Without access to up-to-date technology, rural schools and students may keep falling behind

A new national curriculum, called the Common Core, is pushing school districts in many states into the digital age. That's a problem for some rural areas where students lack the resources to fully use the technology, reports Ida Lieszkovsky for Stateimpact Ohio.

Lieszkovsky writes that students in one Appalachian school district are learning to how to use PowerPoint – on Microsoft Office 2003. It’s not just the software that’s outdated. Just down the hall from the computer lab is a middle-school classroom with several-decade-old big-box computers. The average family income in the district is less than $40,000. The district had to cut 17 percent out of its $12 million budget over the last few years and most of the computers they do have were donated. (Photo by Lieskovsky)

In Appalachian Ohio, one third of homes with children don't have broadband; that translates to 125,000 homes without high-speed Internet. Studies by the Federal Communication Commission and the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate that across America 26 million people don’t have access to high-speed Internet. More than 70 percent are in rural areas.

Rural schools aren't getting much sympathy from state officials, who acknowledge students in rural, poorer districts may not have as many opportunities to use computers, “but if you’re going to try to tell me that students don’t work on computers, they don’t have cell phones, they don’t have devices, I’m not going to really buy that,” John Charlton, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, told Lieskovsky. (Read more)