Written by: Aaron Butler, Lauren Milam, and Marty Parks
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools across Kentucky in 2020, one question rose to the highest priority level: do students have access to the internet at home so we can continue to equitably support student learning remotely?
While many hoped the pandemic was only temporary, nearly two years later students continue to need access to the internet beyond the school campus to engage in extended learning outside of traditional school hours.
The internet is necessary to keep students learning during quarantines and nontraditional instruction days, as well as other temporary or full-time remote learning experiences (e.g., home hospital, natural disasters, homelessness or displacement, etc.). Additionally, Kentucky public schools have students who continue to opt into virtual or remote learning year round. Thus, it continues to be vital to analyze data regarding which students have access to the internet and, therefore, learning opportunities.
The Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE’s) Office of Education Technology (OET) has been collecting data on this for years as a core component to the Kentucky Education Technology System (KETS), giving Kentucky a head start on understanding the online learning gap.
In 2021, the KDE digital readiness survey found that 98% of students have internet access and access to a digital device for school work beyond the school campus. Data from the organization Broadband Now, which compiles data from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the census, and private internet providers, shows that 92% of Kentuckians have access to high-speed broadband (100mbps or more) and 98% of Kentuckians have access to wireless internet service, a difference of 0-6% depending on how you operationalize “access.”
However, the lived experience of many educators was more complex. In a needs sensing survey fielded by KDE during summer 2020, 92% of responding caregivers reported that students have access to the internet beyond the school campus for distance learning. Of those reporting, 94% of caregivers reported that students have internet access for distance learning at home as well as other “multiple” locations. Only 3% of responding caregivers reported they did not have internet access at all.
Only 81% of responding families reported that their students’ primary learning device reliably connects to the internet – however the question does not provide insight into whether it is an issue with the device or the internet connection. Additionally, 27% of caregivers said that “having fast enough internet speed for the child/children in [their] care to stream videos or participate in video conferencing without interruption” was a moderate or major challenge. This issue ranked 7th for parents in terms of the relative challenge. More pressing challenges included balancing time to support the child’s school work with other responsibilities, keeping the student focused, maintaining a schedule for the child and helping the child manage their educational workload.
So what accounts for this discrepancy?
In short: each of these statistics are measuring slightly different things and have different approaches to collecting the data. These different approaches add up to varying outcomes.
For example, the Broadband Now data keeps track of where there is infrastructure for wireless internet. It measures that 92% of households have the ability to connect to high speed internet (100mbps or faster), not whether those households have opted to connect nor whether the household has school-aged children.
By contrast, the KDE Digital Readiness survey data is reported by the district education technology leader and finds that 2% of students lack internet access beyond the school campus, with 5% of total students lacking internet at their homes. There is an expectation that this data be collected at the student-level, but the process districts use to collect it varies. The variation in data collection processes could lead to differences that may show up in the state average.
Both the Broadband Now and KDE Digital Readiness survey measure access – whether the internet exists in a household. The KDE Needs Sensing survey sought to understand sufficiency when it asked families whether they had a reliable internet connection. However, the needs sensing survey was only administered one time, online, to families who were willing to take the time to respond. While more than 56,000 parents and caregivers responded, they are not necessarily representative of all families across the Commonwealth and may be inherently skewed because the survey was conducted online.
In the past, the KDE Digital Readiness survey asked about sufficiency as well. According to the 2019-2020 KDE digital readiness survey data (the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic), districts reported that 78-85% of students had internet access at home that is “capable of having a good experience watching a YouTube video.” This question combines access and sufficiency into one measure. It taps into the usefulness of the internet based on what was then the most common, high bandwidth requirement for online learning at home. Now, the question could ask about students’ ability to connect to a video conference with a good experience.
If you’re keeping track, from 2019-2021 we have measures that suggest that students have internet access at home that range from 78% to 98%. The exact number varies based on the questions asked AND a lot happened between the fall of 2019 and now.
So which measure should I use?
Short answer: They all share valuable data. They may just tell different stories.
The better question is which piece of data is most relevant? When trying to determine the extent to which students could access the internet – Broadband Now and the KDE Digital Readiness survey suggest that 92-97% of students have access.
However, if the question is whether students will be able to engage in NTI consistently if schools close for weather or during COVID-related quarantines, a different measure may be needed. Both of the sufficiency questions, the digital readiness 2019-2020 data and the Needs-Sensing survey, are now two years old. At that time, both suggested that 20-25% of students had some level of difficulty engaging in learning online while at home.
Underlying this query into measurement bias is a question of equity. If learning can happen outside of traditional brick and mortar classrooms or outside of traditional bell schedules, who will have access and who will miss out? If school and district leaders want to continue to use NTI and remote learning approaches, they need to get a clear picture of both access and sufficiency of at-home internet connectivity for all of their students.
Summary Table: Comparing survey measures
| Survey | Survey Design and Sample | Findings | Strengths and Weaknesses |
| OET Digital Readiness Surve | – Online reporting tool administered annually to district leaders per annual superintendent assurances. – Population survey – N = 173 district leaders | – 2021-2022 School Year: Approximately 95% of students have internet access at home and in 2021, 98% of students have access to a digital device for school work beyond the school campus. – 2019-2020 School Year: 78-85% of students have internet access at home “capable of having a good experience watching a YouTube video.” | – Survey questions reflect the value of access both on and beyond school campus for learning. (+) – Survey population of Kentucky technology leadership (+) – Data on home internet access is self-reported by districts. (+/-) – Survey methodology is implemented at the local district level, data collection is not consistent between districts. (+/-) |
| Broadband Now | – Pulls from most recent census and FCC datasets bi-annually and corrects with proprietary data from private providers. | – 91.9% of Kentuckians have access to broadband 100mbps or faster. – 50.5% of Kentuckians have access to 1 gigabit broadband. – 97.2% of Kentuckians have access to wireline service. – 48.4% of Kentuckians have access to fiber-optic service. – 82.5% of Kentuckians have access to cable service. – 89.0% of Kentuckians have access to DSL service. | – Survey questions translated to non-English languages (+) – Survey methodology is public and uses map data for existing internet infrastructure with randomized validation. (+) – Unknown how this data impacts school-aged children (-) |
| KDE COVID-19 Needs-sensing Surveys | – Online surveys of different KDE stakeholder groups; administered one time in the summer of 2020 – N = 56,863 (families/caregivers) – N = 7,440 (teachers) | – 27% of families/caregivers report that they don’t have reliable internet at home. – 77% of teachers said engaging students who do not have reliable internet access is a big challenge. | – Survey questions translated to non-English languages (+) – Questions about technology access mixed different aspects of learning technologies. (+/-) – on-representative sample (-) |