Cost-Effective Strategies to Close the Digital Divide at School

Tennessee
Quality

ExcelinEd convenes a Digital Divide Network of state education and broadband policymakers as well as national partners. The Network provides a space for state leaders to share challenges and best practices and to learn about new resources. Connected Nation participates in the Network and provides a free online tool to state and district leaders that provides insights into broadband pricing.

Students use technology throughout the school day to complement classroom instruction, access resources such as virtual tutoring and participate in online assessments. As technology is increasingly interwoven with learning, schools must be equipped with reliable broadband with the capacity, or bandwidth, of handling many students using their network at the same time.

To make sure school-level bandwidth meets students’ and teachers’ needs, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sets a national recommendation of 1 megabit per second (Mbps) per student. This speed allows for seamless access by all users to online instruction, educational content, tutoring and assessment.

Unfortunately, only 53 percent of America’s K-12 students currently have access to this recommended bandwidth in their classrooms. That means the bandwidth gap affects 47 percent of all students, about 23.5 million students overall.

There are key tools and actions that state and district education leaders can take to address this problem. While improving the bandwidth that students are able to access at school, there’s even the potential for lowering the cost of that service.

Trends in School-Level Bandwidth and Pricing

The FCC provides E-Rate funding for school districts, libraries and charter and private schools to purchase internet service for their buildings. This discounted funding helps subsidize the cost of establishing and also maintaining their broadband networks. Those districts, libraries and schools then report back to the FCC on the bandwidth they obtained, their service provider and the cost of their contract.

The good news is that the median bandwidth per student has increased nearly fourfold over the past five years. Meanwhile, the cost of bandwidth has continuously decreased. In 2022, the median cost per megabit was 12 percent lower than in 2021. Since 2017, the median cost per megabit that school districts pay has decreased by an astounding 75 percent: $4.80 per megabit to a median price of $1.19 per megabit in 2022.

Trends show that districts meeting the 1 Mbps per student goal are also paying less overall for bandwidth, with those districts paying a median of $0.78 less per megabit than districts not meeting the goal in 2022.

Steps to Ensure Cost-Effective School Broadband

Schools and districts that participate in E-Rate report their contract details to the FCC, and this data holds valuable insights for state and district leaders and can inform both procurement and policy decisions.

A national nonprofit, Connected Nation, in partnership with Funds for Learning, has aggregated district, state and national E-Rate data in a free internet speed and pricing tool, Connect K-12. This pricing tool brings transparency to the internet procurement process and can provide districts with the information they need to secure low-cost, high-bandwidth services.

Consider these Connect K-12 capabilities:

By using E-Rate data to make the best possible contracting decisions, education and technology leaders can ensure that students and teachers have seamless access to broadband throughout the school day.

Solution Areas:

Digital Policy

Topics:

Digital Device Access

About the Authors

Amy Owen is the Senior Director, Digital and Teacher Policy at ExcelinEd.

Solution Areas:

Digital Policy