Dive Brief:
- According to a new investigation by the Detroit Metro Times shows how a for-profit tech company, Agiliix, used Michigan's Education Achievement Authority to test a new learning management system that it hoped to then market to other districts.
- Using a bevy of Freedom of Information Requests, the investigation details back and forth emails between EAA officals, Agilix, and a company called the School Improvement Network [SINET] that show the software was riddled with bugs and a headache for teachers and students.
- The EAA was created in 2012 as a "recovery" district for 15 of Detroit's lowest performing schools, which raises further questions about its use as a testing ground for unproven tech.
Dive Insight:
The fact that a barely tested product is being used as a primary teaching tool in schools already designated as the worst is pretty frightening. More scary, however, is the symbiotic relationship that evolved between the EAA, Agilix, and SINET. As the Metro Times explains, "The companies needed the EAA's students to do well in order to prove the effectiveness of their products when making sales pitches to other schools and districts; the EAA needed the companies to do well, so that more money could be funneled back into the product improvement that would, conceivably, promote the kind of student advancement that would attract even more kids, and the state funding attached to them, to the EAA classrooms."
Probably one of the saddest moments in the story is when, a year into the product being in place in the schools, someone from SINET writes an email to the EAA saying the product is a "hack" and they are nervous another district in Kentucky is going to purchase it before they have time to fix it.