Using a multi-modal approach, Discovery Education—along with Comcast—sought to deepen understanding of remaining barriers to home internet adoption among students and their families by exploring the role schools (educators and administrators) are playing, with a particular focus on family involvement in bridging students’ abilities to connect to high-speed internet to support learning. The study found that:

• Nearly all educators who participated in the study agree that digital equity is more important than ever before, due to the COVID-19 crisis forcing education to become (and likely stay) heavily reliant on digital solutions. 
• Educators and families agree schools/districts could be doing more to help students bridge the digital divide. While two-thirds of families and educators acknowledge their school’s interest in closing the digital divide, only one-third are aware of actionable measures being taken by schools.
• Findings suggest a need for a “train-the-trainer approach” to support educators, who are often also working as digital navigators, in order to become aware of the range of barriers that non-adopters face. This will enable digital navigators and educators to help close the digital divide for more students.

To continue the catalyzation of digital equity for school leaders, educators, parents, and students, the researchers recommend the following actionable steps:

• Strengthen umbrella school-to-home communication at timely transitions by leveraging natural calendar transitions, such as summer and spring breaks, to disseminate information about internet programs and providers
• Ensure alignment to, and inclusion of, school communities within Digital Navigator workstreams.
• Leverage data to pinpoint directed supports by assessing which students are unlikely to have a home internet connection and direct them and their families to resources that can assist.
• Collaborate with other public institutions engaged in connecting households with public benefits.

A report from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) highlights some of the problems and issues of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program. Sen. Cruz's first criticism of BEAD is that the allocation gives too much funding to places that have good broadband and don’t need the money—like Washington (DC) and Delaware. The report blames this on the Biden administration, but the allocation of the funding to states was specified in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The next big criticism is that the BEAD allocations did not account for other federal money being spent elsewhere for broadband. This criticism is totally accurate. I think it’s ludicrous that the Federal Communications Commission announced a new round of Alternative Connect America Model (ACAM) funding only a few weeks after the BEAD dollars were allocated. Another of Sen. Cruz's criticisms is that the Biden administration bias in favor of fiber is going to mean that there isn’t enough money to go around and that some homes won’t get broadband. However, while the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has a stated preference for fiber, it also balances that off with a mandate to states to make sure that all unserved locations get broadband. A number of states have said they will fund wireless as needed to make sure the grant funding stretches far enough. Ultimately, the report doesn’t mention my number one complaint about BEAD: that the grant rules say that anybody can apply for a grant—but the rules clearly favor giant broadband providers over smaller providers, municipalities, and everybody else.

Over 40 Republican senators signed a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel urging her to abandon her proposal to reinstate net neutrality rules. Re-imposing heavy-handed, public-utility regulations on the internet, they wrote, would threaten the progress our country has made since 2017, and it would steer our country out of the fast lane and into a world of less competition, less choice, less investment, slower speeds, and higher prices. Further, the FCC lacks this statutory authority over broadband internet access. Any attempt by the FCC to reinstate net neutrality regulations and the onerous rules of Title II on internet service providers will not survive judicial review. The FCC has pushed net neutrality and already lost in court – more than once. Signees include Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Boozman (R-AR), Katie Britt (R-AL), Ted Budd (R-NC), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), John Hoeven (R-ND), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Ron Johnson (R-WI), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Rand Paul (R-KY), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Jim Risch (R-ID), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Rick Scott (R-FL), Tim Scott (R-SC), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Todd Young (R-IN).

After months of experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) to make their work more efficient, some newsrooms are now dipping their toes in more treacherous waters: trying to harness AI to detect bias or inaccuracies in their work. Confidence in the news media is at an all-time low, pressuring news leaders to look for new ways to win back trust. But AI, which has its own biases and makes up fake facts, is an unlikely savior. "The Messenger," a new digital media company, said it plans to partner with a company called "Seekr" to ensure its editorial content consistently aligns with journalism standards using AI. Seekr analyzes individual articles using factors like "title exaggeration," "subjectivity," "clickbait" and "personal attack" as well as purported political leaning. The promise is that a neutral AI will somehow arrive at purely objective ratings—but AI itself is trained on human data, and that data is full of its own biases. It took less than a minute to find, for instance, that Seekr gave a "very low" rating to a harmless Messenger story rounding up late-night comedy hosts' schticks about Kevin McCarthy's ouster, citing the jokes from Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel as "subjective" and "personal attacks." Regardless, experts see some value in using AI to fact-check very large datasets—like being able to track the spread of a falsehood identified by a human across multiple stories and media outlets.