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Survey Finds 85% of Underserved Students Have Access To Only One Digital Device (educationdive.com)
A new research [PDF] on students who took the ACT test, conducted by the ACT Center for Equity in Learning, found that 85% of underserved (meaning low income, minority, or first generation in college) students had access to only one device at home, most often a smartphone. From a blog post: American Indian/Alaskan, Hispanic/Latino, and African American students had the least access. White and Asian students had the most. Nearly a quarter of students who reported that family income was less that $36,000 a year had access to only a single device at home, a 19% gap compared to students whose family income was more than $100,000.
If you read TFA, the percentage of "underserved" kids with access to only one device is 19% (compared to 6% for "served" kids). Nowhere near as alarming as 85%.
Of the students who have access to only one computing device, 85% are "underserved", 15% are not. That's where the 85% figure comes from. I'd cut and paste the relevant quotes, but the PDF has the stupid no-copy flag.
The US is littered with used computers. Just ask around and you will find some spare ones and can avoid the $150.
Another good option: FreeGeek in Portland (and on Wikipedia if you want to see some of the other locations).
If you have to use the internet to do research, then you're screwed because they it doesn't have all the stuff you need, especially at college level or higher.
At college level the internet usually has access to the widest variety of scientific papers compared to any other level.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Start with solid education FIRST. Learn to do arithmetic without a calculator, learn to do research without Google, learn to read a book without swiping
Agreed, that's very important. Like, for example, if the author of this idiotic article had learned proper arithmetic she would know that "85% of those with only one device were underserved" is not the same thing as "85% of the underserved have only one device".
Either that or if she had developed decent reading skills she would have looked at page 5 of the paper and seen there, in clear English, the words "Overall, just under one in five (19%) students from 'underserved' backgrounds report having access to only one device at homeâ"more than three times higher than the percent of students not qualifying as underserved who reported this"
Unfortunately she never developed such basic skills, and thus ended up having to work as a "reporter".
The US is littered with used computers. Just ask around and you will find some spare ones and can avoid the $150.
Yep. I recently took about 50 computers and enough parts to build 50 more to the scrap yard. They pay $2 per pound for disassembled computers and 5 cents per pound for fully assembled computers. I took several dozen apart and made $100 and then sold the rest for the 5 cents because it wasn't worth my time to disassemble them. I regularly see computers on the curb on trash day and you have to PAY to dispose of CRTs. I disposed of several 19 inch and 21 inch CRTs that likely have much better picture quality and refresh rates than most of the cheap LCDs they currently sell. Nobody wants them.