Addressing The Digital Divide In Education

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to shift to remote learning, districts issued wireless hot spots to students as a cost-effective solution to help those living in homes without internet access their school work. While hot spots helped a large number of students, a present digital divide — specifically in rural areas — has made connecting harder for others, but government funding is ramping up to expand broadband access.

Chicago Connected is a $50 million four-year program that has already provided high-speed broadband to over 40,000 households in need, representing around 64,000 Chicago public school students, and plans to expand. On-the-ground community outreach in multiple languages was key to connecting residents to the program quickly, which was needed as school went virtual due to COVID-19. The public schools helped identify eligible low-income students whose parents were then contacted by outreach workers.

Digilearns is a learning intervention platform created to deliver learning materials to students across the country through the use of mobile phones and doesn’t require an internet connection, making education more accessible and affordable to students, particularly those from low-income families. Since launching in 2020, Digilearns has provided access to educational materials to more than 1,000 secondary school children.

Apps that track students’ online activity, door-to-door visits, and receiving input from families on how to reopen schools, are all ways school districts across the country are responding to absenteeism during the pandemic. In one San Antonio district, they were able to locate around 2,900 of the 3,000 students who weren’t showing up to classes.

A school district in Virginia has implemented a two-prong solution to provide internet access to rural students during the pandemic. The indoor solution allows students to make appointments to be inside the school to access the internet. The outside solution, equipping three schools in the district with equipment to boost their Wi-Fi signals, allowing students who can’t make indoor appointments a way to access the Wi-Fi. “We just took advantage of something that was already happening in the district."

For one school district in Texas, using personal relationships established before the pandemic, proved the best way to reach bilingual students in rural parts of the district who weren't showing up to remote classes. One librarian and a parent “went door-to-door there to track down students and find out how they could help families transition to virtual learning. They also had parents fill out note cards showing how many children lived in the home to make sure no child was left behind.” Other Texas districts are similarly relying on home visits to check on students. Data shows those methods work.

Far from its location in Boston, Southern New Hampshire University is offering refugees at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya a shot at getting an education. SNHU offers associate's and bachelor’s online degree programs in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Lebanon. A degree could be life changing, given that only 1 percent of refugees have access to higher education. The online program is “self-paced, offered in English, and costs less.” So far, 84 have enrolled and 24 have graduated.

The Transforming Lives and Communities Initiative converted an office space into a free library and resource center for local youth during the pandemic, providing them with internet access, books, games and other educational materials, including a Reading Clinic to teach local youth how to read. The Initiative continued and expanded from what started as a small venture with less than 10 participants, to over 1,000 registered users.

To combat the banned books war and issues with book access, the Books Unbanned program offers free online access to the library’s entire collection for 13-to-21-year-olds. The program has already issued more than 5,100 cards and checked out 20,000 materials. And because the program is funded independently, it can offer books to people out of state.

Texan cities, like McAllen and El Paso, are bridging the digital divide for students and building infrastructure to connect whole communities. In El Paso, the city used $150,000 of the $84 million it received in federal funds to purchase hotspots, which are now available for check-out from public libraries. In McAllen, the city has taken on the $1 million annual cost to provide Wi-Fi to the entire city.