Educational Equity for Rural Students: Out of the Pandemic, but Still Out of the Loop. A Five-Part Series. Part 2: An Urgent Need to Fix the Digital Divide

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. Researchers report that at least half of public schools are rural in 12 states (i.e., Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Mississippi) (Showalter et al., 2019). Providing quality education to all rural students is a daunting task and needs the support of policy and research. In 2018, the Center for Public Education (CPE) of the National School Boards Association published "Out of the Loop: Rural Schools Are Largely Left out of Research and Policy Discussions, Exacerbating Poverty, Inequity, and Isolation" (ED608842), a comprehensive report on U.S. rural K-12 public education. Today, the data and research presented in the report are about five years old. However, the facts, together with the suggested policies and practices about rural education, are still valid and accurate. After a two-year pandemic, issues related to funding, teacher recruitment and retention, and serving disadvantaged students have become more severe in rural school districts. This five-part series is a data-driven study to inform policymakers, school leaders, educators, and parents. The primary research goal was to examine educational equity for rural students. In Part 2, the report addresses how the persistent digital divide--often referred to as the homework gap--causes underserved rural students to face more challenges and disadvantages (NSBA, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgency of building equal access to internet services in rural areas. To fix the digital divide, we suggest that policymakers look at data about internet accessibility and affordability in rural areas and prioritize specific strategies to close the homework gap caused by the inadequate broadband access of rural students. [For "Educational Equity for Rural Students: Out of the Pandemic, but Still Out of the Loop. A Five-Part Series. Part 1: Growing Diversity of Rural Students," see ED628330.]