Stunning research on inequities of access to online learning in the USA

• 59% of U.S. children aged between 0-18 participated in online learning in the period between August 19 to October 26, 2020.
• Of these, 10 percent did not have adequate access to both the Internet and a computer or other electronic device used for educational purposes.
• Lack of adequate access varied nearly 20-fold across the gradient of parental race/ethnicity and education.
• At the extremes 2% of children of Asian parents with graduate degrees lacked Internet access, compared with 35.5% of black parents with less than high school education.
• 20% of all children with parents without high school completion overall lacked Internet access, compared with 4% of children with parents with a graduate degree.
• 16% of all children with black parents lacked Internet access compared with 4% of all children of Asian parents.

Comment

I find this report stunning because it shows in sharp detail what I think most of us know: there is a huge racial divide in the USA (and probably in other countries such as Canada) that markedly affects access to online (or more accurately emergency remote) learning. It is stunning because it puts some hard (and reliable) data behind this.

Another comment is also obvious: how does access play out in the in-school system? It would have been useful for instance to compare average funding per student in the school system (which varies enormously across the USA) with Internet access. I suspect the areas where children have less Internet access also have the worst funded schools – but evidence is needed. In other words, as we have seen elsewhere, the school responses to Covid-19 probably exacerbate already existing inequalities.

These results also indicate that in school districts with large numbers of black children and parents without high school completion, alternative arrangements to online learning need to be considered – but since these are likely to be in the worst funded school districts, this is unlikely to happen. Nevertheless the 90% who can benefit from online learning should still have the opportunity during a pandemic. Just make sure the others have an alternative.

Lastly, another comment I have made many times before: these data suggest that compulsory attendance in a well-funded public school system provides the best form of equal access to education. It’s an unfair world, and technology during a crisis just amplifies this.