Divya Sridhar is the Director of Digital Equity Policy for ExcelinEd.
The Lone Star State is a frontrunner in closing the K-12 digital divide; it prioritized the issue during the pandemic and built actionable solutions. In the Spring of 2020, Governor Abbott’s Operation Connectivity Task Force began work toward a mighty goal: ensuring every Texas student could engage in virtual learning with at-home connectivity and access to digital devices.
To tackle the digital divide and uniformly support its most disadvantaged rural, urban and low-income students, Texas focused on an important first step: the state –- as opposed to individual districts — coordinated the process to procure digital devices and connectivity. The Governor’s office and the Operation Connectivity Task Force included and worked closely with telecom providers as it built the new statewide procurement process. In the end, the state was able to free up districts to concentrate on the demands of teaching during a pandemic by taking a traditionally a cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming task off their plates.
“Bridging the digital divide for the Students of Texas became Mission Critical with the onset of COVID-19, enabling us to develop successful solutions with speed and at scale like never before.”
Gaby Rowe, Principal, GROW Associates, LLC and Project Lead for Operation Connectivity
By negotiating competitive pricing on behalf of districts, the statewide procurement effort resulted in a 40-50% cost savings in devices and connectivity for districts and students. Between May and December 2020, Operation Connectivity supported the acquisition of more than 4.5 million devices for students, resulting in a 1:1 ratio of device access per student. Texas leveraged $900 million in CARES Act funding to fund this initiative, combining it with federal state and local sources.
In the early days of the pandemic, students in Texas faced a multitude of broadband-related challenges, including lack of adequate high-speed connectivity in many areas and the inability to afford internet plans. Learn how the Lone Star State tackled the digital divide and uniformly supported its most disadvantaged rural, urban and low-income students.
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