Schools’ heavy reliance on the services of major technology companies comes with significant risks. Those risks became a reality this week when an outage at Amazon Web Services led to widespread internet disruptions.
Many educators across the country had to scramble to teach lessons and administer tests offline on Monday after the outage.
Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is a cloud computing service run by Amazon. It reported issues early in the morning on Oct. 20 in one of its data centers. AWS said it fixed the problem by 6 a.m. Eastern Time, but ripple effects caused disruptions all day, with most services not returning to normal until well after the school day ended.
Dozens of ed-tech products used by schools that rely on AWS—including learning management systems, security programs, and online assessment tools—were unusable during the school day on Oct. 20, according to school and district leaders.
“It’s frustrating,” said Adam Lancto, the principal of Grandville High School in Grandville, Mich. “Technology is great when it works. When it doesn’t, it’s tough for teachers to be upfront in the classrooms, trying to navigate those tech issues.”
AWS did not immediately respond to Education Week’s request for comment. But the Associated Press reported that Amazon pinned the outage on issues related to its domain name system that converts web addresses into IP addresses, which are numeric designations that identify locations on the internet. Those addresses allow websites and apps to load on internet-connected devices.
Schools are in an era when just about all of their operations are connected to online networks. Districts accessed an average of 2,982 ed-tech tools during the 2024-25 school year, according to a report from ed-tech company Instructure.
In July of 2024, a faulty software update from global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike halted operations of all kinds of organizations. It happened during the summer, so it didn’t jeopardize school operations nearly as much as if it had occurred when most schools were in session. But at the time, school district technology leaders cautioned that it was only a matter of time before something similar happened during the school year.
So many things were impacted by this [outage]. If it was just one thing, you can almost be OK with it, but it had district-level, building-level, and student-level impacts.
Raul Gaston Jr., principal, Gompers Junior High in Joliet, Ill.
The disruption caused by the AWS outage, which happened during the school day, underscores the importance of balancing the reliance on digital technologies with proactive planning and practice for when digital systems are down, educators said.
“It was a reminder for all the staff that, whether it’s an outage or a cyberattack, there could be instances where they will not have access to their technology,” said Eva Rodriguez, the chief information technology officer for the San Antonio school district in Texas. “They need to be able to pivot and still provide instruction and something for the kids to do.”
How schools were affected by the AWS outage
The AWS outage affected almost every department in the school districts that use its services—from learning management systems, student information databases, and human resource management technologies to security software and emergency alert platforms.
At Grandville High School, 9th through 11th grade students were preparing to take the digital PSAT on Oct. 21. They needed to make sure they were able to access their College Board accounts the day before, but the website was down. Students couldn’t check to see if they had accounts or if they knew their passwords.
“It was a helpless feeling,” Lancto said. “We had to call the College Board, and they were saying their servers are down, so we didn’t really know what to do.”
He and his staff told students that if they couldn’t get into their accounts on test day, they might just have to call the College Board for help. If the website was still down on the scheduled test day, Lancto said the plan was to reschedule it to another day. That would not have been ideal because it would have taken up more learning time. (The PSAT testing went smoothly on Oct. 21, Lancto said.)
Other programs were also down across the Grandville school district, including its student information system Clever, web-filtering software Securly, and online assessment tool Formative, Lancto said.
“Teachers came with a plan to have students do some sort of assessment and had to shift the plan or quickly get something on paper,” he said.
Teachers and staff at Gompers Junior High in Joliet, Ill., were also scrambling to figure out workarounds to the technical difficulties, said Principal Raul Gaston Jr.
The main problem? ClassLink—the single-sign-on software that the Joliet district uses to allow students to log in to all their school apps with one set of credentials—was down due to the AWS outage. Students couldn’t get into any of the educational resources, Gaston Jr. said.
Teachers always have backup plans, though, so they turned to physical books, workbooks, and manipulatives to continue the learning, Gaston Jr. said.
But when teachers scramble to do something completely different from what they were planning to do, it can “come at a cost” because the backup plan might not be as “targeted or intensive” as the lesson they were going to teach, he said.
Beyond the apps used for instruction, there were other programs that were down that were a bigger concern, Gaston Jr. said. For instance, Raptor, a school safety software that screens visitors, was down, so visitors couldn’t enter the building unless they had been to the school before.
“So many things were impacted by this [outage],” Gaston Jr. said. “If it was just one thing, you can almost be OK with it, but it had district-level, building-level, and student-level impacts.”
How schools can prepare for the next big tech disruption
Service outages like the one that happened with AWS are rare, but when they do happen, they reveal just how dependent on digital technology schools have become, educators say.
“We rely so heavily on technology,” said Rodriguez from the San Antonio district. “It’s interwoven into everything that we do, not just instructionally but operationally.”
There are bound to be instances when the technology doesn’t work, she said. Schools need to be prepared with continuity plans, and staff need to be trained on what that looks like.
However, finding time to train staff on what to do when the technology is down is challenging, said Chris Smallen, the chief technology officer for Lenoir City Schools in Tennessee.
“We have very little training time to begin with,” Smallen said. “You kind of have to pick and choose your battles.”
He added that because it’s rare to have outages like the one that happened with AWS, the district doesn’t spend a lot of time training for how to deal with them.
In San Antonio, Rodriguez and her IT staff have been training principals for what to do when the technology doesn’t work, whether it’s because of a cyberattack or an outage. They talk through what it looks like to operate a school with no technology, such as how to take attendance, how to do dismissal, and how to continue instruction.
At least one principal in the district has even started doing “unplugged learning” sessions, in which teachers and students don’t use technology during class, Rodriguez said.
Teachers in San Antonio are also required, as part of the district’s incident response plan, to have five days’ worth of paper-based lesson plans in case of an emergency or when systems go down, she said.
It’s important to have those conversations now, Rodriguez said, especially as schools become more reliant on technology.
“We try to minimize [outages],” she said, “but they’re bound to happen again.”
