Today, as part of the National Digital Equity Summit hosted by the U.S. Department of Education The Office of Educational Technology (OET) has launched Promoting Digital Equity for All: Recommendations based on community-based research for the development of effective Digital Equity Plans to Close the Digital Divide and Enable Technology-Empowered learning. This guideline provides suggestions for equitable broadband use to assist leaders in the creation of Digital Equity Plans, a goal which became a crisis for many families and schools during the outbreak. This year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was passed earlier this year will help achieve the goal of ensuring that everyone has access to $2.75 billion in the Digital Equity Act to ensure that everyone get the full benefit of the digital age.
“Digital equity never been more urgent. However, the opportunity to provide equality in the digital age has been more accessible. The pandemic transformed the equitable access to technology from an aspiration to an emergency,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “Students who do not have broadband or even a phone are less likely to complete homework completion, and lower grades, and lower grade point averages … and even lower rates of college completion. There is any equity without equity in digital form. With the Biden administration’s Bipartisan infrastructure law, we’re making incredible advancements towards achieving this objective.”
This National Digital Equity Summit will gather nearly 200 equity-minded organizations including state and local system officials, federal agencies and experts in educational technology in a debate on the ways broadband investment made under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law can be utilized to assist students that are least from opportunities in digital technology and to close the digital divide by creating transformative learning experiences that are facilitated by technology. It will also be streamed live and accessible on this page.
“The epidemic revealed long-standing educational inequality gaps and triggered an unprecedented time of crisis remote learning. One of the biggest problems of this period is providing the essential access to high-speed and reliable internet required to support everywhere learning that is continuous, 24/7,” said Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Roberto Rodriguez. “We’ve realized the importance of digital equity. It’s no longer just a “nice to have an option, but essential to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to fully take part in the society and economy of today. of today and in the future.”
The new publication also discusses obstacles that exist in the three aspects of availability as well as affordability and adoption and gives some examples of promising strategies to overcome these obstacles. The majority of the information was collected from the Digital Equity Education Roundtables (DEER) Initiative that was initiated by OET in spring of this year and facilitated national dialogues with community-based leaders as well as students and families that are most excluded from digital opportunities, to find out more about the obstacles that learners face and potential solutions to increase accessibility to technology. In these discussions, participants were able to discuss the three aspects that make up digital equity accessibility, affordability, as well as acceptance – to ensure that all students are served in an equitable way. The key lessons learned from these events can be found in the brand new Achieving Digital Equity for All resource.
Its DEER Initiative, today’s summit and the newly released resource show the determination of Biden-Harris to tackle obstacles to connectivity throughout the United States. Additionally, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten recently attended a roundtable discussion in Charlotte, North Carolina, listening directly to school leaders communities, community-based groups, and parents on the steps needed to improve involvement within the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). In addition the Department took part in an back-to-school promotion to increase ACP enrollment, and contributed to the interagency effort to streamline information regarding federal broadband funds and also published an collection of information to help students get access to broadband from their homes.
In the coming year, OET will build on this success by encouraging the sense of urgency surrounding the barriers to adoption that hinder the attainment of digital equity in education, and building a community of advocates who are working to implement solutions.
