In spring 2022, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology (OET) committed to advancing digital equity through the Digital Equity Education Roundtables (DEER) Initiative. Through DEER, OET hosted a series of national conversations with leaders from community-based organizations, as well as families and learners furthest…

When COVID-19 first disrupted the routines and traditions that constitute school, many teachers grappled for the first time with online instruction, often with little experience or support. The experience of the past months has demonstrated that those who could transition seamlessly to online or hybrid models were already delivering authentic,…

Demographic studies (Nakamura, 2002) on internet usage often emphasize the position African Americans have as consumers of internet content. Studies (Eastin, 2015; Katz & Rice, 2003; Nakamura, 2002) addressing topics such as internet access, race, and the "digital divide" fail to measure digital production and suggest that…

Our country has a digital equity crisis, with many socioeconomically disadvantaged students disproportionately experiencing significant negative consequences from the digital divide. This program evaluation sought to investigate whether the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools (VILS) grant program decreases the consequences of the digital divide…

California has begun moving toward a "cradle to career" approach that connects early childhood, K-12, and higher education more closely. But COVID-19 has disrupted learning, funding, and progress toward improving student outcomes and has exacerbated racial and economic equity gaps. This publication is part of a briefing kit that focuses…

How do we ensure that all students have the tools and resources they need to succeed in today's educational context? In this article, we explore how the right to education generally and to specific educational tools and resources in California have been protected through litigation in the past; how the COVID-19 pandemic revealed technology-based…

Higher education systems and institutions are often viewed as resistant to change or slow to adapt, particularly by advocates and communities urging equity-minded reform of colleges and universities. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic jolted California's colleges and universities into drastically changing course to meet students' basic, mental, and…

Digital inclusion is key to a better and fairer economic future where every Californian can thrive. But social and physical distancing requirements necessitated by the pandemic have shined a spotlight on the dramatic digital divide facing California's workers, as well as the inequities of that divide. It's time for policies to change so that every…

The COVID-19 pandemic began in the late months of 2019, and by the spring of 2020, to limit transmission of the virus, schools across the globe closed and transitioned to emergency online teaching. While the move to online teaching and learning was inevitable, many learners, especially in rural and remote areas, found that online schooling had…

This article shows how the adoption of technology may serve as a catalyst for deeper, systemic reforms. This article shares a local case of organizational learning in which a midsize California urban school district faithfully acted on a technology goal nested in its strategic plan. Through this experience, the school district demonstrated various…

In April 2021, New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) and the Philanthropication thru Privatization Project (PtP) released a joint proposal that the federal government should invest a substantial portion of the windfall proceeds from future auctions of public airwaves (spectrum) to seed a new Digital Equity Foundation dedicated to…

This brief combines original research and policy analysis to examine a key issue that is often overlooked in debates about the proliferation of new technologies, education, and equity: the potential for digital media investments to support a promising learning pathway for children in our nation's increasingly diverse, low-income families. A…

To understand the digital divide as a matter of social justice, I identify access to computational fluency as a civil rights issue. "Access" refers to material as well as social resources, including meaningful learning opportunities that create the conditions for urban youth to engage in computational thinking. In this article, I explore…

This qualitative study analyzes how an urban schoolteacher guided her 19 tenth grade Latina and African American young women in developing positive self-concepts as expressed through the implementation of design thinking processes. This work examines how young women who had limited access to digital media negotiated their identities as they…

A complex view of the socioeconomic digital divide in urban schools requires us to address not only the gaps in access to technology, but also inequities in access to human support, digital content, and "effective pedagogical" approaches to technology integration. This study explored the use of social networking site (SNS) as a platform…