Dive Brief:
- North Carolina education officials have selected Canvas as the official Learning Management System for the state's local education agencies and charter schools.
- The platform, which is being implemented on a statewide level, uses a neutral app vendor (EduAppCenter), allowing educators to choose from over 200 apps.
- At SXSWedu, Instructure announced that it would integrate Canvas with Pearson's LMS PowerSchool, meaning North Carolina schools will also get access to the latter.
Dive Insight:
When states (or even large districts) decide to implement costly programs like an LMS on a massive level, there are sometimes concerns about the decision-making process. These are expensive contracts that often happen behind closed doors.
With this in mind, it seems appropriate to point out that a statewide implementation of Pearson's Schoolnet was knocked recently in Idaho, where the state Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations announced that $61 million in public dollars had been wasted on its adoption. The big issue there, according to the state's report, was that Schoolnet was developed for a much smaller district-wide usage, and pushing it on a large scale was ineffective. Former state superintendent Tom Luna has been accused of knowing this but continuing to push Schoolnet into the state's districts despite multiple warnings.
