School boards across the nation are running into problems, as they attempt to quickly transition to offsite learning for many of their students. Whether challenges caused by cyberattacks and hackers, or by the rapid scaling up of their own services, this has left many students without access to their classes. The New York Times reports on issues that have come in from across the nation, with incidents including:
- Hartford’s board finding itself the target of a ransomware attack
- A website crash in Houston leaving many students without access
- A server issue in Philadelphia preventing students from logging in
- A student in Miami-Dade County being arrested in connection with cyberattacks that contributed to glitches for the school district
Of the challenges faced by board offering both in person and remote learning, Virginia Beach superintendent Aaron Spence told The New York Times, “We’ve had to build two school systems from the ground up…We are rising to that challenge, but it has been a heavy lift.”
Some of the roadblocks are due to lack of resources, preparation time or other factors.
“A lot of districts are just wildly unprepared for online learning,” Morgan Polikoff, professor of education at the University of Southern California, told The New York Times. “Not because they’re incompetent or aren’t trying; they just don’t have the expertise to do this.”
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/us/school-districts-cyberattacks-glitches.html
