ANDRE PERRY: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist - The Hechinger Report

COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

Conservatives campaigning against critical race theory are making it even more popular

Conservative legislators across the country are passing laws to ban books and courses that espouse critical race theory — scholarship born in the 1970s that examines the role that racism plays in our daily lives. For instance, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a higher ed bill based on some lawmakers’ beliefs that critical race theory and similar work “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.”

You’d think that after the white supremacists defiled the halls of the Capitol on January 6, policymakers would be compelled to uproot clear and present sources of racial division. After four years of Trump falsely equating white supremacists with activists fighting for racial justice, you’d also think policymakers would see critical race theory as a way to make sense of systemic racism in the U.S. But, alas, racists find a way to use what should be teachable moments as a twisted opportunity to perpetuate their worldview.

A culture built upon a false racial hierarchy can only be maintained through lies, force and duplicity — all of which are on full display in the asinine attempts to ban critical race theory. Those who are threatened by any systemic analysis of racism and its underpinnings reveal exactly where they stand on white supremacy. 

The reasons this country is literally divided are clear to any reasonable person: slavery, Jim Crow segregation, housing and education discrimination, a biased criminal justice system and feckless conservative CONTINUE READING: COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

OPINION: We need more teachers of color. Here’s how one teacher residency program is grappling with the problem - The Hechinger Report

OPINION: We need more teachers of color. Here’s how one teacher residency program is grappling with the problem

OPINION: We need more teachers of color. Getting there requires ambitious equitable solutions

Here’s how one teacher residency program is grappling with the problem

When Marie Lewis applied to the Nashville Teacher Residency (NTR), she was earning $18,000 per year as a paraprofessional, supporting students with special needs, one-on-one or in small groups.

To make ends meet, she also worked over the summers and during school breaks at a child care center, earning $10.25 per hour.  A single Black mother of two, Marie loved children and knew she wanted to be a teacher, but couldn’t afford to pay for a licensure program, which can cost $30,000 or more at local universities for a degree and license. 

Lewis loved the work and the difference she felt she could make in children’s lives, but the way things were going, neither her dreams nor her potential were going to be realized.

Sadly, her story isn’t unusual. Such lack of opportunity disproportionately affects people of color at a time when we are facing a national teaching shortage of teachers of color.

The diversity of students in this country is increasing, but the diversity of our teaching force is not. Just seven percent of our country’s teachers are Black. Yet research tells us that exposure to a Black teacher in elementary school can reduce the high school dropout rate for low-income Black male students by 39 percent. 

There is also a related but largely unseen crisis: the number of CONTINUE READING: OPINION: We need more teachers of color. Here’s how one teacher residency program is grappling with the problem

After-school programs have either been abandoned or overworked

After-school programs have either been abandoned or overworked

After-school programs have either been abandoned or overworked

Many after-school programs, which provide both enrichment and child care, have gone out of business. Others went remote and still others became full-day child care programs. None had much guidance or support

I like building stuff,” said 11-year-old Isabella Lagunas, describing the appeal of her science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) after-school program, Girlstart. “In school we don’t really do a lot of projects, mostly reading. I like [after school] because it’s more hands-on. It’s being more creative.”

When the pandemic forced Austin-based Girlstart to go remote, the priority for Tamara Hudgins, its executive director, was finding a way to maintain that hands-on experience for the girls in her program, the majority of whom come from low-income households and likely have few other options for this kind of academic enrichment.

“Learning via the screen is a real challenge, for the adults as well as children,” Hudgins said. Her solution was to create physical kits containing all the supplies the girls would need. Before the start of every program, each girl receives, either by mail or drop-off, an entire semester’s worth of materials that correspond to the girls’ weekly activities, whether they are working on a DNA phenotype project or exploring the principles of aerodynamics.

“We built a rocket launch,” Isabella said. “That was really fun.”

Going remote but delivering physical materials is one solution to a problem that has plagued after-school providers across the country — how to continue providing their enrichment and child care solutions during a CONTINUE READING: After-school programs have either been abandoned or overworked

PROOF POINTS: Gifted programs provide little to no academic boost, new study says - The Hechinger Report

PROOF POINTS: Gifted programs provide little to no academic boost, new study says - The Hechinger Report

PROOF POINTS: Gifted programs provide little to no academic boost, new study says

National study finds Black students and low-income children don’t reap the small gains achieved by white, Asian and high-income children

Gifted education is often a flash point in school desegregation debates; in large cities, these programs often operate as an essentially separate school system, dominated by white and Asian children. Though gifted programs touch only 3.3 million school children, about 7 percent of the U.S. student population, it’s disturbing that Black and Hispanic children are rarely chosen for them. 

Some progressives have proposed eliminating gifted programs altogether. Others are seeking ways to increase the number of Black and Hispanic students. Only 4 percent of Black children and 5 percent of Hispanic children are in gifted programs compared with 8 percent of white and 13 percent of Asian children, according to the most recent federal figures.

Against this political backdrop, a new study raises big questions about whether gifted education benefits the kids who are lucky enough to be in it. Researchers analyzed the records of about 1,300 students, drawn from a nationally representative sample of children across the country, who started kindergarten in 2010 and participated in a gifted program for at least one year during their elementary school years through fifth grade. 

In school systems that offer gifted programs, children generally begin their schooling in a regular kindergarten classroom with children of mixed CONTINUE READING: PROOF POINTS: Gifted programs provide little to no academic boost, new study says - The Hechinger Report

Interactive: Explore who gains most from student debt forgiveness - The Hechinger Report

Interactive: Explore who gains most from student debt forgiveness

Interactive: Explore who gains most from canceling student debt

As economists and policymakers debate the merits of loan forgiveness, a peek into federal data shows how different proposals could affect different groups of borrowers

President Joe Biden, congressional leaders and debt experts continue to argue over student loan debt forgiveness — both how much should be canceled and which branch can offer relief. Biden told a questioner at last week’s CNN town hall he did not think he had the authority to cancel $50,000 for student loan borrowers, and instead would limit relief to $10,000. Earlier, the administration had said it was reviewing its options for forgiveness through executive action. Even the more modest figure of $10,000 per student would represent one of the most ambitious projects under the new administration, erasing an estimated $377 billion in debt.

Student debt forgiveness is popular among voters, but a handful of economists have questioned whether it helps those most in need. They argue that middle-class families will benefit more than poor and marginalized Americans.

There are many ways to look at the types of people loan forgiveness would benefit: Should we consider household income? What about net wealth? How would borrowers of different races be affected? A Hechinger analysis of federal data provides additional dimensions to the picture of student debt. We show more detail about where student debt falls most heavily and how different cancellation plans would affect different groups of Americans.

First, here is the overall picture of student loan debt and its rapid growth.

Americans amassed trillions of dollars in student loan debt in the course of just a few decades. Throughout most of the Department of Education’s life as a guarantor of loans and a direct lender, student borrowing remained below $20 billion per year, according to a 1998 report from the Institute for CONTINUE READING: Interactive: Explore who gains most from student debt forgiveness

How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

Remote learning violations, mask-wearing offenses and an opportunity to rethink harsh discipline

One Thursday this fall, a middle schooler in Florida’s Brevard Public Schools received an in-school suspension. He had ripped off another student’s face mask and blown into a peer’s face. That same day, six other students across the district were written up for not wearing their masks correctly (including one who also faked using hand sanitizer), while an elementary school student was assigned three days of “private dining” for sharing food in violation of safety guidelines. Meanwhile, an e-learning student got in trouble for filming another student during class without permission.

In many ways, that Thursday was emblematic of a new age of discipline, with multiple students across the district getting written up for infractions that didn’t exist the school year before. Students removed their masks, chatted inappropriately in Zoom and failed to socially distance. In all, about 11 percent of discipline incidents outlined in detail from the start of the school year in late August to mid-September were in some way related to the coronavirus pandemic and the district’s new requirements for in-person and virtual instruction, according to records that Brevard Public Schools provided to The Hechinger Report/HuffPost.

Related: They didn’t turn in their work for remote school. Their parents were threatened with courts and fines

For teachers around the country, school discipline during the pandemic has been confounding. Few have received much guidance from administrators on how to handle discipline issues that arise in remote learning and in school buildings where education has been reshaped by new health and safety guidelines. In many districts, like Brevard, which CONTINUE READING: How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

New studies provide more info for in-person school and community spread

New studies provide more info for in-person school and community spread

PROOF POINTS: Two new studies point to virus thresholds for in-person school

Researchers looked at hospitalization and coronavirus case rates

Two new studies on whether to keep schools open during the coronavirus pandemic come to strikingly similar conclusions: it’s not a simple yes or no. Instead, there are public health thresholds that can indicate when in-person classes are safe. 

The similarity in the results is striking considering that the research teams used different data and took different approaches to crunching the numbers.

“The fact that it seems safe [to open schools] in some places but perhaps not in others isn’t surprising,” said Tulane University economist Douglas Harris, a researcher on one of the studies. “Schools should spread the virus less in places where there is less of it to spread.”

Harris’s study, released on Jan. 4, looked at every 2020 school opening in the country through the fall and tracked how many people in each county landed in the hospital because of COVID-19 for the following six weeks. Harris and two Tulane health researchers found that school openings didn’t add to the number of people in the hospital, as long as the COVID-19 hospitalization rate was below 36 to 44 people per 100,000 residents per week CONTINUE READING: New studies provide more info for in-person school and community spread

Who is the new U.S. Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona? The Hechinger Report

Who is the new U.S. Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona?

Who is the new U.S. Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona?

Biden’s ed secretary will continue a “meteoric rise” to the nation’s top education job after serving as Connecticut’s commissioner

When he was assistant superintendent of schools in Meriden, Miguel Cardona — the state’s new education commissioner — would take new teachers on a tour of the city’s neighborhoods.

He did it because he wanted the teachers to understand the diversity of their students — from those living in half-million dollar homes to those from housing projects.

“The experience motivated the teachers to get to know their kids better,” Cardona said, “and be more actively involved in the community as new teachers.”

Born in a housing project in Meriden to parents who moved here as children from Puerto Rico, Cardona, 44, believes strongly in family and community as well as in the potential for each child to be successful.

The state’s first Latino commissioner of education recalls being the victim of stereotyping as he was growing up.

“For Latino children from communities that are below the threshold of poverty, you know you’re not typically thinking, the data doesn’t suggest that they’re going to be the next principal of the school … or state education commissioner,” Cardona said. “There were times throughout my youth that I think people had lower expectations than they should have. It just made me hungrier.”

“It’s not lost on me, the significance of being the grandson of a tobacco farmer who came here for a better life, who despite having a second grade education was able to raise his family and create that upward mobility cycle,” he added.

Cardona said the values instilled in him — “hard work, service to others, CONTINUE READING: Who is the new U.S. Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona?

Students accused of truancy when they didn’t turn in their work

Students accused of truancy when they didn’t turn in their work

They didn’t turn in their work for remote school. Their parents were threatened with courts and fines

After their kids experienced tech glitches or turned off cameras during online learning, these families were accused of truancy and received legal threats

Hayden, 12, had been having panic attacks about school even before a letter arrived at his home last month, threatening legal action for his alleged absences from distance learning. 

The sixth grader has been attending online class from his home outside Austin, Texas, since August, and having difficulties adjusting. When his grades dropped, he started having intense bouts of anxiety, working himself up until he cried so hard he could barely catch his breath. He wailed that he hated himself and wished he could do better in school.

When the letter arrived from Round Rock School District in November, saying that legal charges punishable by fines or court action could be brought against his mother for his absences, Hayden spiraled into a dayslong episode, says his mother Holly Barentine. He started crying even before they finished reading the letter, disclosing fears about worst-case scenarios that he would fail his classes. When he went to stay the night at his dad’s house, the crying continued. His father emailed Barentine, expressing concern for their son’s well-being.

Hayden, a sixth-grader, hadn’t actually been missing online school. However, his school district only counts kids present in some classes if they both show up and submit their homework for the day. Some of Hayden’s homework hadn’t been reaching his teachers due to apparent technological glitches on the school’s online platform, or in some cases because he hadn’t handed it in ― an oversight he didn’t expect to be met with potential legal action. 

Around the country, school districts are subject to state truancy laws and regulations. However, as the coronavirus pandemic has turned schools upside down and put most learning online, some of these rules are CONTINUE READING: Students accused of truancy when they didn’t turn in their work

PROOF POINTS: 114 studies on flipped classrooms show small payoff for big effort - The Hechinger Report

PROOF POINTS: 114 studies on flipped classrooms show small payoff for big effort - The Hechinger Report

114 studies on flipped classrooms show small payoff for big effort

Research also hints at the importance of live video instruction during remote learning

In a flipped classroom, students watch video lectures before class and use class time to work on assignments and group projects. It’s “flipped” because it’s the opposite of the traditional structure in which students first learn from a teacher’s in-class instruction. 

Advocates believe that students learn more when class time is spent actively learning instead of passively listening. Flipped classrooms also free up class time for teachers to help students individually, as a tutor does. 

Over the past decade, flipping has spread across U.S. classrooms, from city college campuses to suburban elementary schools. But like many trends in education, the novelty took hold before the evidence mounted. 

Now there is a significant body of research to answer the question of whether students learn more. The underwhelming answer from more than 100 studies of flipped classrooms is yes, but only slightly. 

“My takeaway message is that it could be better,” said researcher David C.D. van Alten, referring to a flipped classroom, in an email interview. “But only when it is appropriately designed.” Van Alten, a doctoral student, led the research team at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, which conducted the largest meta-analysis to date of flipped classrooms in the CONTINUE READING: PROOF POINTS: 114 studies on flipped classrooms show small payoff for big effort - The Hechinger Report

ANDRE PERRY: The next education secretary must know about much more than education

The next education secretary must know about much more than education

The next education secretary must know about much more than education

Our schools are in crisis. We need Biden to tell us who our new secretary of education will be ASAP

In the days after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, you didn’t have to be inside the beltway to hear whispers of names being floated for cabinet positions — rumors that were later confirmed as fact: Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve Board (Department of the Treasury); Vivek Murthy, former Surgeon General under President Barak Obama (named to serve in the same role); Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Politics (Office of Management and Budget); and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who served as the top diplomat in Africa during the Obama Administration (Ambassador to the United Nations).

But alas, we’re still waiting on the name of Biden’s education secretary, the person who will help lead our schools out of one of the biggest crises in the history of American education.

Because of President Donald Trump’s clownish denial of the election results, Biden got a later start than his predecessors at naming his nominees for the top spots in his nascent administration, and there are many more departmental roles Biden must begin to fill. However, if there is anything that the entire country can agree on it is that our schools are in the middle of an epic disaster. Uneven access to broadband, resource disparities between upper- and lower-income districts and differences in family resources across racial lines, foreshadow widening achievement gaps. Also, parents are tired of playing the roles of substitute teacher, lunch lady and security guard (all at the same time). They desperately need to hear when and how all students might return to schools safely.

The country needs an education secretary who understands the systemic nature of our current problems, across sectors.

We need leadership on this issue — yesterday. CONTINUE READING: The next education secretary must know about much more than education

Community schools are the schools we need now

Community schools are the schools we need now

To the rescue — The schools we need now are community schools

When the coronavirus struck, the community-school model showed how quickly families and schools needing extra resources could be helped

When America’s schools shut down in mid-March as a result of Covid-19 and transitioned to some form of remote learning, the nation’s community schools responded rapidly.  That’s because these schools already had strong existing relationships with providers of community resources, both public and private.

At least 8,000 American public schools identify as community schools, meaning that they work in well-planned partnerships with local organizations that offer resources like medical, dental and mental health services; before- and after-school programs; and housing and employment assistance to parents. These partners are integrated into the life of the school, both through formal mechanisms and through informal day-to-day contact, which means they can get the right services to the right students at the right time.

City Connects, an organization that integrates student support services in more than 150 urban schools, saw the coronavirus pandemic highlight its value.  

“Having a systemic and systematic strategy for supporting every student made a huge difference when Covid closed the curtain,” said Mary Walsh, executive director of City Connects, an organization based at Boston College. “We were able to avoid ‘random acts of student support’ and to ensure that every student had their needs met and their strengths supported.” CONTINUE READING: Community schools are the schools we need now

OPINION: What math class and police brutality have in common

OPINION: What math class and police brutality have in common

What math class and police brutality have in common

An obsession with rule-following cuts short Black students’ opportunities

Last May, a 15-year-old Black girl in Michigan known only by her middle name, Grace, was put in juvenile detention for not completing her homework. Teens not turning in their homework is hardly an anomaly. Other teens are scolded, lose marks or, at worst, get detention for this offence. But Grace was incarcerated. The difference? She’s Black.

Grace’s story is just one example of how the American education system and American policing tactics converge.

The education system has a dangerous obsession with rule-following for Black children that cuts short opportunities, just as policing has a dangerous obsession with rule-following for Black people that cuts short lives.

This is particularly evident in math class.

Black students often receive compliments in math class for rule-following. In lower-income schools (which are often predominately Black), students are encouraged to follow math rules and formulae without questioning the teacher or the math itself, leaving them no room to ask questions or screw up.

Teachers are more likely to judge their Black students’ math abilities based on non-academic qualities, such as behavior and physical characteristics. A decade ago, Common Core math was introduced to emphasize understanding over rote learning, but the delivery of standards varies across schools, classrooms and teachers, depending both on who is being assessed and who is doing the assessing.

Related: White and female teachers show racial bias in evaluating second grade writing

In higher-income schools (which are often predominately white), understanding is often prioritized over procedure, and students learn math in more abstract ways, such as understanding why one uses a certain formula, instead of just being told to use it “because that’s the formula.” They also are shown how these abstract concepts contribute to the higher CONTINUE READING: 

We let school buildings crumble for years - that neglect is locking kids out - Hechinger Report

We let school buildings crumble for years - that neglect is locking kids out

Rundown schools forced more students to go remote

Government refused to fund crumbling schools for years. Now the neglect has locked children out of learning.

Yvette Alston-Johnson was seething when she got the news. Children in Paterson, New Jersey would not be allowed to go to school in-person this fall, while many of their peers in predominantly white and affluent suburbs would return.

Alston-Johnson attended Paterson public schools, as did her five children, and she has watched the buildings fall steadily into disrepair over the years. She is now the primary caregiver for her grandson Rayahn, who is in eighth grade at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Educational Complex, where close to 90 percent of students are Black or Latino.

“I feel like we get the short end of the stick,” said Alston-Johnson, who is 54. “We’re always last in line when it comes to our schools and money.”

“It’s cold in those buildings in the winter and then the A.C. doesn’t work in the summer; there’s mice running around,” she added. “If they did more upkeep on the buildings, the teachers would have been able to teach them in the buildings.”

Paterson, which serves mostly low-income families, has struggled to find the money to repair its buildings. In 2016, New Jersey allowed historically underfunded districts to submit requests for health and safety improvements. Paterson asked for ventilation repairs in 11 buildings, but all their requests were denied. In fact, of the roughly 90 applications to fix unsafe heating or air conditioning and ventilation systems, just two were CONTINUE READING: We let school buildings crumble for years - that neglect is locking kids out

Coronavirus means free school meals across the U.S. What if that stayed?

Coronavirus means free school meals across the U.S. What if that stayed?

Coronavirus means school food is free across the U.S. What if it stayed that way?

Free school meals, the gold standard for child nutrition advocates, may be one good thing to come out of the coronavirus’s effect on the future of education

YAKIMA, Wash. — Tracy Renecker has been working almost nonstop since the coronavirus pandemic set in. A kitchen manager with the 16,000-student school district serving this central Washington city,  Renecker has been ordering ingredients, packing entrees and sides, and filling grocery sacks to build the five-breakfast, five-lunch kits passed out at the drive-up distribution point outside Washington Middle School, where she works.

Renecker knows what the bags of cut vegetables, single-serve cereal boxes and heat-and-eat bowls mean to parents picking them up each week. They are a lifeline to families, including her own. The school meal program “helps to stretch our money,” said Renecker, a former nursing assistant raising a 6-year-old and a 13-year-old in Yakima.

“I was a hungry child at one point, and I would hate to see any child go hungry,” she said. “I know they can’t learn when they’re worried about when they’re going to be fed.”

Yakima, an agricultural hub surrounded by orchards amid dry hills, was hit hard by both the pandemic and the attendant economic collapse. Summer brought spikes in infections — at least three of which sent children to the hospital — and unemployment, which nearly doubled in the area.

Many Yakima families qualified for food stamps or other forms of federal assistance before the pandemic hit, and that softened the blow in one specific way: The city’s schools already offered meals to all students for free, year-round. That’s because they participate in several U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, including one allowing school CONTINUE READING: Coronavirus means free school meals across the U.S. What if that stayed?

Students deserve an explanation for the origins of the Electoral College

Students deserve an explanation for the origins of the Electoral College

TEACHER VOICE: The United States is not a democracy. Stop telling students that it is

“Students are commanded to vote, but not to judge the fundamental questions of governance not on the ballot — like the legitimacy of the Electoral College”

When U.S. voters recently cast their ballots, an unchecked pandemic raged through the nation, uprisings against racism and police violence stretched into their eighth month, and new climate change-intensified storms formed in the Atlantic.

The reactionary and undemocratic system by which we select our president was an insult to the urgency of the moment. Although millions more people voted for Joe Biden than for Donald Trump — the difference is now 5.4 million — it took several days to learn who won, thanks to the Electoral College. To the relief of many, it appears that this time — unlike in 2000 and 2016 — the candidate who got the most votes nationwide also won the presidential election.

If our students only learn about this exceptionally strange system from their corporate-produced history and government textbooks, they will have no clue why this is how we choose our president. More importantly, they will have a stunted sense of their own power — and little reason to believe they might have the potential to create something better.

To review: A voter in Montana gets 31 times the electoral bang for their presidential ballot than a voter in New York. A voter in Wyoming has 70 times the representation in the U.S. Senate as a voter in California, while citizens in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. have none. The Republican Senate majority that recently confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was elected by 14 million fewer votes than the 47 senators who voted against her confirmation.

Yet politicians and pundits regularly pronounce the United States a “democracy,” as if that designation is self-evident and incontrovertible. Textbooks and mainstream civics curricula make the same mistake, CONTINUE READING: Students deserve an explanation for the origins of the Electoral College

White voters, Donald Trump and the white achievement gap

White voters, Donald Trump and the white achievement gap

Donald Trump and the white achievement gap

White Trump voters either put aside what they learned in school to vote for the president — or they never learned it at all

There is a learning gap that is threatening economic and social productivity in the U.S. that must be addressed. The untreated white achievement gap continues to tear our country apart.

Voting can be considered a test of sorts for assessing our knowledge and comprehension of the world around us. Voting data gives us insight into how people put into practice the information, facts and teaching they’ve received.

Exit polls conducted by the research firm Edison Research show that President Donald Trump received 57 percent of the total number of ballots cast by white voters. They voted for a man who has denigrated established science, supported racist conspiracies and spewed the racist assertion that four U.S. congresswomen of color “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” He struggled throughout his term to renounce white supremacist groups. And as the election returns came in last week, he spun a web of lies about how the American democratic process works.

By their votes, the vast majority of Black and Brown citizens showed themselves to be proficient judges of character and political leadership. This achievement is saving the country.

Millions of people, most of them white, either put aside what they learned in school to vote for the president — or they never learned it at all. Racism is illogical, and the irrationality it produces leads to policies and actions that are dangerously wrong for individuals and the country as a whole. While we so often wring our hands about the lagging educational achievement of Black, Latino and Native students, this election reminds us CONTINUE READING: White voters, Donald Trump and the white achievement gap

What happens when there are school data breaches?

What happens when there are school data breaches?

What happens when private student information leaks

Congressional watchdog report counts breaches of Social Security numbers and health records at schools

ow vulnerable is student data at U.S. public schools? That’s a critical question now that many, if not most, of the nation’s 51 million students are learning online at least some of the time.

Congressional watchdogs recently attempted to get a handle on the cyber security problem in schools. In a report publicly released in October 2020, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) counted 99 school data breaches over the past four years, from July 2016 to May 2020, that compromised the personal information of thousands of students in kindergarten through high school.

Attacks by cyber criminals were rare, the GAO found. More common were unintentional leaks in which private information, such as health records and telephone numbers, were accidentally made public. Students were responsible for more than a quarter of the breaches; their most frequent motive was changing grades.

The GAO relied on a private database of cyber attacks and leaks collected by Doug Levin of EdTech Strategies, a consulting firm. That’s because there’s no federal requirement for school districts to report data breaches. Most states have data breach notification laws but they vary a lot and there’s no obligation for state agencies to disclose them publicly. So the GAO turned to Levin’s K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center, which has been collecting press clips about school data breaches from around the country and monitoring the states that do publicly report, such as Texas.

However, Levin’s own analysis of the data he shared with the GAO arrived at different totals. He counted 458 data breaches in school districts; 315 involved the unauthorized release of student data. That’s more than four times greater. Levin documented that more than a million student records CONTINUE READING: What happens when there are school data breaches?