Bringing Technology to K-12 Students in Low-Income Areas

CST462S: Race, Gender & Class in the Digital World

E.J. Rollo, Sean DeLacerda, Annie Center

February 23, 2021

 Bringing Technology to K-12 Students in Low-Income Areas

Our topic will explore technology deficiencies for K-12 students in lower-income

areas, identifying the causes of the inequities and what can be done to address them.

One of the key areas we’ll explore, which is fundamental to the issue and has been

exposed during the course of the pandemic, is access to broadband internet. Since

most children across the United States have been forced into remote learning as of

March 2020, the drastic inequities in internet access have had a major impact on

students in low-income areas.

Aside from the fundamental issue of access to broadband Internet, having the

proper equipment to access the internet is another key issue that low-income students

face. Most would agree that even though smartphones are common, they are not

feasible to conduct any long-term work on, especially day to day classwork.

Literature Review

Access to broadband internet has been difficult for two groups in particular, those

that live in rural areas and those in low-income communities, with the two overlapping in

some cases. This paper will focus on the second group, low-income communities and

specifically K-12 students in these communities.

Students from rural areas and lower socioeconomic backgrounds have struggled

to overcome the economic burdens of obtaining reliable internet and a suitable

computer to assist in their educational pursuits outside of the classroom (Hampton,

Fernandez, Robertson, & Bauer, 2018, p. 6). These issues have existed long before the

pandemic began, but they have been exposed even further throughout the course of

this past year. Tackling these issues requires a collaborative approach between the
government and the private sector to address these inequities and bring fair access to

every student, regardless of household income (Kim, Padilla, 2020).

Our review of the literature addressing the gaps in performance between

students with easy access to quality broadband compared with students who rely

exclusively on a cell-phone to access the internet shows that students dependent on a

cell phone perform lower on metrics such as digital skills, homework completion and

overall grade point average (Hampton, Fernandez, Robertson, & Bauer, 2018, p. 6).

This can be attributed to the smaller screens, slower devices, and accessing content

with limited features when compared with using a suitable laptop to perform work

outside of the classroom (Hampton, Fernandez, Robertson, & Bauer, 2018). Students

without access to high-speed internet are also less likely to put any planning into

attending college, further exacerbating the problem (Hampton, Fernandez, Robertson, &

Bauer, 2018).

This discrepancy in high-speed internet access is common in rural areas

throughout the United States where infrastructure is limited (Hampton, Fernandez,

Robertson, & Bauer, 2018). However, the focus of our research will be on the

socioeconomic barriers that low-income and underserved communities face, whether

they are rural or in cities. A study conducted before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

of a Latino community in a mobile home park in Silicon Valley exposes a systemic

problem that requires systematic improvements to eliminate the socioeconomic

disparities and improve student learning along with parental involvement (Kim, Padilla,

2020).
 Kim and Padilla (2020) identify some of the factors contributing to inequities in

their study of a Latino community are income, education, immigration status, and

geography. Government programs have been enacted to address the technology

disparity in underserved schools throughout the United States through President

Obama’s ConnectEd program, which helps deliver high-speed broadband and training

for educators in these schools (Kim, Padilla, 2020). Prioritizing more access to

technology has been identified as a critical fundamental component to addressing

broader social disparities (Coston-Scott, 2019).

Research Question

What can be done to enable low income communities to have access to

computers and broadband internet?

Research Design

● Which subject(s) and grade levels do you teach?

● Approximately what percentage of your students have limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home?

● Before the pandemic, which subjects do you think students with limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home generally struggle with compared to

students that do have access to reliable internet and computers at home?

(please explain how you think this relates to schoolwork)

● What is the minimum amount of technology that you think students need access

to at home in order to be successful in their homework and why? (consider this

question for in-person learning)

 ● What do you think could have been done differently in the years preceding the

pandemic to better prepare students for remote learning and lessen the gap

between successful and unsuccessful students? (If you know of any specific

government or private sector programs please mention them).

● What technology/internet related challenges, if any, do you think students will

face when they return to in-person learning?

● What percentage of homework you assign to students requires them to have a

computer with internet access (not just a smartphone)?

● If your students were provided with free high-speed internet and a laptop to use

at home, do you think this would improve their overall grade point average, and

why?

Interviews will be conducted through Google forms, which will be sent via email

to participating teachers. Our target respondents are teachers from Castle Park High

School in Chula Vista, CA. As with other schools in the Sweetwater Union School

District, these teachers serve students from a wide range of socioeconomic

backgrounds. We chose to focus on high school students since they are nearing the

end of their secondary education and are more likely to be assigned work that requires

the use of the internet. We thought this would give us a clearer picture of how students

perform relative to their access to technology.

Service Organization

We selected a site outside the scope of our service learning sites to provide a

better fit with our research question. The high school is located in Chula Vista, about 6

miles from the U.S. and Mexico border and has a mix of students from different
socio-economic backgrounds, where 72.1% of residents are Hispanic, followed by

14.8% White, and 8.6% Asian (California Demographics, February, 2021).

The school is currently operating via distance learning, and we hope to gain

additional insight from the teachers’ responses regarding student access to

technological resources (Castle Park High School, February, 2021). We also wish to

contrast current access levels with pre-pandemic resources.

The teachers at this school engage with a broad range of students that come

from varying economic backgrounds, which is key to our research, with 10.7% of

residents living in poverty (California Demographics, February, 2021). This allows us to

evaluate the role technology at home plays in students from lower-income families

compared to students from middle-class families and more affluent areas of San Diego.

One of our service-learning sites, Hope United Methodist Church, located in the Rancho

Bernardo community of San Diego, provides that contrast with a median income of

almost twice that of Castle Park High residents, and a poverty rate of only 3.4%

(California Demographics, February, 2021). We anticipate using Hope Church as a

comparison to contrast the findings from our questionnaire administered to Castle Park

High School teachers.

Findings

The most consistent feedback we received from our three interview

questionnaires was that more than fifty percent of students at Castle Park High School

have limited access to the internet and computers at home. Kayla, a psychology

teacher, and Debbie, a history teacher, seemed to agree that more than eighty percent

of their students are handicapped in this area (See appendices). When asked what the
minimum amount of technology student’s need access to at home to be successful,

Kayla responded “Functioning laptop computer and high speed, or even medium speed,

internet. Almost all research is conducted through online journal databases that they'll

need to access. A printer would also be nice. Most students cannot print anything at

home and therefore turning work in by hand places them at the mercy of the library

being opened before school (Kayla M., personal communication, February 5, 2021).”

Each teacher provided different reasons for needing internet access and a

functioning computer at home, but the consensus points to a general dissatisfaction with

student access to these resources. Responses did vary across departments since some

courses require less interaction with technology than others. Arden, an English teacher

and department chair said that between 50-80% of their assignments require internet

access and a non-smartphone device (See Appendix B). We were surprised by the

number of students that do not have access to these resources. He also estimated that

between 20-50% of students do not meet the minimum requirements for access to

technology (See Appendix B). The difference between these figures and the number of

assignments requiring internet access highlights some of the challenges faced by

low-income students these days.

Our questionnaire also touched on what could have been done differently leading

up to the pandemic to ensure students were more prepared to handle at-home learning.

Debbie, a History teacher at Castle Park High stated, “Providing computers and internet

before the pandemic began” (See Appendix C) would have been beneficial to students

outside the scope of the pandemic, because she says “So much of school is finding

information online (Debbie M., personal communication, February 11, 2021) .” Kayla, a
Psychology teacher at Castle Park High, gave very in-depth responses and said that

what these kids need are, “Universal internet for all households, and hot spots for

homeless and foster youth, and a computer for every kid. The Williams Act in CA

requires that schools provide all mandatory texts, uniforms, etc. A computer should be a

part of that as well (Kayla M., personal communication, February 5, 2021).”

Conclusions

Our research question was to discover what can be done to enable low-income

communities to have access to the internet and computers at home. Based on our

findings, the clear theme throughout the responses was that access to technology

outside of school, and in some cases within the school, is a problem that is impacting

students across the board. They acknowledged that the lack of internet access is

impacting their classroom performance since they need to conduct research for certain

classes, such as Psychology, which is almost entirely done online.

One detail that was revealed during the research is how the access is

disproportionately affecting students in the foster system and homeless youth (See

Appendix A). One of our service-learning sites, Hope United Methodist Church, located

in an upper-middle class community in San Diego, operates a preschool on site which

we used to contrast against our findings. In conversations I had with Carrie, my contact

at the Church, she says that “limited access to technology is not something we’ve had

to deal with here at Hope Preschool, or at my children’s school when I volunteered and

worked with High School age students” (Carrie Jaquess, personal communication,

February 19, 2021). Not having to overcome the hurdles of trying to obtain the

necessary technology to complete basic assignments, like students at Castle Park High
School face, allows for students in upper-middle class communities to prioritize and

focus on the schoolwork without distractions.

The research findings were in complete alignment with our topic and research

question. One of our responses directly referenced a government program that should

be amended to address the inequities she sees at her school (See Appendix A). The

Williams Act in California requires that children have basic necessities such as texts and

uniforms, where applicable, but should also provide students with computers and

internet hot spots since they are as essential as texts in modern life (See Appendix A).

The combination of research material and findings corroborates a systemic issue

that exists in American cities all across the country. We could have easily conducted

this research in a low-income community 1000 miles away and still draw the same

conclusions. This illustrates the fact that unfortunately these problems are common in

our society and driven by social and economic inequities. Anyone that is researching

this topic could easily use our research and build on the findings by diving deeper into

the causes of why students in low-income communities do not have access to the

proper technology to excel in school.

Recommendations

The most essential thing that the Sweetwater School system, which represents

Castle Park High, can do for their students is implement district-wide internet hot spots.

There’s no reason that students should have to hang around outdoors, in the dark, to

connect to the school’s wireless internet. There needs to be facilities with accompanying

programs in place where students can feel safe and have access to computers, printers

and high-speed internet to complete their work. The challenge shouldn’t be navigating
the neighborhoods for Wi-Fi, but instead the schoolwork itself should be the challenge.

This is why so many students in low-income areas are at such a disadvantage when

they enter adulthood when compared to their counterparts in more affluent areas.

California should immediately address the issue through the Williams Act and

include provisions to provide basic laptops to all students that need one, along with

subsidizing high-speed internet for students at home. Without these essential elements

every one of these students will enter their adult life at such a disadvantage that it

makes it exponentially more difficult for them to achieve a basic middle-class life. This

isn’t meant to be conveyed as an excuse, but as a reason to change the way students

currently access technology to prepare them for the world they will be entering soon as

adults.

To gather a more complete picture of the problem, more research would need to

be conducted on the racial aspects that drive a lot of the problems we discovered in our

research. We did not conduct any research on demographics in this particular

community, but that would be the first place to start gathering more data. From there,

studies to determine what policies can be initiated or changed to provide a catalyst for

change need to be conducted. We only touched on the surface of the problem by

examining the links and impacts between access to technology and classroom

performance.
 References

Hampton, K. N., Fernandez, L., Robertson, C. T., & Bauer, J. M. (2018, December)

Broadband and

student performance gaps.​ James H. and Mary B. Quello Center, Michigan State

University.​

Retrieved January 24, 2020, from

https://doi.org/10.25335/BZGY-3V91

Kim, C. J. H., Padilla, A. M. (2020) Technology for educational purposes among

low-income Latino

children living in a mobile park in silicon valley: a case study before and during

covid-19. ​Hispanic

Journal of Behavioral Sciences.​ Retrieved January 24, 2020, from

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0739986320959764

Coston-Scott, M. (2019) Diffusion of and access to innovation: the efficacy of

bring-your-

own-device (byod) programs to improve academic achievement of students from

low-income

families. ​A Dissertation Proposal Submitted to the Faculty in the Educational

Leadership Program

of Tift College of Education at Mercer University in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the

 Degree.​ Retrieved January 24, 2020, from

https://mercer.openrepository.com/handle/10898/12361

Castle Park High School. (2021, February). Castle Park High School.

http://cph.sweetwaterschools.org/

California Demographics. (2021, February). 91911 Demographics.

https://www.california-demographics.com/91911-demographics

California Demographics. (2021, February). 92128 Demographics.

https://www.california-demographics.com/92128-demographics
 Appendix

Appendix A

Feedback was obtained from a Google Form questionnaire received from Kayla M., a

teacher at Castle Park High School in Chula Vista, on February 5, 2021.

Which subject(s) and grade levels do you teach?

IB Language A: Language and Literature - Grade 12

AP Psychology - Grades 11 and 12

Psychology - Grades 9-12

Approximately what percentage of your students have limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home?

More than 80%

Before the pandemic, which subjects do you think students with limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home generally struggle with compared to

students that do have access to reliable internet and computers at home? (please

explain how you think this relates to schoolwork)

Any courses that required at home research, specifically English and Social Studies.

Students without internet services would not be able to complete their work at home.

I've had students that would be sitting in front of the school at night to use the schools

WiFi.

What is the minimum amount of technology that you think students need access

to at home in order to be successful in their homework and why? (consider this

question for in-person learning)

Functioning laptop computer and high speed, or even medium speed, internet. Almost

all research is conducted through online journal databases that they'll need to access.

A printer would also be nice. Most students cannot print anything at home and

therefore turning work in by hand places them at the mercy of the library being opened

before school - and hope that the public school library printer isn't broken (hint: it usually

is broken!)

What do you think could have been done differently in the years preceding the

pandemic to better prepare students for remote learning and lessen the gap

between successful and unsuccessful students? (If you know of any specific

government or private sector programs please mention them).

Universal internet for all households, and hot spots for homeless and foster youth, and a

computer for every kid. The Williams Act in CA requires that schools provide all

mandatory texts, uniforms, etc. A computer should be a part of that as well. They need

access to one for almost all their assignments.

What technology/internet related challenges, if any, do you think students will

face when they return to in-person learning?

When the money from the CARES Act disappears and school districts stop funding the

hot spots and the device repairs, students will lose access to both.

What percentage of homework you assign to students requires them to have a

computer with internet access (not just a smartphone)?

Between 50 - 80%
If your students were provided with free high-speed internet and a laptop to use

at home, do you think this would improve their overall grade point average, and

why?

Are we in a global pandemic still, or not? If not, access to both may help increase gpa

because of access. If we are still in a global pandemic, why do we even care about

gpa? Grades are arbitrary determinants of capability. They don't actually show what a

student can do or think. They are standardized and standardized results are almost

never predictive of future success. Additionally, during a pandemic we are grading a

student's access and mental health, not their actual work. Most kids aren't doing well

with either of these things.

 Appendix B

Feedback was obtained from a Google Form questionnaire received from Arden G., a

teacher and English department Chair at Castle Park High School in Chula Vista, on

February 8, 2021.

Which subject(s) and grade levels do you teach?

English 9 & 11.

Approximately what percentage of your students have limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home?

Between 20%-50%

Before the pandemic, which subjects do you think students with limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home generally struggle with compared to

students that do have access to reliable internet and computers at home? (please

explain how you think this relates to schoolwork)

None specifically - it would affect particular assignments but not one class entirely.

What is the minimum amount of technology that you think students need access

to at home in order to be successful in their homework and why? (consider this

question for in-person learning)

A reliable computer (to type!) and reliable internet for research/any other tech tools.

What do you think could have been done differently in the years preceding the

pandemic to better prepare students for remote learning and lessen the gap

between successful and unsuccessful students? (If you know of any specific

government or private sector programs please mention them).

District issued hotspots have always been accessible.

What technology/internet related challenges, if any, do you think students will

face when they return to in-person learning?

Not many now.

What percentage of homework you assign to students requires them to have a

computer with internet access (not just a smartphone)?

Between 50%-80%.

If your students were provided with free high-speed internet and a laptop to use

at home, do you think this would improve their overall grade point average, and

why?

Yes because I think students easily give up when confronted with tech issues. We all

know how frustrating it can be and it’s an easy excuse when trying to execute a task

that is already difficult.

 Appendix C

Feedback was obtained from a Google Form questionnaire received from Debbie M., a

teacher at Castle Park High School in Chula Vista, on February 11, 2021.

Which subject(s) and grade levels do you teach?

History.

Approximately what percentage of your students have limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home?

More than 80%.

Before the pandemic, which subjects do you think students with limited access to

broadband internet and computers at home generally struggle with compared to

students that do have access to reliable internet and computers at home? (please

explain how you think this relates to schoolwork)

Looking up information needed to complete homework.

What is the minimum amount of technology that you think students need access

to at home in order to be successful in their homework and why? (consider this

question for in-person learning)

Computer and fast internet.

What do you think could have been done differently in the years preceding the

pandemic to better prepare students for remote learning and lessen the gap

between successful and unsuccessful students? (If you know of any specific

government or private sector programs please mention them).

Providing computers and internet before the pandemic began. So much of school is

finding information online. They've needed these services for a looooong time.
What technology/internet related challenges, if any, do you think students will

face when they return to in-person learning?

Using a text book may seem challenging. Learning to work with paper again may seem

challenging If the school stops supporting the internet and computers students will once

again be left lacking.

What percentage of homework you assign to students requires them to have a

computer with internet access (not just a smartphone)?

More than 80%.

If your students were provided with free high-speed internet and a laptop to use

at home, do you think this would improve their overall grade point average, and

why?

Yes. But FREE is the important word here. Students need access to online databases

that they can only access they have the internet and if it is free.