Chart by Pew Research Center showing that among households with school-age children, broadband Internet access decreases with lower income levels. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel says this creates a “homework gap” for disadvantaged students.
In the last five years, as education has increasingly integrated digital technology, the divide between students whose families can afford broadband Internet access at home versus those that can’t has become a growing concern.
Jessica Rosenworcel, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner, has been a vocal proponent of increasing connectivity among the disadvantaged and coined the term “homework gap” to describe the challenges of access-deprived students.
“The ‘homework gap’ is real,” she stated. “In fact, according to findings from the Pew Research Center, there are 29 million households with school-aged children nationwide. Five million of them lack regular access to broadband.”
The Pew Research Center think tank analyzed 2013 U.S. Census data showing that the lower a household’s income level, the less likely it is to have broadband Internet access, and 31.4 percent of households with school-aged children and annual incomes of less than $50,000 have no broadband Internet access at all.
The “Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim” region, according to a 2017 Brookings Institute study, has the largest percentage of households in the nation— 13. 7 percent or 1.8 million households— located in neighborhoods with very low Internet availability.
Long Beach has an 81.4-percent connectivity rate, coming in at 130 out of 296 cities ranked, according to Governing, a publication that provides information for government officials. This leaves nearly 20 percent, or 30,745 households, without connectivity. By contrast, the city of Irvine, Calif. has 96.3 percent connectivity, ranking third highest in the nation.
In an effort to catch up, the City of Long Beach has been working to upgrade and expand its public Internet infrastructure over the last several years. For its efforts, the City has been recognized as a “Top-10 Digital City” by the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute.
“We are searching for innovative and intelligent ideas that can drive our path forward,” said Bryan M. Sastokas, chief information officer for the City of Long Beach. “This approach allows the City to become resilient and deliver the technology infrastructure and critical tools that are needed to create a sustainable and prosperous 21st-century city.”
In the meantime, though lack of access at home is not causally connected with low student achievement, it does lead to what some researchers call “digital distress” among students who have to complete their homework by staying after school or going to public libraries or businesses such as coffee shops where they can get Wi-Fi access.
According to the National Education Association, nearly 50 percent of all students say they are unable to complete a homework assignment because they don’t have access to the Internet or a computer. Furthermore, 42 percent of students say they received a lower grade on an assignment due to lack of access.
These students’ long-term prospects may be affected as well. Lower-income Americans are more than twice as likely as those in other income groups to be classified as “digitally unprepared,” according to a 2017 Pew report.
According to Monica Anderson, a Pew research associate, 81 percent of workers whose annual household income is $100,000 or more spend at least some of their day using the Internet for work compared to 36 percent of workers in lower-income households.
“Adoption rates are only one component of the digital divide,” Anderson stated. “A person’s comfort level with technology and the rate in which they use the Internet at work and in their everyday lives also varies by income group.”
Some researchers also discuss the “emotional cost” of students having to share computers with others.
“Access and use of a computer at home provide students the opportunity to develop computer skills and increase their level of computer self-efficacy,” says researcher Kuo-Ting Huang of Michigan State University in his 2017 study on African-American students lacking home computers. “Only having information usage would not be sufficient for disadvantaged youth to catch up with others, as entertainment usage also provides a playful and exploratory way of learning.”
However, Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), says that connectivity is not the real problem.
“I think we need to be asking about whether we are using technology in ways that are helping to address long-standing equity issues,” Culatta recently told THE Journal, which reports on education technology. “Just providing access doesn’t solve the problem. You could spend a lot of time connecting schools, connecting homes, but if what you’re doing with the technology isn’t actually improving learning, you haven’t made much of an impact.”
Nevertheless, the 2017 Brookings Institute study underscored a fundamental need for students to be connected, not just for current school usage but for future job prospects.
“Broadband connectivity is important for the entire economy but especially so for the under-18 population,” the study concluded. “Digital curricula, including requirements to complete and submit homework online, are already a central component of primary and secondary schools’ educational strategy. Once students complete school, they’ll find a job market that increasingly requires digital skills to qualify for employment and to succeed on the job. Wireless broadband in the home fundamentally prepares youth for the digital present and future.”
However, many local students still rely only on their smartphones for Internet access and remain disadvantaged compared to their peers with more accessible broadband Internet options.
Wendy Salaya, a teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, believes students who have wireless Internet at home have it easier than students who don’t.
“If you have multiple computers at home, [and] printers, and you have access to that, then you definitely have an advantage,” she said. “There are some kids who have only their phone for Internet access, and it might be an older phone.”
Salaya noted that though about half of her students qualify for Long Beach Unified School District’s (LBUSD) free lunch program, they all still have phones.
“Wilson is very diverse,” she said. “Their families have figured out a way to get them a phone and get them a cellphone plan, even if they’re on free lunch. It’s a survival tool now. Do they also have the Apple laptop and the printers at home? No. But they have the phone. Are you still at a disadvantage? Yes, but at least you have a phone.”
Salaya’s experience confirms a 2015 Pew Research study showing that more households are relying on accessing the Internet through their smartphones only, especially lower-income and African-American and Hispanic households. The number of households with school-age children and smartphone-only Internet access increased from 10 percent in 2013 to 17 percent in 2015.
These households, the study indicated, are more likely than others to run up against data-cap limits that may restrict the amount of time students could use those devices for homework.
Because Salaya teaches Advanced Placement (A.P.) Government classes to students on a college track, she expects them to access the Internet outside her classroom.
“They’re expected to find the syllabus on my website and print it,” she said. “I also give them targeted reading questions [!] so they have to have Internet access. I don’t offer to print anything for them because they’re going to college, so they need to figure out how to be resourceful and if they don’t have a computer at home, then they need to go to the media center at school.
Though her students are all on track to attend college, Salaya sees disparities among them.
“Wilson is very diverse,” she said. “My A.P. classes are diverse. Do they all have equitable resources at home? Definitely not. And if you don’t, you’re definitely at a disadvantage.”
Parents of LBUSD students who don’t have connectivity also can’t take advantage of online tools such as ParentVUE, which allows parents to view their child’s current and historical information, including daily attendance, grades, report cards, test scores, discipline, graduation status and college preparation.
To help address these concerns, over the last couple of years, according to its website, the City of Long Beach has expanded Wi-Fi service at its main library and all neighborhood libraries with more bandwidth, enabled by special “E-rate” funding from the FCC’s Universal Service Fund, allowing it to save $95,000 annually. The City also offers free Wi-Fi at more than 20 of its parks.
The Signal Hill Public Library currently offers four Internet-accessible computers available for use by students whose parents have given consent. That number will increase once the new library currently under construction opens next year.
In March, Signal Hill Councilmember Robert Copeland attended a National League of Cities Conference in Washington, D.C. at which Rosenworcel spoke of the connectivity problem and offered some solutions, which Copeland shared at a recent council meeting.
He said that Rosenworcel discussed a digital-inclusion strategy, such as libraries checking out mobile hotspots to students so they can do their homework, but that she also went further.
“Even more simple than that is this solution,” Copeland said. “She recommended the City just start making maps of where there’s spots for kids to come to get Internet access. So, we’d have our library, [and] maybe here in City Hall, and start engaging the local businesses, and then the local business start saying ‘Okay, we’ll offer a spot. They can come down here and do their homework.'”
Copeland was struck by the simplicity of the idea to solve the problem, especially since he noted that 50 percent of current jobs require Internet literacy and that is projected to increase to 77 percent by the end of the decade.
“I think [the gap] should be something we should look at,” he told the Signal Tribune. “If the general data applies locally, what can we do to make it smaller?”
