Google Chromebooks In Education Provides Affordability, Manageability, Accessibility, And Security In North America 

K-12 school districts in North America often face challenges when it comes to providing students with devices. Despite this, educational leaders are responsible for finding devices for learning that are affordable, reliable, and meet the diverse educational requirements of their constituents. 

To address these challenges, educational organizations sought Chromebooks to provide a cloud-native and easy-to-deploy alternative to traditional laptops and tablets. In addition, qualifying educational institutions received access to Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals for their students and teachers at no additional charge. Education Fundamentals provided these groups with a comprehensive collaboration suite in addition to a robust academic management system. The two solutions combine as a cloud-based platform that enables broader technological access for students, teachers, and staff across school systems.

Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) educational institutions may realize by deploying Chromebooks in Education. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Chromebook on their organizations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed 18 representatives with experience using Chromebooks in Education. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization: an educational group with 30,000 K-12 elementary students and 1,200 teachers across several individual schools.

Forrester spoke with the following four North American education decision-makers about their school districts’ experience with Chromebooks in Education:

• A district edtech coordinator and edtech project manager at a K-12 school with 13,000 students.
• A director of information and instructional technology and a technology integration specialist at a K-12 school with 19,000 students.

This abstract focuses on organizations in North America, respondents’ use of Google Chromebooks in Education, and its value to their organizations.

INVESTMENT DRIVERS For North America

Prior to investing in Chromebooks and adopting Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals, North American schools struggled with high device costs, narrowing the digital divide among students, and overburdened IT groups.

The interviewees noted how their organizations struggled with common challenges, including:

• Missed educational benefits from students not having their own dedicated device. Many schools were not able to offer students a 1:1 device due to the high cost of legacy laptops and tablets. Parents and school leaders were concerned that these students would not be as prepared for an increasingly digital world and that teachers would not be able to take advantage of powerful online resources.
  
  The director of information and instructional technology of a North American K-12 school district said: “We couldn’t afford to get our students devices for $1,200 per kid. Then the Chromebooks came out, and it was the first time we could give a low-cost and really usable device to nearly every single kid. It worked costwise, logisticswise, and even culturewise since the kids all had Google accounts.”
• Growing technological disparity for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Many school systems’ student bodies had a wide mix of backgrounds, with some families having greater financial resources than others. Educational leaders found that students whose families could afford computers at home had advantages over students who could only use computers at school. Leaders sought to provide an environment where students could not only have their own dedicated device but also could take it home each day, but the high cost of legacy laptops and tablets prevented this.
  
  The district edtech coordinator at a North American K-12 school district said: “One of the biggest gaps for our students is that not all families have access to computers. Chrome gives us the ability to provide computer access for students at home. It bridges that gap, so everybody has equal access. That’s a huge thing in our district.”
• Excessive ongoing IT labor for device deployment and management. Educational IT groups were often tasked with supporting new technological programs without additional resources or funding. As schools began adding legacy devices, IT staff struggled to scale environments as many devices required individual-level management and specialized software or equipment. This took staff away from other high-priority work and slowed out rollout by months.

Chromebook and Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals Features

The interviewees’ organizations chose to invest in Chromebook and Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals for the following reasons:

• It significantly reduces disruption in the classroom caused by long startup times and limited battery life. The district edtech coordinator of a North America K-12 school district said: “The reason we went Chromebooks really was because the battery life is better and it takes only 8 seconds to load to start up a Chromebook when compared to [legacy devices]. That and then they’re just easy to manage.”
  
  The same interviewee also said: “For us to consider moving back to [the legacy OS], at minimum, you’d have to find a device under $400 that can boot up and get to the internet in less than 8 seconds like a Chromebook can. We only have 55 minutes each period, so it’s dead in the water if it needs to stop and update.”
• It allows for easier deployment and management while staying within school budget. Educational decision-makers in North America looked to Chromebook as a solution that could be deployed in their classrooms significantly faster and with less overhead while also requiring less ongoing management.
  
  In addition to lower overhead costs, Chromebook devices were seen as costing less and allowed schools to provide each student with their own dedicated device. Procuring devices that cost less and required less IT support was seen as a way for administration to stay within their school’s budget.

Key Results For North American Schools

The results of the investment for the North American interviewees’ organizations include:

Avoided legacy hardware and peripheral costs. All interviewees found that Chromebooks cost less per device than the legacy devices they had either used in the past or had compared in their own business cases. While the device price point varied by educational group, Chromebooks were found to be at most half as expensive as a comparable legacy device for students and teachers alike:  

• Performance and functionality per dollar when compared to other devices. The district e-tech coordinator of a North American K-12 school district said: “You can get a [legacy] device for almost the same price as a Chromebook, but it’s like comparing a base model to a souped-up model. Why not get the souped-up Chromebook with a touchscreen for the same price as the stripped down [legacy] machine?”

• Capable base system that doesn’t require additional peripherals and accessories. The technology integration specialist of a North American K-12 school district said: “We tried [a legacy tablet] as an experiment, but it had a huge flaw, especially with the older students. They needed a keyboard to write their papers and essays. So it’s not just the price point with Chromebooks that’s lower but also that fact that it has a usable keyboard.”

Easier management for Chromebook environment. Chromebook devices were significantly easier for IT groups to deploy and manage as much of the labor was automated and performed at scale through Google’s ChromeOS device management service. The saved labor, software, and hardware resources could instead be focused on improving the school’s environment and completing new initiatives rather than basic management and maintenance of endpoint devices. Advantages included:

• Fewer IT FTEs needed to support Chromebook. A school district in North America was able to support more than 12,000 students and Chromebook devices with just five IT FTEs spending a portion of their time on device management. Interviewees from the school district estimated that if each student instead had a legacy laptop, the IT group would need to double or triple in size to manage those devices.
• Ease of device management. Some North American schools found that Chromebook management through ChromeOS device management was so simple that IT no longer needed to be involved day-to-day, and the work could be absorbed by other school departments. This freed up IT groups for more technical and higher-value work.
  
  The district edtech coordinator of a North American K-12 school district said: “Our IT department does not touch a single Chromebook in our district. We’re at 15,000 devices, and our IT department does nothing with Chrome. It’s all managed by our student program. It’s a super easy program to manage.” The same interviewee continued: “I can’t even imagine how many more people you would need to manage in a [legacy] environment because they’re high-maintenance. … Management is 100 times easier in Chrome than [the legacy system], for sure.”
  
  The director of information and instructional technology of a North American K-12 school district said: “When we got Chromebooks, we could literally roll out 5,000 of them in a week. And 90% of that week was just the logistics of how you get these in the hands of kids. On the other hand, when we tried to roll out 1,200 [legacy laptops], it took us two to three months over a fall quarter.”
  
  In addition, a school district in North America received 50% fewer support tickets after moving to Chromebooks compared to when each student had a legacy device.
• No additional software purchases needed. Some IT groups in North America found that they were required to buy additional software and even hardware to manage legacy laptops and tablets. IT groups already had small budgets and struggled with this additional burden. By moving to Chromebooks, these IT groups no longer needed to buy this software or hardware and could reallocate that budget elsewhere.
  
  The director of information and instructional technology of a North American K-12 school district said: “Another issue with [legacy tablets] is that we couldn’t scale them. We tried to use [legacy management software], but then you had to buy an additional expensive device to use it.”
• Fast registration of students on Chromebook devices. IT groups also saved time registering new students into their school system, especially at the beginning of each new school year.
  
  The director of information and instructional technology of a North American K-12 school district said: “Everything is integrated into Google Classroom. This gives us the ability to get a student all set up within 24 hours of registering into our district. They have a Google account, they’re in Google Classroom, and they’re registered in classes and have everything they need. This is all completely automated. This is very difficult, if not impossible, to automate in a [legacy] ecosystem.”
• Lower headcount needed for Chromebook support. IT groups appreciated that they could support thousands of Chromebooks without requiring additional headcount. This was especially important as many leaders had already been told that they would not be given more funding for additional IT staff.
  
  The director of information and instructional technology of a North American K-12 school district said: “Commercial companies can look at their bottom line and say, ‘I need to hire more IT staff.’ Education is not like that; we need to develop these programs with the people and budget we have. You know what Google’s done? They give us an inexpensive device that just works all the time and has a way to manage 20,000 to 30,000 of them.”

Reduced need for third-party accessibility tools and services. In addition to saving money on the initial device purchase, school systems were able to reduce spend on third-party services and accessibility tools.

Some schools were able to reallocate some of their translation services since students could use text-to-speech translation on their Chromebook to communicate with teachers. Schools could then prioritize translators for the higher-priority cases and reduce costs elsewhere.

A district edtech coordinator at a North American K-12 school district said: “We have a large second-language population, and when we started giving them Chromebooks, those students would use the features right away to communicate with teachers. Then we started using [Workspace for Education Fundamentals], and it would auto-translate for the parents as well. It’s just really made it easier for our students, parents, and teachers to communicate.”

Enhanced security of Chromebook and Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals. School IT leadership found that the number of security incidents and breaches fell after migration to Chromebook devices. They attributed this to Chromebook’s cloud-based OS as well as Google’s built-in security features. In addition, none of the interviewees’ school districts experienced a successful ransomware attack on any Chromebooks in their school systems.

The executive director of technology of a North American K-12 school district said: “The number of security breach incidents on staff devices has decreased at the same rate as our Chromebook distribution [has increased]. That also means users no longer need to worry about their data being backed up and secure.”

Appendix A: Endnotes