As the U.S. Department of Education (ED) prepares to launch a $15 million, five-year national evaluation of technology's impact on learning, the agency's chief technology leader says school districts should consider conducting their own ed-tech evaluations at the local level.

"We need to be able to make the case for why … technology is going to lead to increased student achievement," said John Bailey, ED's director of educational technology. "Schools can do some of the research themselves."

Although conducting research at the local level isn't required by law, Bailey said districts should consider doing it because of the benefits it can bring.

"If the only purpose … is to enhance the development of technology within that district, then it's worth its weight in gold," Bailey said of local research.

But there are political reasons it would make sense for districts to evaluate their technology initiatives, too. Evidence of success, he said, will help school leaders secure the funding and community support they need to expand their efforts district-wide, even during tough fiscal times.

"Everyone is asking, 'Show me the effectiveness. Show me why it works.' In tight budget times, this is even more critical," Bailey said. "Otherwise we're asking people to bank on the promise of technology without proving the effectiveness."

Schools receiving grants for their ed-tech initiatives have been expected to conduct evaluations of their grant projects for several years now. Bailey's appeal to school leaders would take this idea a step further, applying the process to a district's entire technology program.

Klein Independent School District (ISD) in Texas is one district that already has started evaluating its own technology program.

The district hired a consultant to evaluate its Technology Integration Project, which required 19 elementary teachers to develop a model for teaching in the 21st century.

The teachers met every week for a full semester before researching what technology they each would use. Once they'd purchased the technology, completed training, and implemented it for a full year, the district brought in the consultant to measure the project's success.

Ann McMullan, instructional technology officer for Klein ISD, said the district has migrated to a data-driven decision-making model in the last few years, so providing this kind of feedback was essential to its goals.

"We need to prove to our board and community why academic success occurred," McMullan said. "In the past, it may have been enough to say, 'It looks good. It seems to be working.' But now we have to look at [whether] the data prove that we have improved academic success."

The district's evaluation was just completed this past fall and presented to the board. No request has been made yet to expand any of the district's technology projects based on its results, she said.