Our Schools, Cut Off From the Web

[Commentary] Since 2007, when I was named president of the Ford Foundation, we’ve given $44.5 million to dozens of organizations — like Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Mozilla Foundation and the Media and Democracy Coalition — to make the Internet more accessible, affordable and mindful of privacy. But as I prepare to step down in September, I must acknowledge that there has been little real progress on this issue.

Like any effort to develop our national infrastructure, success demands more than the dedication of the nonprofit sector alone. The factors that will drive our national future — educational achievement, a healthy population, broad political participation and economic opportunity for all — depend in significant ways on how we structure and manage our spreading digital frontier. Virtually all of America’s schools are connected to the Internet today. But that success is a lot like trumpeting, a century ago, that virtually every town in the country was reachable by road. Then, as now, the question is quality. Children who go to school in poor neighborhoods are connected to the Web at speeds so slow as to render most educational Web sites unusable. The exploding world of free online courses from great academies is closed to those who lack a digital pathway.

A good first step in addressing this problem would be to overhaul E-Rate to make sure it gets the Web into every classroom and library, not just a school, either through cable or Wi-Fi, and with sufficient financing for upkeep. Second, a subset of teachers and librarians need to be trained as champions of digital education. Without such advocates, the pedagogical impact of broadband won’t be fully realized. Third, any conversation on national infrastructure must put broadband as a priority alongside aviation, bridges, energy, highways, ports, rail and water.

[Ubiñas is president of the Ford Foundation]