California’s SB 876 is a bill that would create a state Digital Education Equity Program (DEEP). This program will be run by the California Department of Education, and the sponsors of the bill argue it would give help and training to schools and other educational organizations in using technology in their classrooms. The bill would require the California Department of Education to authorize grants to each of the state’s 58 county offices of education. Each county office of education would have to tell the department of education what they did with the money, who they helped, and how much money they used every year. (One of the co-authors of this post sat for some years on a county board of education and can testify that county offices don’t have the capacity to properly evaluate grant proposals in this area.) Much of the impetus for the bill appears to be addressing the “digital divide” in education. The digital divide refers to “the gap between those with sufficient knowledge of and access to technology and those without,” per an American University blog post . Educators in many schools lack access to sufficient information and professional development to cost-effectively plan for and […]
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