Meeting expectations? Yes. We expected it to be bad and it is.

Wednesday's Herald Press reported a Huntington County resident went in front of the School Board to discuss concerns he had about the iPad pilot program.  The headline reads, Board Hears iPad Worries. The article continues on the back of the newspaper with the tagline, "School corp. had anticipated bandwidth issue."

These lines frame the summary of administration's position:  We're hearing positive news. We expected there to be a few wrinkles.  We will work these out.  Many teachers have had training. Besides, this is all new and just a pilot. Don't worry.

Huntington Community residents, you should be worried. 

First, the article moves directly from the resident's concerns to administration saying they are hearing mostly positive feedback. One can only hope that, for the sake of brevity, the author skipped mention of administration telling this resident his concerns will be seriously considered. 

This resident is a parent with experience in Information Technology.  He predicted the serious issues being experienced. His posts on flawed implementation of the "21st Century Learning Initiative" are recommended reading. This from the parent's blog on the iPad initiative:

The problem is not your digital citizens acting “uncitizen-like” or teachers not fulfilling mandates, the problem is poor leadership and poor planning on the part of this school corporation.  The problem is the school corporation came into the project unprepared both on the technology and education fronts, with a mandate that fails the basic points of education, network security, and “what to expect from a group of teenagers”. 

Not only does the article seem to suggest that administration dismissed serious concerns, but one must wonder; does administration listen to the residents of the community?  From where is this "positive feedback" coming?"(1) Instead of just copying down notes from a school board meeting, Perhaps the Herald Press could delve into some real investigative journalism on this point. 

Secondly, about those wrinkles.  Attempting this program has not just caused wrinkles with technology, it wreaked havoc on existing infrastructure.  Suffice it to say, most of what used to work no longer works as  well as it once did, if it works at all.

To top this off, HCCSC teachers face a new, stressful and time consuming evaluation scheme from administration.(2)  The frustration teachers are experiencing with technology issues has not helped ease concerns, considering that the with new legislation on this evaluation scheme, any teacher, no matter how experienced, may be released if he or she has the lowest evaluation (3) and enrollment declines.  (Enrollment is declining in HCCSC.)

Considering the new evaluation scheme, could it be HCCSC  teachers felt coerced to attend "voluntary" training?  Administration tells the media outlets it is only a pilot, but consider an email that went out to teachers on September 13th, 2012.  It stated that in order to download necessary documents for the new evaluation scheme, two instructions needed followed using new technology.  Teachers are feeling the heat of high stakes evaluations requiring technology with which they have never been trained.  These actions by administration are simply unprofessional and disrespectful to its employees.

Savvy teachers know, the best way to manage a classroom effectively is get on top and stay on top.  The first days of school are critical to setting expectations.  Whatever the classroom teacher does not structure to her advantage, the students will structure to their advantage.

And so it goes with this new initiative.  Though forewarned that teacher training was the most important aspect to a successful implementation,  this advice was widely ignored.  Every day we continue haphazardly using digital learning will take weeks unlearning and restructuring.  Or, as one parent put it on his blog:

You are not going to fix this by simply adding bandwidth and trying to reason with your students.  You either now have to take the steps of either becoming a cybercop on every user in your network (of which you do not have the time or funds to support) or you have to start unplugging things.  

Notes

1 Perhaps the positive feedback is coming from State Superintendent Tony Bennett.  Bennett has worked to dismantle public education.  He campaigned that all high school students take at least one online course before graduating, despite growing evidence online classes perform poorly.  Bennett has repeatedly pursued deskilling professional licensing for teachers for the purpose of allowing "teachers" to be online course facilitators to huge classes of hundreds of students. 

2 While technically the RISE was produced by the state, it was only a suggested model. The state urged corporations not to use the RISE evaluation scheme, but to develop one of their own. (One frustrated state official told us that local superintendents still “can’t grasp” that they do nothave to use the RISE system. p 16/32 )The teacher's association asked administration to collaborate on a better evaluation, but administration refused to budge. Two years ago, the teacher's association also tried to work with administration to negotiate a contract that could have circumvented the RISE for years, much like many neighboring districts did. But again, administration refused.

(3)  In fact, a teacher could be rated, "highly effective", yet if her score is the lowest of the lot that year, she could be let go. A teacher's evaluation is largely based on her student's test scores.  The flaws with these new untested metrics continue to be exposed as poor indicators of actual teacher performance.