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Internet access across all types of schools has shown steady improvement. Despite such improvement, the actual use of technology in high-poverty, high-minority, and academically failing schools lags behind technology use in more advantaged schools.
Internet Access
Note: For this chart, high-poverty schools are those in which 75 percent or more of the students are eligible for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program. School Internet-access figure for all public schools for 2003 has been rounded to 100.
School Web Sites
The percentage of public schools with Internet access that have their own Web sites grew more than 10 percentage points from 2001-2003, but schools that serve high-minority and high-poverty children are less likely to have their own Web sites.
Note: For this chart, high-minority schools are those in which 50 percent or more of the students are members of the racial or ethnic minorities. High-poverty schools are schools in which 75 percent or more of the students are eligible for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2003"
Teacher Technology Use
While 19 percent of public schools reported that a majority of their teachers were beginners in technology use in 2004, the proportion rose to 26 percent in high-poverty schools. Meanwhile, 77 percent of public schools reported that a majority of their teachers used the Internet for instruction, but that figure dropped to 69 percent for schools that did not make adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act for the 2003-04 school year.
SOURCE: Market Data Retrieval, “Technology in Education 2004” and “Technology in Education 2001”
