The smart choice for smarter students

Eighteen years ago I coauthored, along with Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) of West Virginia, a bipartisan initiative called E-rate — to connect every school and library in America with what was then a promising new technology called the Internet. I wanted to ensure that a child in rural Maine could browse the shelves of the Library of Congress just as easily as a child in the wealthiest school in Manhattan. 

Today, the Internet has transformed almost everything, including how our teachers teach, our students learn, and our libraries serve their communities. The E-rate program, which provides discounts on connectivity to schools and libraries, has been a resounding success, establishing basic connections to the Internet for 99 percent of our schools and libraries. 

{mosads}Yet, basic connectivity is no longer sufficient. It is urgent we now upgrade every school and library to the gigabit broadband and Wi-Fi essential to fulfilling the promise of digital learning in the 21st century. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can ensure that America’s graduates are able to compete and win on the global stage by voting to approve a plan proposed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, which will launch critical modernizations of the E-rate program. 

Across the country, students, parents and teachers are asking for high-speed broadband as a means to accelerate access to educational opportunity. Broadband is the foundation for one-to-one learning initiatives, like our own statewide program in Maine championed by then-governor, now-Sen. Angus King (I), that leverage the power of technology to personalize learning for students, increase the effectiveness of teachers, and make learning as engaging as entertainment. In a world where knowledge is doubling every 13 months, access to high-speed broadband has become as important today as textbooks were in the 20th century.

Broadband-enabled learning is also becoming an imperative for America’s future. Today’s students aren’t just competing with their peers from across the hall, across town or across the country. They are competing with youth from across the globe.

Yet, while South Korea replaces printed textbooks with connected devices, Singapore wires its schools to gigabit broadband, and Australia and New Zealand bring high-speed fiber to their rural schools, an astonishing 63 percent of America’s schools, representing nearly 40 million students, lack the necessary broadband speeds. 

If we want students in Bangor, Maine, to compete successfully with students from Bangalore, India, for the jobs and industries of the future, we must ensure that America has the smartest, most technology-rich classrooms on the planet.  

Earlier this year, the FCC took an ambitious first step to update E-rate by voting to establish high-speed broadband goals, eliminate low-impact spending, increase transparency and accountability, and erase the Wi-Fi disparity in thousands of schools and libraries. Now, by voting for this new phase of modernization for E-rate in December, the FCC can simultaneously end the rural fiber access gap, the broadband affordability gap and a deleterious funding gap.

The chairman’s plan bridges these three chasms by bringing fiber to areas where the private sector has not, improving the affordability of broadband through increased competition and increasing resources to meet the growing demand for increased bandwidth. By closing the fiber, affordability and funding gaps, we will also be closing the gap in the potential of our nation’s children.

Amazingly, we can improve our learning infrastructure with an investment from each of us of just a little more than a half a penny a day. Annually, that is less than the cost of a fast food children’s meal while making a whopper of a difference in each of our students’ lives. That is one reason why 70 percent of Americans support high-speed Internet access in all American public schools within the next five years, even at twice the cost level of the proposal before the FCC. 

Sen. Rockefeller and I established E-rate because it was crucial to prevent our country from dividing into educational haves and have-nots if we were to secure a brighter future for all our citizens. Over the ensuing years, the E-rate program became one of the greatest success stories resulting from bipartisan efforts of Congress and the FCC. 

Today, as the technologies are even more transformative, the requirement for broadband capacity is even more vital. It’s time we utilized this outstanding program to extend gigabit broadband to every school, Wi-Fi to every classroom, and possibilities to every child. We cannot countenance a new digital divide creating an opportunity divide for America’s young men and women. The proposal before the FCC is the smart choice for smarter children, and I can think of no better investment for the next generation — and beyond. 

Snowe served as senator from Maine from 1995 to 2013. She authored the original
E-rate program with Rockefeller in 1995. She is now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.