The Homework Chasm

Communities across the nation are working hard to address the issue of connectivity for students. But we need a national approach, not an ad-hoc strategy. Otherwise, large swaths of the student population risk losing weeks or months of their educations and falling dangerously far behind their peers. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission have several options, but one of the most pertinent to the issue of education is the FCC’s E-Rate program. The FCC should dedicate a special allocation of money from the Universal Service Fund to reimburse schools and libraries that purchase and loan out Wi-Fi hotspots to students who live in homes that lack adequate broadband access, as FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and 16 US senators recently recommended. The FCC could also leverage E-Rate support to empower local educational institutions to extend their broadband access to their communities using innovative methods, like the bus fleet in Indiana, TV White Spaces, and other wireless internet service technologies.

[Amir Nasr is a policy analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute]