Education technology

America continues to make significant strides in reducing the digital divide among school-age children. In 2017, 14 percent of the US population between ages 6 and 17 lived in homes with no Internet service, down from 19 percent in 2015. Still, significant challenges remain, especially for the approximately 7 million school-age children that lived in households without home Internet service in 2017.

The White House is releasing a five-year plan to strengthen education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), developed by the National Science and Technology Council Committee on STEM Education and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The plan seeks to ensure that all Americans have access to quality STEM education and safeguard America’s place as the global leader in STEM innovation and employment.

The "homework gap" affects 12 million U.S. school-age kids. By the numbers:

While several slices of spectrum can carry mobile internet, the most promising for rural school districts is one the Federal Communications Commission first reserved for educational television broadcasts in the 1960s. Over three decades, the government gave away more than 2,000 spectrum licenses to school districts and education nonprofits, primarily in urban areas. But the FCC effectively stopped issuing such licenses in 1995, because many license holders weren’t using their spectrum, and instead making money by leasing it to commercial telecommunication companies.

More than 10.7 million low-income households in the United States lack access to quality internet service. In cities like San Jose (CA), local governments are using streetlight poles to facilitate equitable access to high-speed internet to dramatically improve educational outcomes for low-income students and expand economic opportunity for their families.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced that the US Department of Agriculture is awarding grants for 128 projects to increase access to job training, educational and health care services in rural areas. USDA is awarding $39.6 million through the Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) Grant Program. More than 4.5 million residents in 40 states and three territories will benefit from the funding. Investments include:

America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether. It wasn’t long ago that the worry was that rich students would have access to the internet earlier, gaining tech skills and creating a digital divide. Schools ask students to do homework online, while only about two-thirds of people in the US have broadband internet service.

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly suggested the agency's children's video rules might be unconstitutional. He said a good case could, and had been, made that the rules are an abridgement of broadcasters' speech rights, and thus illegal. 

A coalition of organizations told the Federal Communications Commission that the FCC should retain its children's programming rules. The Center for Digital Democracy, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Common Sense Kids Action, Color of Change, Dr. Jenny Radesky, and the Benton Foundation wrote:

The Parents Television Council says the Federal Communications Commission needs to answer some fundamental questions before it decides to make any "material" changes to its children's TV rules, which would mean voting on an order stemming from the July Notice of Proposed Rulemakiing it approved launching the review of the rules. The questions PTC says have yet to be answered in the Notice of Propose Rulemaking: