80 percent of schools lack sufficient Internet

Needed to keep a school building running these days: Water, electricity -- and broadband.

Technology is changing the way students are taught -- and tested. But there's a catch: Most of it is occurring in schools that have rich connectivity to the Internet. Although nearly every school has Internet access, classrooms frequently are not connected or the connections are super slow. The hurdle is limited capacity inside schools to transmit data, or bandwidth. "It's the backbone. We have to actually think not just about the sustainability of the current traffic, we're talking about exploding traffic," said Raj Adusumilli, assistant superintendent for information services in the Arlington Public Schools in northern Virginia. "When schools and teachers have access to reliable Internet connections, students can discover new skills and ideas beyond the classroom," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, said in a statement. Funds from Big Tech philanthropy projects Start Up: Education and the Bill Gates Foundation are expected to be used to provide technical expertise to schools and use competition to help drive costs down. Today, about 80 percent of schools have Internet capabilities that are too slow or isolated to places like front offices and computer labs, said Richard Culatta, director of education technology at the Education Department.

In some districts, particularly rural ones, cost is a huge factor in getting access to lines that would bring broadband into schools. To buy the equipment and install Wi-Fi costs an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 per school and to run fiber optics into the school can cost tens of thousands more per mile, said Evan Marwell, CEO of EducationSuperHighway.