So it comes as some surprise that the Lee County School District, which has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the state, is able to provide Internet access to every one of its classrooms. Students not only use the Internet to surf for information, but they have become adept at setting up their own home pages on the World Wide Web so that others can learn from them as well.
"We realized that being in a small district and relatively poor, we had to tap into whatever resources we could find to provide an education comparable to the more affluent districts," explained Glen Wilson, superintendent for the Lee County Public School District.
The resources that Lee County schools tapped into include the Kentucky Education Technology System (KETS), which is a statewide computer and telecommunications network, and state matching funds to help purchase computers and local area networks to link classrooms to each other as well as to the World Wide Web, e-mail and other features of the Internet.
What has made all of this possible is Kentucky's technology initiative master plan, which calls for spending $560 million in five years on education technology. That investment has made it possible for more than 50 percent of the state's classrooms to have Internet access, at a time when the current national average is only 9 percent. Kentucky's communities are spending their own money for Internet access as well -- an average of $1.80 for every $1 spent by the state.
But it's not just the affluent school districts who are opening their purse strings. "The school districts that are going online fastest are the small, poor and rural school districts," said Linda Pittenger, principal assistant in the Office of Education Technology for Kentucky's Department of Education. "They really do see this as a way to break those barriers of geography and economics and improve education for their students."
AN EXCEPTION TO THE NORM
Kentucky is justifiably proud of the fact that Lee County students have access to the Internet just as students do in the affluent suburbs of Louisville and Lexington. The state ensures that spending for technology in education is done equitably. But that wasn't always the case. Prior to 1990, the method for funding school programs, such as technology, was considered so unfair that the state's Supreme Court declared the education system unconstitutional, forcing the state to reform how it spends money on education.
Not every state in the Union needs to reform the way it funds technology for schools, but they should take
heed that providing classroom access to the Internet is going to be expensive. Already, there are signs of inequality.
In February, President Clinton announced a five-year, $2 billion program to link all American classrooms to the Internet. Political analysts say his proposal is unlikely to be approved by the Republican-led Congress. In the meantime, a task force commissioned by the president has concluded that the nation needs to spend $150 billion
over the next decade to provide adequate information technology for its public schools.
From a recent study conducted by the General Accounting Office (GAO), it's clear that greater spending is needed to bring the country's schools into the Digital Age. Nearly half -- 46 percent -- of the nation's schools with computers don't have sufficient electrical wiring to plug them in, 50 percent of all schools don't have enough modems or phone lines for Internet access and 33 percent don't have enough electrical power.
Meanwhile, public schools that have access to the Internet are increasing -- 54 percent in 1995 vs. 35 percent in 1994 -- but the gains are uneven, according to a study by the National Center for Educational Statistics. Their research shows that only 31 percent of public schools with high levels of students from poor families have Internet access, while 62 percent of schools with low levels of students from poor families have access.
These kind of statistics have officials concerned. The U.S. Department of Education has warned that a technology gap is growing between rich and poor school districts. The agency pointed out that bigger, richer suburban schools are leading the way when it comes to hooking up to the Internet. In some cases, computers have been concentrated at magnet schools, which attract top students, leaving less advanced students with fewer resources. The most common reason for not having a connection to the Internet was lack of money followed by inadequate wiring.
DIFFERENT FUNDING SOURCES, SAME COSTS
Kentucky has achieved equity for education technology by providing its public schools a stable funding stream they can count on, according to Pittenger. The state has also made the use of technology in education a public policy issue. "You can't just have some corporation come in and throw a lot of money at one school district and show off the benefits and then expect everybody else to follow," she said. "Instead, the state has to take responsibility for the infrastructure."
But judging by some recent announcements, a number of states are planning to rely on corporate contributions to jump start school Internet links. In March, New Hampshire Gov. Stephen Merrill announced plans to connect all of the state's public schools to the Internet using private-sector contributions.
That same month, Tennessee's Commissioner of Education, Jane Walters, announced that by September every public school in the state will be online with the Internet. The state set aside $4 million for the project, but is relying on contributions from private businesses to reach its objective.
The city of San Francisco is beginning to wire its public schools using equipment donated by private computer and telecommunications firms. Unless a school already has a local area network, Internet access usually means that one student or teacher at a time, using one computer, will be able to connect to the service. It's not unusual to find some schools, without any kind of network, paying for several phone lines and modems to increase access to just a few computers.
Lee County wisely directed its funding first toward networking for its schools. Now, they are adding the computers. "There's no purpose in buying a bunch of computers when there's no funds to network them," remarked Wilson. Other schools
are learning the logic of networking. In Lexington, Mass., the school superintendent asked the town to appropriate $1.2 million for networking and wiring even if not
one more computer is added to the school system.
For those schools wise enough to pursue networking before spending money on computers and Internet access, there's another costly problem. Many schools lack the wiring and electrical power to run dozens of computers and printers.
While Kentucky pays for networking its schools to the Internet, each school district has to spend its own money on upgrading any wiring to handle the increased electrical load from computers. Lee County hopes to have one networked computer for every six students, according to Superintendent Wilson. But the old school buildings lack the electrical power to handle the hardware. "The electrical power wiring issue is quite expensive," said Wilson. "All we can do is pursue the wiring and networking as aggressively as funding will permit."
The Lee County School District, like others around the country, rich and poor, have found that adding new computers and telecommunications also requires someone who can manage and coordinate everything. Lee County had to come up with the funds for a part-time technology coordinator. Teachers also have to be trained on how to use the equipment and how to navigate their way through the Internet to find the right kinds of information for their students.
That's not easy, considering the volume of information that's now available digitally. The Internet has been compared to drinking from a fire hose. There's so much information that teachers have to figure out how to get it down to a trickle so the information can be used and understood.
NETWORKING FOR THE INTERNET
As state and local governments race ahead to connect their schools with the Internet, few appear to have put together the kind of equitable master plan created by Kentucky. The half-billion dollar initiative calls for spending nearly $200 million on the statewide network, KETS.
Begun in 1992, KETS reached a major milestone in August 1995, when all school districts were connected. But that's just the beginning, according to Pittenger. The state's goal is to have at least six active drops in every classroom, one workstation for every six students and one for each teacher.
In addition, every classroom will be networked to a schoolwide local area network. The schools, in turn, will be linked to their district area network, which will be connected to the wide area network that is the backbone for KETS. The entire network will carry voice, data and video.
The state began connecting school districts using 56Kb lines. But with the need and demand for more bandwidth increasing rapidly in recent years, the Department of Education has moved about 20 percent of the school districts up to T1 lines. "We have schools coming on so rapidly that we've budgeted to move all the districts to T1 lines in the next fiscal year," commented Pittenger, who attributed the growing need for more capacity to a frenzy of interactive video projects around the state.
To pay for all of this, the state's General Assembly appropriates money to a general fund every two years. Part of those funds are reserved for items the master plan says will be paid for 100 percent by the state. The rest of the money goes into an "offers of assistance" pool, which school districts can draw from. To qualify for these funds, the districts must submit and have approved a technology plan that conforms to state standards. Essentially, the pool matches one dollar for every dollar spent by the district on such things as new workstations and local area networks.
To hold down technology costs, state contracts have been awarded to vendors, allowing small school districts with low volumes to purchase PCs and networking hardware at the same price that the state's largest school districts, with higher volumes, pay for their equipment.
The same form of equity holds true for telecommunications. School districts are charged a flat rate -- $256 per month -- for a 56Kb line. Usually, rates are set according to usage or mileage. According to Pittenger, this provision has really accelerated the number of schools that have gone online. "Superintendents know exactly what their fee is going to be, making it easier to get approval to fund technology programs by the cities and towns," she said.
Another provision that has sparked growth in the use of KETS is the waiver of all installation fees. Since this occurred, Pittenger has seen a huge influx of wiring plans from schools that want to connect to the network.
EQUALIZING THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS
Creating a balanced and fiscally sound plan to help schools connect to the Internet will be a major challenge for governments in the months and years ahead. Many experts believe that while private industry can help, government has the ultimate responsibility for building the necessary infrastructure.
"They are the only ones who can build it if it's going to be efficient and really open," commented Pittenger. As for building up public acceptance for funding the high cost of education technology on an equitable basis, Kentucky has learned that nothing beats local buy-in and ownership of the project. With the state still overwhelmingly rural, parents have begun to view education from a competitive perspective, and have realized they want to provide their kids with the resources that will help them learn more, find better jobs and, ultimately, end up remaining in their rural communities.
According to Pittenger, it likewise became evident to the taxpayers in Kentucky that an investment in education technology is also an investment in the community. "Government has to explain to taxpayers that education technology is a community issue, not just a public education issue," she said. "Nearly 70 percent of the taxpayers in Kentucky don't have a child in the public education system, so you have to show them that the network and the Internet is a community resource that all can benefit from."
For more information, contact Linda Pittenger, Kentucky Office of Education Technology, 502/564-2508; World Wide Web:
Public/Private School Computer Use
In 1993 -- the most recent data available in The Digest of Educational Statistics for 1995 -- 72.5 percent of private school pupils in grades 1-8 used computers at school, vs. 68.6 percent of public school pupils in the same grades. Also, 41.5 percent of private school elementary pupils used computers at home, vs. 23 percent of public elementary pupils.
Slightly more than 17 percent of private school students used computers at home for school work, while 10 percent of public school students did so.
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