As Congress debates what form fall coronavirus relief should take, teachers unions are lobbying for America’s elected representatives to help close the “homework gap.”
“The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare structural racism and inequality in the public education system that has existed all along. One of those areas where the crisis has shone a spotlight is on a specific aspect of the ‘Digital Divide’ known as the ‘homework gap’ — the inability to do schoolwork at home due to lack of internet access,” National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia told the Washington Examiner.
The NEA president spelled out the extent of the problem, in her estimation: “Nationwide, up to 12 million students are affected. That’s roughly 1 in 5. A disproportionate share of those students are African American or Hispanic, come from low-income households, or live in rural areas.”
Garcia’s organization, the most prominent teachers union in the country, is urging Congress “to include at least $4 billion for the successful E-rate program in the next COVID-19 relief package so that more of our most vulnerable students do not fall behind during this pandemic,” she said.
Many public schools will not reopen this fall because of COVID-19 concerns. All California, Oregon, and possibly Washington K-12 public schools will be exclusively online for the start of next school year, for a complete West Coast lockout.
Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator from Maryland, introduced legislation in the Senate called the Homework Gap Trust Fund Act to address the problem.
In the bill’s rollout, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten praised Van Hollen’s commitment to “removing barriers to digital access with a solution that levels the playing field and ensures more affordable, reliable broadband services for every student in the country.”
The bill would take proceeds from the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming “c-band mid-band spectrum auction” for 5G and establish a $2 billion-$4 billion Homework Gap Trust Fund with the proceeds. The fund would be administered by the FCC and “used by jurisdictions to purchase wireless devices and support other initiatives,” according to the bill’s one-page fact sheet.
Some educators and critics believe that reported connectivity problems, though real, might be overblown.
For instance, the text of the bill asserts, “Nearly 50 percent of students in the United States have reported being unable to complete a homework assignment because those students did not have access to the internet or a computer.”
That is likely an exaggeration, given the data. Pew Research Center, whose findings the teachers unions and lawmakers rely on to call for more spending, found that “roughly one-third (35%) of households with children ages 6 to 17 and an annual income below $30,000 a year do not have a high-speed internet connection at home.” That is not the same thing as having no internet connection.
Lindsey Nelson is a science and engineering instructor for the online learning platform Outschool. She teaches hundreds of students every week via Zoom calls. The Washington Examiner asked her if the recently ballooned cyberclasses full of students have had many connectivity issues.
“Occasionally, but it’s not common,” Nelson said. Once quarantine started, “traffic exploded, and there were many capacity issues that the Outschool quickly resolved.” The education company’s information technology workers fixed some of the problems. Zoom also rapidly scaled up its capacity to meet surging demand.
Nelson gives her students “pointers” about how to manage their connections. She advises students with any connectivity problems to clear their browsers, restart their routers, and restart their computers. “Some teachers take it further and try to help kids manage speed tests,” she said.
Outschool classes are not expensive, averaging about $12 an hour, but parents who like the idea of “enrichment” are much more likely to go for it. “I call it the piano and karate lesson crowd,” Nelson said.
Tim Cavanaugh is a former substitute teacher, a father, and a prominent critic of tech-first approaches to schooling. He had three children go through the Alexandria, Virginia, school district’s remote learning at the end of the last school year and was not impressed.
“There was no teaching to speak of, just Zoom conferences that few students attended and that had no mechanism or authority to enforce attendance. As in ordinary school, students who are already motivated can get by, and the vast majority idle in place. The distance learning only exacerbated that,” Cavanaugh told the Washington Examiner.
Cavanaugh also questions the whole idea of the digital divide and its importance. “The idea that [poor students] are suffering from lack of online capacity is not only false. The schools are bending over backwards to subsidize internet access and provide online service. It is completely misguided. Poor students need less of the internet, not more of it,” he said.
