King, Rosenworcel Tout Next Steps in Homework Gap Fight

“We’re going to keep up this fight,” King said, citing his work as Maine governor to expand students’ access to technology and pressing now for more broadband connectivity in the home. “We shouldn’t make young people jump through those kinds of hoops; we need to find ways to make access, which to me is the next step of the equity argument.” The study mandated by last year's education law will hopefully dig into “what the creative solutions are,” King added. He believes education policy is primarily a matter for state and local officials but “a definite federal function” is for federal officials to research and operate as a clearinghouse for that information. “This is something the federal government can do.”

Sens. King and Capito have worked on these issues repeatedly. They introduced the Digital Learning Equity Act and in April wrote to Education Secretary John King about the homework gap.

Jon Bernstein, president of the Bernstein Strategy Group and the coalition’s executive director, said Tuesday will be an important appropriations test. He said a Senate Appropriations subcommittee is taking up the education reauthorization that Sen. King cited and the question will be “whether there are real dollars behind” the Title 4(a) language that involves such grants. The Senate Appropriations subcommittee will take up that FY 2017 funding measure at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in 138 Dirksen.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, credited with coining the homework gap phrase, cited her recent visit to New Mexico with Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and encountering students who had spent hours traveling with a football team only to return to sit down “in the dusty school parking lot” to do homework due to the Wi-Fi being available there. “No matter what, I think we can do better,” Rosenworcel said. “I think digital equity is one of the defining issues of our day.”

She flagged the FCC’s April Lifeline vote to expand the Lifeline program, now poised to encompass broadband service. “With a little pressure, we were able to convince my colleagues at the FCC to update the Lifeline program,” she said. “It is my hope that by the end of the year we will have those changes in place, once we have the administrative work done.” Those changes will need to be promoted to schools and community programs, she added. Rosenworcel also stressed a need for more unlicensed spectrum to help tackle the homework gap, stressing her focus on the 5 GHz band. Unlicensed spectrum “democratized internet access like nothing else,” she said.

King, describing earlier fights within Maine to increase students’ access to laptops, emphasized the need for professional development to train education professionals, which he described as a key element of effectiveness he had witnessed. “My rule is that 10 percent of the cost of a project should be devoted to professional development,” King said. He and others argued there’s no one simple solution to the problems at hand. King advocated a “combination of solutions,” bringing up ways to improve connectivity such as wireless and fiber-to-the-node. “I don’t think there’s any single solution to this issue, and that’s why we need best practices,” King said. The Department of Education study that last year’s law mandated may come up with “useful information” that could be shared throughout the country, he added. “I think it’s simple equity and it’s way more important than it was 20 years ago, 15 years ago, because the resources are so much richer,” he said.

Project Tomorrow CEO Julie Evans, a member of the coalition’s board, spoke about the education stakeholder surveys done for her group’s annual report, which she said validates many concerns about the homework gap. “We saw that, for example, teachers’ use of video had expanded 47 percent from 2012 to 2015,” she said. A third of students were shown to go into school early or stay late “to be able to access their internet resources,” she said. “The time is really right now to act with new solutions and ideas.”

Vincent Scheivert, chief information officer for Virginia’s Albemarle County Public Schools, said it’s “typically DSL or copper” or nothing at all for parts of the region he oversees, which may be insufficient in providing the capacity he sees as necessary. Scheivert said officials therefore took initiative in reclaiming a spectrum license and “building out our own wireless infrastructure” to cover some of the region. “We anticipate it’s going to take us about three years to have 100 percent or near 100 percent,” he noted. “Me saying it’s going to take three years breaks my heart, because that’s a middle-school career for a kid.”