Election Series | Rural broadband access and educational challenges during COVID-19 by Megan K. Rauch Griffard

This is the fifth contribution in the AJE Forum Election Issues series. Together, these pieces will introduce and analyze relevant issues in education policy and politics that will shape the 2020 Presidential election including the politics of school choice, Black Lives Matter and social justice, reopening schools during a pandemic, prioritizing funding for students with disabilities, urban-rural broadband access gap, and student loans for higher education.

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic reached U.S. shores, scholars considered how disasters of all kinds have more negative and longer-lasting consequences for vulnerable populations, including children, rural populations, and minoritized communities. Evidence of this bleak reality has been made abundantly clear as the pandemic marches into its eleventh month. Schools have been on the frontlines of this crisis in countless ways. From an academic perspective, school leaders and teachers have worked tirelessly to keep students on track as best they can, often relying on weak or absent technology resources to do their jobs. Even as schools reopen, school facilities are ill-equipped to handle the demands of remote and hybrid learning environments.

Earlier this year, when states and school districts transitioned to remote instruction, rural communities, in particular, faced additional challenges with online learning, as residents in these regions were forced to rely on uneven, slow internet access. This experience highlights a much larger problem: the overall broadband access gap in rural America. While both presidential candidates have made promises to improve rural Americans’ lives, this issue, which affects the everyday lives of rural Americans far beyond the context of the pandemic, has been largely absent as a policy issue. However, it should not be, especially as a second wave of the virus is already causing shutdowns in Europe. For the next president, addressing the rural broadband access gap could be an important first step in improving many of the social, educational, and economic challenges rural communities face.

An overview of the urban-rural broadband gap

The most reliable and most widely used form of internet access—broadband—is also the least likely to be available in rural areas. A report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that more than 21 million Americans lack access to broadband internet, although some experts speculate the real number may actually be much higher (Ali & Duemmel, 2019; FCC, 2020). Without dependable internet, virtual learning becomes increasingly difficult in rural communities. A 2020 report from the Brookings Institute found that rural districts were less likely to provide students with wireless hotspots or devices to access school materials remotely—two solutions that worked well in urban school districts where many low-income students also lacked internet access at home (Opalka et al., 2020).

Prior research suggests that the short-term solutions local schools and districts provide are not sustainable. Echoes of this reality are present in my own work. Following Hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Florence (2018), storms that brought successive 500-year floods to parts of rural eastern North Carolina, I worked on a team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a National Science Foundation-sponsored study to investigate how rural schools and districts addressed the disruptions to schooling these disasters created. (Griffard et al., 2020). We learned that teachers implemented creative measures to support student learning while schools were closed for prolonged periods of time. Some teachers left packets at the local library for parents to pick up, others relied on social media to stay in touch with students, and a handful of others offered half-day lessons in local community spaces, such as church halls and fire stations (The latter of these is certainly not a viable option during a global health crisis). Our preliminary results showed that keeping students from falling behind was a major motivator for providing these extra resources during closure, but teachers and administrators also wanted to provide routine and emotional support to students.

A team of researchers at Brookings lauds the creative efforts in rural areas to reach students and families, including purchasing cellular data for students and setting up hotspots in outdoor spaces during COVID (Opalka et al., 2020). However, such measures may establish a dangerous precedent for educators. More than 80 percent of the 3,100 teachers we surveyed said they had concerns about their own mental health and burnout after the storm, and 94 percent expressed concern about their colleagues’ well-being (Griffard et al., 2020). Our research suggests that while teachers often go above and beyond the call of duty in crisis times, these added stressors can have real implications for teachers’ emotional health. Given the panoply of preliminary evidence showing how the pandemic has created new and unforeseen obstacles for teachers, those working in rural areas should not have to bear the additional burden of providing internet to students.

Efforts to address the urban-rural broadband access gap

Efforts to expand rural internet access to support student learning during the pandemic have been weak across the board. At the local and state level, as the Brookings researchers observe, most states have failed to make substantial progress close broadband gaps or even to help school districts provide devices and hotspots to students in need (Opalka et al., 2020). At the federal level, some non-profits have pushed Congress to include an internet access subsidy in the next round of COVID-19 relief funding, although this bill remains in a stalemate (Khazan, 2020). 

Earlier this summer, President Trump invested $86 million to expand broadband internet access in rural areas (USDA, 2020). However, this package was quite small in comparison to the size of the need, as only 17,000 people and businesses received funding. Nevertheless, rural voters are more likely to be conservative (Pew Research Center, 2018). In 2016, three long-standing blue states in the Rust Belt unexpectedly flipped in favor of President Trump because of an increased rural voter turnout. Some experts now believe these states’ electoral college points could swing either way (Silver, 2020).

The existing administration’s education platform, which emphasizes expanding private and charter schools, has little effect on rural schooling during non-pandemic times. A report from the National Charter School Resource Center (2016) finds that less than two percent of students in rural areas attend a charter school (Pandit & Ezzeddine, 2016). Investing in rural broadband, on the other hand, aligns well with one of the key pillars of Biden’s education platform, which promises to invest in resources in schools to support student growth. Moreover, from an economic perspective, communications experts argue, that increased rural broadband access will offer more job opportunities for young residents to stay in the area rather than leaving for bigger cities and towns—one of underpinnings of the urban-rural voting divide. 

Recommendations for the next president

Regardless of how the ballots are ultimately cast, the pandemic has shed light on serious inequalities across the country, and it should be the job of the next president to find ways to rectify these inequalities. Arguably, one of the biggest lessons of the pandemic has been how important schools are in the lives of children and how crucial teachers are to upholding this crucial pillar of American life. The lack of internet access in rural areas has seriously undermined teachers’ ability to deliver instruction and students’ ability to learn. We can expect to see learning for children in rural areas to widen, as teachers and schools in this area struggle to adapt to distance education. Failure to address this inequity—and quickly—will likely lead to long-term negative outcomes educationally, economically, and politically in rural communities.

In light of the challenges schools in these communities have faced during the pandemic, strengthening access to broadband internet in rural communities offers a tepid opportunity for Democrats to reverse this course. On the other hand, it may also offer President Trump an opportunity to invest in a key voting bloc. The following recommendations can help offset these expected challenges:

• Expand reliable broadband internet to rural and remote communities—not only as a measure to offset the remote school but as a long-term solution to these communities’ economic challenges.
• Undo legislation that rollback net neutrality. Without net neutrality measures, internet service providers can prioritize certain web content and slow or block other content. A lack of net neutrality is especially threatening to rural communities’ ability to get trustworthy information online from multiple sources because many rural communities have only one internet provider servicing their area. When there is a lack of government regulation upholding net neutrality, it negatively affects not just education but democracy and free speech as a whole.
• Invest in technology upgrades across all schools. As a former colleague in one of the largest urban school districts in the U.S. recently told me, one local high school’s wireless is so weak that all on-site administrators and teachers have been working out of the same room just to be able to get online. This type of problem is only multiplied in rural places without broadband (Opalka et al., 2020).

Our country’s next leader must acknowledge that the urban-rural broadband access gap is not going away without intervention, especially since another wave of the pandemic is already underway.  

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Megan Rauch Griffard is a PhD candidate in Policy, Leadership, and School Improvement in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has previously worked as a classroom teacher, school administrator, and in state-level education research. Her research focuses on principal leadership during disruptions to schooling, including natural disasters and COVID-19. Megan holds an M.S. from Northwestern University, an M.Ed. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a B.A. from Boston College.  

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References

Ali, C. & Duemmel, M. (2019). The reluctant regulator: The rural utilities service and American broadband policy. Telecommunications Policy, 43(4), 380–392.

Brown, L. (2020). The untapped power of rural voters. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/09/opinion/rural-voters-democrats.html

Devlin, K., Silver, L. & Huang, C. (2020). U.S. views of China increasingly negative amid Coronavirus outbreak. Pew Research Center.Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/04/21/u-s-views-of-china-increasingly-negative-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/

FCC (2020). 2020 Broadband deployment report. Retrieved from https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-20-50A1.pdf

Griffard, M.R.,Davis, C.R., Fuller, S.C., & Bortot, C.K. (2020) What can educators expect when students return to school? The School Administrator, 77(9)28–29.

Khazan, O. (2020). American’s terrible internet is making quarantine worse. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/virtual-learning-when-you-dont-have-internet/615322/

Opalka, A., Gable, A., Nicola, T., & Ash, J. (2020). Rural school districts can be creative in solving the internet connectivity gap—but they need support. Brookings: Brown Center Chalkboard. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/08/10/rural-school-districts-can-be-creative-in-solving-the-internet-connectivity-gap-but-they-need-support/

Pandit, M. & Ezzeddine, I. (2016). Harvesting success: Charter schools in rural America. National Charter School Resource Center. Retrieved from https://charterschoolcenter.ed.gov/sites/default/files/files/field_publication_attachment/NCSRC%20Harvesting%20Success%20Charter%20Schools%20in%20Rural%20America.pdf

Pew Research Center (2018). Trends in party affiliation across demographic groups. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-affiliation-among-demographic-groups/

Silver, N. (2020). Latest polls: Who’s ahead in Pennsylvania. FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved from https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/pennsylvania/

Stewart, J. (2019). Does rural broadband tech made in China pose a national security threat? Marketplace. Retrieved from https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/us-rural-broadband-china-huawei/

USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) (2020). Trump administration invests $86 million in rural broadband service in eight states. Retrieved from https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2020/06/24/trump-administration-invests-86-million-rural-broadband-service