Lindsey Tepe

Fake news is simply the canary in the coal mine of a much larger systemic failure—the crumbling of an entire set of institutions in the face of seismic forces shaking our society. Our democracy itself is far shakier than most of us could ever have imagined. Teaching our students to read newspapers of record as part of teaching them to develop critical thinking skills is part of a long-term solution. But for the adults in the room, sending money and providing subscriptions will not substitute for sustained and immediate civic action on all our parts.

In the Digital Age, governance, technology, education, science, platforms, and more are being pushed to become more “open.” Open movements are working to remove barriers that prevent the public from fully accessing these institutions, systems, and fields. In the United States, open government strives to improve transparency, increase collaboration, and facilitate public participation in our democracy. Underlying this movement is one critical need: open use of information. The public must be able to fully engage with the information fueling each of these endeavors. Much of this information is funded by the federal government, which collects, produces, and distributes more information than any other organization, public or private, in the United States. Unfortunately, restricted access to this information—information produced with public funds—is all too common. Why? In part, this is because institutions have failed to recognize that openness is about more than simply being able to view or see information online. Open use requires that information is not only free, but also that it is available for the public to download, copy, keep, analyze, or reuse for any purpose. Movement toward open use policies has come in fits and starts, and faulty federal policies that treat different kinds of information differently have impeded progress. Many policies continue to delay the publication of information; grant use of information to a select few; or even, and most antithetically to an open movement, limit access to those who can pay.

In The Case for Open Use Policies: Realizing the Full Value of Publicly Funded Information, a new report from New America’s Education Policy program, I argue that these ambiguities in public rights to different kinds of information must be addressed. The report details policy recommendations that would move the federal government toward stronger open use policies.

[Commentary] The E-rate program has been significantly updated for the first time since its inception in 1996. This is a good thing, and kudos to the Federal Communications Commission for taking a first step.

But the goal is to connect 99 percent of students to high-speed broadband. To do so, we need speed targets to make that goal meaningful, we need upgraded infrastructure to make that goal possible, and we need more funding to make that goal achievable. There’s clearly still a lot of work to be done.

[Commentary] In the months leading up to President Barack Obama’s announcement of the ConnectED Initiative (which happened a little over a year ago now), Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel spoke about reforming the E-rate program at the Washington Education Technology Policy Summit and said we needed bandwidth capacity goals for schools and libraries. She declared that “before the end of the decade, every school should have access to 1 Gigabit per 1000 students.”

While closing the Wi-Fi gap is a laudable goal given many schools lack sufficient wireless capacity, it’s important to note that the question of capacity and the language around speed goals and targets has taken a backseat. What Commissioner Rosenworcel identified as critical to program reform, Chairman Wheeler has now put aside for Wi-Fi, which generally refers to the delivery of Internet service through the airwaves, as opposed to a cable plugged into your device.

What you have to understand about Wi-Fi, however, is that while your device may be wireless, in order to access the Internet your router still has to be plugged into a high-speed wired connection. Thus, a school replete with Wi-Fi connectivity but only 50 Mbps connectivity per 1,000 students will not be leveraging up-to-date educational technology any time soon.

This is why Commissioner Rosenworcel, President Obama, and countless other organizations have pointed toward more ambitious reforms to meaningfully modernize the E-rate program. The three objectives laid out by Chairman Wheeler are necessary, but hardly sufficient for program modernization.

If integrated into a broader set of necessary reforms, E-rate will enable students to connect to the future of learning. As is, the draft order may just be providing students with wireless access to the same substandard Internet service.