Giving Compass' Take:

• According to a new report from Future Ready Schools, 16.9 million U.S. students (or about 8.4 million households) continue to lack home internet access. 

• How can donors help schools address the "homework gap"? 

• Read how COVID-19 has turned the homework gap into a larger learning gap.

According to a new report from Future Ready Schools, produced in partnership with the National Urban League, Unidos US, and the National Indian Education Association, 16.9 million U.S. students (or about 8.4 million households) continue to fall into the homework gap due to a lack of home internet access.

Among families lacking home internet access, 36% (1.7 million households) are located in nonmetropolitan "rural" locations, and 4.6 million have incomes of $50,000 or less. By race and ethnicity, a lack of home internet access impacts 34% of American Indian/Alaska Native, 31% of Latino, 31% of Black, 21% of white and 12% of Asian students. In addition, 3.6 million households lack a computer, impacting 7.3 million students. The report calls for Congress to invest $6.8 billion to close both home internet and device gaps.

The increasingly digital nature of classroom resources and assignments over the last two decades has fed the phenomena now known as the homework gap, which results from students who lack home internet or device access being unable to complete assignments requiring these tools. The full extent of the issue has been highlighted in recent months by school shutdowns due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

And building closures are expected to keep many students learning remotely full-time or part-time into the new school year, putting more pressure on policymakers and administrators to address these inequities lest many of the nation's highest-need students fall further behind.

According to a map in the report, at least 25% of students in 15 states — Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia — lack home internet access. In 11 of those states, at least 12% of students lack home computer access.

Read the full article about lacking home computer access by Roger Riddell at Education Dive.