This article talks about how the pandemic is impacting students who don’t have proper access to the internet. The article also addresses some of the pre-existing difficulties that people living in poverty face, regarding school work. The shift to remote learning has revealed the country’s digital divides. Too many children live without essential internet services. Remote learning is especially difficult within lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Their research shows that as neighborhood poverty rates rise, broadband adoption rates rapidly fall. With the transition to online learning, students who were already more vulnerable to falling behind will face even more difficulty as they attempt to keep pace. However, many of these challenges have been around long before COVID-19. The “homework gap” has left millions of students without broadband unable to complete their assignments at home. A study done by the NTIA suggests that 12 million students are affected by this gap. In response to the inaccessibility to the internet, parents often took their children to McDonald’s, local libraries, and even gas stations for wifi access. With the pandemic limiting access to these locations, these options are no longer viable.
