The Digital Divide in ’s Public High Schools

Scott Dexter Jack Shuler Associate Professor of Computer and Project Director, Information Science Community Partnership for Research Brooklyn College of CUNY and Learning [email protected] [email protected]

Is there a way to harness the power of computer technology to serve my students’ search for meaning in their learning and in their lives? Lowell Monke Breaking Down the Digital Walls

One of the many issues debated in the World Summit preparatory discussions was whether or not a concept of "communication rights" should be endorsed by the Summit. This issue arises, of course, from the question of how Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be interpreted. The Article itself states that, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." When we put this Article into the framework of the digital divide discussion, it is clear that we must view these freedoms as positive ones; as the UK-based organization Article 19 notes, “the right to freedom of expression is recognized to include a positive element, placing an obligation on States to take positive measures …” (Article 19 2). The Summit’s Draft Declaration of Principles elaborates on the ways in which the rights identified in this Article must be supported:

We recognize that young people are the future workforce and leading creators and earliest adopters of Information and Communication Technologies. They must therefore be empowered as learners, developers, contributors, entrepreneurs and decision-makers. We must focus especially on young people who have not yet been able to benefit fully from the opportunities provided by ICTs. (WSIS paragraph 9)

That is, in order for the freedom of expression to be truly realized, we must ensure that all citizens have the dual capabilities to formulate and apprehend ideas and to use appropriate means of communication to access and disseminate ideas. Or, as Bolt and Crawford say in their book on the digital divide, “This is not a question of newer school texts or better school uniforms, it is literally a social fulcrum point that we… have come to which will determine the face of our society well into the next century.” (Digital Divide 32) In the the broad statistics used to measure the digital divide indicate that the problem is all but solved. According to one government report, in 1994, 35 percent of public schools had access to the Internet while in the fall of 2002, 99 percent

1 had access. Further, “In 2002 the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access in public schools was 4.8 to 1, an improvement from the 12 to 1 ratio in 1998 when it was first measured” (Internet Access…). But numbers don’t and can’t measure the kind of impact that the increasing presence of computer technologies in the schools has actually had. City’s public school system provides a microcosm of the global digital divide. Despite the City’s rhetorical commitment to embracing technology within the curriculum, few schools have managed to meet this commitment successfully. While even the weakest schools have been “wired,” and many teachers are interested in integrating computing into their teaching, a number of infrastructural hurdles remain. These hurdles range from inadequate staffing and maintenance of teaching facilities to inappropriate use of security and “filtering” technology. We suggest that the simple goal of “wiring” schools, that is, providing necessary hardware, often only further entrenches the digital divide. It allows policymakers to offer evidence of cutting-edge technology at the same time they cripple schools’ ability to maintain these resources. In this talk we will begin a discussion about the digital divide as it is manifested in two Brooklyn high schools. We will share stories about the state of affairs in the schools, discuss a survey of the technological fluency of students in these high schools, and engage in the larger debate regarding the pros and cons of computer technology in schools. In order to begin an investigation into the existence of a digital divide in ’s high schools, we conducted a survey in two “zoned” high schools in the borough of Brooklyn. Students living in the vicinity of these schools attend them when they have not chosen to attend another school. New York City allows students some degree of choice in which high schools they attend, but exercising this choice is often contingent upon good grades and behavior. Thus, many students simply “end up” in zoned schools, even if they would rather attend a more prestigious school. Zoned schools have an unfair reputation as “dumping grounds” for under-performing students. This is not always the case, but it is true that most of the lowest performing schools are in fact zoned community schools. New Utrecht High School, a zoned community school, is one of the most diverse in New York City. Nearly 1 in 6 of its students are recent immigrants, many from China, Pakistan, and Russia. Significant numbers of students are bi-lingual in English and Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, Urdu, Bangledeshi, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic. New Utrecht’s diverse student population, however, suffers a significant lack of funds and resources. The second school surveyed was Bushwick High School. In the fall of 2003, administrators initiated a process of breaking the high school into three smaller schools complete with new bureaucracies. Thus, Bushwick did not admit a 9th grade class this fall as the three new schools filled that void. This restructuring is due to the fact that the school has some of the lowest scores of all New York City high schools on standardized tests. These low scores can be linked to numerous educational impediments including an unstable teaching staff that lacks adequate training and the poverty of the surrounding community. Table 1 provides some basic demographic about the two schools and their respective neighborhoods.

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New Utrecht HS Bushwick HS Hispanic (59%) and Black Officially white; many (27%); many undocumented undocumented Asian Latino immigrants immigrants Neighborhood

40% below poverty level Median household income 76% children born into $50K poverty English Language Learners 23.4% 29.4% (14% average in NYC) Eligible for free lunch (poor) 24% 77.1% (51.8% average in NYC) Capacity Utilization 139% 99% (107% average in NYC) % Passing English/Math 62 / 48 23 / 21 Graduation Assessment Dropout Rate 13% 36% (20% average in NYC) Spending per Student 7620 9567 ($9348 average in NYC)

Table 1. Demographics

New Utrecht and Bushwick High School, with all their difficulties, will form the bedrock for our investigations. They are not shining-lights in the United States public education system, and are often viewed as “problems” for elected officials to deal with. The reality is that these are stereotypical urban high schools in the United States and are responsible for engaging and educating almost 4,000 youths with myriad backgrounds and preparations. Simply teaching these students the traditional “reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic” is an immense task. Thus, the prospect of incorporating meaningful education about computers and related technologies is daunting at best. The surveys we created to begin our investigation into the issue of the digital divide at Bushwick and New Utrecht were administered by four Brooklyn College students from my inter-disciplinary class, “Service Learning for Youth Workers.” These

3 students work with high school students participating in after-school programs run by the Brooklyn College Community Partnership for Research and Learning. Table 2 summarizes our survey results. One of the most salient points gathered from this survey is the fact that so many of these students note that Internet filters hinder their research. Of course, the use of filters in public schools is not at all uncommon. According to a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics,

New Utrecht Bushwick Students Surveyed 31 36 Have Computer in Home 30 26 Use Email 25 26 Have Computer in Classrooms 14 15

0-5 hrs 15 25 Weekly Usage 6-10 hrs 8 8 10+ hrs 5 3

Filters 17 20 Not enough 9 13 Limits time Don’t know 0 4 how

Table 2. Survey Results.

Schools use various means to control student access to inappropriate material on the Internet. Ninety-six percent use blocking software, 91 percent report that teachers monitor students’ access, 82 percent have a written agreement that parents have to sign, 77 percent use contracts that the students had to sign, 41 percent have honor codes, and 32 percent allow access only to an intranet (Internet Access…)

One of the authors (Dexter) spent a semester working in an after-school program at Bushwick, and, like students there, found the filters to be a significant impediment to meaningful teaching and learning. It’s important to note that although schools must install filters in order to receive federal subsidies for computer equipment, there are very

4 few guidelines for what these filters should or should not block.1 In the case of Bushwick, where one staff person is responsible for the entire school’s computing infrastructure, filters – and computer security in general – are configured to minimize the amount of maintenance required. Thus, students may save nothing on these computers, no software may be installed – including browser plug-ins that might be needed to use some interactive educational website, and a bizarrely broad range of websites are blocked. These blocked sites are not just those that may contain controversial material. For example, when we attempted to go to the National Hockey League’s website for an exercise in statistics, we found it blocked because it contained a chat area. Of course, even with the filters in place, we routinely observed students playing interactive games on Yahoo and participating in various forms of chat unrelated to the material we were working on. It goes without saying that sites with content relating to AIDS, for example, are generally not available – a particularly disturbing fact given that Bushwick has one of the highest rates of AIDS cases in Brooklyn. So, how and in what framework should computers and their related technologies be introduced to communities of learners? How should they be integrated into the classroom if at all? In their book Breaking Down the Digital Walls, Burniske and Monke ponder these questions. The authors, both former high school teachers, make it clear that they are neither Luddites nor technophiles, but they do exude an air of caution. Discussing a former star-student, Monke writes:

…by the standards of those educational reformers pushing high-tech solutions Peter was actually well-educated. His math and English skills were good. He was already technologically proficient; he was taking the most advanced computer class the school district offered. He could whip you up a magazine layout, create a formula-filled spreadsheet, or design a relational database. Name your destination on the information superhighway and he could get you there – just don’t ask him to explain what he found when he arrived. When he graduated that spring he was ready for work or college. But was he ready to be part of his community? Was his community ready for him to be part of it? (20)

If his community was not ready for him, his employer certainly was. Peter would, indeed, make a fine worker—skilled, capable, and articulate. But this is precisely the problem. When we begin this line of thinking, we inevitably stumble upon the age-old question, for what purposes do we educate? Is it solely for the purpose of guaranteeing students future employment? If so, then what kind of future may we look forward to? Is it idealistic to believe that a good education should be about questioning, dialogue, and critical examination? Can “finding one’s self” be a part of the learning process? Monke asks, “Is there a way to harness the power of computer technology to serve my students’ search for meaning in their learning and in their lives?” (19). According to Louis Althusser, in contemporary Western culture, the School has replaced the Church’s position as the major conveyor of the ideology of the State. The

1 [NCES 2004-11 Oct 2003 Internet Access in US Public Schools… 1994-2002 p12] Under the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), no school may receive E-rate discounts unless it certifies that it is enforcing a policy of internet safety that includes the use of filtering or blocking technology.

5 School functions to help reproduce the various skills of labor, as well as to inculcate students with, “the rules of morality, civic and professional conscience” (89). The School teaches one how to produce and how to know one’s place within the echelon of production. This education begins on the first day of school and continues throughout one’s journey through academia. Bells function to signal class changes, but also to teach solid “professional” skills. Paper deadlines teach work deadlines and so on. Insomuch as the School functions as “conveyor of ideology,” it indoctrinates students—and some teachers—with the myth of the computer and its accompanying technologies. The computer solves, creates, and embodies a potential to change the world. Althusser’s examination sheds light on the question of the digital divide because it brings up several questions: Why are students being trained to use computers? If it is for the purpose of acquiring skills, then we must ask—as Althusser and many others have—what is the purpose of the 21st century school? One answer to this question might be found in our survey results. Students that have access to equipment without adequate support from faculty, staff, and administration are unable to engage in a variety of critical conversations. Such situations force schools into a position of creating future workers rather than future critical thinkers, citizens, and leaders. If computers are used merely to transfer skills then educators are engaged in the kinds of narrative or “banking concept” practices denounced by Paulo Freire (71). Freire argues for an education that consists of critical thinking, analysis, and dialogue. He notes,

Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety. Adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings…They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings… (79)

True learning comes only from dialogue and open access to information. For Freire, this reciprocal learning is a question of human rights: “If it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings.” (88) For the past twenty years, beginning with the Reagan-era report, A Nation at Risk, national policymakers have trumpeted the importance of computer science in primary and secondary school curricula. This report called for a dramatic shift in the way the nation thinks about public education. In addition to its call for an increasing focus on quantitative disciplines, the report also called for increased quantification for the educational process itself introducing a broad array of testing regimes—a simple way to measure learning. Testing is also a way for politicians to establish themselves as champions of education reform. If test scores go up, they must be doing something right. Meeting technology standards, such as having “a computer in every classroom” is a close cousin of standardized testing. If a politician can help place those computers in classrooms, then that politician must be doing something right. Thus constituents are happy. The office-holders are happy. And most importantly, the companies supplying the computers and their related technologies and logistical supports—are happy. As Maris Vinovskis, a former advisor to the US Department of Education, notes, our national response to the concerns raised by A Nation at Risk was short-sighted and

6 ineffective. Vinovskis observes, "Everybody wants their own plan, so we go through these big initiatives in an approach where we try a fad and don't really measure it to see whether it really works." It’s unlikely that the use of technology in the classroom is just a fad. Indeed, the public discussion of the digital divide is a golden opportunity for meaningful educational change. But in order for this to happen, we need to look beyond the numbers and statistics and meditate on discovering how we can most effectively use computers in schools to help us realize our educational goals. Perhaps we can have our students use resources like Indymedia to report events in their communities to the world. Our students could make contributions to online collaborative projects such as Wikipedia. Perhaps their enthusiasms would be fired by the rewards and challenges of creating and maintaining a ‘blog for their school or community. Indeed, for computers to provide a truly revolutionary contribution to the classroom, we must imagine them as tools to be used in education that is critically engaged with the object of study.

7 Bibliography

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes towards and Investigation.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Article 19. Statement on the right to communicate by Article 19 Global Campaign for Free Expression. February 2003. (WSIS/PC-2/CONTR/95-E). Bolt, David and Ray Crawford. Digital Divide. Being Fluent with Information Technology. Committee on Information Technology Literacy. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999. Bromley, Hank. “Data-Driven Democracy? Social Assessment of Educational Computing.” In Education/Technology/Power: Educational Computing as a Social Practice. Hank Bromley, and Michael W. Apple, eds. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998. Burniske, R.W. and Lowell Monke. Breaking Down the Digital Walls: Learning to Teach in a Post-Modem World. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001. “Bushwick High School.” 2001 – 2002 School Report: Brooklyn Superintendancy. www.nycboe.net. Culp, Katie McMillan, Margaret Honey, and Ellen Mandinach. “A Retrospective on Twenty Years of Education Technology Policy.” United States Department of Education. October 2003. Davis, Jim and Michael Stack. “The Digital Advantage.” Cutting Edge: Technology, Information Capitalism, and Social Revolution. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Michael Stack. London: Verso, 1997. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970. “Internet Access Soars in Schools, But ‘Digital Divide’ Still Exists at Home for Minority and Poor Students.” October 29, 2003. www.ed.gov/print/news/pressreleases/2003/10/10292003a.html “New Utrecht High School.” 2001 – 2002 School Report: Brooklyn Superintendancy. www.nycboe.net. Reich, Robert B. The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism. New York: Knopf, 1991. “United States Federal Budget.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/education.html Vinovskis, Maris. “Missed Opportunities: Why the Federal Response to ‘A Nation at Risk’ Was Inadequate,” Ed. David T. Gordon. Nation Reformed? American Education 20 Years after A Nation at Risk Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Education Press. Quoted in “20 Years After ‘A Nation at Risk’: Why National Reform Failed.” Joseph J. Serwach. The University Record Online. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The Regents of the University of Michigan. Wresch, William. Disconnected: Haves and Have-Nots in the Information Age. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996. WSIS. Draft Declaration of Principles. Building the Information Society: A Global Challenge in the New Millennium. November 2003. (WSIS/PC-3/DT/6 Rev 1-E)

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