High School Students' Access to and Use of Technology at Home and in School

High School Students’ Access to and Use of Technology at Home and in SchoolRAEAL MOORE, PHD, AND DAN VITALEInsights in Education and WorkAugust 2018 SUMMARY Access to technology is essential to educational success as well as workforce and community development. However, geographical, income-based, and racial/ethnic disparities in technology access persist.2This “digital divide”—the gap between people who have sufficient knowledge of and access to technology and those who do not—can perpetuate and even worsen socioeconomic and other disparities for already underserved groups.The digital divide has also been referred to as the “homework gap,” due to the challenges that students in technology-deficient circumstances face when trying to do their homework. This gap continues to widen as teachers incorporate internet-based learning into their daily curricula.3SO WHAT?ACT surveyed a random sample of students who took the ACT® test as part of a national administration in April 2017.5 We asked the students numerous questions about their access to and use of technology specifically for educational activities, both at home and in school, including the number and kinds of devices they have access to, the kind and reliability of the internet connection(s) available to them, and how often they used electronic devices for school-related activities. NOW WHAT?Access to devices and internet appears to be somewhat uneven among the ACT-tested students we surveyed. Policy recommendations are to expand device access and internet among those who lack them, ensure students can access materials needed for school related activities via mobile technology, and improve the quality of school internet connections.AUTHORSRAEAL MOORE, PHDRaeal Moore is a senior research scientist at ACT specializing in survey methodological research and research on education best practices in P–12 schools.DAN VITALEDan Vitale is a policy analyst in the Office of Public Affairs at ACT.RELATED WORKThis paper is one of a series of reports on students’ access to technology. For more information, see:Moore, Raeal, Smartphones and Laptops are the Most Accessible Technological Devices Students Have at Home (Iowa City, IA: ACT, 2018), https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/R1680-tech-devices-at-home-2018-05.pdf.Moore, Raeal, and Vitale, Dan, The Digital Divide and Educational Equity: A Look at Students with Very Limited Access to Electronic Devices at Home. (Iowa City, IA: ACT, 2018), https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/R1698-digital-divide-2018-08.pdf .Copyright ® 2018 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved | R1692 ACT Research & Center for Equity in Learning | August 2018 1 High School Students’ Access to and Use of Technology at Home and in SchoolRaeal Moore, PhD, & Dan Vitale Technology—including the internet and electronic devices such as smartphones and computers—is an integral part of everyday life in the United States.1 Access to technology is essential to educational success as well as workforce and community development. However, geographical, income-based, and racial/ethnic disparities in technology access persist.2 This “digital divide”—the gap between people who have sufficient knowledge of and access to technology and those who do not—can perpetuate and even worsen socioeconomic and other disparities for already underserved groups. The digital divide has also been referred to as the “homework gap,” due to the challenges that students in technology-deficient circumstances face when trying to do their homework. This gap continues to widen as teachers incorporate internet-based learning into their daily curricula.3 To date, most research about the digital divide has focused on the US population generally, with less attention paid to determining whether the divide exists among students in the US education system.4 To contribute toward answering this question, ACT surveyed a random sample of students who took the ACT® test as part of a national administration in April 2017.5 We asked the students numerous questions about their access to and use of technology specifically for educational activities, both at home and in school, including the number and kinds of devices they have access to, the kind and reliability of the internet connection(s) available to them, and how often they used electronic devices for school-related activities. In general, the survey yielded the following findings (which are described at greater length in the remainder of this brief). ACT Research & Center for Equity in Learning | August 2018 2 •Nearly all students have home internetand at least one electronic device they canuse at home. However, the total numberof devices students have access to tendsto increase with reported annual familyincome range and sometimes differs byracial/ethnic group.•The most commonly reported availabledevice at home is a smartphone, and themost commonly reported home internetconnection is a monthly cellular data plan.S