Center the design of the pilot around the intended outcome. Across relevant district and school teams involved in the pilot, collaboratively establish a success statement: At the end of the pilot, what would success look like for learning outcomes, student, teacher, and family experiences, and administrator priorities? Then, work together to determine how these outcomes will be measured. Identify team leads for the pilot, including district staff to support with outreach to the vendor, district and school staff to support with ongoing coaching, technical assistance, and implementation fidelity, as well as teacher leads to troubleshoot and brainstorm implementation challenges with their peers.
Strategies for Design & Plan
Draft a statement that describes what success would look like at the end of the pilot and develop specific benchmarks for that success. Share the drafted language with all participating school leaders and educators to collaboratively iterate to the final statement that considers learning outcomes, student, educator, and family experiences, and administrative priorities.
Using the co-created success statement, determine how each metric (learning, experiences, etc.) will be measured over the course of the pilot. Consider mixed methods approaches, such as formative and summative assessments, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observations. Determine when these milestones will take place,who will lead the analysis to determine if the pilot needs modifications, and who will communicate pilot progress to key partners, such as school board members and the broader community.
Reach out to the vendor team to understand dosage. Work with the vendor team to understand, in practice, what implementation needs to look like to best position the product to have the greatest impact on learning outcomes. Ask the vendor team how they determined dosage, including the grade levels and contexts of the learners involved in the research that drove dosage determination.
Collaborate with the involved educators, school leaders, and vendor team to establish a professional learning plan that ensures classroom educators are prepared to effectively use the tool.
Embrace flexibility and collaboration throughout this process. Anticipate that the pilot will not be linear as lessons are learned throughout, and build a pilot team prepared to pivot and collaborate. Clearly define who will be the point of contact for different activities, such as who is the go-to colleague when technical issues arise at the school and district level, who will be lead for professional learning plans and ongoing, evolving professional learning needs, and vendor communications.
This project management resource provides a structured, chronological timeline template for executing an edtech pilot program over a typical school semester or year. It helps districts schedule milestone dates for teacher training, baseline data collection, mid-point check-ins, and final evaluation reviews.
This planning tool guides district teams to transition from broad instructional ideas to highly specific, measurable goals for an upcoming software pilot. It forces evaluators to define exactly what student or teacher metrics will determine if the pilot tool was successful enough to warrant a full purchase.
This comprehensive checklist walks administrative and instructional teams through the critical preparatory steps required before, during, and after a software pilot. It ensures that data privacy agreements, teacher training, and success metrics are all firmly established before a tool enters the classroom.
This planning template helps district evaluation teams explicitly connect their specific student performance data points with targeted edtech procurement goals. It ensures that any new software acquisition is directly justified by an identified, data-backed academic need rather than market trends.
This reference document outlines the explicit performance, communication, and technical benchmarks required of a vendor during an active classroom pilot. It provides a structured breakdown to ensure school staff and external developers maintain shared accountability throughout the evaluation period.
This technical screening instrument is used to evaluate how seamlessly a vendor’s software integrates with a district’s existing data infrastructure, student information systems, and single sign-on platforms. It ensures prospective tools comply with strict data rostering and interoperability standards before purchase.
This visual workflow diagram details how the West Ada School District systematically routes digital content through various internal evaluation and approval stages. It serves as an operational blueprint for managing cross-departmental coordination between curriculum and IT teams during a pilot phase.
This conceptual framework serves as a guide for district leadership teams to evaluate whether new and emerging technologies support deep, meaningful educational goals. It focuses on aligning software selection with core competencies like critical thinking, real-world problem solving, and equitable student agency.
This guide supports educators with small-scale implementation of instructional edtech tools by sharing insights, tips, and lessons learned from real-life cases of integrating education technology.
This report supports districts as they identify the contextual limitations that are important to consider before crafting a research question to make sure the evaluation is based on a question you can answer.
By understanding the extent and quality of research conducted by edtech companies, this report intends to identify strategies to improve the support and accountability for reliable, research-based development of education technology tools by developers.
This case study examines how the Allentown School District builds educator capacity by investing in dedicated instructional technology leadership. It details strategies for creating role-specific professional development pathways that prepare teachers to use AI tools responsibly.
This case study focuses on Indian Prairie School District’s model of using structured learning progressions and core principles to govern generative AI. It outlines methods for establishing strict implementation boundaries that ensure AI tools always complement, rather than replace, human-led instruction.
This document provides a brief overview of Highlander Institutes’ process for facilitating edtech pilots and supporting educators to adopt the best practices of personalized learning.
This Digital Promise publication examines how emerging technological tools can be intentionally mapped to learner-centered instructional practices. It offers guidance on moving past passive technology consumption toward active, deeply collaborative learning experiences.
This evaluation study reviews systemic technology integration efforts aimed at scaling digital accessibility and equity for diverse student populations. It provides data and strategic takeaways on how rigorous post-implementation reviews can identify and eliminate barriers to student access.
