The students chant: “No Summit! No Summit” echoed across McPherson Middle School’s campus on a recent, cold January afternoon. The reason: Facebook’s ChanZuckerberg Initiative’s Summit Learning. Said 7^th grader Drake Madden, “It’s a learning program that is supposed to be a better way, but you are just on a computer. Every time I get home, my head starts hurting. Teachers aren’t teachers anymore.”

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Along with our digital-happy classrooms, there’s the matter of student data privacy. An analysis of the 99 related laws passed by 39 states and D.C. between 2013 and 2018 by the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and the Network for Public Education found that:

• Not one state received an “A.”
• Colorado was the only state to earn a “B.”
• Only New Hampshire, New York, and Tennessee managed a “B-.”
• 11 states, including New Jersey, Vermont, and Massachusetts got themselves an “F’s.”

And, by the way, according to Security Scoreboard, out of 17 industries—2,393 organizations—education came in at #15 in terms of total cybersecurity. Among the at-risk student and staff information:

• Names
• Addresses
• Social Security Numbers
• Test scores
• Behavioral Assessments

Moreover, K-12 schools experienced 122 known cybersecurity hits at 119 education agencies in 38 states—and it all comes with at a cost of millions every year. Indeed, it cost one Texas district $2 million!

Says author Doug Levin, “Make no mistake: keeping K-12 schools ‘cyber-secure’ is a wicked problem—one that is assured to get worse until we take meaningful steps to address it.”