TYLER, Texas — A new study shows Texas tops the list of states with the largest population of kindergarten through 12th grade students without an adequate internet connection, according to the report.
Closing the K-12 Digital Divide in the Age of Distance Learning was a collaboration between the Boston Consulting Group and the nonprofit Common Sense.
The study echoes what local school leaders experienced after East Texas schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic — connectivity was one of the biggest issues with virtual learning.
Before the pandemic, could you even imagine a parking lot turning into a virtual classroom? Well, that's what happened in cities across East Texas. Districts had no choice but to get innovative quickly. The depths of the digital divide became pretty clear during the quarantine period.
“Connectivity was a real challenge," Whitehouse Superintendent Dr. Christopher Moran said. "Not just for our district, but every district in the state. Finding those students who were not connected or struggling to get the resources they need."
Dr. Moran is certainly not alone in the struggle to get students and faculty equipped and online. To keep them connected, WISD provided many hot spots.
“You know from one house to the next, it looks a lot different," said Dr. Moran. "You may have one house with two students and two devices, then you may have a house with six to eight students and limited devices and limited connectivity. That all played a great role in the access students had and will continue."
According to the American Community Survey, 34% of Texas students don't have an adequate internet connection, while 25% don't have the devices needed to keep up with school work.
“Some of the things we ran into were some of the hotspots we were using, They didn't run exceptionally fast," said Mineola ISD Superintendent Cody Mize.
Prior to the pandemic, Mineola ISD equipped most students, except for primary learners, with devices. Mize says the district tried to help alleviate that issue for families. But a pandemic was never in the plan.
“You plan for a lot of things as a principal and now superintendent, but a pandemic, that was not one of those things we ever discussed,” Mize said.
Leaders at the state and national level are taking now taking notice.
Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) recently launched Operation Connectivity.
“When you think about it most of our internet that was put in place was put in place when video wasn't pushed so much, said Pine Tree ISD Superintendent Steve Clugston. “It didn't eat up so much bandwidth. In order to do e-learning more powerfully — video is powerful. It's more like the classroom. It gives you the opportunity to see our kids and build relationships that video is powerful.
It's not just students relying on internet, but also parents and teachers who may be working from home. That's a lot of people online at the same time in neighborhoods across the state, possibly pushing internet speeds to their limits.
“I think the bandwidth issues and the connectivity issues span even further out than just the education of our students,” Tyler ISD Superintendent Dr. Marty Crawford said. "It's certainly a community issue as far as the economy goes, as far as industry goes, and business goes and making sure we can conduct some of the things we were forced to do.”
Many providers, including Suddenlink's parent company — Altice, signed the Keep Americans Connected Pledge to ensure students had reliable access to their services through June.
That was one initiative of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai. Now he's asking congress to earmark funding for education technology. The Cares Act allocated $16 billion to local school districts and Pai believes some of that money could be used to get schools the connectivity they need.
“But even people with internet are going to struggle when everybody is on it,” Clugston said. "We've seen that during the entire shutdown. Then you have the kids who may not even have internet. And then you take your kids who only have internet when mom's home, and maybe they're using her cell phone as a hotspot. Well, that's fine if mom's home, but mom has to go to work some of that time.”
So many challenges — no easy solutions. But there's no doubt, districts will have to be better prepared given the current state of the pandemic in Texas.
At Pine Tree, they've ordered hundreds of hot spots for next year. Mineola partnered with the city to make WiFi available in more locations. Whitehouse plans to offer more education on how the hotspots work and their limitations. Tyler ISD adopted a 1-to-1 device initiative for students and they're expanding wireless access points.
“We are in increasing the coverage of those at least from our campuses, so where it's not just 10 to 15 feet away from the building," Dr. Crawford explained. "It could be 100 feet away to 200 feet away from the building so that there may be some better opportunities later on where you can learn. We will better define it later on, but we're calling it “park and learn” — where you can actually download your work onto your device and then take it back home, work on it and then go back up to the school and you know, touch the mother ship and it actually trades the information with our network. So, I think certain things like that can be an improvement from what we've done now."
Dr. Crawford and his colleagues certainly learned some valuable lessons to help keep students on the right track.
“I think the thing is to make sure kids are familiar with logging in and using the online platforms that we have in place,” Mize said. “Our elementary is a good example. They were using a program called, IXL. They were so familiar to logging into it and going through and doing things within that math program, we actually saw progress with them.
“I think we've learned some things from this. That is making sure our teachers assign the kind of work our students can access from home,” said Dr. Moran.
“You're going to have to have more planning. Maybe tape more lessons and get them out in that fashion. You've got to be pretty creative and our teachers are really good about that,” Clugston said.
When it comes to technology, you can usually count on students (even the young ones) to figure it out. They just need equal opportunities to do so.