Episode 09: Can Technology bring about equitable access to education?
Access to education has long been revered as a great social equalizer. Most of us have internalized the idea that since every child can go to school for free, he or she has equal access to support and resources, and therefore, equal opportunity for growth and advancement. Academic success in our younger years is usually considered a driving factor in financial success. In fact, despite their stark political differences, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both supported the idea of public education.
The Whole People must take upon themselves the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one-mile square without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual but maintained at the expense of the People themselves. – Letter from John Adams to John Jebb, 1785
Elementary education would not become mandatory for children until 1918. Still, it was not until the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 to reject the legality of segregation that equal access to education would come close to even resembling an achievable goal.
That was nearly seventy years ago. The theory still holds—we believe in the power of education to transform lives and build a foundation for future success. In reality, the hunt for “good schools” is a major contributing factor in where parents decide to raise their children and how high school students choose colleges. We know not every school is created equal, and we know there are countless families who do not have the privilege of shopping around for the best opportunity. The educational disadvantages poor children experience often follow them through adulthood. Experts call this effect the “achievement gap,” i.e., persistent disparities in measures of educational performance among subgroups of U.S. students.
The myth of equal access to education was thrust into harsh relief by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were forced to learn from home using online or paper resources. It seems reasonable that access to online education would become the new default equalizing force, but even that ideal fails to take into account very unequal access to the internet or a home computer. Consider these findings from a US Census Household Pulse Survey in August 2020:
Lower-income households are less likely than higher-income ones to have internet access and computer availability
Lower-income households were less likely to report computer and internet availability for educational purposes, compared with higher-income households.
Low-income households may have lower levels of internet and computer proficiency, competing priorities, and/or (in ordinary times) children attend schools that are not well equipped to provide online instruction
Equal access to education begins at the beginning. Yet there is an entire generation of disadvantaged students today that are preparing for post-secondary opportunities. How do we help these students close the achievement gap?
In this latest episode of Illuminate Higher Education podcast, we welcome guest Dr. Lee Lambert. Lee is Chancellor at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. He is strongly committed to leveling the playing field when it comes to education access and has built his career advocating for social justice. In particular, Lee focuses on how issues of race play into socioeconomic inequality.
In this podcast episode, he shares the steps Pima took to increase the availability of tools and resources necessary for students to achieve success in the new learning environment COVID-19 created. According to Lee, this was one of the greatest lessons learned—personalizing and customizing the learning journey to meet the needs of individual students is not just about learning styles or curricula. It’s also about providing students with tools they can carry with them wherever they go.
To hear more about Dr. Lee Lambert and his passion for educational equality, listen to Episode 09 of Illuminate Higher Education.
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This episode is brought to you by N2N’s Illuminate App, the iPaaS for Higher Education.
About N2N Services
Founded in 2010, N2N is committed to serving educational institutions and helping them figure out how to serve their students, faculty, and staff using the most innovative technologies and solutions available in the marketplace. Over the last decade, N2N has served over 300 academic institutions and enabled their student success journeys.
N2N Services Inc. is a leader in enterprise application integration and strategic advisory services for higher education, At N2N, we are committed to providing the highest quality solutions and collaboratively building student-centric solutions.
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