TOPEKA — It doesn’t take a lightning-quick internet connection to theorize income, education and geographic disparities underly Kansas’ digital divide.

But the nonprofit and nonpartisan Kansas Health Institute’s latest research demonstrated with online county-by-county maps that broadband deficits and computer ownership gaps plaguing Kansas were intertwined with social and demographic influences.

Thirty-one percent of low-income Kansas households making less than $20,000 annually didn’t have high-speed connections, KHI said. However, 4.5% of Kansas households earning more than $75,000 were in the same predicament in terms of broadband access.

Kaci Cink, an analyst with KHI, said Kansas families able to tie into reliable broadband were able to more efficiently download, browse and stream contents of the internet. KHI said the rise of a global digital economy and the lack of high-speed communication options continued to undermine Kansans relative to employment, education and health care.

“Kansans use broadband to engage with health care providers and access health-related information, so not having connectivity can create barriers to health,” Cink said. “And we are seeing this among populations that may need health care services the most.”

KHI said one in 20 or 5.8% of Kansas households didn’t have a computer, smartphone or tablet. But Kansans with a bachelor’s degree in college where eight times more likely to have a computer than Kansans who didn’t earn a high school diploma.

Of Kansans age 65 or older, one in 10 or 11.8% didn’t have a computer to access the web. KHI said one in 10 Kansas households, or 12%, lacked broadband service.

KHI developed an to provide an overview of computer ownership and broadband availability in each of the state’s 105 counties. The dashboard, based on 2022 information from the U.S. Census Bureau, provided breakdowns by age, race, ethnicity, employment, education and income.

For example, it revealed gaps among counties in terms of the percentage of households without a computer. A sample: Riley, 2.4%; Johnson, 2.8%; Sedgwick, 4.9%; Shawnee, 7.6%; as well as Jewell, 15.7%; Lincoln, 14.3%; Marshall and Neosho, 12%; Gove, 10.2%; and Wallace, 10%.

The dashboard chronicled county-by-county differences in broadband availability. The percentage without high-speed internet: Johnson, 5%; Riley, 9.5%; Sedgwick, 10.7%; Shawnee, 17.2%; as well as Lincoln, 26.2%; Gove, 24.2%; Jewell, 22.8%; Neosho, 19.6%; Marshall, 16.9%; and Wallace, 11.8%.

The challenge of responding to the state’s technological divide has been more difficult in rural communities due to insufficient infrastructure that elevated the cost of adding high-speed internet service.

Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, said delivering broadband to rural communities was “critically important for those communities to thrive.”

To work toward closing the gap, the federal Affordable Connectivity Program operated from Dec. 31, 2021, to June 1. That program reduced the nation’s internet connectivity deficit by providing 23 million households with discounts on broadband services and computer purchases. An attempt to extend the federal initiative has been introduced in Congress, but not passed.

In 2023, Gov. Laura Kelly said Kansas received $452 million that would be dedicated to the program to expand broadband infrastructure in Kansas.

It followed the state’s 2020 commitment to provide $85 million over 10 years to the Broadband Acceleration Grant for benefit of Kansas communities, especially in economically distressed regions.

In July, Kelly said acceleration grants of $10 million were awarded to a dozen internet providers, and that investment would be paired with $12.7 million in matching funds, for benefit of 14 rural Kansas counties.

“Broadband drives innovation, unlocks potential and ensures everyone can participate in services essential for economic, educational and industrial growth,” Kelly said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

Rural Alaska schools despite Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a multipart education bill this week.

Early Thursday morning, the Alaska House of Representatives voted 36-4 to advance , which offers rural schools as much as $39.4 million in state aid to match federal dollars intended to improve their internet service.

Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham and the leading House lawmaker behind the bill, said he expects the Senate to take it up speedily and said the governor’s office has told him that Dunleavy is inclined to allow it to become law.

Legislators must act quickly: March 27 is the final federal deadline for rural school districts to apply for funding that pays for nine in every 10 dollars of their internet bills.

If districts miss that deadline, they won’t be able to reapply until next year.

Currently, the districts are limited to speeds of 25 megabits per second, slow enough that it no longer qualifies as “broadband” under published by the Federal Communications Commission last week.

HB 193 provides a state match for federal funding that pays for speeds of up to 100 mbps.

“No. 1, we don’t have much time left. We have seven days until there’s an absolutely hard stop,” Edgmon said late Wednesday night.

Last year, 151 schools benefited from the program, but many have said that the current limits on bandwidth and speed are too low for modern use.

“We’re in an era when schools are relying more and more on better internet speeds for everything from teleconferencing to taking tests … it’s become an essential service,” Edgmon said.

Rep. Thomas Baker, R-Kotzebue, said that in some of the schools he represents, it might take 15 minutes to open a Wikipedia page, and that some administrators have to cut internet to parts of their school building to ensure that there’s enough bandwidth for other students.

Rep. Alyse Galvin, I-Anchorage, urged lawmakers to support the bill, citing public testimony that showed it took some students four days to take an online test because of inadequate internet. Students in Anchorage could complete the test in a single day, she said.

“If we’re going to have a system of public education, then we need to make sure this gets leveled out,” she said.

Funding for the improved internet program had been included in Senate Bill 140, comprehensive education legislation that passed the House and Senate in February, but Dunleavy vetoed the bill and on Monday, lawmakers failed by a single vote to override the veto.

House Rules Committee Chair Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, said the push to get HB 193 through the House late Wednesday and early Thursday was at least partially attributable to the Alaska Beacon’s reporting on the issue.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

, the latest in a series of 10 research reports on rural education, shows that roughly 9.5 million students attend public schools in rural areas — more than 1 in 5 nationally. Nearly 1 in 7 of those rural students experience poverty, 1 in 15 lacks health insurance and 1 in 10 has changed residence in the previous 12 months.

Roughly half of all rural students live in just 10 states. Texas has the largest number, followed by North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Virginia and Michigan. Texas has more rural students than the 18 states with the fewest combined.

In 13 states, at least half of public schools are rural: South Dakota, Montana, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Mississippi and Iowa. In 14 other states, at least one-third of all schools are rural. 

More key findings from this edition of Why Rural Matters:

• More access to psychologists and guidance counselors is needed. In non-rural districts, there are an average of 295 students per guidance counselor or psychologist. In rural districts, the ratio increases to 310:1, with seven states (Minnesota, California, Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana, Indiana and Michigan) having ratios worse than 400:1. 

• More access to gifted and talented programs is needed for Black and Hispanic students in rural districts. Though 17% of students in rural schools identify as Hispanic, they represent only 9% of participants in these schools’ gifted programs. Similarly, 11% of the rural school population identifies as Black, but only 5% of the gifted student population in rural schools is Black. In contrast, 65% of rural students are white, as are 77% of participants in gifted programs. 

• Rural areas appear to offset some of the impact of poverty on educational outcomes. Overall, students experiencing poverty scored 27 points lower than their peers on the grade 8 NAEP math assessment and 22 points lower in reading; in rural schools, these differences were 22 and 18, respectively. Socioeconomic equity in reading appeared to be highest within rural schools in Arizona, Idaho, Texas and Oklahoma, and most concerning in Illinois, Mississippi and Virginia. For math, the most equitable states were Hawaii, Arizona, West Virginia and Oklahoma; the least equitable states were Colorado and Louisiana.

• Many rural areas continue to lack basic internet access. The pandemic made clear that adequate internet connectivity is essential to equitable education opportunities. However, 13% of rural households lack minimum broadband connection for streaming educational videos or engaging with virtual classrooms. In six states, more than 1 in 6 rural households doesn’t have at least a basic broadband connection: New Mexico (21.4%), Mississippi (20.6%), Alabama (18.9%), West Virginia (17.5%), Arkansas (17.4%) and Louisiana (17.2%). 

• Students in rural districts are more likely to graduate high school than their non-rural counterparts. In the majority of states with enough rural students to make data available, (34 of 46), rural students graduate at rates higher than their non-rural peers. Despite facing a range of spatial inequities, the unique strengths of rural areas —such as smaller schools and close community ties — combined to create graduation advantages of at least 5 percentage points in Nebraska, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island.  

• Many states provide a disproportionately larger share of school funding for rural districts because of the higher relative costs of running rural schools. Fourteen states, however, devote disproportionately less: Nebraska has the greatest disparity, followed by Vermont, Rhode Island, Iowa, Delaware, South Dakota, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota. 

• Rural school districts in Delaware, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Nevada are the most racially diverse in the United States. In these states, two students chosen at random from a school in a rural district are more likely than not to be of a different race or ethnicity. 

• Communities surrounding schools in rural districts on average have a household income of nearly three times the poverty line. Rates were lowest in New Mexico (1.85) and highest in Connecticut (5.32).

As post-pandemic recovery continues, states and local districts must reevaluate what it means to provide a public education that meets student and family needs and prepares young people for life beyond pre-K-12 schooling (including college and career readiness and engaged citizenship). These challenges are widespread but are most intense in the Southeast, Southwest and Appalachia. What is needed is the will to address them.

The results published in Why Rural Matters 2023 make clear that policymakers cannot ignore the difficulties faced by rural schools and the students they serve.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona made stops in Kansas and Missouri Tuesday as part of a multi-state tour, labeling internet access “the new pencil” as he discussed the government’s efforts to expand broadband connectivity.

During events in Overland Park, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, Cardona discussed a program that subsidizes internet access and community engagement. While speaking to superintendents and education leaders in Kansas, he declared lack of access the “equity issue of our moment.”

“This president is going to put the digital divide in your rearview mirror, and not just through talk but through action,” he said.

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The Kansas City leg of the tour began at the central resource branch of the Johnson County Library in Overland Park, Kansas, where Cardona was joined by Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

The pair crashed a meeting where teachers were learning about the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program, a benefit providing up to $30 per month for qualifying households to pay their internet bills and a one-time $100 discount to purchase a device.

“In order for students to achieve at high levels, (internet access) is a necessity,” Cardona told educators.

The FCC tracks internet connectivity nationwide and maps where residents have access to various speeds of broadband connections. shows five spots in Missouri and 10 spots in Kansas where residents have no access to the internet. The spots appear to be the size of some of Missouri’s smallest towns.

There are many areas throughout both Missouri and Kansas where less than 20% of residents have broadband access.

Rosenworcel said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress in 2021 should also address this issue, with money earmarked for states to use on their needs.

“We’re now committed to building this infrastructure everywhere as a result of (the Bipartisan Infrastructure) law,” she told reporters after the Overland Park event.

To discuss the “digital divide,” Cardona and Rosenworcel spoke to school superintendents and education leaders from corporate and nonprofit companies.

The superintendents represented some of Kansas’ largest school districts, all speaking of connectivity initiatives.

Michelle Hubbard, superintendent of the Shawnee Mission School District, said her school district sent a questionnaire to students, and 93% responded that they had internet access.

“That is just not true outside of where we sit right now,” Hubbard said, alluding to the wealth in the surrounding community.

Blue Valley School District Superintendent Tonya Merrigan said her district’s counselors and social workers are trained to ask about student’s internet connectivity because some families were too “afraid” or “embarrassed” to ask for help.

Local programs are reaching out to families about the federal program, said Kansas City Digital Drive managing director Aaron Deacon.

Rosenworcel hopes that communication from community partners will help form trust around the Affordable Connectivity Program to reach those who may not otherwise sign up for the federal program.

“We know when people hear about it locally from teachers, from their principals, from somebody who runs an institution in their own backyard, they’re more likely to trust it and sign up,” she said to reporters.

Effective communication with families was the focus of the secretary’s stop in northeast Kansas City where he chatted in a gathering at the Mattie Rhodes Center, a community center with a multicultural focus.

Cardona walked off his tour bus and into the center’s parking lot for a series of photo opportunities and informal meetings. He head-butted a soccer ball with teenage musicians and ate paletas with U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver before sitting down with parents.

Cleaver and Missouri’s Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven joined him at the table with parents.

Cardona said the parents’ concerns ranged from their children’s safety to their desire for their kids to be challenged in the classroom.

“We need to support our public schools; we need to support our parents, our educators,” he said. “Ultimately, all that goes to our students.”

Talking to reporters, he referenced part of the proverb “it takes a village,” as he pointed toward the gathering of kids, parents and educators in the Mattie Rhodes parking lot.

Cardona’s bus tour, named “Raise the Bar,” is titled after his desire to raise student achievement, he said.

“Our students should be leading the world right now,” he said. “We rank somewhere in the 30s compared to other countries. That’s unacceptable.”

The United States’ ranked 21st in the latest (2018) ​​Programme for International Student Assessment, a global test of student achievement.

Cardona is scheduled to make stops in St. Louis as he continues to Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

Pennsylvania is set to receive the first installment of federal funding to improve and expand broadband internet access across the commonwealth, Gov. Tom Wolf said last week.

State and federal officials joined Wolf in the Governor’s Reception room of the state Capitol on Thursday to announce that $6.6 million from President Joe Biden’s “Internet for All” initiative is on its way to Pennsylvania.

The federal infusion is the first installment of more than $100 million Pennsylvania is set to receive for projects that expand and improve high-speed internet access in urban and rural areas of the commonwealth.

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“We really need to do a good job of making sure every corner of Pennsylvania is connected in a robust way to the internet,” Wolf, who leaves office in January, said. “This $6.6 million is the beginning of a generational change waiting for Pennsylvanians.”

The funds, and broadband projects statewide, are overseen by the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority, created by Wolf in 2021 as a independent agency of the Department of Community and Economic Development.

In mid-November, the authority released its for spending the money to expand broadband access in Pennsylvania.

“With guidance from the Pennsylvania Broadband Authority, distribution will be carefully targeted for guaranteed progress,” Wolf said.

Wolf said that the lack of affordable and accessible broadband is hindering Pennsylvania’s economic growth.

“The lack of consistent, affordable, quality statewide broadband keeps children from learning. It keeps businesses from growing, it keeps the job market for workers much more limited than it should be, and it reduces medical care options for all of us,” Wolf said. “It’s one of the biggest challenges holding Pennsylvania’s economy back right now.”

Western Beaver County School District and Blackhawk School District Superintendent Dr. Rob Postupac echoed Wolf’s comments, adding that “families living without broadband face significant barriers in educational opportunities, employment opportunities and access to basic needs such as healthcare through telemedicine.”

“For too long now, those in our rural communities have had to live in digital darkness,” Postupac said. “The time has come to tackle this issue.”

Earlier this week, the Wolf administration’s broadband authority asked Pennsylvanians to review Federal Communications Commission (FCC) maps, which are used in accessibility and infrastructure projects, for accuracy before they are finalized in mid-January.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John Micek for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on and .

The report, released today by the National Center for Education Statistics, compiles data collected from the 2020-21 National Teacher and Principal Survey. Conducted annually as a series of questionnaires, the survey offers a comprehensive review of schooling in America. Some 76,000 teachers and nearly 13,000 principals were included in the sample for the “first-look” study on teaching and learning conditions during the tumultuous spring of 2020. 

The report’s most striking findings highlight the gap in home internet connectivity between students enrolled in different kinds of schools. While 58 percent of private school principals reported that all of their students had access to the internet at home during this period, only 4 percent of public school principals could say the same.

The flipside of that disparity was no less stark: At the same moment that schools were closing and classes migrating to Zoom and other online platforms, 61 percent of public school principals said they’d sent wireless hotspots home with students, compared with just 9 percent of private school principals. 

In a statement accompanying the release, NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr commended the “extraordinary efforts” of school leaders to bring virtual learning opportunities to their students.

“Many principals sent hotspots and other devices to students’ homes, worked directly with internet providers, or offered spaces where students could safely access free Wi-Fi so that students had the opportunity to learn in this unprecedented time,” Carr said.

But in spite of the massive effort expended to ease the switch to online learning, the technological divide seems to have been reflected in the early weeks of COVID-era instruction. Although a slightly larger percentage of public school faculty told pollsters that their schools had transitioned to distance-learning formats (77 percent, vs. 73 percent of private school teachers), they were only about half as likely — 32 percent vs. 61 percent — to report having real-time interactions with over three-quarters of their students in the spring of 2020. 

While 9 percent of private school teachers said they had no such interactions during that time, 13 percent of public school teachers did.

Geographic distinctions were also clear in the data. Among public school teachers, those employed in urban and suburban areas were comparatively more likely (86 percent and 87 percent, respectively) to say that all or some of their classes had moved online that spring than those teaching in towns or rural areas (75 percent and 77 percent, respectively).

While about half of city and suburban principals said they’d worked with internet providers to offer more home internet access to families, just 42 percent of principals in towns and 36 percent of those in rural areas agreed.

Other key takeaways from the report:

• Private school teachers were also significantly more likely to agree, either “slightly” or “strongly,” that they had access to the resources necessary to be effective in their teaching (76 percent, vs. only 61 percent of public school teachers). 
• More than twice as many private school teachers “strongly” agreed with that claim than public school teachers (37 percent vs. 17 percent).
• Interaction gaps were also apparent between teachers at charter schools vs. those at traditional public schools. In the first few months of the pandemic, 55 percent of charter school teachers said they taught real-time lessons to students who could participate through video or audio interaction; only 46 percent of district teachers said the same. 
• Charter school teachers were also somewhat more likely to report holding scheduled sessions with groups of students, offering one-on-one sessions, and convening office hours than were district school faculty.