Tag: equity

The pandemic and related requirements that students learn from home have brought to my attention issues I thought we had moved past. My reference here is to data I have read locally (Minneapolis ara) about the numbers of students unable to participate in online efforts because of the lack of access. Schools had recognized this issue and made mobile hot spots available to families in need so students could meet homework assignments, but the more general expectations that are now in place revealed more need than schools could meet.

We have written a textbook since the middle 1990s and have included comments about equity. Looking at the history of our coverage, I can see a timeline of what we used as “marker variables”. In the early days, the marker was easily quantifiable and was reflected in the student to computer ratio. So, we would compare schools with a high proportion of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch with schools with few students needing this assistance. You would see values like 10:1 and 5:1. What would seem to happen was that the government would recognize such disparities and step in with subsidies such as the e-rate. The next marker was again quantitative and might be the proportion of school computers with Internet access. Soon, most schools were wired and we started to talk about issues such as 1:1 initiatives and more qualitative indicators such as the type of classroom tasks students participated in and the staff available to support educators.

The next disparity involved assumptions about whether homework could require Internet access and the proportion of families with high-speed access by income level or some other variable. I thought we had kind of moved beyond the quantitative differences to focus on the kinds of free-time home activities students focused on or the types of home devices (phone, tablet, computer) relative to equity variables.

My surprise was that the pandemic seemed to indicate I had to back up along my assumed timeline with families claiming that children could not connect to complete assignments. PEW provides some data relevant to this issue. A chart based on these data appears below and PEW also writes that 25% of children in homes with less than 30K in income do not have access to a computer.

Internet content related to topics that interest me seem to surface in cycles. Sometimes I try to figure our why and sometimes I don’t. The digital divide seems to be trending at the moment. I think this is reactionary – other problems dominate the news and then advocates remind us that some of cuts involved programs that helped people needing help. This is only waste in the way some folks think about government spending.

So, here are some of the sources you might explore.
1) Nice overview from Edutopia – I am likely to use this as a source for other sources sometime down the road. My present annoyance is the short sightedness of the BYOD concept.

 

2) This from the Digital Divide Initiative (new to me). An attempt to explain the long term cost of the digital divide (again the way we address immediate problems keeps setting us back in meeting long term needs). Included are data from some states (Minnesota was the only regional state for me).

3) Finally, there was a recent report from Common Sense media regarding the “screen time” of children before the age of 8. Of course, the topic of screen time goes both ways with both concerns and educational benefits. The report devoted a section to inequities. Check the contrast total media use and technology use by income (you have to explore several sections) – sad – too much passive and not enough active.

OK – there you have it, reading assignments from the “need to share” perspective. Taxes can be good – someone needs to care.

Is internet access a right? I guess it depends on who you ask? Providers who have invested millions, perhaps billions, in hooking many of us up argue their investment assumed they could charge a fee for access. They have a valid point, but the reality is that this logic leaves many without. Clearly, some do not have the means to take advantage of internet resources and some end up being treated differently based on where they happen to live. History demonstrates we have encountered these issues before. Electricity and phone service are examples. A pure market approach ignores those who cannot be conveniently connected or expects some unfortunates to pay additional fees.

There is some hope this issue will be addressed by the new administration (after the economy is back on course I assume). The outgoing FCC chair made a pitch for universal access and the FCC promises to address this issue in the near future.

High speed Internet access could be argued to be an economic/educational necessity much in the way transportation (Interstate highways), power, electricity, and phone communication came to be regarded as necessary services.

I follow PEW reports closely because the organization has the means to actually collect data. The newest report provides a description of home broadband access. Andy Carvin, long an advocate for issues associated with the digital divide, provides a nice analysis of this report.

Broadband access continues to become more prevalent, but education and income continue as significant predictors of who has access. Approx. half of all adults now report broadband access in their homes. Access speed is also related to patterns of use (this was reported in previous reports on this topic) and continues to be evident in the present data. Those with faster access connect more frequently and engage in most tasks more frequently (with the strange exception of looking up info on Wikipedia). These relationships could be interpreted in multiple ways. Perhaps access is a determinant of use. Perhaps folks with less interest simply do not invest in more costly access.

I  wish the analysis would have included data on the impact of children being present in households. I could not find comment on this issue.

Why should educators care? We should care because this issue should influence our assumptions about our students. If we make an assignment, do we assume students will be able to work on that assignment at home. Even if we expect students to complete the assignment in school, do we assume students are equally prepared to use the Internet to respond to the tasks we give them?

The situation is clearly improving. However, as more have access, the limitation of doing without or of having a slow connection can become a more significant problem.

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