CoSN tells school districts to plan for adoption before they buy new tech

The parts of the new toolkit that matter most are the ones a district works through before it signs a purchase order.

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) has published its 2026 Blaschke Report. Titled "Change Management for Education Technology: A Practical Guide for District Leaders," it comes with a companion School District Technology Change Management Toolkit. The report focuses on the human and organizational side of adopting technology: the teachers, staff, students and families who have to live with whatever the district buys.

The report sets out to help K-12 districts handle the people and organizational problems that arise when they take on new technology. For a CTO or curriculum technology director, that could move planning earlier, before procurement starts.

Two jobs inside one rollout

The toolkit separates two kinds of work that often get treated as one. Project management delivers a technical solution. Change management prepares and supports the people who are supposed to adopt it. The report is written for the second.

To structure that work, CoSN uses the ADKAR change management model, which arranges adoption around five outcomes a person moves through:

1. Awareness of why the change is needed
2. Desire to take part in it
3. Knowledge of what to do, tailored to each role
4. Ability to do it in practice, built through hands-on opportunities
5. Reinforcement that keeps the new practice going after launch

Districts can use the ADKAR framework to pinpoint how far along each stakeholder group is in adopting a change. The toolkit notes that groups can sit at different stages at the same time. For example, a district might find its trained power users ready to build skill while families are still asking why the change is happening. That suggests each group could need a different fix, and one districtwide training day may not reach all of them.

The research behind the report was qualitative. It ran over the summer and combined a review of change management literature with interviews of education and technology leaders from small, midsize and large public districts across the country. Jesse Davis, CoSN's 2026 Blaschke Fellow, wrote the report.

Questions that come before the RFP

According to the toolkit, districts should start by spelling out what problem the proposed technology change is meant to solve. From there, they should name the groups it affects, set a timeline for implementation and decide how they will measure success.

Leaders are also urged to account for competing initiatives and implementation fatigue before their district moves into procurement or a districtwide rollout. Picture a district replacing a learning platform in the same year it adopts a new curriculum and a new assessment system. For a district in that position, the guidance suggests weighing the overlap before procurement begins.

A sponsor who has to state up front how success will be measured would give the district a yardstick for the purchase before it is made. For districts whose purchasing steps stop short of adoption, the toolkit's planning questions could fill that gap without replacing anything already there.

Champions, a council and life after launch

For running the change, the framework relies on "change champions," people who link implementation leaders with the staff and stakeholders dealing with the change day to day. Champions should have credibility with peers, represent a range of roles and schools, and be willing to hear concerns instead of just promoting the new initiative.

The toolkit also lays out a change management council to review significant technology changes. That suggests CoSN sees change management as an ongoing district function rather than a one-off project task. The council could also be where the fatigue question from the planning stage gets enforced.

After a rollout, districts are told to track adoption indicators, review feedback and help requests, keep refresher training going and hold a post-implementation review.

The toolkit recommends a post-implementation review once a rollout is done. For districts, that step may deserve more weight than it usually gets.

Where the Blaschke series has been heading

There is a fair limit to keep in mind. The report rests on a literature review and interviews, so it describes what experienced leaders recommend. That suggests it does not show whether districts using the framework get higher adoption or lower costs. Districts may have to supply that evidence themselves, which is why the toolkit's insistence on defining success measures early does double duty.