Education Week - January 7, 2015 - 10

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS > Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
www.digitaldirections.org
E-Rate Is Undergoing Major Policy and Budget Upgrades
K-12 digital demand fuels modernization
By Benjamin Herold
& Sean Cavanagh
Federal officials have dramatically
overhauled the E-rate program
to prioritize expanded support
for broadband and wireless
connectivity, through the approval
of a series of changes that have
been widely hailed by education,
library, technology, and industry
groups as much needed and long
overdue.
The capstone came last month,
when the Federal Communications
Commission approved a $1.5 billion
annual funding increase for the program,
which subsidizes schools' and
libraries' purchases of telecommunications
services.
"The increase in support is
significant. It is justified. And
it is smart," fcc Chairman Tom
Wheeler said in a statement accompanying
the decision. "In the
18 years since the E-rate was established,
technology has evolved,
the needs of students and teachers
have changed, and basic connectivity
has become inadequate."
The commission voted to raise the
E-rate's annual spending cap from
$2.4 billion to $3.9 billion and approved
a series of potentially significant
rule changes in a contentious
3-2 vote Dec. 11 that broke down
along partisan lines. Those moves
followed the fcc's July decision to
overhaul the mechanics of the E-rate
to prioritize broadband and Wi-Fi
connectivity while phasing out support
for older technologies.
The new money for the program
will come from increased fees on
telecommunications providers.
Those charges are typically passed
on to consumers via their phone
bills. The fcc estimates that most
U.S. households will pay an additional
$1.90 per year, per phone line.
The new aid is expected to begin
flowing to schools and libraries
this coming summer. Most of the
new rules approved by the commission-including
several changes
that could benefit rural schools,
which continue to struggle with
access to fiber-optic cable, generally
regarded as the best means of
providing high-speed connections-
will take effect in 2016.
In the short term, experts on
broadband service for schools
say, the most noticeable changes
will likely result from the program's
new emphasis on supporting
schools' internal Wi-Fi needs,
which were neglected under the
program's previous structure. With
the rise of online testing, 1-to-1
student computing, and digital
instruction, improving schools' Internet
infrastructure has become a
national priority.
Currently, 63 percent of public
schools in the United States, serving
more than 40 million students,
are unable to deliver the level of
bandwidth that the administration
of President Barack Obama now
recommends, according to the fcc.
Rising Digital Demand
A wide range of groups applauded
the fcc's moves to modernize its
rules and dedicate more money to
the E-rate program.
"The clear and compelling voice
of America's public school districts
was heard," Thomas J. Gentzel, the
executive director of the National
School Boards Association, based in
Alexandria, Va., said in a statement.
For years, ed-tech advocates have
pushed for more E-rate money, noting
that demand has far exceeded
available funds.
Prior to last month's increase,
the E-rate's annual spending cap
was frozen for years at $2.25 billion,
and adjustments for inflation
only began in 2010. Mr. Wheeler
and his fellow Democrats on the
commission, Mignon Clyburn and
Jessica Rosenworcel, voted in favor
of the change. Opposing the spending-cap
increase were Republicans
Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly.
While affluent families may not
notice the small increases in their
phone bills, "families in middle
America are sick of being nickeled
and dimed by Washington politicians,"
Mr. Pai said in a dissenting
statement.
Mr. Pai also worried that the
new aid will end up going largely
to meet schools' internal Wi-Fi
needs, rather than helping schools
with poor or nonexistent connections
to the Web. He questioned
whether the changes will benefit
rural schools, noting that no specific
safeguards to ensure that the
"fiber gap" is closed were part of
the fcc's December rule-making.
And relaxing the requirements
for how E-rate applicants must
demonstrate they have secured
matching funds from other sources
could lead to waste and fraud, Mr.
Pai said.
In an interview with Education
Week, Patrick R. Halley, the associate
chief of the fcc's wireline-competition
bureau, who helped lead
the recent E-rate modernization
efforts, minimized such concerns.
Schools' requests for aid for inter
10 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 7, 2015 | www.edweek.org
HOW THE E-RATE OVERHAUL WILL WORK
The Federal Communications Commission approved in December
a series of sweeping changes to the E-rate, the second time in
less than six months the agency adopted policies designed to
bring the 18-year-old program up to date. The changes made
last month to the program will:
* BOOST its total funding cap to $3.9
billion a year, from $2.4 billion, with
annual adjustments for inflation;
* CREATE new opportunities for
schools and libraries to secure
E-rate funding for "dark fiber,"
cable currently not being used by
anyone-a step the FCC believes
will help small and rural districts;
* ALLOW schools and libraries to apply
for E-rate aid to build their own
high-speed broadband networks, or
portions of such networks, when that
is the most cost-effective option;
* REQUIRE that all telecommunications
companies that receive subsidies
through a specific federal program
to help rural communities offer highspeed
broadband to schools and
libraries in those areas at "rates
reasonably comparable" to prices
offered in urban communities; and
* OFFER incentives for state support
of various broadband projects
through a match of E-rate funds
of up to 10 percent of the cost of
construction, with a special focus
for tribal libraries and schools.
SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission
nal wireless-network-related equipment
should be paid for with E-rate
money that was already allocated
prior to the December spending-cap
increase, Mr. Halley said. Phasing
out support for "legacy" technologies,
such as phone lines, pagers,
and email services, should free up
$3.5 billion over the next five years,
he said, and the commission has
already ordered that $2 billion in
existing reserves go to support internal
Wi-Fi projects.
While none of the new E-rate
money will be set aside specifically
to help rural districts access external
high-speed broadband networks,
Mr. Halley acknowledged,
the combination of more overall
money for the program and new
rule changes should help.
For example, schools have historically
been prohibited from
using the E-rate to build their own
fiber-optic networks. That rule has
been a particular problem for rural
districts, more than one-fourth of
which can't find more than one
bidder for broadband-connectivity
services on the private market, according
to a recent survey by the
Consortium for School Networking,
a Washington-based association for
school technology officials.
The new rules will ease that prohibition
by allowing for "self-provisioning"
when no other affordable
high-speed option is available.
Beginning in 2016, the Universal
Service Administrative Co.,
which administers the E-rate, will
also publish the prices and terms
that providers charge schools and
libraries for program-supported
services. Given the "wildly different"
prices that even neighboring
schools have ended up paying for
similar services under the current
system, Mr. Halley and others said
the change would bring new transparency
to the program.
'Massive Upgrade' Predicted
The application window for requests
for E-rate funding for the
2015-16 school year will be open
from January to March of 2015.
John Harrington, ceo of Funds
for Learning, an Edmond, Okla.,
company that consults districts on
the E-rate, said schools that had
been skeptical that new federal
aid would arrive are now eagerly
preparing revamped applications.
"A lot of projects really are
shovel-ready," he said.
Many school officials' immediate
focus, Mr. Harrington said, will be
improving their on-campus wireless
networks, which he described
as the source of the bottleneck that
many teachers and students experience
in the classroom.
Technical rule changes that will
provide greater flexibility for large
up-front capital expenditures will
help get projects moving, he said,
as will a new rule allowing E-ratefinanced
efforts to begin as early as
April of a given funding year-before
the money has even been approved.
The fcc's actions are a big step in
the right direction, Mr. Harrington
said, but establishing high-speed
external connections for all U.S.
schools could still take time.
"They won't be able to get it all
at once," Mr. Harrington said. "But
over the next few years, we will see
a massive upgrade in schools' Internet
connections."
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Education Week - January 7, 2015

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