One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic was that many families didn’t have reliable internet access at home. As schools closed and classes moved online, educators rushed to improvise solutions for families without robust connections, setting up mobile Wi-Fi access points in school buses, sending home portable hot spots to those who needed it and more.
And even before the pandemic, educators were working to close the “homework gap,” the divide between students who can easily log on at home to access critical school materials and those who lack reliable home internet.
Now that schools are back open and pandemic relief funds are expiring, there’s a risk this gap will quickly widen unless policymakers take a fresh look at the nation’s connectivity. And it’s one that disproportionately affects students of color and those in underserved communities.
That’s the argument made by Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, in her new book, “Digitally Invisible: How the Internet Is Creating the New Underclass.”
“The truth is that most of these programs created during the pandemic relied on philanthropic and private sector support and continue to do so,” she writes of efforts to make sure students have online access for schoolwork. She calls for new federal legislation to “make these programs less vulnerable to political changes.”
The largest federal program offering support for school districts and libraries for internet connections, the E-rate, was created nearly 30 years ago. Back then much of today’s crucial technology for living and learning had not yet been invented — including smartphones, social media and AI chatbots. “It’s been too long that we’ve kept these same policies in place,” Turner Lee told EdSurge. “We need ways we can guarantee support to schools for the type of infrastructure they need.”
EdSurge connected with Turner Lee for this week’s EdSurge Podcast. The sociologist shared her experiences traveling around the country — to stops including Marion, Alabama, West Phoenix, Arizona, and Hartford, Connecticut — asking people to share how they get connected and the challenges to digital access they face.
Check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on the player below.
