How States and Districts Can Close the Digital Divide To Increase College and Career Readiness

Across the country, educators are finding innovative ways to integrate technology into their curricula, allowing students to develop apps, speak with astronauts aboard the International Space Station, and create and publish e-books. These types of opportunities are increasingly important aspects of a well-rounded education as technology advances and becomes more critical to the workforce. Yet they are not available to all students. Students from marginalized communities often don’t have the chance to engage with technology in meaningful ways. Instead, they are limited to, at most, using technology to complete digital worksheets, watch videos, or email their teachers. These passive uses of technology lack rigor and present little opportunity for students to further develop their digital skills—those necessary to use digital tools and technologies to work, learn, and interact—or to be exposed to new creative and productive uses of technology. Sometimes this divide stems from a lack of access to devices, but even students who have access often lack the adequate knowledge to utilize devices, and their teachers are typically not adequately trained to embed technology into their curricula in meaningful ways. This gap in educational technology (ed tech) is commonly referred to as the digital divide.

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