As classrooms across America become increasingly diverse, with growing populations of multilingual learners and students from various cultural backgrounds, school districts face a critical challenge: selecting educational technology that truly serves all students.
According to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 5.3 million English learners in K-12 public schools in the fall of 2021, up from 4.6 million in the fall of 2011. Texas had the highest amount, at 20.2 percent.
The traditional approach of choosing tools based on ease of use, efficiency or cost is proving inadequate for today’s multicultural learning environments.
“Technology is not neutral,” says Joshua Jonas, a curriculum and instruction researcher at Baylor University and former high school teacher. “It either amplifies equity or widens gaps, depending on how it’s selected and integrated.”
This fundamental shift in thinking is driving districts to move beyond asking “Will it work?” to asking “Will it work for whom?”
The stakes are high. As UCLA professor Tyrone Howard notes, districts must be mindful of neurodivergence and cultural differences in learners, recognizing that tools often cater to dominant culture norms while excluding multilingual learners and students from non-Western pedagogical traditions. The result: We end up leaving the same kids behind, only faster.
Set Up a Framework
Forward-thinking districts are adopting systematic approaches to culturally responsive edtech selection. The Center on Inclusive Technology and Education Systems (CITES) encourages technology leaders to define an inclusive technology vision, gather community feedback and define shared roles before diving into tool selection.
Mia Laudato, CITES’ co-project director, recommends starting with one of CITES’ six self-assessment tools.
“If you really want to change your ecosystem, you need to look at your overall ecosystem,” she says. “Start with the leadership assessment and ask other district leaders to take it too.”
After you’ve completed the assessments, discuss your strengths and challenges, prioritize key areas and determine goals.
“Implementation often fails when we go straight to student outcomes because we have to change adult behaviors first,” says Laudato. “Districts must get buy-in from a multidisciplinary team, including a family representative, on a shared, inclusive technology vision, and develop a strategic implementation plan before selecting tools.”
Evaluate Vendors
With 17 percent of its 12,700 students classified as English language learners as well as a significant refugee population, Jenks Public Schools in Oklahoma used the CITES framework to develop a robust vendor-evaluation process.
“We ask vendors to take our survey for curriculum tools that specifically looks at accessibility,” says Samantha Reid, educational technology coordinator. “It has to be AA rated or we don’t buy it.”
Last year, Jenks did a pilot with Talking Points, a family engagement and communication platform that offers automatic translation in the language a family chooses.
“We liked that the platform has human translators, particularly for our large population of Zomi students from Burma. Zomi is so small that it doesn’t exist in [typical formatted] translation,” says Reid.
Reid says that thinking about technology to serve all students has transformed the way she collaborates with her district’s assistive technology team. “We meet weekly to do things together. Our tight bond helps every student.”
The 3Cs of Inclusive Edtech
Debbie Tannenbaum, a school-based tech specialist for Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, supports an elementary school in which 40 percent of the students’ initial language is not English. She looks for technology that can help students become creators versus consumers and for tools that incorporate a framework she developed called the “3Cs”:
- Choice: Tools should provide multiple ways for students to access and share learning, such as through audio, drawing, dictation or video. When one of Tannenbaum’s first-grade multilingual learners discovered he could create videos using Wixie instead of doing traditional math worksheets, his entire attitude toward learning transformed. “He’s just finished third grade and is different because he has access to tools like that,” says Tannenbaum.
- Collaborative: Digital tools must provide opportunities for students to work together in virtual spaces, respecting different comfort levels and communication styles while building essential 21st-century skills. “Ultimately, students need to know how to interact in digital and analog spaces. We don’t want students always working on their own because in the workforce people work together.”
- Clickable (User-Friendly): Icons and interfaces should be intuitive, with visual and textual cues side by side to support multilingual learners who may recognize pictures before words. Tannenbaum teaches icons first.
Equity-Centered Teams
Districts intent on choosing inclusive technology should form diverse evaluation teams that include teachers, directors of multilingual learner services, special education specialists, parents, community members, and even student representatives.
Kelly Forbes, a former newcomer teacher and Title III director who is now a district consultant, says that one of the keys is understanding the people you’re serving.
“Invite parents of your multilingual students to the table,” he says. “Let them be leaders in the committee. Have someone who doesn’t speak English be on the committee and hire an interpreter.”
Because most educators don’t live in the zip codes they serve, community input is essential for understanding local needs and cultural contexts.
Six Steps to Success
The shift toward culturally responsive edtech selection requires more than policy changes; it demands a reimagining of how districts approach technology decisions. But this hard work enhances everyone. As Forbes says, “When we do this, we all rise.”
The technology becomes a bridge rather than a barrier, supporting students in expressing their knowledge while maintaining connections to their cultural and linguistic heritage.
Jonas and his colleagues at Baylor developed a six-step technology evaluation for equity framework.
- Know your students beyond the numbers: Understand languages, cultures, learning preferences and existing barriers.
- Build a culturally responsive evaluation team: Include diverse voices in decision-making.
- Compare with similar districts: Learn from districts with comparable demographics.
- Pilot with equity in mind: Collect feedback specifically from multilingual learners and families.
- Embed equity in procurement: Make cultural responsiveness a formal requirement.
- Create feedback loops: Monitor effectiveness in the first 60 days of implementation.
