There is a gap in most school district ed tech budgets that no line item can fix. Districts spend billions of dollars each year on classroom technology, yet the people who use that technology every single day rarely get a seat at the table when the purchasing decisions are made. The result is predictable: expensive tools that teachers avoid, software that confuses students, and hardware that collects dust.
New research from ISTE+ASCD makes the case for closing that gap systematically. Schools that incorporate student input into procurement end up with tools that are easier to use and feature “clear, intuitive user interfaces.” Students, it turns out, want something specific: customization and simplicity, not flashy features. That preference alone should reshape how districts write their evaluation rubrics.
What Students Actually Notice
Alana Winnick, educational technology director and data protection officer at the Pocantico Hills Central School District in New York, has been testing this approach for years. As the founder of Students for Innovation, she runs student clubs focused on AI, digital wellness, innovation, and STEAM, and she treats those students as a standing advisory group whenever her team evaluates new technology.
Her process is practical, not ceremonial. When her team receives evaluation units for potential laptop purchases, students get to handle them. They weigh in on physical details that adults often overlook: how heavy the device is to carry between classes, whether the speaker volume is adequate for a crowded room, how responsive the touchscreen is, how many ports they actually need. When her digital wellness club tested gaming software, students flagged whether certain games had addictive design elements built in and asked for a “try again” mechanism so they could improve scores without starting over.
These are not minor preferences. They are the kind of feedback that determines whether a device gets used or gets shoved into a drawer. “You don’t know until you put it in the hands of your power users and have them push it to the limits what kind of feedback you’ll get back,” Winnick says.
The same principle extended to interactive displays during a recent replenishment cycle. Both students and staff at Pocantico Hills identified touch capability and wireless projection from laptops as non-negotiables. That preference shaped the final purchase. When the people who stand in front of those boards every morning drive the spec list, the technology actually fits the workflow.
The Structural Problem Worth Naming
The pushback against student-inclusive procurement is real and worth taking seriously. District administrators face genuine constraints: budget timelines, vendor contract cycles, IT staff capacity, and legal requirements around data privacy. Involving students adds steps to a process that is already slow. For a large district managing hundreds of devices across dozens of schools, building in student feedback loops can feel like adding complexity to an already strained operation.
There is also a legitimate question about representativeness. Which students get to weigh in? A club of self-selected tech-interested students at a well-resourced suburban district may not reflect the needs of English language learners, students with disabilities, or students in under-resourced schools where the technology gap is widest. A feedback process that only surfaces the voices of already-engaged students can reinforce existing inequities rather than address them.
These are real concerns. The answer is not to abandon student input but to build feedback structures that are deliberately broad, not just convenient. A pilot program that only tests devices with the robotics club is not the same as a structured evaluation that samples across grade levels, learning needs, and classroom contexts.
How to Build It Into Your Process
For schools looking to start, Winnick’s model offers a replicable framework without requiring a massive structural overhaul.
Start with what you are already evaluating. Before your next device purchase, headphone order, or software renewal, identify one or two student groups who use the product daily. Ask them to test evaluation units for two weeks. Give them a short structured feedback form: ease of use, physical comfort, anything they would change, anything they loved. This does not require a formal committee or a policy rewrite.
Make feedback collection a habit, not an event. Winnick collects student input during lunch and in hallway conversations, not just in structured settings. That kind of informal channel matters. Students who trust an adult with their honest opinion tend to share things that never appear in a formal survey. Relationship-building is infrastructure.
Bring students into vendor conversations when you can. Winnick takes students to ed tech conferences, where they walk the showroom floor and ask vendors direct questions about their products. Beyond the procurement value, this exposure plants seeds. For students who have never thought about careers in IT or product design, watching a vendor demo and realizing they have useful opinions about it can be a meaningful moment. That is a side benefit worth naming.
Use student feedback to sharpen your procurement rubric. The ISTE+ASCD research finding about intuitive interfaces and customization without complexity is a starting point. Districts can translate that into concrete evaluation criteria: How many steps does it take a student to complete a core task? Can the interface be adjusted for different reading levels or visual preferences? Does the tool surface the most-used features prominently, or does it bury them under menus? These questions come from student preferences, not vendor marketing materials.
What This Means for Budget Season
Most districts finalize technology budgets months before the school year starts, which means the window for building student feedback into the current cycle may already be closing. But the next procurement cycle starts now.
One concrete action: if your district is mid-cycle on any software renewal, pull together a small group of students for a thirty-minute structured review session before the renewal deadline. Ask them to complete one representative task in the tool and share what confused them. That session will cost almost nothing and will surface information your IT team does not have.
For instructional coaches and curriculum directors, the student voice principle applies beyond procurement. When teachers are evaluating new instructional tools for their own classrooms, student pilots offer the same benefit: real-use feedback that no product demo can replicate. A teacher who tests an AI writing assistant with three students before adopting it for the whole class will integrate it more smoothly than one who rolls it out cold.
Winnick summarizes the stakes plainly: “The farther removed you are from the students, the less connected you are to understanding how your decisions impact them.” That observation applies to curriculum decisions, policy decisions, and device decisions equally. It is not a call to hand purchasing authority to twelve-year-olds. It is a call to stop making consequential decisions in a vacuum.
Building Toward Consistent Practice
The schools that do this well do not treat student feedback as a one-time pilot or a public relations strategy. They build it into their evaluation processes the same way they build in IT compatibility testing or network performance checks. Student input is a quality filter, not a checkbox.
For districts starting from scratch, the bar is low enough to clear this semester. Pick one upcoming purchase. Find ten students who will use the product. Give them a week with it. Listen carefully. Then buy accordingly.
The technology will get used. That alone makes it worth the extra step.
EdTech Institute covers technology in education so teachers can focus on what matters: their students.
EdTech Institute also builds free, classroom-ready tools for teachers at RazaEd.
Source: How K-12 Districts Can Use Student Voices To Guide Ed Tech Purchases (EdTech Magazine K12)