Tech Support and "Taking TCO to the Classroom"

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Providing an adequate level of technical support is one of the greatest challenges school districts face when they set out to build a technology infrastructure, but one of the hardest for them to get a handle on. Unlike staff development, which the U.S. Department of Education recommends be funded at a level equal to 30 percent of the technology budget, there is no comparable budgetary benchmark for staff support. A school district may have figured out a more cost-efficient way to provide it through a centrally managed network deployment and computer standardization than a school district that is forced to spend more money on support staff because it has not made the same kinds of choices. Or, a district may appear to spend less on support, but actually be spending more because of the "hidden" costs it incurs when teachers and students are forced to solve their own problems.

CoSN-NSBA Survey

In October, 1999, CoSN and the National School Boards Association joined forces to conduct an online survey to find out more about how schools were managing tech support and trying to control its costs. Participation was voluntary, and solicited through an e-mail message sent to representatives of the approximately 468 school- and district-level members of the NSBA's Technology Leadership Network (many of whom are also members of CoSN). Thus, the survey is not a scientific one, nor was any attempt made to create a sample that reflected school districts nationwide.

As could be expected, the responding districts tend to be more technologically advanced than the average American school district. More than ninety percent of the respondents said all of their schools were connected to a Wide Area Network and 83 percent said every school in their district had a Local Area Network. And while small school districts are well represented among the 124 districts that participated, the sample had a much higher percentage of districts with more than 10,000 students (34 percent) than is found nationwide (about 4 percent).*

Nevertheless, the survey should continue to be useful to school officials as a source of information about what their peers are doing and to help focus their attention on these issues.

Benchmarking

Perhaps the most striking initial finding of the survey was the fact that only 38.7 percent of respondents said that their district has adopted standards or benchmarks to measure how effective their computer support is. The largest school districts were more inclined (56.5 percent) to do this, a finding that might be expected because they presumably would have a harder time monitoring this informally.

Has your district adopted any standards or benchmarks for measuring whether its technology support is adequate?

	"Yes"
Overall Sample	38.7%
More than 20,000 Students	56.5%
10,000 to 20,000 Students	47.1%
2,500 to 9,999 Students	27.3%
Under 2,500 Students	34.4%

Among those who try to track the adequacy of their support, the most common benchmarks cited from a list of five were "the length of time it takes to respond to a call for help" and "the amount of time the network is down," both cited by about 85 percent of those who do benchmarking. While about three-fourths of the smallest districts track the percentage of computers that need repairs, this practice was less prevalent (30.8 percent) among responding districts with at least 20,000 students, all of which have at least 3,000 computers to monitor.

(If you have adopted standards or benchmarks), which of the following standards and benchmarks has your district adopted?

	Overall	More than 20,000	10,000-20,000	2,5000 to 9,999	Under 2,500
Time it takes to respond to a call for help	85.4%	100%	75.0%	91.7%	72.7%
Amount of time network is down	85.4%	69.2%	112.5%**	75.0%	90.9%
Volume of calls for support	68.8%	69.2%	75.0%	58.3%	72.7%
Time it takes to repair a computer	70.8%	84.6%	75.0%	58.3%	63.6%
Percentage of computers that need repair	56.3%	30.8%	75.0%	50.0%	72.7%

*Base is number who said they had adopted standards and benchmarks, not total respondents in group

**This question produced an additional positive response from someone who had previously said his district had not adopted benchmarks

Controlling Costs

Roughly 90 percent of respondents said they have pursued strategies to try to control tech support costs. The most commonly cited strategy, which, from a TCO point of view is not necessarily a "cost-saver," was to rely on "teachers, librarians and other non-technology support staff to help provide some support." Close behind were "Limited the ability of teachers and students to modify the way computers are configured" and "Taken steps to standardize the model of computer used throughout the district," all cited by about 9 out of 10 respondents.

More than half of the responding districts (56.5 percent) reported that they also relied on students to provide support as a way of controlling costs, a practice that did not vary much by district size.

More than 81 percent of respondents said they had limited the number of operating systems that the tech staff had to support, and more than 72 percent said they had limited the number of software applications.

Which, if any, of these steps have you taken to try to control the amount budgeted for technology support (check all that apply)?

	Overall	Over 20,000	10,000-20,000	2,5000-9,999	Under 2,500
Reduced the number of applications supported	72.6%	82.6%	76.5%	68.2%	71.9%
Limited number of operating systems supported	81.5%	87.0%	88.2%	70.5%	84.4%
Taken steps to standardize the model of computer used	87.9%	82.6%	88.2%	90.9%	84.4%
Relied on teachers, librarians and other non-technology staff to help provide support	93.5%	91.3%	100%	95.5%	93.8%
Relied on students to help provide support	56.5%	56.5%	64.7%	56.8%	59.4%
Hired outsiders to provide support	63.7%	56.5%	70.6%	61.4%	65.6%
Shifted to a centrally controlled, district-wide network	86.3%	95.7%	76.5%	84.1%	84.4%
Installed a thin-client solution in at least some parts of the district	26.6%	30.4%	5.9%	34.1%	21.9%
Limited the ability of teachers and students to modify the way computers are configured	91.1%	91.3%	88.2%	97.7%	87.5%

Standardization

One recognized way of controlling support costs is to try to limit the number of operating systems that are supported. Only 6.5 percent of respondents said they had managed to standardize on a single operating system. (The question treated different versions of the Windows operating system as different systems.) About 57 percent said they supported two to three operating systems, 18.5 percent had to support four or five and 13 percent had to support more than five.

Perhaps not surprisingly, larger districts had a more difficult time standardizing their larger base of computers. Not a single district in the 40 districts with more than 10,000 students had standardized on one operating system. Among the largest districts, those with more than 20,000 students, 39 percent reported that they had to support more than five operating systems.

How many different operating systems (e.g. Macintosh, Windows 3.0, Windows 95, Windows 98, WindowsNT, MS/DOS) is your technology staff required to support?

	Overall	Over 20,0000	10,000-20,000	2,5000-9,999	Under 2,500
Only 1	6.5%	0.0%	0.0%	11.4%	3.1%
2 or 3	57.3%	39.1%	23.5%	61.4%	87.5%
4 or 5	18.5%	21.7%	41.2%	15.9%	9.4%
More than 5	12.9%	34.8%	17.6%	0.0%	0.0%
N/A	4.8%	4.3%	17.6%	4.5%	0.0%

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they offered a "help desk" that computer users could call to get their problems resolved. The practice, though, was much more prevalent among those districts with more than 20,000 students (95.7 percent) than it was among smaller districts (ranging from 59 percent to 53 percent). About 55 percent of overall respondents said they outsourced at least some of their technology support, a finding that did not vary much by district size.

The survey attempted to assess how whether tech support personnel were managed centrally, by individual sites or by a combination of the two. In addition, districts were asked to indicate how many staff members were managed centrally and how many locally.

How Technology Staff Is Managed	Overall	More than 20,000	10,000-20,000
All staff managed centrally	50.8%	30.4%	47.1%
Some are managed centrally, some by sites	38.7%	60.9%	35.3%
All staff are managed by individual sites	6.5%	0.0%	5.9%
N.A.	4.0%	8.7%	11.8%

How Technology Staff Is Managed	2,500-9,999	Under 2,500
All staff managed centrally	45.5%	71.9%%
Some are managed centrally, some by sites	47.7%	18.8%
All staff are managed by individual sites	4.5%	9.4%
N.A.	2.3%	0.0%

How many people on your technology staff are managed and deployed by a central office?

How many people on your technology staff are assigned to individual schools or groups of schools?

	Districts with More than 20,000 Students
Number of Support Employees Reported	Managed/ Deployed Centrally	Managed Locally
46 or more	39.1%	8.7%
21 to 45	26.1%	13.0%
11 to 20	21.7%	21.7%
5 to 10	4.3%	13.0%
Fewer than 5	0%	39.1%
N.A.	8.7%	4.3%
	Districts with 10,000-20,000 students
46 or more	0%	0%
21 to 45	11.8%	5.9%
11 to 20	17.6%	17.6%
5 to 10	47.1%	23.5%
Fewer than 5	17.6%	41.2%
N.A.	5.9%	11.8%
	Districts with 2,500-9,999 students
46 or more	0%	0%
21 to 45	0%	0%
11 to 20	9.1%	13.6%
5 to 10	31.8%	29.5%
Fewer than 5	54.5%	52.3%
N.A.	4.5%	4.5%
	Districts with less than 2,500 students
46 or more	0%	0%
21 to 45	6.3%	0%
11 to 20	0%	0%
5 to 10	3.1%	12.5%
Fewer than 5	87.5%	87.5%
N.A.	3.1%	0%

The complete results from the survey questions are posted on the "Taking TCO to the Classroom" Web site, www.classroomtco.org. Additional materials will be posted there as they become available.

*This summary presents findings for 124 schools and school districts. In a handful of cases, more than one representative of a district responded to the survey. In those cases, one response was eliminated and where there were discrepancies in the responses, the response was changed to "N/A." Where it appeared that the entity represented a single school or campus, the responses were included in the overall totals, but separated out from the categories "Over 20,000 students" and "Under 2,500 students" to provide a more accurate picture of the challenges of networking a district.

This study was prepared by the Consortium for School Networking's "Taking TCO to the Classroom" project in partnership with the National School Boards Association's education technology programs staff. The results were analyzed by Sara Fitzgerald, director of the CoSN project, and vice president, communications of Funds For Learning, an educational technology consulting firm. NSBA's education technology staff provided input on the questions, and developed, implemented and publicized the online survey.