Understanding Student Safety in the Educational Landscape

As a whole, there are three interrelated and inseparable aspects to keeping kids safe: physical safety, online safety and data safety.

Physical safety is the oldest and most primitive form of safety. The impact of physical safety failures or mishaps is often immediate, and the results are physical injury or death. Threats include active shooters, abductions and accidents.

Online safety is a relatively new concern in the past twenty years or so. Online safety is not as well understood as physical safety, and neither is the impact. Threats include online predators, cyberbullying, pornography and online human trafficking. In terms of incident frequency, this is likely the fastest growing safety issue for kids.

Data safety is about the data we collect and maintain about the kids who attend our schools. It’s valuable to scammers: Identity theft is a common consequence of K–12 data breaches, and more than 1 million children were victimized in 2017 alone. Children are common targets because they provide a “clean slate” for scammers to work from. Data safety issues result in financial harm and significant stress,…

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