Report: 3 in 4 School Districts Meet FCC Internet Speed Standards – Government Technology

High-speed Internet access was extended to an additional 5 million students in the past year, and nearly three-quarters of K-12 school districts (9,573) in the United States are now providing bandwidth at a minimum rate of 1 megabit per second. But while the federal E-rate program continues to lower Internet service costs for schools, there’s a long way to go in reaching the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) universal goal: 3,330 districts (more than 25 million students) still don’t have adequate high-speed service, and the cost of broadband service in remote areas of Alaska, Texas and Michigan are sky high, according to the Connect K-12 2023 Report on School Connectivity from the broadband nonprofit Connected Nation.

The 13-page report, released Monday, is the nonprofit’s fourth and final annual update on the nation’s progress toward meeting the FCC’s standard of 1 Mbps for each student. So far, the report said, 27.1 million students have that level of connectivity at school, but Connected Nation’s Connect K-12 program (CK12) has resources available to help districts reach more.

“A critical finding is that school districts that are meeting the 1 Mbps-per-student goal are also getting access at a much lower rate than those districts not meeting that benchmark,” Emily Jordan, Connected Nation’s vice president of education initiatives, said in a public statement. “In fact, the cost is substantially higher for those school districts not meeting that level of connectivity. The good news is school and state leaders can leverage CK12’s free and easy-to-understand data to better navigate the market when negotiating new Internet contracts — giving them the information they need to obtain better rates for their budgets and better connectivity for their classrooms.”