5 Keys to Improve Collaboration Between K-12 Tech and Instructional Leaders

As both departments focus on student success, they must also focus on connecting for edtech purchases.

Educators are constantly adapting to meet the changing needs of the modern student. Today’s chief information and technology directors are no longer hardware techs and computer problem solvers. And instructional leaders don’t just focus on curriculum and textbooks any more. The two roles have much more in common now than ever before.

Tech directors are involved in curriculum technology and policy decisions, and curriculum directors are immersed in technology for everything from hiring and staffing to classroom management solutions.

What’s constant is that both roles remain focused on student success. To get there, both sides have to collaborate in educational technology decision-making and purchasing.

Back to Basics: Why Do Schools Buy Technology?

“We don’t buy software to make the jobs of administrators and teachers easier. We buy it to maximize their time and resources in support of kids,” says Lisa Andrejko, Ed.D., a former superintendent in two Pennsylvania school districts and current Lead Strategic Education Advisor for PowerSchool.

“You have to give technology a purposeful meaning for it to be effective. That should be driven by your curriculum decisions,” adds Jason Henry, Curriculum Supervisor for Secondary Education, Parkland School District. “A lot of times curriculum decisions are driven by state mandates, state standards, state testing, and so on. But we also look at data, areas of need, and what our student needs are. That creates the demand and is what drives what we should be buying in technology.”

Tony Davis, a former educator for 28 years and current Strategic Education Advisor for PowerSchool, dives deeper to explain tech’s role at multiple levels. He says:

• “At the classroom level, teachers and leaders use technology solutions to disaggregate student achievement in ways that personalize instructional planning and delivery.”
• “At the school level, data mining tools offer ways to report student data that produce deep teacher conversations during professional learning community meetings about curriculum and assessment implementation.”
• “At the district level, content coordinators, curriculum directors and assistant superintendents target gaps in student achievement at individual schools and inspire meaningful conversations with principals and teachers, specifically about their students.”

The Importance of Collaboration Between CTOs and Curriculum & Instructional (C&I) Leaders

In many districts, there’s often a divide between the CTO and Curriculum & Instructional leaders. Here’s a familiar scenario: your tech director feels that the curriculum director doesn’t understand hardware limitations and security of edtech ecosystems as a whole; and the curriculum director thinks your CTO doesn’t deliver tech to the classroom fast enough to solve immediate issues. But if the two department leaders could discuss their concerns openly and regularly, their individual needs would be better understood and their collective energy would be more focused on improving student outcomes.

“Once a month we have an interdepartmental meeting with our tech, C&I, and student services departments to all stay on the same page,” says Henry, whose district credits multiple collaborative meetings as drivers for success. “In the end we’re here for the best interest of our students. The biggest benefit of collaboration for me is to have that support system to lean on when we need it. If you enter this world in education and you’re trying to make these decisions on your own, it can be daunting.”

“It’s a must to have curriculum directors and CTOs work together in today’s education environment,” adds Lorraine S. Lange, Ed.D., former superintendent of Roanoke County Schools and current Strategic Academic Advisor for PowerSchool. “Both positions are important because they bring different viewpoints. It’s really like a marriage. Two people join together for a common purpose.”

We spoke with eight current and former educational leaders who have worked in K-12 curriculum, technology, and administration to compile these 5 tips to improve collaboration between CTOs and instructional leaders:

1. Stay Focused on Student Success

The mission of every school and district is focused–one way or another–on student success. With one common goal, tech and learning leaders have a great first step toward successful collaboration.

“CTOs always like to find ways to be more directly in alignment with the core mission of the district which is student achievement,” says Don Fraynd, Ph.D, a former principal in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and current Strategic Education Advisor for PowerSchool. “Finding technology that they can show has a direct impact on student achievement fulfills that goal. When a technology product enables the ability to apply research that grows student skills, this is a win-win for the technology staff, the HR and operations staff, and instructional staff.”

“Every decision you make, whether it’s technology, or curriculum, has to align to a mission statement that’s set forth by leadership, so everyone is rowing in the same direction,” adds Tracy Smith, Assistant to the Superintendent for Operations, Parkland School District.

Jason Henry, Smith’s colleague at Parkland, says, “We had meetings to talk about what we wanted for our students and what we want to get out of our teachers in the classroom. It became evident that highly invested students is ultimately where we want to end up. Inside a continuum of educational practices, everything that you can think about in education will always come back to highly invested students and building relationships. If those are off tilt, you’re not getting the best educational experience.”

And finally, former superintendent Andrejko says: “I had a few tough conversations with my tech directors over the years. My ‘orders’ to them were usually, ‘Figure out how to make it work.’ I really didn’t need to know why it was hard or other excuses. If it was good for kids, we needed to do it.”

2. It’s Time for Instructional Leaders to Get Tech Savvy

We’ve seen transformative changes in things we use every day. Just think how far advancements in cars, phones, appliances, computers, and even homes have come in just the past 30 years. Yet if you look at the modern classroom compared with classrooms from 100 or so years ago, not much has changed.

All that’s shifting–with modern edtech tools meeting the needs of evolving classrooms. To keep up, today’s instructional leaders have to focus on more than curriculum.

“Anybody who’s in curriculum now has to do everything they can to strengthen themselves in technology,” says Henry. “You’re not just buying a textbook any more, you’re buying digital content. You’re not just aligning curriculum to content any more. You’re trying to figure out how that content fits multiple pieces–with college and career readiness, with standards, and also for digital citizenship for 21^st century education. All of these pieces have to come together well and if they don’t, they come across as separate initiatives. Technology is the equalizer. Tech is where you can make these things come together a lot more efficiently than looking like separate initiatives.”

3. Tech Directors Need to Focus on Supporting Curriculum & Student Success

Technology directors should view their primary function not as gatekeepers, but bridge builders. Too often tech directors only look at the technical problems or issues. They may lose sight that their job is to discover how software solutions will help achieve the goal of supporting teachers and kids, even if it means extra work.

“For those school districts who boast cutting edge technology or call themselves technology model programs, if the main goal of the technology is not to support sound curriculum efforts, that designation is hollow,” Andrejko says. “Teaching and learning drive every decision in a school. Technology is there to maximize the curriculum efforts, not the other way around.”

“Curriculum is first, and technology supports curriculum in the classroom,” adds Henry. “We’ve always worked to ensure our curriculum is what’s driving our decision-making process.”

4. Become a Master Craftsman Cabinet Maker

The most important part of collaboration is meeting in person regularly. The best way to work well together for a common goal is practice and repetition. Many districts facilitate this process by creating a cabinet, or team, made of tech directors, instructional leaders, and other school stakeholders.

“As superintendent, I made both the technology and curriculum directors part of my superintendent’s cabinet. It’s beneficial for tech to hear about all the facets of the district and board operations,” says Andrejko.

Parkland School District has successfully encouraged collaboration between the two departments. According to Smith, the district’s leadership is focused on building relationships and a culture of trust, which she says takes time and effort. “We’re fortunate that we’ve been able to work in this collaborative fashion,” she says. “Bringing a lot of people together often is part of our district culture. It seems like a lot of meetings, but that time up front pays dividends because we don’t have as much miscommunication or fires that have to be put out as a result.”

Amy McIntosh, former Assistant Secretary of the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, U.S. Department of Education, agrees, and goes even further to open the meeting to additional roles. “There should be a district needs-planning process that involves a superintendent’s whole cabinet so academic needs are well understood, along with administrative, financial, and other kinds of needs for technology which are then prioritized. The first battle is making space in the budgets and priority lists for tech that address academic needs,” she says. “Any purchasing process, from writing the specs to making a decision, should include both academic and tech leaders in a team. Criteria for clear decision-making should be laid out, including how well the product meets academic needs separate from how the product does on technical requirements.”

Davis compares this effort to all of the people who help a world-class athlete succeed. “While each member of the team working on behalf of the athlete has their specific duties, they collaborate on critical elements important to the athlete’s success. High-performing school systems apply a similar approach. They have distinct job duties but their responsibility is to foster a collaborative culture that is mindful and sensitive to the operations of the school system expected to improve school and district outcomes, improve instructional and leader quality, and increase student achievement. In other words, technology solutions are not the sole responsibility of the Chief Technology Officer or a small select group that likes technology,” he says.

He offers the following steps to involve the larger school district team:

1. Adopt standards and processes to share the responsibility of improving internal efficiencies by eliminating redundancies, improving patterns of communications, and boosting organizational productivity.
2. Share in the analysis of the current technology supports and recommend solutions to optimize data collection, analysis, and reporting.
3. Share in the selection of technology solutions assuring the purchase of highly integrated and easily assessible systems for all teachers, support staff, and leaders.
4. Share the responsibility of implementation and professional development necessary for the effective use of the solutions that support your entire organization.

5. Involve Superintendents

In line with building a cabinet, a big part of the responsibility to inspire–and create–collaboration falls on the superintendent’s shoulders. A leading superintendent responsibility is to instill district leadership teams with a vision for regular collaboration. Their job is to find a way to engage all stakeholders in the process of creating student-centered learning environments and being committed to full implementation of these innovative environments.

“Our superintendent is heavily involved,” Smith says. “He’s very visible and accessible. He likes to see us communicating and interacting, and he’s put together structures to make that happen.”

Former superintendent, Jeff Felix, Ph.D., says that the superintendent must first bring their business, curriculum, and technology leaders together in a trusting relationship to develop the best ideas and plans for student success. He offers the following methods to make these relationships as effective as possible.

• Be honest and open about why you’re laying the groundwork for trust-building and collaboration. Communicate why those objectives are important.
• Start the initial discussions around ways that each department can contribute to best practices and how those practices address a student’s academic and social emotional needs.
• Take the feeling of working in silos out of the culture by naming and recognizing cross-functional teams. These working groups joining members of each department should be the primary structure of your organization.
• Before you implement your personal “great idea,” take the time to investigate, plan, act, and reflect with these working groups. That joint vision that develops from taking the time with the group is much more powerful than your initial idea because it is supported by all stakeholders.
• Any superintendent must be a master communicator. Your skills will be vital in carrying out an ongoing discussion among all members of the working group, and making sure everyone feels they have a voice and are being heard. Be transparent with your communication and your decision-making.
• Use technology to share each other’s calendars. This powerful form of trust has an amazing impact on all stakeholders and makes everyone’s time much more effective.

Stop, Collaborate & Listen

It really does take a village to educate students, and everyone wins when K-12 technology departments are on the same page as curriculum and instructional leaders. It can sometimes seem easier and quicker to make decisions in silos without the extra steps of connecting with other stakeholders, but that ultimately stands in the way of achieving school and district goals.

When it comes to student success, pausing and taking extra steps and time will give them the very best education possible. Hearing each other’s ideas and priorities is the most important step to getting there.