We’ve all heard of the achievement gap that plagues U.S. schools and students. Related — and just as significant — is the “homework gap,” or students’ inability to access consistent, reliable Internet connectivity outside school. This is a major hurdle as digital homework becomes ubiquitous, and particularly impacts low-income households who are more likely to be without broadband. In an effort to help overcome this digital divide, the Center for Digital Education, on behalf of Samsung, sought out school districts implementing innovative initiatives to bring connectivity to students on and off school premises. Read this white paper to learn about how these districts are addressing the homework gap and the challenges still to be overcome.

1. 1
We’ve all heard of the achievement gap that plagues U.S. schools
and students. Related — and just as significant — is what FCC
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel refers to as the “homework gap,”
or students’ inability to access consistent, reliable Internet connectivity
outside school.
This is a major hurdle as digital homework becomes ubiquitous.
According to the 2015 report, “Taking the Pulse of the High School
Student Experience in America,” 96.5 percent of the students
surveyed said they needed Internet access to complete homework
outside school. About half could not complete homework due to lack
of Internet access and 42 percent had received lower grades on an
assignment due to lack of access.
Not surprisingly, socioeconomics play a large role in the homework gap.
Students from low-income households are about four times more likely
to be without broadband at home than their more affluent counterparts.
A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found only 8.4 percent of
households with school-age kids and annual incomes of over $50,000
Bringing Internet Home:
Pervasive digital education requires pervasive access
A 2015 study found that half of students
surveyed could not complete homework
due to lack of consistent, reliable
Internet access outside of school.
The Homework Gap

2. 2
All White Black Hispanic Asian
38.6% 37.4% 15.5%24.6%31.4%
8.4% 6.7% 13% 12.8% 4%
Households With School-Age Children That Do Not Have Broadband Access
% Lacking a high-speed connection at home
Annual income under $50,000
$50,000 or greater
% With a high-speed connection at home
All households
with school-age children 82.5% 88% 71.5% 72.2% 92.3%
Annual income under $25,000 60.3% 67.9% 53.6% 54.8% 79%
$25,000-$49,999 75.7% 80.6% 71.2% 69.2% 88.6%
$50,000-$99,999 88.2% 90.5% 84.1% 82.1% 94%
$100,000-$149,999 94.3% 95.1% 91.7% 90.6% 96.5%
$150,000+ 96.7% 97% 93.5% 93.9% 97.9%
Source: Pew Research Center analysis of 2013 American Community Survey (IPUMS)
lacked broadband access, compared to 31.4 percent of
students in households with incomes below $50,000.
Technology has transformed education, but the initial focus was
to equip schools with high-speed Internet access and students
with devices. Now, “the biggest challenge is the at-home piece,”
says Brent Legg, vice president for education programs at
Connected Nation, a nonprofit committed to bringing high-speed
Internet and broadband-enabled resources to all Americans.
Some work is being done to overcome this challenge. The
ConnectED initiative aims to provide 99 percent of American
students with access to the Internet at school. The initiative
has now been joined by ConnectHome, which works
with nonprofits and industry partners to bring high-speed
broadband to 275,000 households. In 2014, AT&T pledged
$100 million over 3 years to provide 50,000 students with
off-campus connectivity.
With lofty goals come challenges. One is developing data plans
that can support rich educational content, but are inexpensive
enough for school districts or low-income families to afford. A
federal program known as E-rate partially reimburses schools and
libraries for Internet access costs, but it doesn’t subsidize at-home
connectivity. Another challenge is that many low-income students
don’t go home to the same place every night. They require a
solution that moves with them, not a cable that connects to a
single dwelling.
In an effort to help overcome this digital divide, the Center for
Digital Education, on behalf of Samsung, sought out school
districts implementing innovative initiatives to bring connectivity
to students on and off school premises.
Samsung has a particular stake in solving these challenges for
students. As one of the largest technology companies in the
world, offering solutions ranging from network infrastructure to
mobile computing devices to interactive displays, Samsung is
dedicated to ensuring students receive the education and skillsets
necessary to better prepare them for the future. Since 2010,
Samsung has been hosting the Solve for Tomorrow contest,
which challenges students to tap into their science, technology,
engineering and math (STEM) skills to create solutions to real
problems in their communities, such as the homework gap.
Through this contest, Samsung awards $2 million in technology
each year to participating schools across the country.
Keep reading to learn how Samsung and other technology
companies are supporting schools in their efforts to bridge
the digital divide.

3. In San Marcos Independent School District outside
San Diego, 89 percent of students qualify for free- and
reduced-price lunch and 65 percent are English language
learners. Until last year, 59 percent of the sixth graders
at the district’s Alvin Dunn Elementary School lacked
home Internet access. That has changed thanks to a
Qualcomm Education pilot program that provided all
77 Alvin Dunn sixth graders with a Samsung tablet
featuring a low-cost data plan sponsored by AT&T.
Qualcomm Education’s QLearn technology allows
the school to provide after-school access to approved
schoolwork and learning-related apps and websites on
both WiFi and LTE. This gives students constant access
to learning tools on the Samsung tablets so they can
study, conduct research, watch school-approved videos
and turn in homework.
To conserve LTE and keep the monthly plans
affordable, the school can also designate allowable
content such as websites, apps and videos to only be
accessed on WiFi. This approach allows Alvin Dunn to
comply with federal laws such as the Children’s Internet
Protection Act (CIPA), which require schools to block
content that could be considered obscene or harmful
to students while they are on and off campus. It also
keeps data costs low by ensuring kids don’t spend
their evenings watching YouTube videos. Instead, the
technology provides a simple user experience that
allows students to access school-approved games and
other content.
Ninety-six percent
of students said having
access to the Internet at
home made them better
learners, according to
an evaluation of the Alvin
Dunn pilot conducted
by Project Tomorrow,
an education nonprofit
dedicated to empowering
student voices. A majority
said the ability to do
homework outside school
made them more confident
in their abilities and more
interested in what they
were learning. On average,
the students said they spent just over an hour per
day doing schoolwork-related activities at home.
Qualcomm Education, Samsung and AT&T are
continuing the Alvin Dunn pilot this year with a new class
of sixth graders. The goal is not to offer charity — the
impact of which ends when the sponsor’s money dries up
— but to create a sustainable business model. The hope
is the pilot will lead to a $10 to $15 monthly data plan that
can be purchased by schools and rolled out nationwide
starting this September. If successful, it will be one that
school districts can afford and will give the carriers a
financial incentive to continue offering it.
3
Focus on Data Plans:
Alvin Dunn Elementary School, San Marcos, Calif.
Before a pilot equipped all sixth
graders at Alvin Dunn Elementary
School with a tablet, 59 percent
lacked home Internet access.
of students said
having access to the
Internet at home made
them better learners.
A majority said the
ability to do homework
outside school made
them more confident in
their abilities and more
interested in what they
were learning.
96%

4. Pasadena Independent School District (ISD) and
Katy ISD serve similar numbers of students, but
are demographically distinct. As a result, they are using
very different approaches. For Pasadena, the issue has
been connectivity at home, while Katy’s schools have
undergone a digital transformation.
Pasadena ISD
The district serves 50,000 students across 50 schools.
Seventy-one percent of the students are Hispanic and 70
percent are economically disadvantaged. Pasadena ISD has
become a model for identifying the needs of its students,
then developing technology solutions to address them.
Beginning in 2011, the district began work on a 24/7
digital learning environment. Educational technology is
of limited value without rich content, skilled teachers
and an understanding of the target population, so
the district spent the first year conducting a needs
assessment, developing a grade-by-grade digital
curriculum and providing teachers with intensive
professional development to help maximize the impact
of new digital resources.
Only after this work was done did the initiative bring
students on board. The district decided to first focus
on the middle school, and in year two Pasadena gave
sixth graders devices with data plans to provide at-home
connectivity. Each year another grade was brought
online, but only after digital content was developed and
teachers were trained.
The next step was for Pasadena to determine the most
cost-effective way to ensure home connectivity and a 24/7
mobile learning environment for its high population of low-
income and minority students. The district is landlocked
and densely populated, making it well-suited for a private
LTE network.
Polly Gifford, the founder and principal consultant of
Education Partners Solutions, Inc., says districts need to
accurately evaluate the true cost of the private network
Demographics and Geography Help
Determine Optimal Connectivity Solutions:
Katy and Pasadena Independent School Districts, Greater Houston Area
Ninety percent of Katy ISD students have Internet access
at home, so the district supports a program that provides
discount pricing for parents who want to purchase devices.4
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5. option compared to other approaches. “You have to clearly
define the capacity and applications you’re looking for and
who the subscribers will be.”
A well-thought-out procurement process will also help
identify a district’s most cost-effective connectivity option.
For example, it’s important not to overlook the fact that
a private LTE network could be obsolete in a few years
as technology advances. But, Gifford says, “in this case,
competitive bids showed the private network to be the
most cost-effective and technology-efficient way to ensure
24/7 learning over a 5-year period.”
Pasadena ISD broke ground on its first tower in February
and service will commence in summer 2016. Because
community leaders took the time to identify their students’
needs and aligned technology to curriculum, they can be
confident a private LTE network is their best option.
Katy ISD
The district serves over 73,000 students in 60 schools
spread over 181 square miles. With fewer than 30 percent
of its students considered low income and many more
already connected to the Internet at home, its needs
are very different from Pasadena’s. Katy’s story is about
transforming itself into a digital learning environment.
In 2009, the district launched its Mobile Learning
Initiative at one elementary school, providing 140 fifth
graders with smartphones donated by Verizon. The
phones featured large screens and easy-to-read text,
but had no texting and phone capabilities. Instead, they
provided filtered Internet access and apps their teachers
had selected.
In year two, Katy ISD expanded the pilot to 10 more
schools, this time using Android devices. During the 2011-12
school year, the district also upgraded its core network to
accommodate the new mobile devices. By 2012-13, the
district had distributed 2,800 mobile learning devices to fifth
graders at 18 elementary school campuses.
As was the case in Pasadena, intensive professional
development for teachers was an important part of
the initiative. The tables shown indicate that it yielded
immediate student achievement gains.
By the program’s fourth year, students were
increasingly asking to use their own devices and not
taking them home as often. A district survey found
that more than 90 percent of students have at-home
Internet access, and parents increasingly purchased
their children devices as they saw the plethora of online
software and resources.
Now, instead of supplying mobile devices, Katy
ISD supports a program that provides discount pricing for
parents who want to purchase them. Additionally, the district
has added bandwidth and access points at all schools.
Students can also check out a device and a
hotspot if they do not have Internet access at home.
All devices are routed back through Katy ISD’s filter.
In less than a decade, Katy ISD has transformed
into a digital learning environment. A rich curriculum and
learning tools are available online, and processes such as
communicating with teachers and getting assignments
have been standardized.
“Competitive bids showed the private network to be the most cost-
effective and technology-efficient way to ensure 24/7 learning over
a 5-year period.”
Polly Gifford, Founder and Principal Consultant, Education Partners Solutions, Inc.
Percentile on state tests for students participating
in year one of Mobile Learning Initiative
Reading
Math
Science
2009 86%
86%
80%
94%
92%
95%
2010
2010
2010
2009
2009
Percentile on state tests for year two of Mobile
Learning Initiative, expansion to 11 schools
Reading
Math
Science
2010
2011
2011
2011
2010
2010
91%
90%
90%
93%
92%
62%
5

6. The High Plains Regional Educational Cooperative
(HPREC) serves a number of school districts over
a vast, sparsely populated area of New Mexico. In these
rural areas, geography makes connectivity a challenge.
Building a fiber optic cable network is usually not cost
effective, so HPREC is pursuing a creative technological
solution. “White spaces” are frequencies reclaimed from
the ultra-high frequency (UHF) broadcast allocation when
television switched from analog to digital. The technology
can provide long-range, high-capacity, high-quality
broadband for a comparatively modest capital investment.
Some technologies that utilize white spaces can be
deployed similar to cellular towers, but due to the nature of
the spectrum, transmission signals can cover a larger area.
A white spaces system utilizing this technology was
successfully deployed in a rural area of northern Alberta,
Canada, serving vast areas in remote regions.
White spaces offer a number of advantages for rural
school districts. Being less capital intensive than other
approaches translates to being quicker to market — about
18 to 24 months for southeastern New Mexico. Low capital
costs can also make it easier to offer low-cost data plans.
HPREC has entered into a partnership with Terastream
Broadband for the New Mexico schools project. Terastream
is developing a homework Internet access package that
would be offered at a discount rate as long as at least one
child in a household is in school. “We are committed to
doing whatever is necessary to make our products cost
effective within the markets we serve,” says Terastream Vice
President of Business Development Liz Zucco.
Rather than competing with other carriers, Terastream
seeks to bring service to places where it doesn’t make
sense for others to do so.
The HPREC/Terastream joint venture has been granted
an experimental license in New Mexico. Their next chal-
lenge will be gaining access to the broadcast allocation
needed to make the project a reality. The FCC plans a
spectrum auction this spring.
“White Spaces” Offer a Potential
Solution for Rural Connectivity:
Southeastern New Mexico
Since building a fiber optic cable
network is not usually cost
effective in rural areas, white
spaces offer a creative solution.
The technology can provide long-
range, high-capacity, high-quality
broadband for a comparatively
modest capital investment.
6
The Advantages of White Spaces
Offer long-range, high-capacity,
high-quality broadband in rural areas
Smaller upfront capital investment makes
it easier to offer low-cost data plans
Quicker to market

7. School Superintendent Dan Walker regularly confronts
challenges that few of his counterparts could even
imagine. His Lower Kuskokwim School District in western
Alaska covers 21,000 square miles, or about the size of
West Virginia. It serves approximately 4,200 students in
28 schools that range from 12 to just over 500 students
and are spread across 22 villages. The only way to get in
or out of most of the villages is by air. Even school sports
teams fly to away games — that is, when they don’t travel
in snowmobile convoys along frozen rivers.
With many miles in between sparsely populated
villages, it’s impossible to staff every classroom with a
high-quality teacher, which makes blended learning and
two-way interactive videoconferencing critical.
A decade ago the district accessed the Internet via
a satellite system plagued by low bandwidth, lack of
reliability and delays. But then GCI, a telecommunications
company with Alaska’s largest wireless network, built
out its system, allowing Lower Kuskokwim to switch to
a land-based microwave network that is faster, provides
more bandwidth and is less susceptible to weather.
A typical school in one of the district’s villages has
three or four portable videoconferencing stations. Some-
times just a single student will be taking a class and
sometimes it’s a much larger group.
Despite having many times more bandwidth than it
had with the old satellite system, the microwave network
is still far below recommended levels, which necessitates
aggressive management of the network. Non-educational
content is blocked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m, so teachers wait
until after 5 to download video clips and other materials
that require more bandwidth.
School is the hub of the community in small
Eskimo villages. Combine that with the fact that Lower
Kuskokwim is one of the nation’s poorest school districts
with 90 percent of its students below the federal poverty
level, and that only schools and libraries — not homes
— qualify for federal E-rate reimbursements for Internet
access costs, and it’s easy to understand why the
district’s focus is on school connectivity. Most students
receive a school-issued device and connect to the
Internet on campus.
Walker says Lower Kuskokwim’s wide area network
(WAN) is probably the most complex of any school
district in the country. It costs about $30 million annually,
but since E-rate reimbursements are based on poverty
level and urban/rural status, the district foots only about
10 percent of the bill.
A technological revolution in recent years is providing
students in the district access to quality education
that would have been impossible less than a decade
ago. And it appears all the hard work under difficult
circumstances is starting to pay off. Last year alone, the
district’s graduation rate rose by 15 percentage points.
Doing More with Less:
Lower Kuskokwim School District, Alaska
Lower Kuskokwim is one of the
nation’s poorest school districts with
90 percent of its students below the
federal poverty level. With little to no
connectivity at home, most students
receive a school-issued device and
connect to the Internet on campus.
7
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8. Using 24/7
Internet Access
to Meet Unique
Student Needs:
The Momentous School,
Oak Cliff, Texas
8
Collaboration and student engagement
improved at the Momentous School after
teachers and students were equipped with
Samsung tablets that had filtered content and
mobile broadband from AT&T.
The Momentous Institute (formerly Salesmanship
Club Youth and Family Centers) is a private nonprofit
organization that has been providing mental health services
in the Dallas area for over 95 years. Its focus on prevention
rather than intervention led to the founding of the Momentous
School, a lab school, in 1997.
Building on the institute’s work, the school, located in
the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, serves 248 students between
the ages of 3 and 11 with a program focused on social and
emotional health. More than 90 percent of its students are
Hispanic and 85 percent qualify for free and reduced-price
lunch. Momentous serves them well; as of 2014, 99 percent
of its former students had gone on to graduate from high
school on time and 86 percent of graduates had enrolled in
higher education.

9. 9
In recent years, the school began exploring ways to
increase student engagement and extend learning to
students’ homes. A parent survey found 96 percent had
smartphones, 82 percent had computers, 92 percent had
Internet access and 78 percent had tablets. But as is often
the case in low-income families, there was uncertainty
around the Internet and access was not always consistent.
School leaders chose to address the issue by combining
their educational expertise with technical know-how
provided by Samsung and AT&T. During the 2014-15 school
year, all Momentous School students and teachers received
tablets donated by Samsung and equipped with filtered
content and mobile broadband from AT&T. Beginning in
the spring semester, three social and emotional health
applications based on strategies teachers use in school
to aid students’ self-regulation and relationship skills were
developed and added to the tablets.
Two lead teachers were involved in software
development, advising the technical team on ways in
which tablets with filtered content could help create a
24/7 learning environment. They later played an important
role in training their colleagues to use the tablets. There is
also an annual training event for parents where they learn
safety practices and how to use the tablets’ software.
At the end of the school year, teachers and fourth- and
fifth-grade students were surveyed about their perceptions
of the tablets’ impact. Teachers reported the tablets
helped them facilitate differentiated instruction and improve
student engagement, among other benefits. Momentous
teachers also reported the tablets actually increased
collaboration among students (rather than isolating them)
as they shared what they learned and asked their peers to
troubleshoot problems with them.
The fourth and fifth graders agreed, reporting the tablets
enhanced collaboration, creativity and learning. They
were also found to be much more engaged in learning, as
measured by how much they enjoyed using the tablets in
various subject areas.
This year, Momentous implemented a Google platform
and is focused on perfecting the software. School leaders
decided not to send tablets home until technology issues
have been ironed out, the devices have the necessary apps
and filtering is installed to prohibit students from downloading
anything they shouldn’t. Tablets are expected to start going
home in April and continue through the end of the school
year in June. After the school year ends, school leaders will
conduct a needs assessment, implement additional parent
training and plot next steps.
Percentage of teachers who agreed or
strongly agreed the tablets enhanced:
94.7%
63.2%
81.6%
82.1%
77.6%
61.7%
Differentiated instruction
Student engagement
Student learning
Student collaboration
Communication with other classrooms
Assessment
Percentage of students who agreed or strongly agreed
they enjoyed using tablets in each subject area:
Music
Art
Social
Studies
Science
Math
Reading
Grade 5
Grade 5
Grade 5
Grade 5
Grade 5
Grade 5
Grade 4
Grade 4
Grade 4
Grade 4
Grade 4
Grade 4
96.5%
86.2%
83.3%
83.4%
80.6%
70.5%
100%
96.4%
92.9%
95.9%
93.6%
96.8%
Momentous teachers reported
the tablets actually increased
collaboration among students
(rather than isolating them) as they
shared what they learned and
asked their peers to troubleshoot
problems with them.

10. Conclusion: Closing the Gap
Clear progress is being made in the effort to bridge the digital
divide in American public education and close the homework
gap. The profiles highlight various approaches that are showing
promise in different environments.
But challenges remain. Perhaps the biggest is how to bring
promising pilot programs to scale and avoid having them
become what Julie Evans, the researcher behind the evaluation
of Qualcomm Education’s Alvin Dunn Elementary pilot, calls
“campfires of innovation.” In other words, the goal is to ensure
promising innovations can spread before they expire. With
its focus on building a sustainable business model, it’s clear
Qualcomm and its partners understand the challenge.
Education Partner Solutions’ Gifford warns that school districts
may be operating far outside their core competency when it
comes to procuring on-campus and/or at-home Internet solutions.
They sometimes don’t understand the resources and alternatives
available to them. As a result, they can too easily just purchase
whatever is offered by their local provider.
Some have signed long-term contracts that leave them over
charged and poorly served. Last year, Education Week highlighted
the case of a rural school district that, until recently, had been
paying $9,275 a month for “the slowest internet in Mississippi.”
Gifford stresses that such stories are hardly limited to rural areas.
There are also reasons for optimism. When it comes to school
access, the FCC recently approved a $1.5 billion increase in 2016
E-rate reimbursements to a total of $3.9 billion. Just as important,
it has introduced transparency measures such as online access
to bids and other documents that will show districts what their
counterparts pay for Internet access.
The ConnectED and ConnectHome initiatives demonstrate
that the government recognizes the importance of both on-
campus and at-home Internet access to achieve digital equity.
The participation of technology companies is also encouraging;
perhaps they recognize a business opportunity that could make
large-scale, at-home access economically sustainable.
As we get closer to the summit, the climb becomes steeper.
Educational content is becoming more robust, so long-term
solutions should focus on infrastructure that can support ever-
growing bandwidth requirements.
It’s clear from these case studies there is no one-size-fits-all
answer to educational connectivity challenges. Perhaps the best
description of what needs to be developed is a flexible free- and
reduced-price lunch program for data. Low-income students
can’t learn if they’re hungry; nor can they succeed if they lack the
broadband access they need to do their homework.
This piece was developed and written by the Center for
Digital Education custom media division, with information
and input from Samsung.
Learn more: samsung.com/education | insights.samsung.com | 1-866-SAM4BIZ
Follow us: youtube.com/samsungbizusa | @SamsungBizUSA
Produced by:
© 2016 Samsung Electronics America, Inc. All rights reserved. Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. All products, logos and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks
of their respective companies. This white paper is for informational purposes only. Samsung makes no warranties, express or implied, in this white paper.
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