Evaluation of LAUSD’s
Instructional Technology
Initiative
Year 2 Report
Executive Summary
Jonathan Margolin, Ph.D.
Jessica Heppen, Ph.D.
Erin Haynes, Ph.D.
Kristin Ruedel, Ph.D.
John Meakin
Jordan Rickles, Ph.D.
Artineh Samkian, Ph.D.
Brenna O’Brien, Ph.D.
Wendy Surr
Lauren Fellers

MONTH
YEAR
JULY 2015

 Evaluation of LAUSD’s Instructional
Technology Initiative: Year 2 Report
Executive Summary
July 2015
Authors:

Data Analysts:

Jonathan Margolin, Ph.D.
Jessica Heppen, Ph.D.
Erin Haynes, Ph.D.
Kristin Ruedel, Ph.D.
John Meakin
Jordan Rickles, Ph.D.
Artineh Samkian, Ph.D.
Brenna O’Brien, Ph.D.
Wendy Surr
Lauren Fellers

Alison Hauser
Jarah Blum
Suzette Chavez
Kaitlin Fronberg
Dong Lee
Caitlin Jacobs
Charleen Wilder

1000 Thomas Jefferson Street NW
Washington, DC 20007-3835
202.403.5000   TTY 877.334.3499
www.air.org
Copyright © 2015 American Institutes for Research. All rights reserved.
3130_07/15

 Executive Summary
The Instructional Technology Initiative (previously called the Common Core Technology
Project) is the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)’s signature investment in
technology. Originally planned to provide technology devices to every teacher and student in the
640,000-student district, ITI aimed to transform learning throughout the district by providing
interactive and engaging learning environments, supporting implementation of the Common
Core State Standards with digital curriculum materials and assessment, and closing the “Digital
Divide” by ensuring that all students have access to 21st century technology.
American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted an external evaluation of the implementation
and outcomes of the initiative starting in spring 2014. An Interim Report summarizing findings
from Year 1 of the initiative (2013–14) was submitted in September 2014. The present report is
intended to provide formative feedback to inform district plans for re-envisioning ITI, based on
the first two years of implementation, from which many lessons learned can be gleaned.
The Year 2 Report mainly addresses the period from August 2014 through June 2015,
corresponding to Year 2 of ITI. During this period, the initiative expanded in scope to include
101 schools participating as part of four distinct phases:
Phase 1 included 44 of the 47 schools from the previous year, all of which used iPads.
Phase 2A included 11 schools for which the district purchased iPads in Year 1. Students
in these schools received their devices in fall 2014.
Phase 2B consisted of 27 schools for which the district had not purchased iPads prior to
suspending its purchasing agreement with Apple in August 2014, leaving these 27
schools without devices to distribute to students. Teachers in these schools received their
iPads and were invited to participate in all professional development activities.
Phase 1L included 19 high schools that each selected a mobile computing device other
than an iPad.
ITI encompassed several components related to infrastructure, instructional and technical
support, and student safety. All devices were bundled with digital curriculum content intended to
align with the Common Core State Standards. LAUSD staff provided five professional
development workshops throughout the year. The district trained 28 virtual learning complex
facilitators (VLCFs) to provide on-site support to teachers with technology integration and to
school leadership teams with technology planning. The district also assigned 23 microcomputer
support assistants (MCSAs) to provide technical support focusing on configuration of devices,
wireless connectivity, and hardware or software malfunctions. The district developed a strategy
to promote students’ physical and online safety, including Digital Citizenship lessons and
monitoring of device security settings, and initiated a policy allowing students to take home
devices after their school met five required components specified in a checklist.

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—1

 The primary evaluation questions addressed in this report are as follows:
1. What is the continuing nature and effectiveness of the district planning and assistance for
ITI and other technology-integration programs? What, if any, improvements are
recommended to maximize the potential for program success in subsequent years?
2. How was technology used by teachers and students in the ITI and non-ITI schools?
3. In what ways did schools differ with respect to models and strategies for technology
integration?
4. Based on a synthesis of the findings, what are the recommendations to the district?1
The Year 2 evaluation examined the degree to which the district implemented its planned
strategy for ITI during the 2014–15 school year, depicted the progress of schools in
implementing local support for technology use, and observed the degree to which technology
was integrated in classroom instruction. To accomplish these objectives, we evaluated the
district’s implementation of the initiative with respect to specific targets, documented major
changes in policy or strategy that responded to Year 1 recommendations, conducted site visits to
11 schools, and collected additional data about technology usage. Data sources included the
following:
Key district documents regarding ITI planning and implementation
Interviews with 14 district leaders, including leaders of the ITI team and other district
administrators, as well as focus groups with MCSAs, VLCFs, and Educational Service
Center (ESC) area superintendents
A total of 85 classroom observations conducted in a mix of grade levels and subject
areas, in a sample of 10 ITI schools and one non-ITI school implementing its own
technology initiative
Extant data depicting resources offered to schools (e.g., Help Desk requests, VLCF and
MCSA staff assignments, wireless infrastructure upgrades, device distribution);
instructional support (e.g., VLCF daily activity, professional development participation);
and technology use (time spent on Pearson digital curriculum apps, Mobile Device
Management [MDM] data for all ITI schools with iPads to capture device usage by
teachers and students2).
In general, we found that the district and ITI schools made steady progress relative to the
previous year, particularly with building essential infrastructure for deploying devices, training
teachers, engaging with parents, and providing technical support. At the same time, however, the
district has not yet arrived at a solution for several organizational and technical challenges.
Ongoing challenges and areas where less progress occurred included: deploying devices in a
timely manner, communicating with schools, coordinating efforts with other instructional
initiatives, and clarifying a vision for technology use in instruction. The district has publicly
acknowledged these challenges and has initiated several efforts to address them. Schools also
made progress with implementing key support structures for technology, and classroom
1

An evaluation question about early student outcomes was not addressed in this report because of the shifting nature
of ITI during the 2014–15 school year.
2
Phase 1L schools with laptops are not included in the MDM data.

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—2

 technology use appeared to be more frequent than during the previous year. However, the ways
that technology was used in the classroom were similar to the last year, and access to and use of
high-quality digital resources remained limited.
Our findings are summarized in four sections: District Leadership, Technology Use in Schools,
Instructional Support for Schools, and Technical Support for Schools. The findings presented in
this summary reflect points of convergence of multiple respondents or data sources; we mention
the particular data source where this information is particularly relevant for interpreting the
finding. We conclude with a discussion of implications for subsequent technology initiatives in
LAUSD and other districts.

District Leadership
ITI is a large and complex initiative. It is housed in the Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and
School Support (OCISS) and comprises six functional groups: instructional readiness,
instructional/content development, safety, organizational change management, technical, and
asset management. In this section, we provide a summary of district leadership pertaining to four
topics: (1) deployment and readiness; (2) safety and security; (3) coordination with related
initiatives and among ITI teams; and (4) communication with schools, parents, and the public at
large.
Deployment and Readiness. In 2014–15, the district deployed 35,781 iPads to 54 Phase 1 and
Phase 2A schools, and 10,879 devices to 12 Phase 1L schools. As in Year 1, however, the district
had challenges related to the amount of time required for device setup and personalization, and
the district’s process for deployment was not sufficiently scalable to enable all schools to receive
devices at the beginning of the school year. Many schools’ deployment dates were pushed back,
some to as late as January or February 2015; the district had difficulty with communicating
deployment dates in advance due to uncertainty about when its staff would have devices set up
and ready for distribution. Deployment once again consumed considerable time of MCSAs and
VLCFs, and delays in receiving devices discouraged some teachers from making the
commitment to integrate technology into their classroom activities. Many schools’ deployment
dates were pushed back, some to as late as January or February 2015. The district made some
progress with increasing the efficiency of deployment, such as improving coordination with
schools with deployment logistics and involving students and school staff in device setup. In the
coming 2015–16 school year, the district plans to deploy approximately 70,000 devices to
students. To ensure that schools and students receive these devices in a timely manner, we
recommend that the district consider and implement additional steps to automate the
provisioning of devices and to shift greater responsibility for deployment to school staff
who are trained and have adequate time allocated to deployment activities. This will require
working with device vendors to eliminate the technical challenges involved with personalization.
Also, the district should provide training to school staff to prepare them to assume responsibility
for personalization and inventorying during deployment, with fewer district staff needed on-site
to lend assistance.
Internal district reports indicate that ITI schools were, for the most part, technically ready for
deployment in Year 2. Most schools received infrastructure upgrades, and all secondary schools
met the district’s criterion for sufficient bandwidth; however, 40 percent of elementary schools

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—3

 did not meet the district’s bandwidth criterion, an issue that needs further attention by district
technology leaders. Furthermore, school-based staff reported frequent difficulties with wireless
connectivity.
The district developed three resources to ensure schools’ instructional readiness: an Instructional
Technology Planning Course through which school leaders would develop a school instructional
technology plan, the Technology Readiness Checklist, and a take-home policy and its checklist.
The district did not communicate to schools that completion of these resources was a
requirement for deployment in 2014–15; no schools in fact completed the planning course, and
many schools did not complete the checklist prior to deployment (although nearly all did so at
some point during Year 2). By spring 2015, the district had made the development of a school
instructional technology plan a condition for deployment for the 2015–16 school year and had
begun to offer a four-day summer planning institute during which school teams would develop
their plans. We recommend that the district make completion of the Technology Readiness
Checklist an additional condition for deployment, inasmuch as this checklist includes specific
details that may not be included in school instructional technology plans.
Safety and Security. In Year 2, the district expanded its existing safety and security strategies by:
Enacting a take-home policy that listed requirements schools would need to meet before
sending devices home with students. Among the requirements was obtaining the active
consent of 90 percent of parents.
Expanding its digital citizenship education strategy by including it in the take-home and
technology-readiness checklists, and promoting it during Digital Citizenship Week.
Training school staff on asset management and device management systems.
Twenty-six ITI schools implemented device take-home during the 2014–15 school year,
beginning in November 2014. All but one of these schools were secondary schools. Our Year 2
evaluation findings suggest that device take-home was generally successful; there were no major
negative incidents noted among any of our data sources. Parents generally had few concerns
about device take-home, and school staff saw two benefits: It alleviated the burden of
distributing devices on a daily basis, and it enabled students to use the devices for homework.
However, the actual benefits of device take-home were not clear. Our data did not indicate the
degree to which teachers and students made use of device take-home for out-of-school learning
experiences—largely due to the fact that device take-home was implemented late in the school
year. Future evaluation efforts should examine the ways that devices are used outside of school
for academic and nonacademic purposes.
School-based stakeholders indicated that most schools offered digital citizenship lessons to
students. Although some stakeholders continued to express concern about the physical safety of
the devices—parents especially worried about their liability for lost or stolen devices—or the
physical safety of students carrying the devices, others, including parents and students, expressed
the opinion that student training and district tracking greatly reduced risks to the devices or
students. Through the take-home checklist, the district made it mandatory for schools to provide
students with introductory lessons on Internet safety and cyberbullying. We recommend that
the district encourage schools to go beyond the introductory lessons and to treat digital
citizenship as an ongoing conversation among staff and students. The district should
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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—4

 encourage schools to share these resources with parents and engage them in conversations about
device liability and student safety, especially when implementing take-home policies.
In Year 2, the district offered workshops to train school staff on asset management (i.e., tracking
device location, condition, and assignment) and device management (i.e., to monitor and change
device settings and download apps). The latter training, however, did not include use of systems
compatible with devices other than iPads. We recommend that the district develop a
comparable device management training for those schools that have chosen devices besides
iPads (e.g., laptops and Chromebooks).
Coordination With Other Initiatives and Within the ITI Team. ITI was not well-coordinated
with other, related initiatives during the first two years of implementation. The ITI team was not
integrated with other offices within OCISS or with ESCs (now referred to as local districts), and
district leaders did not set the expectation that ITI and other district offices should coordinate
with each other. Due to their lack of ownership, these existing units did not coordinate with ITI on
concurrent instructional initiatives; in some cases, these initiatives were actually at cross-purposes
with ITI. As a result, professional development for initiatives such as Common Core
implementation did not reflect ITI content, and vice versa. Leaders of other initiatives believed it
was impractical to integrate content related to ITI because of the relatively small number of ITI
schools that would find the content relevant. For the 2015–16 school year, the district is
devolving to local districts the responsibility for supporting schools with managing device
inventory and overseeing their technology integration. Presumably, there will still need to be
central-office-level coordination and direction for the initiative. We recommend that the
district reorganize the ITI team so that it is no longer a separate entity within OCISS, and
that it becomes integrated within existing offices. Improved coordination with ongoing
initiatives would improve the coherence of the initiative and would provide additional
opportunities for reinforcing ITI goals and strategies.
Within the ITI team itself, the instructional and technical staff had difficulty coordinating their
response to technical challenges, such as whether and how to assign Apple IDs to students.
Current structures, such as weekly team meetings, were not seen as useful in fostering
cooperation across instructional and technical staff. Team members stated that ITI functional
teams were not held accountable for meeting deadlines for completion of tasks, with
repercussions for other teams (a finding reported in Year 1 as well). The lack of accountability
reflected a project plan that was not sufficiently developed with respect to roles and
responsibilities. We recommend that the ITI director and team leads, under the guidance of
the initiative’s executive sponsors, develop a detailed project plan that specifies tasks, roles,
and responsibilities.
Communication. District communication with schools was realized primarily through direct
interaction with principals, through e-mails, monthly principal meetings, and VLCFs. However,
despite the district’s implementation of its communication system to schools, stakeholders
reported that some of the information the district conveyed was not sufficiently clear (especially
information about deployment and security policies), and that the information presented at
principals’ meetings was not sufficiently relevant. Considering the importance placed on the
monthly principals’ meetings, we recommend the district enhance the usefulness and
relevance of these meetings by targeting presentations to different school levels or phases.

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—5

 This could involve offering breakout sessions for different phases, school levels, or schools in
pre-or post-deployment. Finally, the district had success with conveying information through
VLCFs and should continue this tactic as well, providing VLCFs with the information they need
to provide regular updates about the initiative to school-level staff.
The district made progress in communicating about the initiative with parents, through the
development of a parent engagement plan and presentation materials for schools to deliver. Most
of the 11 schools we visited in winter/spring 2015 held parent meetings about technology, and
more than half of the schools also offered technical training to parents; some of these schools
used or adapted the district materials in engaging with parents. However, as with communication
with teachers, parent engagement was largely the purview of school principals, who could
choose whether or how much of the district materials to pass on to parents, and thus parent
engagement activities varied by school. In general, relying on school leaders to convey
information to teachers and parents is not an unreasonable strategy, as long as the district makes
its expectations clear. We recommend that the district state its expectations to school leaders
for their role in communicating with parents and teachers about the initiative, and monitor
whether and how schools are meeting these expectations. The district would then have
feedback about whether school leaders are communicating with teachers and parents as expected.
In its communication about the initiative to the general public during Year 2, the district
emphasized its change in vision for the initiative and its willingness to consider changes to its
procurement of devices and funding source. Administrators believed that the district had not yet
succeeded in communicating about the initiative’s purpose and value, stemming in part from the
district’s own lack of a clear vision. They further believed that a clearer message about the
initiative’s vision will follow from the recommendations of the ITI task force.

Technology Use in Schools
Evaluation findings indicate that classroom technology use was more prevalent in 2014–15 than
it was found to be in 2013–14, although these differences may reflect the fact that our
observations were conducted at different times of the school year. What did not seem to change
was the way in which teachers and students were using technology. In both years, teachers
primarily used technology for whole-class instruction (e.g., projecting an assignment on a screen
in front of the class); this use did not take advantage of the 1:1 device availability for students.
The next most frequent technology use, observed in 40 percent of classrooms, was students
searching the Internet. Students used devices for interactive lessons or activities in about one
third of the classrooms; this use did leverage the 1:1 device availability, and some of these
interactive lessons included embedded assessments/checks for understanding. We did not
observe as much use of devices for creating or presenting projects as in the prior year; again, this
was likely due to the difference in timing of the site visits. The apps we observed or that teachers
reported to have used seemed limited in their potential to engage students in new or exciting
learning opportunities. The use of the Pearson digital curriculum app was generally low; ITI
schools used the Pearson digital curriculum most in upper-elementary mathematics. In summary,
teachers and students frequently used the technology, but not yet in ways that transform teaching
and learning as envisioned by the initiative. Our recommendations for improving classroom
technology use are included in the following sections on instructional and technical support.

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—6

 Instructional Support for Schools
The Year 1 evaluation reported that educators required more robust instructional support for
technology integration. The district made progress with enhancing instructional support in 2014–
15, although our findings indicate that teachers require substantially more support to use
technology effectively. In this section, we summarize findings related to three types of supports.
Teacher Training. The district developed and offered five centralized professional development
workshops focused on technology integration, meeting its own targets for expanding professional
development offerings. A common sentiment among district and school staff was that this set of
workshops was not sufficient to prepare teachers to use technology for instruction. Some districtand school-level respondents expressed the need for workshops on additional topics that were
geared toward teachers with differing levels of expertise. Most of these workshops were focused
on iOS-based tools, thus excluding schools using devices other than iPads. We recommend that
the district develop and offer additional workshops that meet the needs of schools using
devices other than iPads and that are differentiated with respect to the level of technology
expertise expected of participants. Relatively few teachers per school attended the workshops
offered, for reasons that some teachers ascribed to inconvenient times and locations. We
recommend that the district consider offering training webinars to enable teachers to
participate during contractual time at their school.
In Year 1, VLCFs had limited time to provide instructional support due to the need to assist with
deployment and address technical issues. To address this limitation, in Year 2 the district
expanded the ranks of VLCFs (from 14 to 28), formalized their training, and provided additional
supervision. VLCFs and school staff concurred that VLCFs provided ongoing coaching and
professional development to teachers. Moreover, in schools with higher levels of technology
implementation, school staff considered the VLCF to be an integral part of on-site integration
support. The frequency of this support, however, did not meet district expectations during Year
2. A continued constraint on the VLCFs’ time for instructional support was the number of
operational and technical responsibilities that required their attention. We recommend that the
district consider ways to maximize VLCFs’ time spent on instructional support. It is crucial
to encourage schools to eventually build their internal capacity for supporting and coaching
technology use, for example, by providing released time to a teacher at each school to serve as an
instructional technology coach in addition to the VLCF.
Instructional Resources. The district did not procure digital instructional resources as intended,
and our findings from site visits indicated that teachers and students used only a limited set of
apps. We recommend that the district seek ways to provide access to high-quality digital
resources, aligned to standards and curricula, to teachers in varying grade levels and
subject areas. At a minimum, teachers could benefit from a list of recommended applications
and programs. Better integration of the ITI team within OCISS, as previously noted, could
potentially put more resources at the disposal of the initiative to assist with the vetting of digital
resources.
Time. In some schools, we found that administrators built time into teachers’ schedules to
collaborate about technology and learn from each other. We recommend that the district
encourage principals to provide teachers with opportunity to try new resources and

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—7

 strategies, discuss them with teacher teams, and observe technology implementation in
each other’s classrooms. Related to the issue of time was the concern, noted particularly by
VLCFs, that concurrent instructional initiatives competed for the time and attention of school
staff. As already mentioned, further integration of ITI into the local districts appears to be a
strategy that the district is pursuing for bringing increased coherence among initiatives in the
coming years.

Technical Support for Schools
Consistent with recommendations in the Year 1 evaluation, the district provided resources for
technical support to ITI schools along with training opportunities to build internal school
capacity. The district assigned each school an MCSA to provide on-site support and increased
the number of MCSAs assigned to ITI schools from 14 (in 2013–14) to 23 (in 2014–15).
However, the ratio of MCSAs to schools did not meet district targets for appropriate staffing.
Only about half of Help Desk tickets were resolved in less than one week (the district’s target for
response time), and staff in some schools expressed concern about the delayed response to
requests and the amount of time that MCSAs were present in their schools.
The district has encouraged schools to develop internal technical support systems, and schools
have begun to do so in different ways. Many schools reported drawing upon a dedicated
technology lead or team to solve simple issues. Schools that had established these internal
support systems generally reported satisfaction with technical support.
As in Year 1, we found that technical problems (e.g., obtaining Apple IDs, updating apps, and
connecting to Wi-Fi) were a barrier to the integration of technology. Teachers expressed fears
that lessons they planned would fall short if the technology failed to work for any reason. It is
therefore crucial for establishing and maintaining teacher buy-in to ensure that adequate
technical supports are in place in every ITI school, with systems in place for teachers to access
appropriate support resources. It also should be acknowledged that some technology problems
experienced by teachers reflected larger systemic issues and must be addressed at a higher level
than school-focused technical support. We recommend the district develop a coordinated
response to systemic technical issues. In particular, the district should work with device
vendors to develop a process for device personalization that is manageable for schools and
districts.

Cross-Cutting Themes
School Leadership. ITI schools in our case study sample that showed the greatest progress in
implementation tended to have principals who communicated a clear actionable vision,
established a technology leadership team and secured strong technology support, and supported
ongoing professional development and collaboration around integrating technology into
instruction. These principals relied on district resources (including VLCFs) to some degree, but
also secured locally based support. Strong leadership was a facilitating factor that tended to
outweigh other barriers to technology implementation. We therefore recommend that the
district continue to support school leaders with workshops that develop their
understanding of and capacity to lead technology implementation, and that these
workshops be evaluated as to their quality and usefulness.

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 Underutilization of Resources. One theme that runs throughout several of the key findings is
the apparent underutilization by ITI schools of the tools and resources the district developed to
support technology implementation. As in any instructional initiative, successful implementation
depends on the willingness of schools to use the resources and tools. We found that at least some
schools used the parent engagement materials (although the extent of parent participation was
unclear), and most schools provided introductory digital citizenship lessons, yet the extent to
which schools used the full range of these materials is not known. Furthermore, many schools
did not take advantage of professional development workshops, train-the-trainer sessions, and
MDM or asset management training. As ITI moves forward and continues to evolve, it will be
important to refine the district (central office or local districts’) supports to ensure that
they are perceived to be high quality and relevant for school leaders and teachers.
Vision for Technology Integration. A lack of clear district vision for instructional technology
use was perceived to hinder communication of the importance and value of technology in
schools to the general public. In addition, some school staff lacked clear understanding about
how they were supposed to integrate technology into instruction. The relatively infrequent
“transformative” use of technology that leveraged the 1:1 device allocation to students may be
symptomatic of this lack of guidance. In spring 2015, the district began to address this issue by
convening its ITI Task Force to develop the district’s vision. In the meantime, the district
expected schools to develop their own vision as part of their School Technology Plan; each ITI
school will be required to complete such a plan by October 2015. The district should continue to
support schools as they develop their own vision and plan for technology use.
Equitable Resources for Non-iPad Schools. The district has not yet developed as extensive a
set of resources for schools with laptops or Chromebooks as it has for iPad schools. Most of the
professional development workshops offered by the district targeted only users of iOS-based
devices (i.e., iPad users), some of the parent engagement presentations were applicable only to
iPad users, and the district had not yet developed device management training sessions (i.e., for
management of apps and security settings) for users of Windows-based devices and
Chromebooks. Given the multiplicity of devices available to Phase 1L schools, the district will
be challenged to provide resources and trainings that are applicable to them. We recommend
that the district evaluate the different experiences of users with different devices in order to
understand whether the district is providing appropriate supports to all types of users, and
to understand the benefits and limitations of different devices.

Discussion
With the Instructional Technology Initiative, the Los Angeles Unified School District launched
an ambitious effort to address persistent concerns about equity and access to 21st century
learning opportunities for students in the district. At the end of two years of implementation, the
initiative is at a point of transition. The district has restructured the leadership of the initiative, is
reframing its vision, and has negotiated new contracts with vendors while reconsidering its
funding sources. At this point, it is appropriate for the district as well as other interested and
invested stakeholders to reflect on a number of important lessons learned from the evaluation of
ITI in its first incarnation, to inform their subsequent technology initiatives.

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 In general, the district showed progress in several areas related to supporting the deployment and
integration of devices into pilot schools between spring 2014 and spring 2015 (the timeframe for
our evaluation). Much time and effort went into deployment, safety and security and take-home
policy. These areas of attention were absolutely necessary for the rollout to happen, but yet,
attention to these areas left too little time and resources to be directed toward coordination with
other initiatives and supporting integration into instruction. A lack of alignment with
instructional initiatives, curricula, and other professional development in the district (particularly
in the local districts) seemed to be a key barrier—at least some school-level educators could not
reconcile the competing pressures on their time and instructional foci in the classroom, in ways
that allowed them to maximize the use of technology.
Still, technology was used by many teachers and students in ITI pilot schools, and this finding is
important. From both the MDM records and our classroom observations, we know that the
devices were not locked away all school year in schools in which devices had been deployed.
Levels of use appeared to increase from 2013-14 to 2014-15, and it is reasonable to expect that
use will continue to rise if the devices remain in the schools, as long as they are kept in working
order. As for how the devices are used, our results suggest that the uses of devices in 2014-15
were similar to how they were used the year prior. A small proportion of teachers within ITI
schools seem to use them for interactive instruction that leverages the 1:1 configuration. More
common is use of the devices for Internet research to support the creation of projects and
presentations. Although these are each potentially promising uses of technology when integrated
into broader learning goals, it does seem that ITI schools lacked access to clear information
about innovative, high quality apps and digital lesson content to incorporate into their instruction
(a notably common problem in other studies of technology implementation; Enyedy, 2014) In the
absence of a recommended set of apps or digital curricula, some teachers will find ways to sort
through the expansive content available online (including open educational resources) to build
into their lesson plans. But many will not, due to time constraints and other barriers. LAUSD
teachers could benefit from a more concentrated, centralized effort to identify and curate high
quality, standards-aligned digital content to use in their classrooms.
In addition to increasing use of devices generally, our case study analysis reveals several pockets
of promise related to school culture and teacher collaboration around technology use. VLCFs
became true partners to teachers and school leaders in some schools, where they seemed to
encounter greater openness to trying new approaches with technology. In our site visits, we
uncovered a number of exciting and promising examples of teacher sharing and professional
learning and student involvement in device rollout and upkeep, suggesting that the development
of school technology culture was well underway in at least some schools during the 2014-15
school year. Interestingly, some of the schools that were further along in their implementation of
technology and the development of collaboration and culture to support technology integration
were those whose deployment dates had been delayed. It was not necessarily that additional time
with the devices made the differences; it is possible that in a few cases, having some time and
space to plan together, within their own local context, was beneficial.
The ITI encountered a number of operational challenges, as well as challenges with public
perception about the initiative. While the overarching vision for the initiative—to provide
LAUSD students with access to technology—remained the same, the goals for rollout and scaleup shifted often over the course of this 1¼-year evaluation. To gain more traction and public
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 support during these very early years of implementation, the ITI would have needed to take root
in pilot schools quickly enough to allow them to show more uptake and progress. This is not
unique to technology implementation; this is true for any educational reform under pressure to
demonstrate its worth to stakeholders essentially immediately.
The existing research base provides some hypotheses for the pieces that needed to be in place in
order for the ITI to take root in pilot schools quickly enough to show more progress. For
example, Penuel (2006) and Valiente (2010) emphasize the importance of school leadership to
champion one-to-one computing and a shift toward student-centered pedagogy enabled by
technology. Essential infrastructure includes connectivity to the wireless network, the devices
themselves, and technical and instructional support for teachers (Argueta, Huff, Tingen, & Corn,
2011; Center for Promise, 2013; Valiente, 2010). Other prior research suggests that that essential
components of technology integration into the classroom include professional learning (Fixsen,
Naoom, Blase, & Wallace, 2007; Center for Promise, 2013; Staples, Pugach, & Himes, 2005),
school culture (Billig, Sherry, & Havelock, 2005; Glazer, Hannafin, & Song, 2005), and
organizational support (Abbott, Greenwood, Buzhardt, & Tapia, 2006; Fixsen et al., 2007). Of
critical importance is the development of a clear vision shared among educators (Valiente, 2010),
and that the vision is tied to concrete strategic plans.
LAUSD’s approach to the ITI demonstrated awareness of these necessary factors – there were
formal or informal structures in place to address all of them (e.g. change management, VLCFs,
technology and instructional readiness planning, professional development courses). But the
district’s efforts and schools’ own ITI-related activities did not result in the establishment of
these necessary factors within and across the pilot schools, as our case study analysis from 201415 makes clear. At the district level, LAUSD’s ITI team worked to put into place many of the
key supporting ingredients that would enable schools to make use of the devices they were
provided as powerful tools for teaching and learning. But in the early stages of the initiative, the
ITI’s project management strategies were not able to concurrently address all of the aspects of
deployment, training, support, coordination, and alignment.
At its heart, the ITI is about both technology and instruction, and effective management of it
required coordination and communication between technical and instructional teams and leaders.
The structure of LAUSD (and many other districts) is such that the instructional division is
separate from the technical division. These divisions did not seem reach a level of collaboration
that would be needed to avoid the challenges ITI encountered, and on some issues seemed to be
unable to resolve differences in perspective (for example, on issues related to Apple IDs). The
significant role of the local districts in setting instructional goals created still greater need for
coordination in order for the ITI to be seen as a priority – and an opportunity for teaching and
learning – at the school level. The plan to decentralize the ITI out of central office and to the
local districts for school year 2015-16 may alleviate some of these challenges, but is sure to raise
others. The key ingredients – alignment, coordination, communication – will remain essential.
Achieving meaningful technology integration is difficult and takes time (Davies & West, 2014;
Shapley, Sheehan, Malone, & Caranikas-Walker, 2010). Although the desire is for positive
change to be immediate, the reality is that educational settings are complex and implementation
processes take time. Evidence suggests successful implementation of technology (and nontechnology) initiatives require a cyclical process of systematic planning, implementing and

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—11

 refining processes to foster change in the system (Center for Technology Implementation, 2013;
Fixsen et al., 2007). Leveraging technology for transformational change in schools and
classrooms requires more than a commitment to purchase and disseminate the equipment
(Penuel, 2006, Valiente, 2010). Rather, it is a process that unfolds over time through the
sustained efforts of district and school leaders and teachers. Educators within and beyond
LAUSD can draw upon the experiences over the last two years as they continue to seek ways to
teach, inspire, and prepare their students for a technology-rich future..

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LAUSD ITI Evaluation: Year 2 Report Executive Summary—12

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