0.2 Newell, p. (march 2010). technology disconnected: teacher  (Page 5/10)

We have a long way to go, but there is no better place to start than in our schools. While our workplaces are moving swiftly into the information age, our classrooms are not keeping pace. Today, millions of children have more contact with technology in an afternoon at the video arcade that they do all year in school. We need to change that. We need companies to develop software that is as exciting to learn from as video games like Mortal Kombat are to play. We need schools equipped with the right technology.

If we fail to ensure that all our children are technological literate, our nation will be poorer economically and spiritually. We will allow our nation to face a new divide—the divide between those children who have access to technology and those who never have (Cassidy, 2004).

This Open Letter reaffirmed three of the four goals of his earlier Executive Order, dropping any mention of the need to provide teachers resources for professional development opportunities to assure they could use and teach with information technology. The following year in his 1996 State of the Union address, President Clinton announced his goal of connecting every classroom and library to the Internet by the turn of the century. Clinton credited the creation of the program to Gore, who championed the idea (Rosenbaum, 1999).

Funding issues

Funding for these Internet connections would be expensive, and raising taxes to complete this program would have created significant problems for all politicians who wanted to be seen as promoting education but also wanted to avoid creating new taxes on their constituents. The solution to this dilemma was the E-Rate (formally the “Educational Connection Rate”) program that would provide the funds to wire educational institutions to the Internet. Established with bipartisan support in Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the E-Rate program provided for a 20- to 90-percent discount on telecommunications services, Internet access, and internal network connections for schools and libraries. Funding for the E-Rate program came from long-distance telecommunications provider fees and provided a significant amount of money from outside the education budget to provide Internet connections to schools. With the backing of the Clinton administration, the Federal Communications Commission used the E-Rate funds to funnel more than $2.25 billion in 1999 to help more than 1 million classrooms and libraries across the country gain access to the Internet (Torry, 2000). The E-rate funding commitment in 1998 totaled almost $1.7 billion with about $1.1 billion going to urban schools, $183 million going to rural areas, and the balance to suburban schools. According to FCC documentation, 32,000 applied for 1999 e-rate funding (Bolt&Crawford, 2000).

The E-Rate funds quickly became a political issue as other Federal and State budget items were eliminated. During a time when a tight lid on other spending was imposed, the E-Rate funding was increased (Rosenbaum, 1999). Since the E-Rate money had the (seemingly unassailable) political objective of furthering educational goals and promoting educational equity, the program was structured to allow rural and poorer schools to qualify for larger discounts than wealthier schools. However, the discounts allowed wealthier schools, many of which were already connected to the Internet, to shift funds away from telecommunications bills and redirect them toward buying more computers and technology for students (further widening the digital divide) (Torry, 2000). While intended to assure that all students gained access to the Internet, critics cited that E-Rate funds exacerbated the digital divide since wealthier schools (which had the staff and ability to apply for the E-Rate funding) received the newest and fanciest technology while it took poorer schools and districts much longer to receive Internet connections and computers (Editorial, 2000).