Freshmen year, I remember having to sit through the nightmare that was and is MiSiS, and now four years later, it appears that the nightmare may happen again. This upcoming school year the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is fully implementing support for the Schoology Learning Management System (LMS).
This LMS, like MiSiS, follows a 1993 court order that mandated that LAUSD create a district-wide system to track student records. According to administrators at Reseda, the adoption of Schoology offers an attempt to fulfill that court order and to increase parents’ ability to see their student’s progress. Parents will be able to check student’s grades and message their student’s teachers. Students will also be able to see their own progress and can see their assignments and homework online.
With many students being tech-savy, Schoology is also optimized for smartphones with an app already developed. “Already developed” means that the district explores endless benefits in implementing this LMS.
However, while Schoology seems to offer many advantages, over the years, LAUSD has learned to proceed with caution now whenever they’re about to unveil major technological changes. Unlike the implementation of MiSiS, Schoology will not be rolled out district wide in one year. In fact, once the school year starts, LAUSD will have had at least 1.5 years of experience with the program.
According to LAUSD’s official FAQ page on the Online Gradebook Pilot, LAUSD’s pilot program, encompassed three phases since its launch in the spring of 2016. With many schools having already voluntarily piloted the LMS, LAUSD might actually pull this off.
Since LAUSD phased this program out over time, students should hope that there will be less district-wide chaos over the implementation of new technology. But then again, that’s what they said about those iPads…
For more information, visit LAUSD’s official FAQ page on the subject:
