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Capehart

Kristina Ishmael on digital barriers to equitable education

Capehart

The Washington Post

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.61.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2023

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this conversation recorded for Washington Post Live on April 28, Kristina Ishmael, deputy director of the Education Department’s Office of Educational Technology, discusses the barriers to closing the digital divide, the importance of reliable internet access in providing equitable education and the obstacles to distributing financial assistance where it’s needed most.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm Jonathan K. Parton. Welcome to K-PART. On April 28th, Washington Post live hosted a series

0:06.1

of conversations on digital inclusion. I kicked things off with Christina Ishmael, Deputy Director

0:12.4

of the Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology. We covered a lot of ground in 20

0:18.2

minutes from the importance of access to broadband to the importance of making that access available

0:24.0

to everyone. So there have been big investments to help with the home access divide.

0:30.4

And that is exactly where we are now. And so we through the FCC is a affordable connectivity

0:35.4

program. We know that about 50 million households qualify for free and kind of reduced price

0:41.5

with that stipend that they are providing through the ACP, but only 17 million households have

0:47.3

signed up for it. Ishmael talks about how they are pushing to close that divide, the obstacles to

0:52.9

getting financial assistance where it's most needed, and what she'd ask for if I were a genie

0:58.2

granting her three wishes, her answers were crystal clear. Digital access is pretty fundamental

1:07.7

to all parts of daily life and for broader participation in society. How is access to that digital life,

1:14.4

a key component of education? Yeah. So in March of 2020, when their doors shut to the physical

1:21.0

school buildings, we sent kids home and moved into an emergency remote learning situation.

1:27.5

We realized at that point, of course, that not everyone had home access. And of course,

1:32.9

we had been working in this space, especially within education and within educational technology

1:37.1

for quite some time. The FCC had been working on this prior to the pandemic as well,

1:42.3

but it was that moment that we knew we needed that continuity of learning to continue and provide

1:47.9

some sort of stable learning environment. And not everyone had access to do that. And so that was

1:53.7

that moment that we have certainly looked back on and been able to provide as many resources as

2:00.6

possible to state education agencies as well as to the local school districts and then community

2:06.0

based organizations as well. And so there have been big investments to help with the home access

...

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