Research Wednesday | April 9, 2025
This week’s research comes from the University of Chicago which studied the impact of broadband access during the pandemic on 80,000 students. Not surprisingly, students that were high-performing before the pandemic benefited from broadband access. But the reverse was true of low-performing students. Researchers speculated that the low-performing students had fewer computer skills and often had less adult supervision during the day. Moreover, one of the key variables studied, “engagement”, may have been more related to noneducational computer use than to completing assigned academic tasks. The low-achieving students might have been affected by other variables, such as low attendance, housing instability, and other factors that disproportionately affect poor children. The bottom line for the 80,000 students was that it helped advantaged kids, but the disadvantaged students still need human connection to remain effectively engaged in school. This is a cautionary tale as schools prepare to spend millions of dollars on artificial intelligence, often without sufficient guidelines on how to use it and how to assess its effectiveness.