The global competition for jobs and the need to implement a 21st-century education became more real recently when recent reports showed that more Chinese residents use the Internet than U.S. residents.

• 233 million Chinese had used the Internet by the end of March, compared with 216 million U.S. residents at the end of 2007.
• While 71 percent of Americans use the Internet, just 17 percent of Chinese do so. China has 1.3 billion people, compared with the United States’ 304 million residents.

Physical Safety Up, CyberSafety Down

Physical Safety Up, CyberSafety Down An annual survey revealed that school districts improved their physical safety scores by 39 percent in 2008, while the same districts’ cybersafety scores decreased by 25 percent in the past year.

Measured on a scale of 100, the average national cybersafety score in 2008 was 38.6, down significantly from 2007. More than half the school districts responding (57 percent) use network access control to protect data and authenticate users. Of these, 70 percent use security cameras and almost half use mass notification systems.

Nearly one in three districts reported physical security breaches in the past 12 months, a 21 percent increase over 2007 levels. Fourteen percent of the districts reported IT security breaches, a 9 percent rise over the 2007 data.

Virtual Schools’ Real Growth

A new study predicts that half of the high school courses taken in 2019 will be delivered online. Enrollment in online classes hit the 1 million mark in 2007, 22 times the level of delivery seven years earlier, according to the North American Council for Online Learning. Online classes aren’t expected to top 10 percent of high school classes offered until about 2012, but the growth from there will be rapid, to 20 percent before 2015.

Two reasons for the expected surge are the cost savings and flexibility offered by online classes. Not only can students take a much wider range of classes than their high school offers, but online courses are more likely to zero in on student weaknesses and give students the time and support they need to shore up these weaknesses.

Source: Hoover Institution’s Education Next report, Summer 2008; National Center for Education Statistics; North American Council for Online Learning; Babson Survey Research Group

Sunny Skies Ahead

Current growth trends indicate that 50 percent of all courses in grades 9–12 will be taken online by 2019.