President Obama's misguided plan to connect schools to the Internet

[Commentary] E-Rate is almost the perfect Washington DC program. It hits the hot buttons of education, technology, and good jobs at good wages in one shot and spreads federal monies to vendors and consultants in every corner of the country. And no politician has ever been defeated for public office by touting improved Internet connections at local schools. But in a large study of students in North Carolina, two colleagues and I recently found that the actual benefits for students—the kids the program is supposed to help—are about zero. In fact, our research found that the E-Rate program marginally hurt student performance rather than helped it.

To investigate the impact of E-Rate and to focus on the current example proffered by the President, my colleagues (Ben Schwall of Clemson and Scott Wallsten of the Technology Policy Institute) and I studied how broadband subsidies in North Carolina related to learning. Gathering data on all public high schools in the state from 2000-2013, including how much E-Rate funding was sent to schools, we investigated how SAT scores in math and verbal reasoning changed with increased Internet subsidies. Holding other school and socio-demographic factors constant, the changes were small but the finding was statistically significant. Except the relationship was negative. In other words, the more E-Rate funding a school received, the worse its students performed.

[Thomas Hazlett is H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics at Clemson University, where he also directs the Information Economy Project. He formerly served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission.]