CoSN Survey Highlights Need for Greater E-rate Funding and Overwhelming Lack of Broadband in Classrooms

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), in partnership with MDR (Market Data Retrieval), released the final results of its first-ever E-rate and broadband survey on the challenges K-12 schools nationwide face with growing demand of digital learning environments.

With more than 460 responses from 44 states, 43 percent of districts said none of their schools meet the broadband goal of 100Mbps of Internet access per 1,000 students. Nearly one-third of those surveyed said they did not apply for some of the E-rate program’s funding due to anticipated shortfalls in funding. Bandwidth was identified as the most important priority for the E-rate program, followed by wireless in schools, as well as school Local Area Network (LAN) connectivity and district Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity.
Other key findings:

• 99 percent of districts need additional Internet bandwidth and connectivity in the next 36 months.
• 93 percent of districts believe current E-rate funding does not fully meet their district’s needs.
• 20 percent of districts identified geography as a barrier to increasing connectivity in their schools, and 10.5 percent indicated their Internet providers were either at capacity or could not expand capacity.