Press Category: On the Wire

Washington, D.C. (September 16, 2025) — CoSN today awarded the Trusted Learning Environment (TLE) Seal to Northside Independent School District (NISD) in San Antonio, Texas. NISD is the fourth-largest school district in the state, serving approximately 95,500 students across over 130 schools. The CoSN TLE Seal is a national distinction awarded to school districts and other education agencies implementing rigorous privacy policies and practices to help protect student information. NISD is the twelfth school system in Texas to receive the TLE Seal.

The CoSN TLE Seal Program mandates that school systems uphold high standards for protecting student data privacy across five key practice areas: Leadership, Business, Data Security, Professional Development and the Classroom. CoSN also offers a TLE Mini Seal that allows school systems to demonstrate progress in one or more of these areas as they work toward earning the full Seal. To date, TLE Seal recipients nationwide have improved privacy protections for more than 1.4 million students.

“Northside Independent School District has demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting student information and building a culture of trust across its schools. Earning the CoSN Trusted Learning Environment Seal reflects the district’s dedication to implementing rigorous privacy practices and continuously strengthening how it safeguards student data. We are proud to recognize Northside ISD for its leadership in this critical area.” said Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN.

 

“Applying for the TLE Seal was far more than a checklist exercise; it was a deep dive into our district’s communication strategy regarding data. The process challenged us to understand our systems, refine our data governance frameworks, and communicate our standards more transparently, ensuring Northside remains a trusted leader in protecting student and staff information,” said Leann Kidd, Executive Director of Northside ISD Technology Services.

The CoSN TLE Seal is the only privacy framework designed specifically for school systems. Earning the TLE Seal requires that school systems have taken measurable steps to implement, maintain and improve organization-wide student data privacy practices. All TLE Seal recipients are required to demonstrate that improvement through a reapplication process every two years.

To learn more about the TLE Seal program, visit www.cosn.org/trusted.

About CoSN

CoSN, the world-class professional association for K-12 education technology leaders, stands at the forefront of education innovation. We are driven by a mission to equip current and aspiring K-12 education technology leaders, their teams, and school districts with the community, knowledge, and professional development they need to cultivate engaging learning environments. Our vision is rooted in a future where every learner reaches their unique potential, guided by our community. CoSN represents over 2,000 school districts and 14 million students and continues to grow as a powerful and influential voice in K-12 education. www.cosn.org

About the CoSN Trusted Learning Environment Seal Program

The CoSN Trusted Learning Environment (TLE) Seal Program is the nation’s only data privacy framework for school systems, focused on building a culture of trust and transparency. The TLE Seal was developed by CoSN in collaboration with a diverse group of 28 school system leaders nationwide and with support from AASA, The School Superintendents Association, the Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO) and ISTE+ASCD. School systems that meet the program requirements will earn the TLE Seal, signifying their commitment to student data privacy to their community. TLE Seal recipients also commit to continuous examination and demonstrable future advancement of their privacy practices. www.cosn.org/trusted

About Northside Independent School District

Established in 1949, Northside Independent School District (NISD) is San Antonio’s largest school system ad the fourth-largest school district in Texas, serving approximately 95,500 students across 130+ schools. Recognized as a premier destination for educational excellence, Northside ISD delivers a well-rounded academic experience through innovative programming—including full-day Pre-K, elementary STEM labs, dual language instruction, advanced magnet schools, and robust career and technical education (CTE) pathways. Driven by a dedicated faculty and bolstered by strong community partnerships, NISD remains deeply committed to nurturing individual talents in academics, fine arts, and athletics while empowering every student for future success. www.nisd.net

BALTIMORE, Md. — September 16, 2026 — Concentric Educational Solutions today announced the launch of Concentric360, giving school systems, municipalities, workforce boards, and community organizations a shared way to identify the causes of youth disconnection, coordinate wraparound support, and reconnect young people and families to education, training, and work. Built around the same community model that powers Concentric’s work in schools, the platform extends that support beyond the classroom, helping regions build a coordinated, lasting approach to youth and workforce success.

About 16% of young people ages 18 to 24 are “disconnected youth” or NEETs, meaning they are not in employment, education, or training, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This disconnection stems from complex factors, including caregiving responsibilities, economic barriers, and a lack of opportunity. The NEET phenomenon significantly impacts workforce development, economic productivity, and social stability, making it a critical challenge for today’s young adults.

Disconnection rarely has a single cause, and Concentric360 is built on that understanding. Rather than treating absence or disengagement as one problem with one fix, the platform relies on a community model that surfaces the specific, often overlapping factors behind each young person’s story, from housing instability to health challenges to a lack of clear pathways to work. When automated outreach isn’t enough to close that gap, Concentric deploys Professional Student Advocates, certified community members trained to identify the real-world circumstances that student information systems cannot capture.

Built to earn trust by design, the Concentric360 platform is consent-forward, non-punitive, and equity-conscious, ensuring that interventions prioritize family support over surveillance.

“Young people disconnect from school and opportunity for a lot of different reasons, and no single letter or text is going to resolve that,” said Molly Hebert Loyd, CEO of Concentric Educational Solutions. “Concentric360 was built to understand what’s truly driving disconnection for young people within a community and to connect them with the right supports to help them reengage and thrive. Whether that means returning to the classroom, reconnecting with a workforce training program, or securing their first job, our goal is to find the real barriers standing in their way and make sure every young person gets the support they need to succeed.” 

Concentric360 is built as an end-to-end continuum of six coordinated modules that empower advocates to identify what’s driving disconnection and connect young people and families to lasting solutions:

Action Center: A central hub that turns engagement data into expert recommendations and defensible decisions, giving municipalities, school districts, and community partners a complete per-resident record to identify needs and coordinate support.

Outreach Engine: Scalable, multi-language automated text and email outreach that engages families early and connects them to resources. When these initial efforts fall short, the system triggers an escalation to Home Visits.

Field Engagement App: A field tool for Professional Student Advocates that captures real-time, actionable insights during home visits and community engagement events, surfacing the root-cause themes behind disconnection across a community.

Case Manager: The operational backbone that manages case assignment, monitors progress, and provides quality assurance, ensuring every intervention connects families to the right supports consistently and at scale.

Community Support Hub: A clearinghouse of essential resources linking families to services that help remove underlying barriers to consistent school attendance and post-graduation success.

Digital Workforce Center: This module guides young people from career exploration through hands-on experiences like internships and apprenticeships, and offers durable skills training, job-readiness tools, and industry mentorships customizable for college, vocational, or career paths.

Concentric360 was shaped in close collaboration with school leaders, municipal officials, and workforce stakeholders who saw the same pattern play out again and again: a young person disconnects from school, and without the right support, that disconnection follows them into adulthood. Communities that treat education, workforce readiness, and social support as separate systems often lose track of these young people in the gaps between them. Concentric360 closes those gaps, giving school districts, municipalities, and community organizations one coordinated way to identify what a young person needs, connect them to it, and follow their progress toward a lasting outcome, such as a diploma, a credential, or a first job.

Concentric360 doesn’t stop at the school door. Home Visits serve as the critical step for families who don’t respond to automated outreach, giving Professional Student Advocates the chance to sit down with families and understand the full set of circumstances behind disconnection. From there, the platform connects families to targeted interventions and wraparound services, and opens pathways forward, whether that’s back to the classroom, into workforce training, or toward a first job.

Connecting all Concentric360 components is Concentric Intelligence, an AI layer that analyzes data across the continuum, surfaces root-cause patterns, and generates narrative reporting for municipalities, school districts and community stakeholders. By documenting every engagement and tracking resolution rates against a starting baseline, it gives leaders the credible, board-ready evidence they need, not just proof that a problem is being monitored, but proof that people are being reconnected to learning and opportunity.

Municipalities, school systems, and community organizations can deploy the full Concentric360 continuum or start with individual modules, scaling to meet their unique needs and budgets.

To learn more about Concentric Educational Solutions and the Concentric360 platform, visit www.concentriced.org, follow the organization on X, or connect on LinkedIn.

DOHA, Qatar – September 2, 2026 – Starting today, Spencer Striker Digital Learning has made all 30 episodes of Al-Khwarizmi: Father of Algebra & the Algorithm available for free on YouTube, alongside a complete 45-minute cinematic edition (Play video). The AI-animated docudrama tells the story of a young scholar in ninth-century Baghdad whose work laid the foundation for algebra and the algorithm. Viewers can experience it two ways: as 30 serialized, 90-second episodes in the vertical format popularized by TikTok, or as a single widescreen HD film that plays the whole story from start to finish. Teachers can screen the film in a class period, and students can watch the series on their phones.

Play video: Al-Khwarizmi: Father of Algebra & the Algorithm | Full Cinematic Docudrama (46 minutes)46:00

The series was created by Spencer Striker, PhD, a Professor of Digital Media Design at Northwestern University in Qatar and the founder of Spencer Striker Digital Learning. “I’m sharing Al-Khwarizmi at no cost and in multiple formats,” Striker said, “so that when teachers, students, or history buffs are looking for a visual depiction of this formative period in the history of mathematics, our series will be readily available.”

The series shows how modern computer science and AI trace back to Al-Khwarizmi’s work more than 1,200 years ago. By combining Greek geometry with Indian arithmetic, he wrote the first book of algebra and laid out each method as step-by-step instructions anyone could follow. When his work reached Europe in Latin, his name was written as Algoritmi, and that became the word “algorithm.” The title of his book, Al-Jabr, became the word “algebra.”

Striker said he created and shared the landscape version of the series for use in classrooms, where professors and teachers can use it in lessons about math, social studies, or world history. He will also share his production notes with educators teaching classes about AI or animation.

“AI holds enormous promise, but without thinkers like Al-Khwarizmi, neither AI nor algebra would exist,” said Striker. “Revealing the historical roots of these tools reminds students that there is no substitute for human intelligence and creativity.”

Al-Khwarizmi: Father of Algebra & the Algorithm was sponsored by the Doha Film Institute Web Series Grant and selected for the Qumra 2026 Series Lab.

About Spencer Striker Digital Learning

Spencer Striker Digital Learning produces free interactive learning experiences combining AI with lifelike digital media design on topics that help students make sense of complex issues. Spencer Striker is a Professor of Digital Media Design at Northwestern University in Qatar. His award-winning learning experiences include apps, games, motion comics, VR and web-based storytelling. Learn more at SpencerStriker.com.

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BALTIMORE, Md. — August 31, 2026 — Michigan’s Ecorse Public Schools (EPS) is again extending its partnership with Concentric Educational Solutions to reengage chronically absent students in learning. Building on their multiyear agreement, the Concentric and EPS teams will collaborate throughout the 2026-2027 school year to identify and resolve the root causes of student absenteeism—ranging from academic struggles and health issues to home safety and transportation gaps.

EPS is a five-site district serving roughly 1,300 pre-K through 12th grade students in the Metro Detroit area. Concentric’s partnership with the district began after Ecorse Community High School alone posted a chronic absence rate of 72.1% in 2019, one of the highest in Michigan at the time, and it has since grown into a districtwide effort.

Concentric Educational Solutions partners with school systems, municipalities, and community partners to combat chronic absenteeism and reconnect youth to opportunity. Concentric’s approach draws on Howard University-certified members of the community to gather real-time insights from students and families, helping school systems and other stakeholders respond to student absences earlier, align resources, and address the factors driving disengagement. Among the services Concentric makes available to Ecorse Public Schools are:

• Home visits by trained, community-based teams to enrolled students identified as chronically absent or not attending school
• Engagement with families through collaborative discussions to identify barriers to attendance
• Custom ethnographic research from noted scholar and Howard University Professor Dr. Ivory Toldson interpreting the data collected during family engagements and outlining how and why chronically absent students have disengaged from learning
• Collaboration with school administrators that turns research into intervention strategies for the students and families engaged during home visits

Chronic absenteeism is generally defined as missing 10% or more of school days. Nationally, the rate climbed from 15% before COVID to a peak of 28% in 2022, and has come down since to 22.6% for the 2024-25 school year, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Return to Learn Tracker, which uses data from 45 states. In Ecorse, districtwide chronic absenteeism fell from 72% in the 2021-22 school year to 67.1% the following year, then ticked back up slightly to 68.7% in 2023-24.

“Chronic absenteeism remains a challenge, not just here in Ecorse but across Michigan,” said Ecorse Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Josha Talison. “The same thing researchers are finding nationally, we’re living here too: the fast progress right after the pandemic has slowed down. That’s not a reason to back off. It’s the reason we can’t. What’s different for us now is the infrastructure we’ve built to meet it. We have home visit teams who know these families by name, and a real system for turning what they hear on the ground into actionable plans. That kind of work rebuilds the relationships it takes to get students back in the classroom and connected to opportunity, and we look forward to keeping this work going with Concentric.”

“It is rare to see a district with this level of clarity. The team in Ecorse knows exactly what works for their families, and they have the courage to stick with it,” said Concentric Educational Solutions CEO Molly Hebert Loyd. “Our partnership is not about trial and error. It is about scaling what we know works. We are proud to deepen our commitment to the Ecorse community, because this is where real, generational change happens.”

To learn more about Concentric Educational Solutions’ approach to combating chronic absenteeism, visit the company’s website at www.concentriced.org, follow the organization on X, or connect on LinkedIn.

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ParentSquare, the leading family engagement infrastructure for K-12 districts, today announced two ParentSquare Intelligence capabilities arriving for back to school: AI Assistant for Smart Sites and Conversation Starters. Both continue the expansion of ParentSquare Intelligence, the AI and data intelligence layer introduced in March that embeds actionable insights and automation across the company’s unified school-home engagement platform.

AI Assistant gives families, staff, and community members instant, self-serve answers directly on a district’s website. The assistant lets visitors type a question and receive a direct answer pulled from the district’s own site content, including information in PDFs and images that standard search tools cannot see. It supports 190+ languages, so nearly everyone can get answers in their home language. Whether someone is new to the district or just looking for important dates at 9 p.m., they get a fast, accurate answer on the spot instead of waiting until the next morning to call the front office. 

Built-in analytics show districts what visitors are actually asking, surfacing content gaps and helping communications teams keep improving the website for both their current community and prospective families. Districts can customize the AI Assistant’s name and avatar, or use the default branding out of the box and personalize it later with zero extra lift required.

Conversation Starters help connect school and home by turning everyday classroom updates into meaningful conversations at the dinner table or on the ride home. When a teacher shares a post, ParentSquare Intelligence automatically generates relevant questions based on the content, turning a school update into a real discussion. For a post about a class science experiment, a family might see “What did your class test in the experiment today?” followed by “What surprised you about the results?”

Teachers review the suggested prompts and can edit or remove them before publishing, and families receive them in their preferred language. The questions are open-ended, not quiz questions: a specific starting point for the kind of everyday moment research links to stronger attendance, motivation, and academic outcomes.

“Back to school is when families form their first impression of their school district. These capabilities help districts start the year strong, with clear answers for every family and simple ways to keep the conversation going at home. That is the promise of ParentSquare Intelligence: practical intelligence embedded in the tools schools already use every day,” said Anupama Vaid, President and Founder of ParentSquare.

AI Assistant and Conversation Starters join Contactability™ Benchmark, AI Rewrite, and AI Alt Text as part of ParentSquare Intelligence, with additional capabilities across communication, attendance, payments, and websites planned throughout the 2026-2027 school year.

About ParentSquare

ParentSquare is the leading family engagement infrastructure helping K-12 districts nationwide reach every family with an award-winning, all-in-one communication platform. Reaching over 22 million students, ParentSquare helps districts consolidate disconnected tools and outdated communication systems with personalized messaging, websites, forms, payments, attendance solutions, and more, in one easy-to-use platform. With powerful features for achieving 100% contactability, two-way translation into 190+ languages, and purpose-built AI enhancements, ParentSquare empowers districts to invite every family to be involved in their student’s education, no matter their home language or the device they use.

Recognized for growth and innovation by Inc. 5000, GSV 150, and more, ParentSquare was founded in 2011 in Santa Barbara, California. Learn more at parentsquare.com

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