions Asked Before Adding Tech

In the race to serve the diverse needs of students and address widening learning gaps, school districts often look to add new tools and resources. This is especially true as it relates to ed-tech. 

Leaders are bombarded with slick new web apps, software packages, and physical devices making grand promises to improve student learning, provide actionable data, and save time and money.  

Sometimes the products live up to the hype and transform districts and schools. But to avoid the big misses, tools must first be thoughtfully selected, thoroughly vetted, and meaningfully implemented for districts and schools with unique needs. 

Unfortunately, too often the opposite tends to occur: Districts looking for solutions adopt new tools without doing the legwork. 

Crucial funds are allocated and then spent, and the trickle-down effect for teachers is a suite of tools that feels “overwhelming” and “counterproductive,” rather than useful and powerful, according to Adam Gebhardt, a high school art teacher in Pennsylvania. Gebhardt told Ed Week that teachers these days “almost need fewer choices, the best, most-effective ones.” 

The adoption of promising new tools ramped up dramatically during the pandemic—a time when Kate Lund, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction at Glastonbury Public Schools, told Edutopia that school systems were expected to “leverage any and all technology” to keep kids learning. But lately, Lund, like other district leaders, believes they’ve “leaned too far.” 

For district leaders deciding whether or not to adopt new tech tools—and whether those new tools are actually useful—we leaned on research and lessons learned from other teachers and administrators to devise a list of questions to ask and answer first. 

1. What specific district problem does this solve? Can you explain it in three sentences or less? 

It seems simple, but this exercise is often challenging for district leaders—especially because tech companies entice them with seemingly easy to implement products that promise academic success, greater efficiencies for teachers, and more. Districts can quickly find themselves adopting new tools before they’ve even figured out whether or not they need them. 

“In recent years, tech companies have provided their products to schools either free or cheap, and then schools have tried to figure out how to use those products,” the New York Times recently reported. As the Times notes, the dynamic should be reversed: “Districts and individual schools should first figure out what tech would be most useful to their students, and their bar for ‘useful’ should be set by available data and teacher experience.” 

The School Superintendents Association (AASA) recommends refining your need by engaging “people who work with the problem on a daily basis,” such as teachers, school staff, parents, or the community at large. For example, if your district wants to improve math scores, an administrator may believe kids are simply performing poorly at math, “but a teacher might say that the problem is they’re unable to give students sufficient individual attention.” This refinement can help you “narrow down the universe of digital tools to the ones that address your need.”

2. Does it pass the sniff test with teachers? 

If teachers will be the primary users of your new tool, it makes sense to glean their insights into its effectiveness early on in the process. Doing so can help ensure tools are genuinely useful for the needs of classrooms, as well as identify potential areas for future training. 

Asking teachers to watch a demo of a product and answer a simple question like: “Would you use this in your classroom?” is an “efficient way to narrow the field” of choices, the AASA says. 

But frictionless demonstrations often gloss over problems. In a 2019 report on ed tech buying practices, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) recommends that districts conduct pilots of tools they’re close to purchasing. According to ISTE, asking teachers to try out tools in their classrooms for a period of time, and providing detailed feedback on their user experience, can “determine the validity and reliability of a resource under consideration without making a districtwide commitment.” 

To get the best feedback, ISTE recommends choosing teachers with a wide range of teaching experience across grade levels and subject areas. Test runs of the product will generate important data related to usability and curricular relevance, and also seed the field with a “cohort of coaches and ambassadors if you move to wider adoption.” When teachers have a voice in the selection process of a tool, they are more likely to use, support, and champion it amongst their peers, the report notes. 

3. Are you sure you don't already have something that does this?

Before purchasing a new tool, take a look at the many dozens—possibly even hundreds or thousands—of tools that have already been purchased. A 2024 nationwide report found that in recent years the adoption of new ed tech tools in districts has ballooned: In 2018 districts used an average of 841 tools. By 2024 that number tripled to 2,739. Yet the vast majority of these tools remain untouched. 

A 2019 report tracking 200,000 software license purchases by nearly 300 schools found that, on average, a whopping two-thirds of the products went unused, amounting to about $2 million of waste in district spending.

Taking an audit of tech you already have, and asking stakeholders whether the proposed tool meets a new need, will save your staff time and energy and save you crucial dollars that can be used elsewhere. 

4. How does the technology work? Are your answers specific, concrete, and evidence-based?  

When it comes time to proving the efficacy of a given product, it’s important to look beyond splashy advertising, sleek websites, and juiced testimonials. Unfortunately, finding real evidence can take more time and legwork than you might expect. 

A 2022 report from Ed Surge notes that no governing body holds edtech companies accountable for the claims they make about their products, or the findings they present to districts—even if it amounts to a “dressed-up anecdote from one teacher.” According to Ed Surge, most decisions around purchases are based on ambiguous or dubious standards like “usability, personal relationships, features, and not evidence.”

Putting your tool through a pilot program while gathering feedback from the teachers using it will answer most of your rubber-meets-the-road questions.

You can add another layer of input into the vetting process by turning to third-party services. Resources like Ed Tech Evidence Exchange, Evidence for ESSA, and Common Sense Education provide in-depth reviews, information, and existing research on tools you’re considering. 

5. What data is collected—and is the data truly useful? 

Almost every instructional tool boasts flashy dashboards and claims to offer data and reports that can help identify gaps in learning and improve student and teacher performance. But researching whether that data is actually useful and actionable is crucial, writes instructional Leader Shveta Miller. 

Miller recalled the story of an adaptive literacy tool that was meant to incrementally challenge their students and provide reports to teachers on their progress. Instead the reports were “vague, listing only percentage scores on activities that teachers could not see or experience themselves.” The tool also didn’t do a great job of alerting teachers when students were mastering new skills and were ready to move forward. As a result, she said, teachers only realized at the end of the year that dozens of students had been repeating low-level work they’d already mastered, wasting valuable learning time.  

Vetting a tool for how it handles sensitive data—like the personal information of students or teachers—is important, too. The Learning Accelerator recommends looking for tools with solid data encryption and security that ensure only authorized users can access data, transparent data policies that detail how personal data is collected, stored, and shared, and clear plans for how to address data breaches. Tools with strong privacy policies, they said, also allow schools to retain ownership of student or teacher data and the ability to delete that data when appropriate. These tools also “collect only the data necessary for its function.” 

6. What kind of professional development has been (or will be) provided for teachers?

When schools and districts are overwhelmed by a proliferation of tech tools, teachers experience the brunt of the issue—largely because they are not properly trained to navigate newly purchased and adopted software or platforms. 

And often, the effects are serious and harmful to teachers and in-school communities. A 2021 study, for example, found that when teachers are pushed to adopt new technologies without the “technical resources and equipment necessary for its correct didactic use,” it can undermine confidence and professionalism, require teachers to learn the tools at home, and lead to stress that spirals into “conflicts between teachers.” The problem doesn’t seem to be getting better: A 2023 report concluded that more than half of incoming teachers lack the confidence and understanding to effectively use ed tech in their classrooms.

To effectively train teachers to use new tech tools, Michael Ham, a former educator and associate partner at The Learning Accelerator writes that districts should define what proficiency looks like and identify the "baseline skills and understandings necessary" to use them. Are the functions clearly labeled and easy to find, or does using the tool require significant navigation and technical knowledge? Ditto for the data or outputs: Are they easy to find, or are they stored somewhere that isn’t clear? Again, leaning on your early stakeholder feedback is key at this stage. 

Cutting corners on budgets or time leaves teachers—and ultimately their students—with a deficit that is hard to make up. Ham suggests going beyond the resources provided by a vendor, such as crash-course professional development sessions, one-pagers, and how-to videos that are “usually designed with broad audiences in mind.” Instead, leverage school and district level leaders and resources to “personalize” training. This may include online webinars and live trainings “that align with your users’ schedules and provide them the support they need to fully engage.”  

7. Does it pass all tests with flying colors? (If in doubt, throw It out.)

Given how inundated schools and teachers already feel with tech tools and systems, new tools should get more than a passing grade when measured against the standards discussed above. This may involve fighting against your nature. 

An intriguing 2021 study found that when people are looking to improve ideas or situations, they “systematically default” to adding, instead of subtracting. In the face of lower test scores and widening academic gaps, Justin Reich, a professor at MIT and director of its Teaching Systems Lab, says this finding applies to district leaders, who often seek to improve schools by introducing new programs, new tech tools, or new policies. 

But that isn’t always the right approach. “When the system isn’t working, and the people in the system are exhausted and overwhelmed, you can’t fix those problems by adding more things to the system and making it more complicated,” Reich told ASCD. 

While adding a shiny new tool may appear to be a step in the right direction, that may not in fact be the case for your district. In fact, sometimes staying put—or even focusing your attention on subtracting complexity by removing technology services you’ve already purchased and don’t use—is the better approach.