Consortium for School Networking

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) launched the Digital Equity Dashboard, an innovative and practical tool designed to help school districts and communities leverage data to close digital equity gaps. The dashboard integrates various national data sets into one comprehensive dashboard.

The Consortium for School Networking's 2021 report  includes IT leadership and infrastructure findings to give school districts and policymakers a holistic understanding of the K-12 technological landscape. This year’s 10 top findings are:

1. Efforts to expand broadband access outside of school have increased dramatically. In 2020, 51 percent of district tech leaders provided off-campus internet services, but in 2021, that nearly doubled to 95 percent.

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), State E-rate Coordinators' Alliance (SECA), Allianced for Excellent Education (All4Ed), Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition (SHLB) and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) submitted to the Federal Communications Commission an estimate outlining the cost to provide much-needed cybersecurity protections to US K-12 school districts and a petition for declaratory relief and rulemaking urging the agency to expand the E-rate program to cover these protections.

The Consortium for School Network issued a new report that identifies the top five technology developments to enhance teaching and learning: Mobile Devices; Blended Learning; Cloud Infrastructure; Extended Reality; and Analytics and Adaptive Technologies. These "Tech Enablers" are tools that support smoother leaps over the hurdles and expansive changes in global K-12 education.  

Increased investment from the E-rate program’s modernization is helping to improve school Wi-Fi and broadband connectivity. 69 percent of school system leaders are “very confident” in their wireless network’s ability to support one device per student. Ninety-two percent of school systems are meeting the Federal Communications Commission’s short-term goal of broadband connectivity (100 Mbps per 1,000 students in a district), as well as making strides in the FCC’s long-term goals. School districts are still facing significant infrastructure challenges.