"As a community, we're in the 21st Century when kids are in school, but we're in the 20th Century in many of our homes." - Ann Blakeney Clark
There used to be a temporal boundary between school and home. Paper homework represented the one dreaded exception, a crumbled reminder of work to be done. But technology has blended it all and students are now sharpening their skills in a variety of environments.
The change in learning settings is creating a dilemma for many schools districts throughout the U.S. How do you integrate technology being used inside schools with a variety of home working environments? How do you choose technologies in schools that have an all-in-one element equally adaptive to parents, teachers, and students?
Ann Blakeney Clark, superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, NC sat down to discuss her process in determining "one-stop" technology that crosses various levels of learning. As a League of Innovative Schools district, Clark shares her passion for raising the technological bar for communities faced with a financial disadvantage. There is little reason, according to Clark, that a school-learning environment should not seamlessly communicate with every home inside a community.
Interview
Rod Berger: Ann, what role does a challenging procurement process play? All things being equal and per pupil expenditures being equal, a very generative conversation would be between leaders and districts of different type and demographic. One of the challenges we hear from the vendor side is how do we incorporate amazing technology when there’s a lot of bureaucracy? You have districts saying, “We would love to do what we saw from our neighbors but our funding is challenged at best.”
How can we can improve the process and get through some of the red tape? How can we get innovation into the hands of intelligent people making decisions with the purchasing power? How can we facilitate the 5-year-old who’s talking about his long-term goals?
Ann Blakeney Clark: Our platform for success in Charlotte starts with the fact that we have long been a district with a strategic plan and working document developed with the input of our community. We have a specific goal in our strategic plan that talks about personalized learning, integrating technology and creating one to one technology for our students. It was designed with community input. When we started putting together a one to one environment of devices for grade 3 through 12, in our budget, we did it a grade level or two at a time. In a very systematic way, we trained our teachers first, got them comfortable with the technology, and then we rolled our technology out starting in middle school. We led up and down so the kids never once had a device without training.
We had a very strategic approach. We already had buy-in from our community. Now I’m in a place where I’m saying to our community, “Okay, we’re one to one. We’ve done our part as a school district now. Our community has got to come together and be a Wi-Fi community. Otherwise, we have an equity issue. It’s great that we have devices at school, but it’s not great if we’re sending home paper handouts to do homework.” That’s not what our parents are expecting to see when their kids come back from an eight-hour day of fully using technology. They don’t want to see a paper sheet coming home for them as a worksheet.
We can’t make that transition with our home assignments until we have a universal Wi-Fi access in our community. I issued a call to action to our community. Let’s solve this. We now have a non-profit that was started by one of our students called E2D. It’s an organization where an 8th-grade student said, “You know what, dad? There are kids in my class that don’t have a computer at home. So how are they doing their homework like I’m doing it?” She solved that for her school then she solved it for her finger patterned schools, and now she and her dad have solved it through this non-profit that an 8th-grade student came up with. We’re now going after laptop donations from our business community to put a laptop in the home of every single student, and I’m taking on the lead and the campaign for universal Wi-Fi access in our community. We don’t need to be relying on the public library and Starbucks to provide our Wi-Fi access. That’s not good enough for our kids. We’ve started getting some grants where we’re putting hotspots in the hands of kids that are fully funded through the grant, but that’s not a long-term solution.
I’m not letting the challenges of procurement stand in the way of our ability to advance. What we know is what our kids need, and our teacher’s desires are learning experiences for their kids. I would advise other superintendents to have a strategy, engage your community, business, parents, and non-profits in the vision of that strategy. People know we’ve been going after it and they’ve seen us very systematically do this, very successfully. We’ve got the devices in the hands of every kid at school. Now, we need devices in the hands of every kid at home. We then have to make sure we have the Wi-Fi access, so it’s a fully useable technology for all our students, not some of our students.
It’s about a strategy, getting buy-in, and getting a commitment from your parents in your business community on the front end and it’s selling that vision. I guess I have the added advantage of having been a principal in this district at all three levels. I’ve been the chief academic officer. I have some longstanding credibility in the community to stand before this community and issue a call to action, such as, “We need to be a Wi-Fi community and here’s why.” I think having an aligned cohesive strategy is critical.
RB: Yes, and incorporating the community. Digital inclusion obviously is very big for the district. Talk with me about how you have looked at incorporating parents and caregivers into the conversation in a regular communication loop about how their children are doing, and how we’re accessing their progress? I’m seeing more and more of that being a beachhead for districts. I’m curious as to how you’re looking at that?
AC: We certainly are pushing ourselves on ways that we can communicate more effectively, more frequently and more efficiently with our parents. We have a CMS app available for our families that provide up-to-date information on what’s happening in the school district, important things like “Tomorrow is a snow day” but also other important information that our families need in real time.
We also are using text messages and applications to push information out when the bus is late. We’re trying to use the technology not only in the classroom but also in the operational business side of our district as well to keep our parents connected.
But critical to that, I believe is Wi-Fi access in every home because we can’t assume that every parent can make it to the public library to check their email everyday or that every parent has access to a computer at their workplace, to stay connected to their school. We do know that most of our families have a telephone and most of them own a cellphone at this stage. And that has been a way that we’ve been able to manage the digital divide or the Wi-Fi access issue.
But we continue to push ourselves and to push our community. I like to say, “As a community, we’re in the 21st Century when kids are in school but we’re in the 20th Century in many of our homes.” We’re a school of almost 55 percent poverty. How can we be cutting edge in our school house and then revert to old systems and structures that we left behind a long time ago as educators? That’s a continual tension, and I would want to acknowledge that. But it’s one we’re not choosing just to say, “That’s a barrier, and that’s not in the school’s wheelhouse.”
We can be the drivers, we can call into question, and we can call for action. We can rally our community behind E2D as we have to work on getting the laptops. We have 22,000 homes at this point that we believe don’t have a laptop. I mean, that’s doable. It’s a community with almost a million people with business and industry. I look out my window every day and see these tall buildings; I know we can pull off 22,000 laptops sooner rather than later.
And then we sit with, “Okay, now what do we do about Wi-Fi access?” I think you just chip away at it. It took us four years to be one-to-one grades 3 through 12. I don’t want to paint a picture that overnight, all of a sudden we had all these computers. It took time; it took a well-thought out plan; it took making some tough business decisions in terms of budget, but we knew we had a destination. We had engaged our community in our strategic plan in a very intentional way, so we were well positioned to have our parents behind us. 200,000-plus parents is a good number to have behind you –
RB: It’s a sizeable group.
AC: That’s right.
RB: Ann, let’s say you remedy this 22,000-plus homes without a laptop and we’ve got Wi-Fi in the district, what’s next? I think part of what’s interesting about the league and the superintendents that are part of it is that you get other districts working very hard to be included and to participate. I’ve even had offline conversations with those that are looking to districts like yours as lighthouse opportunities for learning from afar. If the backdrop becomes you’ve solved some of these challenges, what’s the next step in a world where your district is completely connected? What are some things you would personally forecast and relay to your fellow superintendents around the U.S, about the development of students, once all the elements are in place?
AC: I’ll go back to a question you asked earlier because I think the conversation we’re having with our vendors right now is the functionality we need. We want to make things as easy as possible for our students, our teachers, and our parents. We want a one-stop shop, and we want a dashboard that can do a lot of things, not just one particular feature that they are really good at.
I think the opportunity is in front of the educators across this nation; teachers, principals, superintendents, and boards of education, to push the technology industry that is supporting K-12 and even higher education. We need integrated systems; we need simplicity, and we need one click. We don’t need to have a thousand different programs. We need everyone to come on board and align their particular product and make sure it’s exceedingly compatible and flexible because we’re going to be reevaluating our investments and our technology programming software, particularly on the education side. I think our vendors are going to have to become increasingly nimble, less niche-focused and more able to deliver a very robust product that can meet a lot of the needs of K-12 education - since that’s what we’re talking about right now.
That’s what I see on the horizon because those are the conversations we’re starting. We are looking at the array of programs that we have and making sure they’re all aligned to what our data tells us our students need. We are having those tough conversations that say, “This is not going to continue to work for us in the ways that it has and here’s what we need and here’s what we see on the horizon that our teachers are going to need in terms of being able to be more effective.”
I see that landscape changing rather rapidly over the next five to six years. It’s something that I think we’re in a position as a K-12 community to really drive change.
RB: The culture between districts and vendors is changing. We come from the world where we used to purchase a textbook, and check it off, check off the box. Districts would live and die by that text and the content of a legacy system of a publisher that was well known. Now you’re working with technologists who would like to be able to be included in conversations with progressive districts like yours where there is an understanding that technology is fluid. It pivots; it changes with feedback from the users, the students, and the teachers.
How have you seen leadership circles change in accepting and contextualizing technology, as something that changes, is fluid, as opposed to a sign that it’s not worthy of being a part of a very large district implementation?
AC: The first thing I would say is I am pushing so hard for this Wi-Fi access because our parents are not expecting to see textbooks come home. We find ourselves in this 21st Century, 20th Century bind because we don’t have that Wi-Fi access. That’s why I’m pushing hard, so we can completely release ourselves from the need for textbooks. That’s the first step that I believe we’re going to be going after very aggressively.
The second thing: I don’t think it’s going to be prudent for a vendor to have a specialty in just social studies anymore. I think they’re going to have to come with a product that is nimble enough to address social studies, science, and foreign language. As I’ve said earlier, something robust in its ability to work on multiple platforms because we’ll have students with different technology at home than perhaps they have at school.
We’re going to be pushing the envelope on a very flexible product that can meet a lot of needs and not just one need. We’re not going just to buy social studies software and science software. We’re going to be looking for companies that can fulfill a lot of things with a deep menu; deep in terms of content, and deep in terms of grade levels that it can support. We’re going to want a K-12 kind of technology solution, not, “This is what we’re using for elementary. We’ve got to use this for middle school, and yet another for high school.” These are the sorts of things I’m asking about as I work with my curriculum instruction team and with our technology team. How can we continue to push for what we know we need?
RB: Well, it’s been a great pleasure to get to know you, Ann, and what you’re doing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina. I’m sure it will be a wonderful success in April when the league comes to visit. Thanks so much, Ann.
AC: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Ann Blakeney Clark brings a quarter-century of experience in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina to her role as superintendent. Clark’s extensive education background includes serving as principal at elementary, middle and high schools. She has held a variety of teaching and administrative positions in CMS since joining the district. She most recently served as the chief academic officer.
She graduated from Davidson College with a B.A. in English and earned a master’s degree in special education from the University of Virginia.
Her achievements in education and the community have been widely recognized. She has been named a Broad Superintendent Fellow, Charlotte Women of the Year, the Thomas Jefferson Distinguished Alumnae Award from University of Virginia, National Principal of the Year (1994) and William Friday Fellow and Council for Great City Schools Outstanding Urban Educator Award winner.
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About Rod Berger, PsyD.
Dr. Rod Berger is President and CEO of MindRocket Media Group. Berger is a global education media personality and strategic influencer featured in The Huffington Post, Scholastic, AmericanEdTV, edCircuit and in EdTechReview India.
Audiences have enjoyed education interviews with the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, Arne Duncan, Randi Weingarten, Sal Khan along with leading edtech investors, award-winning educators, and state and federal education leaders. Berger's latest project boasts a collaboration with AmericanEdTV and CBS's Jack Ford.
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