Episode 12 Information Technology. All schools
need it. All schools have it. All schools hire
individuals with expertise in managing it to,
well, manage it. In this episode, I describe
a reality that many recognize in their schools,
but they are reluctant to admit. This episode
calls out the inability of school leaders to
provide effective supervision and evaluation
of the IT professionals they hire. Now, I do
believe this is a prevalent problem. I've seen
it over and over again during my career. But
I'm not blaming anyone. It's the result of various
factors related to school operation and IT management.
Just because it arises from factors over which
we have no control does not mean, however, that
we can do nothing about it. In this episode,
I describe how it happens and suggest a few strategies
for minimizing the adverse effects it can have
on school operations, especially teaching and
learning. Let me begin by describing it. All
schools have leaders. Ultimately, there's a single
person responsible to the board of directors
for running the school. This is the school's
chief executive officer. Their title varies depending
on the nature of the school. But if you're a
superintendent or president, then you're that
person. School leaders hire others to manage
departments that have specific functions. For
example, we have academic leaders, financial
leaders, operational leaders, and of course,
technology leaders. Some of these leaders come
from education. Some come from other fields.
Almost all of them share a common understanding
of the work they do, however. While the CEO may
not know the details of financial accounting,
they do understand budgets. Information technology
is one of the few aspects of school operation
in which the leader has very little knowledge
and likely little shared understanding. Obviously,
this is a generalization. But school leaders
tend to be drawn from educators. They may have
been using technology in their teaching. They
may have taken the computers and education course
as part of their graduate program. But technology
changes quickly. So if they've been in school
administration for very long, then the technology
they used in teaching is likely to have changed.
The graduate course they took in educational
technology probably focused on classroom technology
rather than the configuration of IT. Technology
leaders, on the other hand, are rarely drawn
from educators. They are unlikely to have classroom
experience other than their own experience as
a student or in training others how to operate
IT. The chief technology officer in a school
is likely to hold an advanced degree in IT or
technology management or something related and
their coursework likely included business analysis,
but the cases in situations they studied in those
courses rarely include educational populations
or problems. We know of course that leaders do
not work in isolation. Good educational CEOs
include a leadership team to help them make decisions.
Within the leadership team, there are others
with similar experiences. They comprise many
folks who have experience managing budgets in
schools, for example, so they can collaborate
when necessary and draw on each other's experience.
Technology is the one area where the chief technology
officer may be the one person on the leadership
team with deep understanding of their field.
While others on the leadership team may be able
to check the interpretations or explanations
of others on their team, it is rare that the
team includes others who can check the interpretations
and explanations of the IT professionals. In
many aspects of schooling, school leaders retain
outside advisors as well. When the situation
calls for, they bring in the lawyers. In my experience,
it is rare that they call in outside expertise
to advise on technology decisions. IT auditors
are occasionally retained to assess infrastructure,
and specific IT advisors are used for security
audits, for example. But school leaders rarely
seek the advice of how technology decisions are
made and how their departments are operating
and interacting with others. Another factor that
makes it difficult for leaders to assess the
operations of their technology leaders is the
uniqueness of technology systems. While systems
in different organizations may ostensibly be
the same, there are differences in how they're
configured and in the capacity of the IT teams
to operate them. Your school and a neighboring
one may both have the network environment that's
built on Ethernet infrastructure and that uses
Windows Active Directory, but that does not mean
you are both configured in the same way. Also,
the staff may have very different beliefs about
how to manage users and devices, and there may
be different levels of expertise in the advanced
configurations. All this affects how the system
operates. For many reasons then, IT leaders are
likely to have knowledge that is not held by
others on the leadership team. The result is
the leadership team must assume the IT leader
is accurately reporting on the status of infrastructure,
configuration, and operations. No one is able
to challenge the IT folks when they say, it must
be done this way, or we can't implement the changes
that you want. Now I wish I could say my IT colleagues
are always honest with their reports. There's
a reason why IT folks have the reputation of
being difficult colleagues. They often are. They
take advantage of the unique knowledge that they
have to avoid doing things they don't want. Yes,
I know this is not universally true, but I have
seen this repeatedly over my career. I have also
been on the receiving end of lazy excuses from
IT folks, and it surprises me when IT tries to
hoodwink me. So just what should a school leader
do if they believe the IT leaders are hoodwinking
them? What if they're having difficulty communicating
with them? What do they do if they find the IT
leaders are not accommodating the needs of faculty,
students and staff? Or if they're otherwise dissatisfied
with technology and how it's being managed? Now
I have observed IT professionals who do not react
well when leaders attempt to give them direction.
They recognize their unique knowledge. They also
recognize the power they have as they control
access to email and other essential communication
systems and loads and loads of sensitive data.
it is accurate to say that your IT leader could
make for a very bad day for everyone. Regardless
of the difficulty of taking control of the IT
by supervising and evaluating ones who have expertise
that they don't, school leaders can adopt several
strategies to make this easier. First, school
leaders should recognize the importance of IT
in mission critical operations. Just as no responsible
school leader would eschew an active role in
making decisions about curriculum, they should
not avoid taking an active role in technology
decisions. This can begin by insisting IT leaders
explain things in plain language and asking questions
until you understand the infrastructure, situation,
or rationale for their decisions. Second, frame
your supervision and evaluation of IT professionals
along with your daily conversations with them
through a lens you understand. I recommend technology
acceptance. Listen to episode two and three for
an overview of this model. This is a good framework
that educators can understand. One advantage
of using technology acceptance in this way is
that there are objective performance indicators
that can be defined and there's reliable ways
to measure technology acceptance and the evaluation
of IT leaders can be tied to changes in those
measures. Third, get help. When school leaders
sense they're not getting the complete story
or if the IT leaders or their decisions seem
unreasonable, they should find an independent
expert to see if the explanation or the decisions
they are getting from their IT leaders make sense.
Of course, school IT leaders in a region tend
to know each other, so this may require that
your expertise come from some distance away.
Schools have a long history of collaborative
decision making and independent review. That's
what accreditation is all about. In my experience,
school leaders are reluctant to apply these same
practices to IT decisions in their schools. And
that's a mistake.