Philanthropy, federal relief funding and other community driven efforts to close the digital divide in a year of remote schooling have helped significantly to bring more children online. But many families remain underconnected.
As more families pivot back to remote learning amid quarantines and school closures, reliable, consistent access to devices and home internet remains elusive for many students who need them to keep up with their schoolwork. Home internet access for students has improved since the onset of the pandemic with help from philanthropy, federal relief funding and other efforts — but obstacles linger, including a lack of devices, slow speeds and financial hurdles.
In two studies, one conducted in 2015 and another in 2021, Katz and other researchers surveyed low-income families with young children. While rates of home internet access and computer ownership are up significantly, the proportion of lower-income families whose internet access is unreliable or insufficient remained roughly the same.
About 34% of households making less than $30,000 reported having trouble paying for their home internet bill, as did 25% of those making between $30,000 and $50,000. Compared to white households, Black and Latino families were less likely to have access to broadband and a computer at home. Even before the pandemic sent most schools to some form of remote learning, classrooms have increasingly embraced the role of technology in teaching, creating a “homework gap” between those who do and do not have access to internet and devices at home. Roughly 2.9 million school children lived in households without internet access, according to pre-pandemic Census data, and about 2.1 million lived in households without a laptop or desktop computer.
“To my mind, you had an entire school year to learn how to be better prepared, and how to be proactive and how to incorporate a Plan B at the drop of a hat,” she said. “There was no reason why every student, when they returned to school, didn’t receive or keep their laptop.”
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