Still Separate, Still Unequal? (The Case of Digital Equity in Education)

[This is Part 4 in a series on race, schooling and educational opportunities. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 can be found here.]

Fifty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court declared that providing “separate but equal” educational opportunities to students based on race denied students of color the equal protection of the law. Largely, the holding in the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education has been examined with respect to equity of access to the institution of schooling generally. And, while much of the progress that was achieved by eliminating legally enforced (de jure) school segregation has been erased by de facto housing segregation patterns that beget de facto school segregation, it is also clear that students of color continue to be denied equal educational opportunities within the institution of schooling. That is, while the post-Brown focus was and continues to be between-school and between-district segregation by race, more subtle forms of racial discrimination have persisted and proliferated within schools and districts, even in the most “integrated” schools and districts.

Less an issue of “within-school” racial segregation than one of segregation across schools and districts, consider the issue of digital equity in education. I've written a bit about digital equity in education (see e.g. http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v15n3/), but mostly in academic journals. So, I thought I'd use this space today to mashup some text from blog posts I've written before.

In homes, there are significant disparities in computer access and use by race. Fairlie (2005) found that African-Americans and Latina/os are much less likely to have access to home computers than are white, non-Latina/os (50.6 and 48.7 percent compared to 74.6 percent), and those differences are more pronounced for children than for adults. Using advanced statistical analyses, he concludes that, “[e]ven among individuals with family incomes of at least $60,000, blacks [sic.] and Latinos [sic.] are substantially less likely to own a computer or have Internet access at home than are whites.”  In the following table, we see some of those differences.

One problem these data present for educators is that the significant inequities that exist within homes present a huge barrier to using technology to extend the learning day and to bridge a home-school connection.  That said, there are opportunities for schools to level the playing field with respect to access to technology.  However, within schools, while disparities are less pronounced, digital inequities persist. Here are some selected statistics from an NCES report:

• In 2005, the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access in public schools was 3.8 to 1, a decrease from the 12.1 to 1 ratio in 1998, when it was first measured. However, schools with the lowest level of minority enrollment had fewer students per computer than did schools with higher minority enrollments. Specifically, according to my own analyses, schools in rural areas and schools with higher percentages of African-American students are more likely to have lower levels of computer access.
• In 2005, 94 percent of public school instructional rooms had Internet access, compared with 3 percent in 1994. There are no differences across school characteristics.

Thus, while Internet access in schools and classrooms is consistently good and equitable, access to computers generally is slightly inversely related to the percentage of students of color in schools.

What about use of technology in schools?  Let's look at some recent statistics on computer uses in schools disaggregated by race. [NOTE: these data are generated with the NAEP Data Explorer. Thus, these are nationally representative data].

Looking first at computer use for math, by race, in 2007, at 4th grade:

[NOTE: click on the following images to see larger graphics]

and then at 8th grade:

What do we see? Well, two things: First, computer use for math is more frequent in 4th grade than 8th grade (BTW, that's a consistent finding across lots of ed. tech. research; what's up with the secondary school teachers?). Second, at both grade levels, white students are more likely than African-American students to "never or hardly ever" use computers for math (and, yes, statheads, those differences are "statistically significant"). So, I can't say that African-American students use computers for math more than white students, but I can say they are less likely to "never or hardly ever" use computers for math in school.

In fact, that's pretty much the gist of what I report in the article in the Educational Policy Analysis Archive to which I linked above.  African-American students have slightly lower levels of access to computers in schools, but the frequency with which they use computers in schools is at least as high, if not higher, than other students.

The logical next question, then, is "What are the students doing on the computers?" Answering that question is difficult, mostly for a lack of appropriate data. For math. though, there are some interesting data.  By further sniffing through the NAEP Data Explorer, I "explored" differences in digitally-infused pedagogy by race. One of the items on the background questionnaire of the 8th grade NAEP in 2007 was as follows: "When you are doing math for school or homework, how often do you use these different types of computer programs?" One of the listed programs was "A program to practice or drill on math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)." Looking at the results for that item disaggregated by race, we get the following (again, click on image to enlarge):

Overall, African-American students are much more likely to use computers to practice or drill on math facts than White students.  The learning affordances of the modern Internet seem to grow exponentially these days, but even in 2007 terms, using computers for drill on math facts is hardly taking advantage of the power of computer-mediated learning.

The educational research I have done over the last decade has taken me to schools all across the United States.  I've been to schools in urban centers (e.g. NYC, Dallas, Houston, Miami-Dade, etc.), tiny rural towns (e.g. Beckley (WV), Gnadenhutten (OH), etc.) and everything in between.  I can report with great confidence that the schools wherein I have seen advanced, progressive applications of technology have been schools that serve overwhelmingly Caucasian populations.  Relatedly, if you consider all of the reasonably large-scale 1:1 computing initiatives in the United States, you would be hard-pressed to find such a program in a majority-minority community.

As the learning affordances of ubiquitous computing continue to expand, I worry deeply about creating a new sort of digital divide; one where students of color are not afforded the opportunities and advantages of learning in technologically innovative and important ways.  The educational technology community is by no means bounded, but there is unquestionably a large, but tightly connected group of individuals who are arguably the "leading" practitioners with respect to technology in education.  They are the folks who are connected through Twitter and through their blogs.  They are overwhelmingly Caucasian, and I strongly suspect that if we polled them about the populations of students they serve, that population would be overwhelmingly Caucasian.  A little over one year ago, Paul Bogush, a technologically-innovative teacher in Connecticut wrote:

Seventeen years ago a few months into my first teaching job, I was standing in an assembly when I realized something.  I was the only white dude in the room.

I was looking around Twitter today at who other people follow and I had the same feeling come back.  There are only white dudes in the “Twitter room.”  I could not find anyone who was not.  Out of every class that I have collaborated with this year only one person was an African American. Then I thought about the blogs I read, the wikis I check out, and the podcasts I listen to.  Same deal as the Twitter room.  What’s up with that?

Good question.  What is up with that?