2017 IT Leadership Survey

The shift to mobile learning, student data privacy and budget constraints are top of mind for school district technology leaders. These are among the key findings CoSN revealed today from its . Conducted annually, the CoSN survey provides the education community with insights on how U.S. school system technology leaders are leveraging technology and the current challenges they face.

Key findings:

• Mobile learning is the top priority for IT leaders, ranked atop the list for the first time. The number two priority is “Broadband & Network Capacity.
• Cybersecurity and student data privacy continue to grow as major concerns with 62 percent of respondents rating them more important than last year.
• Budget constraints and lack of resources are ranked as the top challenges for the third straight year. More than half of school technology leaders said their IT budgets have stayed the same since last year and do not sufficiently meet current needs and demands.
• Understaffing remains a key issue for technology departments in school systems. More than 80 percent of IT leaders do not have enough staff to meet district needs. Nearly two-thirds of respondents indicated that their staff size has remained constant even in the face of increasing needs.
• Single-Sign-On (SSO) is the most implemented interoperability initiative with 60 percent of school technology leaders having partially or fully implemented SSO. Data interoperability, meanwhile, was the next most popular solution, with 73 percent of respondents indicating they were in planning or implementation stages.
• Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), more than one-third of IT leaders expressed “no interest” in such initiatives, up from 20 percent in 2014.
• Open Educational Resources (OER) interest is high, with nearly 80 percent of respondents indicating it was part of their district’s digital content strategy.
• Education technology experience is common among IT leaders – 73 percent have worked in the K-12 education technology field for more than 10 years.
• Strong academic backgrounds are also prevalent among IT leaders. Nearly 80 percent of IT leaders have some college beyond a bachelor’s degree and 61 percent of IT leaders hold a master’s degree.
• Lack of diversity continues to be an issue for school district technology leaders. Ninety percent of IT leaders identify as white, the same percentage as the prior year.