We did it with electricity following the Rural Electrification Act. It takes some work to make sure everyone is connected. We’re also diverse geographically, and that has wonderful qualities but it also has consequences. Why does the US have such digital inequity? We told so many of them to go to online class, but the data suggests that as many as 17 million of them can’t make it there, so now this homework gap is becoming an education gap-and I worry it can become a long-term opportunity gap if we don’t correct it. And then enter the pandemic, right? We sent millions and millions of kids home. It’s becoming apparent that every student needs this to complete schoolwork now. I started calling where those numbers overlap the “homework gap” because I felt that this portion of the digital divide really needed a phrase or a term to describe it because it’s so important. But FCC data consistently shows that one in three households don’t have broadband at home. I looked at the data and I found that seven in 10 teachers would assign homework that requires internet access. Or kids sitting in fast food restaurants and doing their homework with a side of fries. The more that I talked to teachers, the more I heard the same stories over and over again: Kids sitting in the school parking lot with school laptops they had borrowed late into the evening, trying to peck away at homework because that was the only place they could actually get online.

It’s hard for our teachers to assign homework if we don’t have the confidence that every student has reliable access outside of school.”

But when our students go home at night, not all of them have reliable internet access at home.

We now have these devices we can use in all of our classrooms. And something struck me: I wound up in big cities and in small towns, in urban America and rural America, but I heard the very same things from teachers and administrators no matter where I went: “The E-Rate program is great. When I joined the FCC, I decided that I would visit some schools that were E-Rate beneficiaries when I was traveling for work.

How did you come up with the term “homework gap”?

The homework gap