The Digital Divide

• while only 39 percent of classrooms in schools with high concentrations of poverty (based on 71 percent student eligibility for free or reduced-price lunches) had Internet access in 1999, 74 percent of classrooms in schools with lower concentrations of poverty had Internet access by that time (NCES, 2000a)

• between 1998 and 1999, while the percentage of classrooms with Internet access increased in schools with lower concentrations of poverty, this percentage did not increase in schools with higher concentrations (NCES, 2000a)

• only 50 percent of schools with high concentrations of poverty used dedicated lines (which facilitate faster and more reliable connections) for Internet access, while 72 percent of schools with the lowest concentrations of poverty used them (NCES, 2000a)

• by 1999, urban schools had, on average, 11 students per computer with Internet access, while rural schools had only 7 (NCES, 2000a)

• by 2000, only 4 percent of adults with only an elementary school education used the Internet, while 74.5 percent of those with at least a four-year college degree did (NTIA, 2000)

• by the end of 1998, 37 percent of the classrooms in schools with racial minority enrollments comprising 50 percent or more of the student body had Internet access, while 57 percent of those in schools with less that 6 percent minority enrollment did (NCES, 2000a)

HOME

• by 2000, even in the context of improving rates of access, only 23.5 percent of African American households, and only 23.6 percent of Latino households had Internet access, considerably lower than the 41.5% national average (NCES, 2000a)

• though the disparity in Internet usage between men and women had largely disappeared by 2000 (NCES, 2000a), women are still more likely to use it recreationally to pursue hobbies and personal interests related to travel, health, and cooking, while men use it largely to further professional endeavors like on-line investing (Cyber Dialogue, 1999)

• by 2000, people with physical disabilities were less than half as likely to have computer access at home as people without physical disabilities; 23.9 and 51.7 percent, respectively (Kaye, 2000)

• by 2000, while only 22 percent of households with annual incomes of less than $15,000 had home computers, 86.3 percent of households with annual incomes of more than $75,000 had them (NCES, 2000a)

• by January 2000, of the 242 million Internet users worldwide, 120 million are from the United States and Canada, while only 2.1 million are from Africa, 1.9 million from the Middle East, and 8 million from South America (CommerceNet, 2000)

• by 2000, 49.6 percent of the worldwide Internet users were first-language speakers of English despite the fact that they make up only 5.3 percent of the world's total population (Global Reach, 2000)

PEDAGOGY (refer to table in article)

• between 1994 and 1999, while students in schools with low concentrations of poverty were most likely to be assigned computer-related tasks focused on active learning, students in schools in which 71 percent or more of the student body was eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch were more likely to be assigned practice drills than any other computer-related task (NCES, 2000b)

SOURCES

CommerceNet. (2000). Worldwide internet population [online]. http://www.commerce.net/research/stats/wwwstats.html

Cyber Dialogue. (1999). The American Internet User Survey [online]. http://www.cyberdialogue.com/free_data/index.html

Global Reach. (2000). Global internet statistics (by language) [online]. http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3

Kaye, H.S. (2000). Computer and internet use among people with disabilities. San Francisco, CA: National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

National Center for Educational Statistics (2000a). Internet access in U.S. public schools and classrooms, 1994-1999. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Education.

National Center for Educational Statistics (2000b). Teacher use of computers and the Internet in schools. Washington, D. C.: United States Department of Education.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) (2000). Falling through the net: Defining the digital divide. Washington, D.C.: NTIA.