Education technology

Getting internet to the school is just one piece of the puzzle in closing the digital divide and the growing “homework gap” in which students lack residential and community broadband access. Even in communities with exceptional broadband in their schools, how are student experiences affected when nearby institutions and establishments, including libraries, churches and other public facilities, have limited digital resources and connectivity?

In a letter, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition applauded Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for promoting fiber broadband deployment to schools and libraries through the E-rate program. “Competitive bidding has been a fundamental principle of the E-rate program since its inception,” said John Windhausen, executive director of the SHLB Coalition.

Connected Nation has been selected by EducationSuperHighway to carry forward its mission to ensure state and school district leaders have the information they need to improve school broadband (high-speed internet) connectivity. This will be made possible through a new tool—Connect K-12—that will equip them with key information and analytics needed to improve school broadband access in their communities.

Only about a third of California households in rural areas are subscribed to internet service, compared with 78 percent in urban areas, according to an EdSource analysis of data from the California Public Utilities Commission. The divide between students who have access to internet and computers required to do assignments at home and those who don’t is known as the “homework gap.” And it threatens to slow down efforts to close the gap in educational opportunities between students in rural regions of California and their wealthier counterparts around the state.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announces the E-Rate program category two budget multipliers and funding floor amounts for funding year 2020. In the recently adopted Category Two Report and Order, the FCC extended the test period for the category two budget approach from five years to six years and provided a pro-rated portion of category two funding for all applicants for funding year 2020, the sixth and final year of the test period. The FCC then directed the Bureau to release the updated category two budget multipliers and funding floor, adjusted for i

Only a third of rural California households have internet access, compared to 78% of urban households, limiting the number of students who can finish online homework assignments, according to an EdSource analysis analysis of California Public Utilities Commission data. While low-income families are the most likely to lack internet access because the additional payment is too much, there's also a lack of service providers and options.

In a Report and Order adopted November 20, the Federal Communications Commission made permanent the “category two budget” approach that the FCC adopted in 2014 to fund these internal connections with schools and libraries. The category two budget approach consists of five-year budgets for schools and libraries that provide a set amount of funding to support internal connections.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is providing the funding through the Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) grant program. These investments will benefit 5.4 million rural residents. Projects include:

In communities where too many people have no access to broadband infrastructure, investing in connections to community anchor institutions is an intermediate step that can pay huge public dividends. Imperial County, located in the sparsely populated desert region of southeastern California, is an exciting example. When relying on a single telecommunications provider and its outdated technology, Imperial County school districts, higher-education institutions, and government agencies had limited access to broadband infrastructure.

Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s is a magnum opus of broadband policy for the forthcoming decade. While there are dozens of important insights offered by the paper, perhaps the most important, are those focused on solutions to connect students who lack broadband access at home. According to estimates, 70% of teachers reportedly assign homework that requires internet access. Yet, according to the FCC’s 2019 Broadband Deployment Report, 39.8% of homes do not subscribe to high-speed broadband.