Earlier this month, Mobile Beacon joined our friends at the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) in Washington, DC to educate our lawmakers about why it’s so important to ensure our schools, kids and communities are able to connect to fast and reliable internet service.

At the Capitol Hill briefing, we heard from FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that today, seven in ten teachers assign homework that requires Internet access. But according to data from the FCC, one in three households does not have broadband service.

These statistics are striking, but for those affected by the digital divide it is so much worse. Comissioner Rosenworcel recounted the time she met with a group of high-school athletes in New Mexico who said they sit in pitch-black darkness in the school parking lot after their football games to pick up the wireless signal they need to do their homework. And she told us about the young women she’s met with who dreams of careers in science, and pleads with their parents to drive them night after night to the house of a relative or friend with broadband service.

How are kids supposed to excel in the classroom when they lack a resource as important as the internet?

But of course there is hope. More and more organizations are coming forward to provide solutions to assist schools with closing the homework gap. At Mobile Beacon, we’re helping schools across the U.S. gain affordable and reliable internet service to serve students’ needs in and out of the classroom.

To date, Mobile Beacon has donated over 500 laptops to educational programs across the country. If you’d like to find out more about our work with schools, please click here, or contact us today!

We’re excited to see Commissioner Rosenworcel take a strong stand on closing the homework gap and encourage her to continue her leadership on this issue.

To learn more, check out SETDA’s latest report called, The Broadband Imperative II: Equitable Access for Learning, with recommendations to increase access both in and out of school. Let’s keep up the fight to close the digital divide!