Equal Internet Access is a K-12 Must-Have

COMMENTARY by Helen Brunner

The days when spiral notebooks, No. 2 pencils, and a backpack full of textbooks served as the mainstays of the American classroom are rapidly giving way to a new school environment. Interactive whiteboards, online classes, streaming lectures, and digital textbooks are revolutionizing the way students learn and communicate with their teachers. Technology is blurring the brick-and-mortar boundaries of learning in 21st-century schools.

As a result, access to the Internet has become a need-to-have-not just a nice-to-have-when it comes to student success. After all, according to documents the Federal Communications Commission's broadband task force released in 2009, about 70 percent of teens said the Internet had been their primary source for a recent school project, and at least 65 percent went online at home to complete their homework. Teachers routinely assign homework that requires Internet use to complete, and more than half of American schools expect to adopt e-textbooks in the next two to three years.

But with this increased reliance on the Internet as a basic resource in our education system, we can't forget about the infrastructure that makes it all possible. We must ensure that all students-no matter their location or socioeconomic status-have access to affordable, reliable high-speed Internet both in and outside the classroom.

Even if students have reliable Internet access at school, many become digitally disconnected once they leave. This is especially true for minorities and those who live in rural or low-income communities, and it makes their homework harder to complete.

Read the rest of this Black Star Journal commentary here.