11 Facts About Today’s K-12 IT Leadership

Republished By Plato

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Broadband access and the ever-growing equity gap are among K-12 IT leaders’ top concerns, according to CoSN’s annual IT Leadership Survey.

The survey, released in collaboration with the Ed-Fi Alliance and other partners, is based on a national survey of nearly 400 school systems and provides a nuanced look at the challenges K-12 IT leadersship has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We were proud to once again work alongside the CoSN team in developing this report,” said Sean Casey, manager of strategic partnerships at the Ed-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit devoted to helping school districts and states achieve data interoperability. “At Ed-Fi, our goal is to define data standards to solve problems shared by all educators and to arm the learning community with useful information, as found in this report, for conscientious decision-making that leads to better outcomes for learners everywhere.”

1. Efforts to expand broadband access outside of school have increased dramatically. In 2020, 49 percent of respondents did not provide off-campus services, compared to just 5 percent in 2021, meaning 95 percent of respondents are providing off-campus services of some kind. The most popular strategy for increasing broadband access outside of school is deploying district-owned hotspots, with 70 percent of respondents taking this route–this compares to just 17 percent the prior year. Thirty percent work with their communities to provide Wi-Fi hotspots compared to 19 percent who did so in 2020, and 27 percent provide home access via free or subsidized programs to low-income families–more than double the prior year’s rate of 10 percent.

Laura Ascione is the Editorial Director at eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland's prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism.