Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Mitigating data breaches with live patch management

Key points:

  • The nation continues to face a severe cyber workforce shortage
  • Defending against future ransomware attacks requires cybersecurity investments
  • See related article: Fixing the K-12 cybersecurity problem
  • For more news on IT security, see eSN’s IT Leadership page

According to a recent report from the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), aggressive hacking tactics by threat actors are increasing in frequency and complexity against K-12 classrooms and higher education institutions.

With public and private schools providing a broad attack surface area for exploitation, they often find themselves repeatedly targeted by malicious hackers looking for financial gain or to steal the sensitive information of students and teachers. These cyberattacks create potentially dangerous effects on the education sector via lost instructional time and the cost to recover from the incident.…Read More

3 collaborative strategies to bolster cybersecurity

In the fall of 2021, the Center for Internet Security’s Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) reported an expected 86 percent increase in cybersecurity incidents targeting K-12 school systems over the course of one year. Public and private schools provide a broad surface area for exploitation and are often the target of malicious hackers looking for financial gain or to steal the sensitive personal data of teachers and students.

Countering these ransomware attacks with proper cyber hygiene practices can be especially difficult if there is little or no room in the IT budget, or if curriculum leaders lack involvement in the effort to enhance cybersecurity.

As a result, there are a few helpful benchmarks that can assist IT administrators in their ever-evolving quest to bolster cybersecurity measures and limit schools’ exposure to pervasive attacks. …Read More

UTAH SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS PROVIDE MODEL FOR EXPANDING EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

UTAH and ARIZONA (Aug. 9, 2021) – Education changes lives. Yet for a multitude of reasons, not all students have equal access to quality learning. It is a challenge that former Utah State Senator Howard Stephenson has been working to solve for 20-plus years. Recently, with the support of the Utah Legislature and groups like the Utah Private Schools Association, he has made some great strides. The most recent – and most notable – comes from what some may consider an unlikely source: a series of partnerships between Utah schools and ASU Prep Digital, an accredited online K-12 school based in neighboring Arizona.

Utah Education Landscape

Stephenson, who graduated with a class of 22 students from a small rural high school located three miles south of the Utah/Arizona border, recalls taking TEMAC Programmed Learning Material courses by correspondence – an experience he describes as “painful” – to complete coursework to make himself stand out to college admissions committees. That was decades ago, a far cry from the level of competition that today’s students encounter.…Read More

How teletherapy enables access to special education services

Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, some parents of children enrolled in public schools have made, or are considering making, moves to alternative modes of education. Private schools, parochial schools, and homeschooling have all reported higher interest over the past year, and while enrollment data is not yet solid enough to officially call it a trend, it appears that some shifts away from public schools will occur in the next year.

Much of this stems from the disruption of the pandemic and the flexibility that private schools had to bring students back to the classroom. A recent poll by Education Next found that the parents of children enrolled in a private school were more likely to be “very satisfied” with their educational experience this year than parents of children in public or charter schools. In March 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 11.1 percent of households with school-age children reported homeschooling, double the prior year’s figure.

Serving students with disabilities…Read More

Chris Christie announces plan to privatize New Jersey public schools

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced a pilot program on Thursday that would allow private companies to run public schools in some of the state’s chronically underperforming school districts, Reuters reports. The public-private partnership would authorize school management organizations to operate five schools, and would target some of the 100,000 New Jersey students now enrolled in 200 chronically failing schools, the governor’s office said…

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…Read More