Education technology

The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Education announced efforts to promote the use of $16 billion in funding from the recently enacted Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act’s Education Stabilization Fund for remote learning. The agencies will work with governors, states, and local school districts as they leverage funding to best help students learning from home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result of COVID-19, over 300,000 University System of Georgia students have returned home to finish their courses online. Now more than ever, I have realized the great digital divide in our state, and because of it, high-achieving students, particularly in rural Georgia, are suffering immensely. It is imperative that we all seek to use the anti-deficit perspective for the sake of students.

Confronting the unprecedented challenge of lengthy school closures because of coronavirus, the nation’s roughly 13,000 public school districts are scrambling to cope. Almost no district was truly ready to plunge into remote learning full time and with no end in sight. There is no one-size-fits-all remedy and no must-have suite of digital learning tools. Leaders have largely had to find their own way, spurring a hodgepodge of local innovations.

Although the city of San Jose has neither authority nor budgetary responsibility over our 19 school districts, the city has a moral responsibility to support their critical work. Among the city’s many educational initiatives, it committed to close the digital divide in San Jose by launching the Digital Inclusion Partnership last year, to build digital skills and expand broadband access.

Here in Georgia, we believe in second chances. That is why students across the state are rallying to give the University System of Georgia another shot at getting the optional pass/fail policy right. Right now, we are struggling to accommodate the transition to online education. For one, home Wi-Fi rarely works. The University of Georgia has recognized that connectivity and access pose a huge issue for many students, so it has offered to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots. But in some places, cell service is so poor that sometimes texts won’t go through.

As the COVID-19 crisis took hold and schools in Lockhart (TX) had to close and shift to remote learning, the school district quickly conducted a needs assessment. They found that half of their 6,000 students have no high-speed Internet at home. And despite being a short drive south of Austin (TX), a third of all the students and staff live in "dead zones," where Internet and cell service aren't even available. With the help of a local Internet provider, the district is installing seven booster towers outside each of its schools.

The principles we need to connect us were enshrined by a Republican-led Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In the legislation, overwhelmingly approved by both Republicans and Democrats, the law mandates that the Federal Communications Commission to base policies for the preservation and advancement of universal service on principles including:

To connect students on the wrong side of the digital divide, school districts in a number of cities, including Portland (OR) and San Francisco (CA) are working with Comcast to sponsor the cost of the company’s Internet Essentials program for low-income families in need of home broadband connections during the crisis. They plan to pay the monthly cost of Comcast’s Internet Essentials plan for eligible households. The school systems will distribute promotional codes to families who can then contact the company to sign up for broadband access at no cost.

So far, 723 telecommunications companies large and small have signed the Federal Communications Commission's "Keep Americans Connected" pledge. But according to a growing movement, many of those same companies — and especially the largest ones — need to "remove fine print from the internet pledge." A petition which currently has 13,112 signatures is asking FCC C