Students in rural America still lack access to high-speed internet at home despite governmental efforts during the pandemic to fill the void. This lack of access negatively affects their academic achievement and overall well-being. The situation has been getting worse as the urgency of the pandemic has receded.

Those findings are based on a new study we did to determine the post-pandemic outlook on .

During the pandemic, school districts quickly deployed emergency resources such as Wi-Fi hot spots to facilitate remote learning. In rural Michigan, student home internet connectivity soared to 96% by the end of 2021, a remarkable from 2019.

However, these gains are proving temporary. By 2022, student access in rural Michigan began to decline. Today, many more students are disconnected . The downward trend is likely to continue as

We surveyed students in grades 8-11 from and , tracking changes in their digital access, educational outcomes and well-being. We found that of rural students still lack high-speed broadband internet at home.

Why it matters

highlights how rural gaps in access to the internet, mainly the lack of broadband home internet access, were not resolved over the pandemic. And these persistent access gaps could affect students’ , and .

Rural students lacking adequate home internet face significant educational disadvantages compared with their better-connected peers. These lower classroom grades, , lower educational aspirations and lower interest in STEM careers. Our findings link these adverse outcomes, which start with access gaps, to subsequent gaps in digital skills. These digital skills are less likely to develop without reliable broadband connectivity at home.

In early 2020, schools mobilized state and federal relief to provide students with home internet and laptops. Our study demonstrates the success of these initiatives in rural areas, where school-provided Wi-Fi hot spots accounted for nearly all of the during the pandemic’s peak. Importantly, as hot spot funding has ended, many households maintained access by subscribing to local internet service providers.

The success in transitioning students from school-provided Wi-Fi hot spots to paid subscriptions is now at risk. Many low-income households rely on the , the nation’s largest internet affordability initiative, created under the . This program provides a monthly discount of up to US$30 for eligible households and up to $75 for households on Native American tribal lands. The program is set to expire in .

We found that internet access among rural students had in 2022. This trend is likely to accelerate with the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program.

Young people’s time spent online – such as surfing the internet, playing video games and interacting on social media – helps them develop valuable skills. These skills include problem-solving, information literacy and creative expression. These skills apply across both digital and offline environments. Our research shows that digital skills helped rural students , even as these interests declined during the pandemic.

Additionally, rural adolescents are at a heightened level of risk for social isolation. While adolescent mental health within our study – as measured by – , rural students without adequate home internet remain at higher risk.

What still isn’t known

A major challenge in bridging the access divide is pinpointing underserved areas. Accurate maps are crucial to direct billions of dollars in funding from programs such as the , also known as BEAD, and the toward truly underserved communities. As part of the process to receive BEAD funding, each state must identify unserved and underserved homes. Local governments, nonprofit organizations and internet service providers can also develop .

Maps must be finalized and grants must be made to states before large-scale infrastructure improvements will commence. However, some other early initiatives are now coming online. For example, in 2022, the , in partnership with a , started the . Funded with a $10.5 million grant from the , this project increases the bandwidth on Michigan’s education network that is being made available to local service providers. These providers will deliver reliable high-speed internet to 17,000 previously unserved households by the end of 2024.

Still, other major infrastructure improvements across the country will .

The is a short take on interesting academic work.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The towers, which stand 60-to-80 feet tall, have been erected by the school district at  Dunbar High School, Morningside Middle School, Rosemont Middle School and Eastern Hills High School. 

One-quarter of students most in need of internet access have been connected. The remaining 75% of students will get internet service when phase two of the project begins in December. Zip codes that are underserved will be targeted, according to the district. 

The pandemic and its effects, including the rise of virtual learning, exposed the digital divide, particularly in communities of color. Those students lack wifi access, exacerbating the already existing racial achievement gap in many schools across the country. 

The towers are meant to help combat that problem in Fort Worth where an estimated 60,000 residents lack internet access. 

“Our towers are up and functional,” said Chief Information Officer Marlon Shears in a statement. “We are continuing to deploy service by getting modems to students in need. We also have begun the process to put up more towers, extending service into additional areas.”

Voters approved funding the project in November 2020 through the Tax Ratification Election (TRE).

According to the 2019 Worst Connected Cities from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, Fort Worth ranked No. 245 out of 625 cities in terms of connectivity. The report, based on data from the 2019 American Community Survey, found that 11% of  Fort Worth households did not have broadband and nearly 28% of households lacked a cable, fiber optic line or DSL. This was an improvement over 2018, when 31% of households did not have cable, fiber optic or DSL. 

NDIA Executive Director Angela Siefer said 36 million U.S. households don’t have a home broadband subscription. Of the 36 million, 26 million are in urban areas. 

“So we know we have an infrastructure availability issue in rural areas,” she said. “And what we know in urban areas is even when the infrastructure is there, people don’t always subscribe. And why don’t people subscribe? It’s expensive, digital literacy issues, trust issues about getting stuck with large bills. 

“So there needs to be alternative solutions,” Siefer continued. “And what some school districts are doing … is they’ve come up with an alternative solution, which is, you know what, we’re just going to build it ourselves.”

That’s what Fort Worth is doing.  

Clay Robison, spokesman for Texas State Teachers Association, noted that most students in Texas are no longer learning remotely, but are back in classrooms. 

“The new Fort Worth towers should benefit students and teachers who are still involved in remote instruction,” he said, adding students learn best with a teacher in the classroom.  

“If the Fort Worth district continues to provide wifi access. This will help students with their homework and studies at home and, we hope, help narrow the digital divide between low-income and more-fortunate students,” he said, later adding: “Most school districts were scrambling after the pandemic broke out to provide digital access to students who needed it. Some districts were more successful than others.”

But the narrow, 45-day window for districts to apply comes in the middle of the summer as leaders are scrambling to prepare for a new school year and face a host of unknowns.

“I think a lot of schools are going to say, ‘We can’t do it,’” said Evan Marwell, CEO of nonprofit Education SuperHighway, a nonprofit working to improve at-home broadband service for students.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ Newsletter

If they don’t apply for the new , part of the American Rescue Plan, districts could miss out on critical funding at a time when demand for remote learning options this fall is increasing. While most say they’re committed to fully reopening, concerns about rising COVID-19 cases are prompting more parents to push for virtual learning. The question is whether students — especially those in lower-income homes — will still have to contend with glitchy Zoom sessions or getting kicked off line in the middle of submitting assignments.

Home internet access has increased substantially in recent years, but 11 percent of families still depend on mobile devices for service, according to released last month from New America and Rutgers University. Among those with at-home broadband service, more than half described their service as too slow.

A by the Consortium for School Networking, a professional group for district technology leaders, showed that almost three-quarters of respondents said they plan to apply for the new federal funds. But only 170 members took the survey. A spokeswoman for the Federal Communications Commission, which runs the program, said the agency doesn’t have data on how many districts have applied so far. Christine Fox, senior director of external relations at the Consortium, added that some districts are waiting for a second application window, but the FCC said there’s no guarantee there will be one.

‘COVID numbers increasing’

Arkansas is among the states where some districts are applying for the technology fund and seeing a growing demand for remote learning. Applications from districts that want to offer virtual academies have been pouring into the education department. In mid-June, Don Benton, assistant commissioner for research and technology, had received 125 requests. By last week, most of those had been approved, with at least another 75 pending.

Benton expected as much, with “COVID numbers increasing … due the abysmal number of people getting vaccinated and taking the vaccination, social distancing, and precautions seriously.” Less than half of the state’s vaccine-eligible population has had one dose, according to .

In other parts of the country, many districts decided to continue offering virtual learning to accommodate parent demand — even before COVID cases began to rise again. showed two-thirds of the nation’s top districts will offer virtual academies, and the Austin Independent School District in Texas, even its virtual learning program for elementary students outside the district.

The Harrison School District in northwest Arkansas is among those putting final touches on a connectivity fund application and planning to use the money for more hotspots.

Susan Gilley, the district’s executive director of federal programs, said she’s most concerned about students having reliable internet and those “that live so remotely that even cellular Wi-Fi is unavailable.” The district is allowing remote learning for third grade and above.

The 2,700-student district supplied 100 families with hotspots last school year and plans to increase that to 1,000, Gilley said. The district also hopes to purchase 1,100 devices for students and outfit its entire fleet of 37 buses with Wi-Fi routers, up from eight last year.

But some experts want districts to think beyond devices.

“Districts for the most part have plenty of tools already,” said Joseph South, chief learning officer at the International Society for Technology in Education.

The uncertainty about reopening means districts need to be ready to adapt to changing situations, he said. Even if schools don’t close completely this fall because of positive case rates, there have already been examples of students being .

Successful models, South said, “require an approach where technology is being used face-to-face in ways that are effective each day, but that also lay a foundation for a shift to more reliance on the technology if face-to-face engagement has to be curtailed.”

Benton, in Arkansas, added that if districts are going to allow remote learning, he’d like them to give parents better information on how to keep students at home on track. A from the University of Missouri showed that the transition to remote learning put particular stress on Black families who often lacked reliable internet and the technological know-how to keep students connected.

“We can have the best technology, teachers and tools available, but without quality family engagement, we are missing a huge piece for student success,” Benton said.

‘Not all hotspots are equal’

The Emergency Connectivity Fund is similar to an existing internet discount program for schools and libraries, known as E-Rate. Funds can cover the cost of devices, hotspots and routers on Wi-Fi-enabled buses. Larger districts with technology departments might be in a better position to develop strong plans and meet the program’s requirements, Marwell said. But others might just buy more hotspots because that’s easier than negotiating a plan with an internet provider to provide service to students’ homes.

In general, hotspots are only as good as the surrounding cell service, meaning they provide spotty connections in a lot of rural areas and often aren’t strong enough for multiple family members to be online at one time. Wired connections, linked to fiber-optic cable, are faster and more reliable, but many communities still don’t have service. That’s one need the infrastructure bill, which the Senate was expected to pass Tuesday, would address.

Hotspots “worked great for some students,” Marwell said, “but that didn’t work well for a lot of students.”

After a year in which some students had no face-to-face learning, researchers have a better handle on where the nation’s broadband infrastructure fell short in meeting the needs of families with multiple children learning at home.

As the nation transitioned to remote work and learning, complaints to the FCCskyrocketed, according to a recent Carnegie Mellon University . Most users complained that providers offered faster “downstream” service — the ability to download files or videos — than the “upstream” capabilities needed to submit files like school assignments.

“The implications for [internet service providers] are obvious,” the authors wrote. “Even after COVID-19 has been tamed, we will probably see more people working and going to school from home than before the pandemic.” The authors said providers will have to reconsider the speed customers need to upload data “or risk becoming less competitive.”

Companies marketing internet solutions to districts are also trying to address families’ frustrations with unreliable service. Last month, Kajeet — known for enabling school buses to blast Wi-Fi into neighborhoods with limited broadband — launched its new , a fixed connection suitable for households with multiple family members online.

Michael Flood, Kajeet’s senior vice president for education and general manager, added that hotspots are still a better solution for students who aren’t always learning at home. “Not all hotspots are equal,” he said, adding that some are five times as fast as the ones many districts purchased and distributed last year.

In Congress, Democrats in the House and Senate are hoping to turn the temporary Emergency Connectivity Fund into a five-year, $40 billion program. The proposed could turn up as future legislation under the $3.5 trillion Democrats unveiled Monday.

For now, districts are trying to comply with the fine print for the new program. That includes estimating how many students need devices or internet service.

Another requirement is that districts can’t use the funds to provide devices or broadband to students who have been served under another state or federal program, such as last year’s relief funds. In fact, in some districts where students already had devices, officials used those earlier funds to pay for at-home internet. That’s one reason why they’re waiting for a second application window as their needs this year become clearer.

The connectivity fund “is an off-shoot of a program that has a history of being tight on rules and regulations,” Marwell said, referring to E-Rate. “The last thing a school wants to do is spend a million on home broadband and find out they didn’t follow these rules.”