Big Tech spent millions to close California’s digital divide this year. It’s hardly making a dent.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, California estimated that 1 million of its 6.2 million school kids didn't have the equipment they needed for virtual learning, prompting leaders from across the tech industry to immediately open their wallets to help. But six months later, with school back in session, only a fraction of the devices those contributions were supposed to purchase are actually in students' hands. Amassing these donations, it turns out, was the easy part. Thanks to supply chain issues, inequity in existing infrastructure and even President Trump's geopolitics, actually procuring, distributing and putting the devices to use has been far more complicated. Equally challenging: Tracking what progress has been made at all. That's true in California and even more true across the US as a whole. Once students do receive devices, issues still arise. Advocates say students are receiving hot spots only to find that they live in a dead zone or that the devices don't have the bandwidth to support Zoom.