K–12 Expanding Services in Response to Pandemic
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 06/01/21
In the last year, to
help its community of students, families, teachers and staff through
the pandemic, K-12 districts began offering new services. Those
included contract tracing, remote counseling and more. A recent
survey by the Consortium
for School Networking (CoSN) found that nearly
three-quarters of school systems (74%) have conducted contact
tracing; two-thirds (67%) have provided cleaning services for
devices; and half (51%) have tested temperatures. Nearly a third (29%) have
provided COVID testing.
The "Ed
Tech Leadership Survey Report" found that while a
majority of schools (53%) offered remote counseling to their
students, less than half as many (23%) also offered it to teachers.
Some 34% provided telehealth options.
Most districts have
also updated their family outreach strategies. Two-thirds (63%) have
boosted their frequency of communication, and more than half (52%)
have increased the number of outreach channels. Some districts (32%)
have enhanced how they use their existing parent portal; and some
(37%) have adopted more two-way communication between parents and
teachers.
In spite of the
emphasis on home schooling during the pandemic, just 61% reported
providing families with tips on how to use technology; and 33%
offered teaching tips. However, a quarter of districts said they
offered "more detailed information" about curriculum and a
similar number (27%) tried to provide greater detail about their
children's performance.
The survey also
asked respondents what systems they have been using to measure the
effectiveness of their remote instruction efforts. Eight in 10 (81%)
said they have systems to track attendance; two-thirds (65%) could
measure participation; and six in 10 could monitor "equitable
access." Fewer than half can measure engagement (43%) or the
details needed to perform contact tracing (44%).
On the assessment
front, a light majority (52%) tracked summative assessments in an
enterprise system while a smaller share (42%) did the same with
formative assessments. Another 35% said their schools use formative
testing but don't have an enterprise system for reporting or
monitoring results. A third (33%) used an enterprise system to track
interim assessments.
Flexibility was a
theme in many of the responses generated by the CoSN survey. As one
participant told the organization, "Many of the needs that we
actually had to respond to were not the ones that we had
anticipated."
This year's CoSN
survey and report were conducted with the support of CDW•G and the
Ed-Fi Alliance, and in partnership with AASA, The School
Superintendents Association, MDR and Forecast5 Analytics. The report
is openly available through the CoSN website. The survey collected
information from 390 participants between November 12, 2020 and April
1, 2021.
The complete report
is openly available on
the CoSN website.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.