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The Homework Gap and Libraries

Submitted on November 30, 2016

A newspaper picture shows three children standing across from their school, downloading homework onto their smartphones. McAllen, Texas, their home town, has a 35 percent poverty rate. Many families are unable to afford home broadband services because of their limited incomes. The children in these families are squarely in a “homework gap”: their teachers expect them to have Internet access and assign homework that relies on it. The children are left looking for Wi-Fi bleeding through school and library walls so they can access their school materials.

Even as policymakers and technology companies laud the transformations broadband enables in education, when it comes to accessing the Internet to distribute homework and grades, to collect and grade assignments, and toof its statewide school and library network (Maine School and Library Network), the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) that provides schoolchildren with an Internet-compatible device (like a laptop), and an experimental program of hotspot lending.

Under the leadership of then-Governor (now Senator) Angus King (I-ME), Maine was one of the first states to pursue a vision to provide all seventh-grade students and teachers with an Internet-ready device, technical support, and curriculum help, and to subsidize an Internet connection to households. While the home Internet access plan ran out of funding, the device and tech support program has been operating since 2002. The program reduced technological inequities across the state(1) and inspired other state-funded programs in Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Dakota.

Maine is currently testing a hotspot lending program in Washington