In 2013, the U.S. made a promise to close the connectivity gap to provide all public school students access to high-speed broadband access in their classrooms. The FCC’s 2014 E-rate modernization was a first step toward this goal.
To check in on this goal four years later, EducationSuperHighway released the “2017 State of the States” report, which provides an update on the status of Internet connectivity in the nation’s K-12 public schools. While the report indicated that 39.2 million students are now connected, the report finds that there are still 6.5 million students left to connect.
The report recommended the following steps to help realize this goal:
1. Leveraging price transparency to bring affordable bandwidth to 6 million students.
2. Connecting 100,000 students to service providers that meet national benchmark prices for Internet access.
3. Empowering fewer than 40 school districts representing 400,000 students to increase their broadband investment to levels comparable to those of districts that are sufficiently connected.
FOR A LINK TO THE COMPLETE REPORT, GO TO WWW.TECHLEARNING.COM/OCT17
