Tony Bates reviews How one city closed the digital divide for nearly all its students from The Hechinger Report April 14. In a nutshell: in Oakland, California, only 12 percent of low-income students, and 25 percent of all students, had proper internet access. "Two years into the pandemic, Oakland has been able to connect 98 percent of the students in the district." The mechanism was "a public-private partnership called #OaklandUndivided that included the school district, the Mayor's office, the nonprofit Tech Exchange, Oakland Promise and other community-based organizations." Bates notes that the problem of internet access extends well beyond schools. He also notes that "the Oakland School District is not a rich jurisdiction." But in this, as in most such cases, it's a matter of institutional will. The city made it a priority, and that's how it got done.
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