BROADENING BANDS: For the first time, the highest-ranked priority on the Consortium of School Networking's (CoSN) annual report, “2016 K-12 IT Leadership Survey Report,” is broadband and network capacity. This is the fourth year the survey has been conducted. CoSN asked 500 school system technology leaders about their “priorities, challenges, budgets, salaries, professional backgrounds, years of experience, and education” between January and March 2016. Eighty-six percent of the respondents hailed from public schools.
Broadband and network capacity replaces last year’s top concern, assessment readiness, which, for the first time, failed to crack the top three priorities. The survey also found that 99 percent of respondents expect to incorporate digital Open Educational Resources into their instructional materials over the next three years and that only 11 percent of responding districts have personal device bans in place.
The survey also found that 90 percent of responding district technology leaders were white. But there may be opportunities for more diverse leadership down the line: one-third of district technology leaders planned to retire within six years.
