As school technology gets more sophisticated, so do cybercriminals, but school leaders can’t sit back and wait for someone to hand them solutions. During the edLeader Panel “Cybersecurity in School District Settings: A District Leadership Approach,” three innovative superintendents discussed strategies to try and stay ahead of cyber issues even when the landscape is constantly evolving.
During the edLeader Panel “The Role of MTSS in District Improvement: Aligning Vision and Action,” three top-notch current and former district leaders discussed change management, focusing on how a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) can provide an organizing framework for accomplishing strategic goals. The panelists shared practical strategies to help anyone from seasoned K-12 superintendents to up-and-coming administrators accomplish their district goals and lead confidently.
If we want students to succeed in college and the workforce, they need to be familiar with STEM and CTE, but that’s easier said than done. As important as building sustainable STEM programs is, it can also be very difficult.
Strategic plans. Student engagement initiatives. Academic success goals. Whatever a plan is called, it usually starts full of hope and promise. But, despite all of the time and resources spent creating them, plans often fail. During the edLeader Panel “Beyond the Plan: Measuring, Adjusting, and Realigning Strategies for Success,” experts from The Center for Model Schools discussed the keys to successful plan implementation.
While the required implementation of the Science of Reading (SOR) appears to be a phenomenon that has swept across state legislatures in recent years, the truth is that it has been a “culmination of decades of research into literacy,” according to Dr. Roland Good, a leading literacy expert who is also Co-founder of Acadience Learning and an original author of the DIBELS early literacy assessment.
Maybe you remember the ELIZA chatbot or when IBM’s Deep Blue defeated the chess whiz Garry Kasparov. You were probably around for the arrival of Siri, the virtual assistant designed to answer our most pressing questions. A common element of these remarkable events was artificial intelligence (AI)—once a thing of science fiction, now a reality. It’s been around for a while, scaling in the 2020s across fields, including education, where it has transformative potential.
The future is here. Artificial intelligence is part of almost every area of society, including education, so it’s time to take a serious look at it. How can AI help teachers and administrators?
Each year, CoSN conducts a national survey among education technology leaders to assess the current state of technology innovation across multiple school systems. Five specific current challenges were identified in the 2024 survey results: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cybersecurity, Student Well-Being, Digital Equity, and Interoperability.
Is this scenario familiar? The administration decides that the staff need professional development to integrate a new SEL approach into the classroom. They know that teachers need more than one day of seminars to adjust their classroom methods, so leadership provides training over several weeks. Once the school year begins, administrators observe the teachers to check their progress, but only a few have integrated the SEL approach into their lessons. The professional development, despite the in-depth training, wasn’t impactful enough.
It’s a long-proven truth that some students need tutoring outside the classroom, which was especially shown during the pandemic. For many students, this means the difference between success and failure. But how does one go about helping students get the tutoring they need?