Yesterday morning, after 48 days of questions about Woodland District 50’s Chromebook program, I went to the district office and asked whether anyone was available to talk with me.
Dr. Robert Machak came out.
We spoke briefly. Later that morning, as he said he would, he sent me a written response.
I appreciate both of those things.
His answer also makes the next part of this much clearer.
Dr. Machak wrote that a Chromebook is “a technology tool” used alongside other classroom resources to support learning. He said the Chromebook itself does not determine a student’s success or a specific learning outcome. Instead, he said the better gauge of educational benefit is the content and purpose of the assignment and whether the student mastered the goal or standard.
That is a real answer about how Woodland thinks about the device.
It is not an answer to most of the questions I have been asking since August.
On August 21, I asked Woodland what student activity the district and its technology vendors can observe, record, or retain through Chromebooks and required software.
I asked whether staff or vendors can view a student’s screen or internet activity in real time or retrospectively.
I asked what instructional platforms collect about how an individual student completes work: answers, mistakes, retries, time on task, changes, clicks, and similar student-level activity.
I asked which outside vendors receive student-level data and how long that information is retained.
I asked what monitoring continues when a Chromebook is used away from school, outside instructional hours, or on a family’s private internet connection.
I asked what educational justification exists for collecting that information and whether Woodland has evaluated the benefit against the privacy, developmental, behavioral, or screen-exposure costs.
And I asked whether a parent can decline particular forms of monitoring or student-level data collection while still allowing a child to participate fully in Woodland’s educational program.
After meeting with Dr. Machak and the district’s technology director on August 26, I reduced those questions to six narrower written questions.
Those questions included the same basic issues: what data is collected, who receives it, how long it is kept, what happens off campus, what educational decision the information changes, what parents can decline, and where Woodland draws the line.
Those are still the questions.
Dr. Machak’s new response creates another important one.
If the Chromebook does not itself determine the learning outcome — and the real evidence of learning is the assignment and the student’s mastery of the standard — then how does Woodland determine what portion of the educational benefit is attributable to the Chromebook?
Was the result caused by the teacher?
The student?
The curriculum?
Practice?
Prior knowledge?
A parent?
The device?
Some combination of all of them?
An outcome does not identify its own cause.
That matters because public schools are making decisions about devices, platforms, monitoring, data collection, vendor access, and assessment systems on behalf of children.
“Technology is a tool” may be true.
But if a district requires or broadly uses a tool, families should be able to understand what the tool does, what information it collects, who gets that information, how long it is retained, and what problem the district believes the tool solves.
I filed a Freedom of Information Act request on October 5 seeking the existing records behind those questions.
When those records arrive, I will read them.
If they answer the questions, I will say so.
If they do not, the questions remain.
That is the standard I am going to use here: not whether somebody sent an email, held a meeting, or gave a response.
Whether the response actually answers the question.