My colleague Javeria Salman brings you the lead story today, about districts’ struggle to get students equipped for online learning. Enjoy! -- Tara García Mathewson
By Javeria Salman
After schools switched from physical instruction to remote learning in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, districts and state leaders assured families they would get devices for students and the technology resources needed to do schoolwork at home. But more than two months after the switch to distance learning, many students still don’t have what they need.
Students who haven't had access to technology since mid-March could face significant problems, said Karen Cator, CEO of Digital Promise, a nonprofit that works for innovation in schools.
“When schools reopen, we'll have to try to figure out what kinds of learning loss there has been,” Cator said. “Some students will have had no education access for up to six months. Some students will have just the normal kind of summer learning loss.”
Only 24 percent of public school teachers reported that all of their students had access to a computer or tablet to use for school work, according to a nationally representative survey of 600 public school teachers conducted in early May by Educators for Excellence (E4E).
Kids in low-income families were most likely to be left out of remote learning. A survey of more than 1,500 parents by ParentsTogether Action, a parent-led nonprofit, revealed that children from families with a household income of less than $25,000 per year are 10 times less likely to participate in remote learning than children from families earning more than $100,000. Children from low-income homes were also three times more likely to lack consistent access to a device (32 percent vs. 10 percent).
“What's happening has absolutely laid bare the nature of the inequities with regard to home access to technology,” said Cator.
Five weeks into the shutdown, many students still lacked access to necessary technology. In New York City, for example, 19,000 students who had requested devices still didn’t have them by late April, according to reporting by Chalkbeat and WNYC. With a month of school left to go, the city’s Department of Education was not sure just how many students lacked needed devices.
On the other side of the country, an estimated 1.2 million California public school students had no computers or internet access at home by late April, according to the California Department of Education. By the end of May, the problem had not been resolved.
In an online press conference May 27, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said that while the state has worked with companies and foundations to distribute more than a 100,000 hotspots and 21,000 computers, “there’s a gap in supply.” California needs “at least $500 million to address the immediate needs of our students,” Thurmond said. He estimated some 600,000 students are still waiting for a computing device, while 300,000 to 400,000 students have no way to get online and need access to an internet hotspot. He called for companies, foundations and individuals to donate technology resources.
But devices for students are sometimes hard to find. Many companies produce them as they’re needed rather than keeping storerooms full of hardware. According to Cator, this has created a supply chain shortage and a delay in access to devices.
And while larger districts have been able to secure large orders of computers and tablets, smaller districts, especially those in rural areas, are still having trouble finding enough for their students. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, California’s largest public school system, Superintendent Austin Beutner announced in mid-May that “just about every one” of the district’s students had a device, thanks to a “procurement team working around the clock to scour the globe and find devices.” The Metropolitan School District of Pike Township in Indiana was not so fortunate. It couldn’t get vendors to commit to a delivery date for orders of laptops it placed in early March, according to Education Week.
Foundations, companies and individuals are trying to fill the gap and purchase equipment for students or provide resources for school districts. New organizations like Devices for Students, a coalition of educators, tech employees, nonprofits and local businesses working to close the digital divide in the Bay Area, have sprung up alongside additional programs from established groups, like the new initiative, DigitalBridgeK-12, from EducationSuperHighway.
Hundreds of teachers from Florida to California have requested distance learning materials and devices like writing tablets and Chromebooks on DonorsChoose, a nonprofit education crowdfunding site. Donations to many distance learning projects are being matched by various DonorsChoose partners. Salesforce.org, for example, is currently matching donations for distance learning projects in specific counties in California. DonorsChoose also launched the Keep Kids Learning Pilot Program, which — on teacher request — shipped materials directly to student’s homes. By May 21, funding for the program had run out. Parents and teachers have taken to social media to plead for device donations for their kids.
While Cator, of Digital Promise, applauded individuals who are taking the initiative to provide for their students, she added that “technology is part of an infrastructure that needs to be procured at a school and district level.” Cator said “some sort of hybrid model” of learning will be required to deal with the continued threat of the coronavirus when schools re-open in the fall. If that is the case, it will be vital to get all students online. “If we can't get every student access, that's going to exacerbate the gaps even more,” she said.
Send story ideas and news tips to tara@hechingerreport.org. Tweet at @TaraGarciaM. Read high-quality news about innovation and inequality in education at The Hechinger Report. And, here’s a list of the latest news and trends in the future of learning.
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 The Shortlist |
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- Planning for the fall. In a new report, researchers from New America, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., outline four scenarios for what school can look like this fall, all incorporating some element of distance learning. One scenario involves reopening buildings but being ready to switch to remote learning within a matter of days, should it be necessary. Another envisions a remote learning start with plans to reopen schools when safe. A third starts with blended learning from the beginning, where students do a mixture of in-class and at-home learning. And the fourth is an all-online scenario. The report helps districts think about how to plan for each scenario, including training teachers, considering the needs of all students and choosing learning materials. Read more here. The Center on Reinventing Public Education, at the University of Washington Bothell, aims to inject as much evidence as possible into decision-making around school reopening. The Evidence Project will coordinate research efforts and help schools make sense of the latest findings. The initiative’s website, and a link to sign up for biweekly updates, is here.
- The latest data on distance learning and equity gaps. GoGuardian, an ed tech company that helps districts monitor and manage online learning, analyzed web use across its more than 10,000 customer schools, finding that about 10 percent of the time students spent online using their school-issued devices in May was on video conferencing. From March to May, the percentage of time students spent on YouTube doubled. Among the other most popular websites are Clever, Zoom, Khan Academy, Instructure, Flipgrid, ClassLink, IXL, Quizlet and Edpuzzle, most of which allow for asynchronous learning, which seems to be the model of choice for districts during school closures. Separately, LearnPlatform expanded on its finding that digital equity gaps have increased since March, based on an analysis of its own customers. According to the company, which helps districts study ed tech effectiveness, all districts saw a decrease in the number of students with access to technology when schools closed, as well as an increase in engagement with technology among students who did have access. In districts with more than 40 percent black and Latino students, however, the gap between those two groups is 121 percent larger. In districts where more than 40 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch the gap is 33 percent larger.
- Case studies in expanding student networks. The Clayton Christensen Institute is building out its resources to help expand students' networks beyond their own families’ with case studies of nonprofits, schools and districts doing this well. The first five case studies are available here. Julia Freeland-Fisher’s book, “Who You Know: Unlocking Innovations That Expand Students’ Networks,” argues educators can and should play a role in expanding students’ social networks. One of the Christensen Institute’s first featured case studies is of the Cajon Valley Union School District, which starts career-related learning in kindergarten and helps students connect with professionals across a range of fields throughout their time in the K-12 district. I wrote about this initiative when it was getting off the ground in 2018. Read that story here.
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