Moving Beyond the ‘Digital Divide’: Three Steps for an Anti-racist Approach to Equitable Participation in K-12 Schools

While many school districts now issue devices to all students and feel they have addressed the “digital divide,” it is time to move beyond one-to-one access and take an anti-racist approach to technology integration.

Superintendents must start asking if instructional technology is being used to replicate inequitable instructional practices or to transform student learning via student-centered, culturally responsive practices. Schools must stop analyzing data that repeatedly shows academic gaps without also finding promising practices that shrink those gaps.

Instead of having a global approach to the digital divide and a microfocus for instruction, school divisions must provide a clear and compelling instructional vision for equity and then zoom in to determine if the use of devices are supporting that vision.