Education Week - March 18, 2015 - Special Report - (Page S20)
EDUCATION WEEK MARCH 18, 2015
n
The Chief Academic Officer > www.edweek.org/go/CAO
S20 |
Forging a Partnership
For the Digital Age
Chief technology officers play strategic role in curricular issues
and software operate.
hortly after successfully
deploying laptop computers
to middle and high
school students in Kent,
Wash., in 2006, Thuan
Nguyen went to his superintendent
with a surprising
proposal: The
technology chief for the
27,000-student district
wanted a half-dozen instructional technology
specialists taken away from his
department and reassigned to Kent's chief
academic officer.
"The equipment was out there, the initial
professional development was done,
and a lot of the basics were taken care
of," said Mr. Nguyen, now an assistant superintendent
and chief digital strategist
for the district. "I thought it best if those
resources were immediately available to
the academics department so they could
direct the day-to-day transition" to digital
classroom instruction.
School technology experts say the highly
regarded Kent district's flexible staffing arrangement
represents an unusual solution
to an increasingly common challenge: how
to get districts' academic and technology
departments to forget old turf wars and
start working together.
Such collaboration means a changing
role-and, more importantly, a new mindset-for
chief academic officers.
It's not necessary to become an expert on
fiber-optic cable, hardware specifications,
or technical interoperability standards.
But modern caos do need to be familiar
with the basics of how networks, devices,
They also need to know what questions
to ask of their technology counterparts,
and be willing to listen to the answers.
Perhaps most critically of all, digital-era
caos need to embrace "systems thinking,"
making sure that technology and academic
experts are working hand in hand on big
decisions, said Thomas B. Ryan, the chief
executive officer for the eLearn Institute,
a Wyomissing, Pa.-based nonprofit that
consults with districts on effective use of
digital learning tools.
"It's hard when districts are slashing
budgets and departments are competing
against each other to keep their funds,"
said Mr. Ryan, a former chief information
officer for the 90,000-student Albuquerque,
N.M., public schools. "But caos really
need to embrace a culture that allows for
a more trusting partnership and a projectmanagement
approach."
POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
There can be harsh consequences when
a district's academic and technology departments
don't work well together.
The high-profile meltdown of the
641,000-student Los Angeles Unified
district's ambitious 1-to-1 iPad initiative
showed the danger of unrealistic
expectations and a failure to balance the
desire for new technology with what's actually
needed for effective classroom use.
Mr. Ryan said there are countless other
examples of districts buying new comS
puting
devices that can't support new
online tests, 1-to-1 computing initiatives
that crash because schools don't have
enough bandwidth, digital instructional
materials that don't align with academic
standards, and classroom-administration
tools that teachers never use.
Too often, district decisionmaking involves
"technology on one side of the
table, educators on the other, and they
just lob verbal bombs at each other," he
said.
The position of instructional technology
specialist highlights the divide. The
role is relatively new. In many districts,
the question of whether the people fulfilling
it should be housed in academics is a
source of major friction.
Partly, the debate is about what's best
for schools. Often, it reflects a larger
struggle between chief academic and
chief technology officers over money,
power, and control.
And the friction is often exacerbated by
deep-seated differences in how the two
types of leaders think, talk, and operate.
"A lot of instructional people look at
technology [leaders] as 'the person who
is stopping me from doing what I want to
do,' " Mr. Ryan said. "And the [technology
leaders] see the instructional folks with
their Ph.D.s and think they're living in a
dream world."
For Mr. Nguyen, the Kent district's
chief digital strategist, the move to cede
direct control of some instructional technology
staff was a way to ensure that the
input of technology experts was actually
PAGE S23 >
BY BENJAMIN
HEROLD
During a joint visit to Mill Creek
Middle School in the Kent, Wash.,
district, Thuan Nguyen, right, and
Louanne Decker discuss the
district's blended learning
options. Mr. Nguyen is the
assistant superintendent and
chief digital strategy officer, and
Ms. Decker is the district's chief
academic and innovation officer.
PHOTO BY
IAN C. BATES FOR
EDUCATION WEEK
http://www.edweek.org/go/CAO
Education Week - March 18, 2015 - Special Report
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - March 18, 2015 - Special Report
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Education Week - March 18, 2015 - Special Report - S1
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