AASA Partners with CoSN on Annual State of EdTech Leadership Survey

Earlier this week CoSN released the  2023 State of EdTech Leadership report. The annual survey, which began in 2013, gives school district leaders and policymakers a holistic understanding of the K-12 IT landscape. This year’s report offers unique insight into the challenges that K-12 EdTech leaders have faced over the past year — critical information that will also help CoSN create useful resources to assist school systems in improving learning through technology. This year’s top findings include the following:

• Over 10 years, the top challenge for EdTech leaders has not changed — budget constraints and lack of resources were ranked the number one challenge in 2013, and 10 years later, it still ranks as the number one challenge.
• Top priorities have changed. The top three in 2013 were mobile learning, BYOD (bring your own device) and online assessment readiness. This year, cybersecurity tops the list, followed by network infrastructure, data privacy and security.
• Only a third of EdTech leaders feel their district has sufficient resources to deal with cybersecurity issues.
• Twelve percent of districts don’t allocate any funds for cybersecurity defense.
• Most districts (66 percent) do not have a full-time cybersecurity position.
• VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) is now ubiquitous, with 95 percent of districts having implemented it today as compared to 55 percent in 2013.
• Fifty-five percent of EdTech leaders come from an education/instructional background, a 10 percent increase since 2013. Those from a technology background currently account for 42 percent.
• The percentage of EdTech leaders earning $130k or more has tripled over 10 years, from 6 percent in 2013 to 18 percent today.
• Students are less likely to receive support for off-campus broadband access than in 2021. During the height of remote learning, 95 percent of districts were providing off-campus broadband compared to 74 percent of districts this year.
• The number one challenge to professional learning is prioritizing the time over other institutional or organizational priorities.
• Eighty-five percent of districts are implementing Single Sign-On, making it the top interoperability initiative.