Our friends at the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) just published new and important research that shows that the gobs of federal tax dollars spent in Florida making sure that every school at every grade level had full Internet access “had minimal impact” on school performance.
Legislators, in Minnesota and states across the country where their schools are struggling, need to awaken to the reality that what really works is placing a really good teacher in every classroom in every grade.
Not broadband. Not a librarian.
A good teacher. In every class. In every grade.
From the TPI report:
Studies exploring the relationship between technology in the classroom and students’ outcomes have yielded mixed results. We contribute to the debate by examining the effects of broadband subsidies to schools on school performance measures in Florida. Specifically, using a nearly universal panel of Florida schools in the period 2016-2019, we assess the effect of federal broadband subsidies to schools via the E-Rate program on school grades. We build on previous studies by separating subsidies into support for internet access and support for internal connections as well as examining performance across subject matter and school levels. Our results suggest that the relationship between broadband subsidies and school performance is minuscule at best.
You can read the full TPI broadband report here.