New E-Rate Funding Will Take Time to Reach Schools

The pressure on school districts to upgrade their technology is growing, as the financial support to make those changes is limited. States are scheduled to begin giving online tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards in a year -- exams that many district officials say will greatly tax their bandwidth and their ability to give tests with their current stock of laptops, desktops, and other devices. Meanwhile, schools' demand for bandwidth is also rising because of the growth of technology-enhanced lessons in classrooms, as well as students' increasing reliance on mobile devices and other new technologies.

The Federal Communications Commission, the agency that oversees the E-rate, announced a series of steps that officials said would not only put more broadband funding into the program over the next two years, but also redirect the funding to pay for the most in-demand technologies, such as broadband. Yet most of the tangible benefits of the new money for broadband will not be felt in districts for a while, a number of observers predict. They cite a variety of reasons, including the fact that the E-rate application process for 2014 is already far along, as well as the limits on how quickly districts can arrange to make technology upgrades.