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Education Coalition Pushes E-Rate Reform

Critical to realizing the promise of digital learning is the need for true connectivity. If all students are to tap into the world’s knowledge, leveraging high quality resources as they explore, grow in skills and truly personalize learning, then ensuring that all students have access to high quality broadband is vital.

This push for connectivity must be done sensibly. The FCC has undertaken the process of reforming the E-rate program, revisiting how schools and classrooms are provided funds to connect to the internet. We think this is an important task. This is why Digital Learning Now! joined the Council for Chief State School Officers, the Alliance for Excellent Education, iNACOLChiefs for Change, the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the Knowledge Alliance in submitting comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in responding to its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. We asked the FCC to review and modernize the E-Rate program, supporting consensus-based solutions fully reflective of the education community’s needs for 21st-century learning. These comments can be read in full here.

We were not the only group submitting comments to the FCC. Hundreds of commenters filed comments during this time showing a significant interest in ensuring that the FCC understands the need to modernize E-Rate for the 21st Century learning. These comments stress the transformative power of digital learning and argue that the commission should take a common sense approach to goals and speed targets. They agree that there is a need to refocus the E-Rate program on broadband connectivity to support digital learning. As the FCC does this, commenters argue the FCC should streamline the administration of the E-Rate program, providing support for multi-year contracts, promoting consortium participation and encouraging statewide contracting and procurement options. Ultimately, E-Rate should recognize the benefits of all-day connectivity to learning.

As the FCC evaluates these important comments, today, the Education Coalition filed comments replying to this initial wave, offering recommendations, analysis and support of particular reforms. You can read these comments in full here. The reforms particularly raised by the FCC and supported by the Education Coalition are summarized below.

  1. Speed Target. Establish a simple speed target for the E-Rate program that should be a benchmark for schools and libraries, not a mandate or fixed requirement.
  2. Priority Funding. Eliminate the existing priority system that limits schools’ ability to receive support for in-school network infrastructure. The E-Rate program should be focused on broadband-related services and a simplified eligible services list.
  3. Streamlined Program. Simplify and streamline the program by eliminating unnecessary procedures and transitioning to a wholly online program.
  4. Multi-Year Contracts. Permit schools to receive support for contracts up to 5 years in length to increase certainty, simplify program administration, and help reduce costs.
  5. Consortia Applicants. Eliminate existing disincentives to consortium participation by simplifying and streamlining consortium application processing, including prioritized review by dedicated review personnel. Going forward, the FCC should prioritize consortium funding and provide an additional 5 percent consortium-specific discount.
  6. State Procurement and Contracting. Provide a more inclusive path for applicants to take advantage of statewide contracting and bulk buying opportunities. Eliminate the need for duplicative competitive bidding obligations by increasing reliance on state and local procurement laws.
  7. Support for Mobility. Expand school boundaries and digital learning opportunities by incorporating the LOGO pilot program into E-Rate and establishing a new WiFi pilot program for school buses.
  8. Reform in Early 2014. Move forward decisively, no later than the first quarter of 2014, to modernize and streamline the E-Rate program. The time to act is now: a point that the record emphatically evidences.

We close our reply comments with a call to action noting that,”by reforming the E-Rate program, the Commission can seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to help unlock the potential of digital learning and help address educational equities. E-Rate, as currently constituted, is simply insufficient to meet the broadband requirements of today’s students and schools, particularly in rural areas. Either federal policy will accelerate reforms that support digital learning models or it will inhibit adoption of these promising new models of teaching and learning.”

Background: 

The E-Rate program was enacted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to provide discounts to public and private schools and libraries to help connect them to the Internet. At the time, only 14 percent of classrooms had Internet access; and, of those, 74 percent used dial-up. By 2005, the program had helped successfully connect 94 percent of U.S. classrooms to the Internet.

The program has provided the necessary foundation for connectivity in schools; however, additional high-speed broadband and network resources are needed for students to benefit from technological advances and emerging education models, including online and blended learning.

These comments build off of DLN’s public record supporting this important reform effort.

  • E-Rate Policy Brief: To assist organizations with thinking through reform ideas, we published a policy brief outlining the history of the program, the challenges that have emerged over time, and summarized some of the reform ideas to date.
  • U.S. House Testimony: Back in February, DLN Executive Director John Bailey testified before the U.S House Education and Workforce’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education on how education innovation can improve student achievement and recommended that E-rate should be modernized, streamlined, and better aligned to the reform agendas being put into place by our nation’s governors.
  • Funding Challenges: In response to a Washington Post article and comments from the White House (see herehere, and here), we offered a policy analysis of the challenges the FCC faces with expanding the program due to the USF contribution rate, which is also in need of reform.

We are excited to participate in the FCC’s rulemaking process and hope to see a new E-rate program which is modernized, simplified and focused on the needs of a 21st education system.