Case USA52: Why a State Education Department Mistook LMS Procurement for Enterprise Architecture Maturity
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- Jul 24
- 2 min read
Overview:
This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how US education systems have mislabeled technology purchases as “Enterprise Architecture progress.”
In K–12 and higher ed, a recurring pattern is treating the rollout of a learning management system (LMS) as proof of enterprise maturity.
The LMS purchase was publicized as a unifying step for teachers, students, and administrators; training was conducted, and usage rates were high — yet the enterprise structure linking curriculum standards, assessment workflows, student data privacy, and cross-district reporting was never modeled.
P1–P6 Insight Preview:
P1 (Strategy): The LMS program was justified as an equity and digital transformation initiative, but no roadmap tied it to systemic educational goals or governance.
P2 (Process): Teaching, grading, and content delivery workflows were configured in the LMS, but integration with assessment reporting and district-level interventions was absent.
P3 (System): The LMS connected poorly with student information systems (SIS) and analytics tools; behavior models for information flow were never defined.
P4 (Component): The platform, plugins, and content repositories operated with inconsistent standards across districts.
P5 (Implementation): Rollout was technically smooth, but iterations were driven by vendor updates rather than enterprise learning objectives.
P6 (Operations): Business ops in teaching were improved for daily class delivery, but tech ops struggled with cross-system sync; both failed to produce unified statewide performance insights.
Role Disconnects:
CEO/Superintendent: “Every school is on the same platform” — but learning outcomes remain fragmented.
CIO: “We have one LMS for all” — yet we run three different ways of storing and reporting grades.
Sales Head (EdTech Partnerships): “Adoption numbers are high” — but districts still demand costly custom integrations.
Chief EA: “We standardized a tool, not the educational enterprise”
Head of Curriculum & Instruction: “Teachers can upload lessons easily — but aligning them to state standards is still manual and inconsistent”
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