Equal Internet Access Is a K-12 Must-Have

By Helen Brunner

The days when spiral notebooks, No. 2 pencils, and a backpack full of textbooks served as the mainstays of the American classroom are rapidly giving way to a new school environment. Interactive whiteboards, online classes, streaming lectures, and digital textbooks are revolutionizing the way students learn and communicate with their teachers. Technology is blurring the brick-and-mortar boundaries of learning in 21st-century schools.

As a result, access to the Internet has become a need-to-have—not just a nice-to-have—when it comes to student success. After all, according to documents the Federal Communications Commission's broadband task force released in 2009 , about 70 percent of teens said the Internet had been their primary source for a recent school project, and at least 65 percent went online at home to complete their homework. Teachers routinely assign homework that requires Internet use to complete, and more than half of American schools expect to adopt e-textbooks in the next...