Education Week - January 28, 2015 - 12

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS > Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
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District and Company
Share Costs of Fixing
Broken Tech. Initiative
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
just a first step on a long road to
redemption.
During negotiations that stretched
over several months, Guilford
County and Amplify made a series of
difficult decisions regarding money,
public-relations strategy, and program
design. Ultimately, that process
led to a commitment to share
responsibility for getting the rollout
right the second time around.
As a result, the Guilford district
has mostly maintained the trust of
key constituents. It has also avoided
the type of ongoing meltdown still
unfolding in Los Angeles, home to
the other big 1-to-1 computing initiative
to go off the rails during the
2013-14 school year.
"There were a couple of highprofile,
large-scale deployments
that year that experienced big
challenges," said Justin Hamilton,
Amplify's chief of staff. "One of
them is back on track. A big part
of that has been partnership and
collaboration."
Major Hardware Problems
In December 2012, Guilford
County won a $35 million dollar federal
Race to the Top grant to develop
and implement a new personalizedlearning
initiative, known as pace
(short for Personalized Achievement,
Curriculum, Environment.) The program's
centerpiece was a plan to give
15,000 middle school students their
own digital tablets.
In April 2013, Amplify was approved
as the district's primary
vendor on the project, beating out
Apple and Pearson. (Larry Berger,
the president of Amplify Learning,
is on the board of Editorial Projects
in Education, the publisher of Education
Week.)
Four months later-without having
piloted the new devices, and after
only a condensed training period for
school-based staff-the district began
distributing tablets to 18 schools.
The aggressive rollout strategy
flew in the face of the slowand-steady
approach that experts
recommend.
"We had done some large-scale
deployments before with other
technologies," Ms. Carr said. "We
were able to roll them out and ramp
them up quickly, and it worked well.
So perhaps we were overconfident in
our ability to do it again."
The district expected hiccups
related to software, training, and
teachers' willingness to adopt the
new devices, she said.
What it did not anticipate were
massive hardware problems, including
almost 1,600 broken screens,
more than 2,000 broken device cases,
and a handful of overheated battery
chargers, one of which partially
melted.
In October of that year, Superintendent
Maurice "Mo" Green suspended
the program and recalled
Amplify hardware from schools.
That December, Mr. Green sent
a letter to district staff, elected officials,
and community leaders announcing
that schools would have to
wait until 2014-15 to receive their
new tablets.
Learning From Failure
Experts say a clear-eyed diagnosis
of the problem is the first step
toward fixing a 1-to-1 computing
initiative that has gone off-track.
In Guilford County, that meant
assigning responsibility for what
went wrong.
The tablets provided to the district
by Amplify were made by Asus, a
major Taiwanese electronics manufacturer.
Those devices did not include
the type of protective glass that
Amplify had promised. Asus also initially
disputed the district's contention
that its chargers were defective.
Mr. Green, the Guilford superintendent,
insisted that Amplify replace
all the tablets with a new device
from a different manufacturer.
Amplify officials say they independently
reached the same conclusion
and decided to switch out all of their
tablets in use in the United States.
Guilford officials also wanted
some kind of compensation for the
lost 2013-14 school year, for which
they had already paid Amplify
$3.2 million.
The company agreed to reimburse
the district for staff training
time and related expenses,
an amount that totaled $856,750,
according to documents provided
by the district.
To ensure that Guilford schools
got four full years of service, as originally
promised, Amplify also agreed
to extend its contract by one year, at
no additional cost. Guilford officials
estimated the value of that extension
at $3.9 million.
In response to Guilford's request
for additional supports during a
second attempt at deployment,
Amplify agreed to provide technology
staff for 90 days at each of the
28 schools receiving devices, at its
own expense.
"I suppose [Amplify] decided that
[the problems in Guilford] were a
black eye for the company, and that
if they didn't get it right, customers
weren't going to buy from them anymore,"
said Ms. Wilson of the Oneto-One
Institute, which has received
sponsorship funds from Amplify.
Guilford County remains Amplify's
most prominent client, accounting for
12 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 28, 2015 | www.edweek.org
more than half of the 30,000 or so devices
the company has in circulation
in K-12 schools in the United States.
The fixes did not fall entirely on
Amplify.
Jill R. Wilson, who helped negotiate
both deals with Amplify as the
general counsel for the Guilford
County School Board, said the district
improved its contract language
the second time around, adding
specifics on issues including device
specifications, delivery schedules,
contingencies, and consequences.
Earning Back Trust
District officials also piloted the
new devices in schools before moving
ahead with a comprehensive rollout,
improved their training for principals
and teachers, and adopted a slower,
staggered deployment plan.
Roughly 18,000 new Amplify tablets,
designed in partnership with
Intel, have been distributed this
school year. Breakage and defect
rates are down dramatically compared
with 2013-14.
But perhaps the most significant
challenge throughout the ordeal,
said Ms. Carr, the Guilford district's
chief of staff, was earning back the
trust of everyone from teachers to
local business leaders to the U.S.
Department of Education.
"We're a district that believes in
telling people what's going on," she
said. "That includes the good, the
bad, and the ugly."
That approach helped replenish the
reserves of trust and good will that
had been depleted during the tablet
fiasco, said H. Winston McGregor,
the executive director of the Guilford
Education Alliance, a local nonprofit.
"They were able to own the problem,
fix it, and keep our sights as a
community focused on the higher
Kevin Mash, a middle school
math teacher for the Guilford
County, N.C., school district,
works with an Amplify tablet
last summer to identify ways
to use it in his classroom.
SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
After massive hardware problems led the
73,000-student Guilford County, N.C., school district
to suspend its 1-to-1 tablet-computing initiative in
December 2013, both the district and its vendor,
Amplify, took steps to get the effort back on track.
WHAT THE DISTRICT DID:
n Agreed to not seek repayment of $3.2 million paid to Amplify during
the 2013-14 school year, despite the initiative being suspended after
15,000 digital tablets had to be withdrawn from schools.
n Strengthened its contract with Amplify to include greater detail
on device specifications, delivery timelines, contingencies, and
consequences.
n Created a pilot program to test Amplify's new devices before
re-deployment.
n Expanded and improved training for school-based personnel,
especially principals.
n Moved from an all-at-once device deployment to staggered rollout
in 2014-15.
WHAT AMPLIFY DID:
n Replaced all of its original digital tablets and related equipment
with a new device from a different manufacturer.
n Reimbursed Guilford County schools $856,750 for lost staff time,
training, and related expenses incurred during the 2013-14
school year.
n Agreed to provide an additional year of service at no additional cost
to the district. Guilford County officials estimated the value of the
extenison to be $3.9 million.
n Provided free, on-site IT support staff for 90 days for each of the
28 Guilford schools receiving devices during the 2014-15
school year.
SOURCE: Education Week
vision," Ms. McGregor said.
Other key players in Guilford
County remain wary, however. The
district's plans to expand the 1-to-1
computing effort to elementary and
high schools remain on shaky ground.
"We've spent a lot of time trying to
understand why this did not go the
way we desired for it to go, and we've
spent a lot of time trying to ensure
that it now goes better," said Amos L.
Quick III, the vice chairman of the
Guilford County school board.
"We are in a period of wait-and-see,"
he said.
Coverage of trends in K-12 innovation
and efforts to put these new ideas
and approaches into practice in
schools, districts, and classrooms
is supported in part by a grant
from the Carnegie Corporation
of New York at www.carnegie.org.
Education Week retains sole
editorial control over the content
of this coverage.
The DIGITAL EDUCATION blog
tracks news and trends on this issue.
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digitaleducation
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