I was thinking about this too, all the kids with special needs that aren’t getting all the services they need.
and of course the differences in resources. every time I download and print all these packets I keep thinking about the family without high speed internet or a printer, not to mention childcare needs as parents need to keep working. I’m fortunate we can work from home, as much as I grumble about it. I can’t imagine what we’d have to deal with if that weren’t possible.
I think the lack of computers is a bigger issue.
Comcast has stepped up in and is offering 25mbps internet for free for 3 months to all low-income families. If you live in a region that is covered by Comcast, you can get free broadband from them. That has really help out low income families in Eastern Massachusetts. Just last month school systems were saying online classes were not an option due to the lack of internet. That's no longer the case.
Also, I was happy to hear that Boston Public Schools are providing Chromebooks to all students who don't have consistent access to a computer at home.
Yes there is still inequality, but at least we are trying to address the issues.
When it comes to online learning for students, I'm more worried about rural America. Much Rural America does not have access to high speed internet.
Even in Western Massachusetts, which is by no means as rural other areas in this Country do struggle with this. A little over half the towns don't have Cell service in most areas, Cable TV does not Exist. DSL exist for some but not everyone. Where my mom lives there is no DSL, no cable. Other than dial up, the only option for internet is via Satellite services like HughesNet. They are very expensive, and have data caps. Up until a couple years ago, the data caps were similar to mobile. $120 a month internet plan gave you 10GB for the month. That 10 GB was a hard limit, and they essentially shut you off once you exceeded it by throttling you to 56k speeds. Data caps are now 50GB a month. But by no means can you use zoom on that. My mom already exceeded it in less than 1 week working from home. Thankfully after being turned off for a couple days she has it back because HughesNet has decided not to enforce the data caps at this time. Their notice to customers basically read that due to COVID-19 many people are working from home or taking online classes. Data usage is way up and we want to ensure everyone is able to stay at home and remain safe. The slow data caused by people exceeding their data caps is clogging the network and therefor we have temporarily stopped enforcing the data caps to allow for data to flow as fast as possible. My read on that is most of their customer base probably exceeded their data caps and all that throttled data essentially made the system slow to crawl..
There has been a decade longs initutie to get broadband too these towns in Western Massachusetts. Comcast and Verizon will not do it because based on the population density they have made the decision that it would not be profitable. They will only bring access if someone pays for it. Either the town or potential customer.
6 years ago there was a vote that passed, towns would pay half the amount to bring broadband access, the other half would come from federal funds. However, our Governor is holding the federal funds and not releasing it. He says the money could be put to far better use. It doesn't make financial sense to pay for broadband access and feels it should be left in the hands of the private businesses.