A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

FOR RELEASE: January 19, 2001	Contact:         David Thomas (202) 401-1579

STUDIES SHOW E-RATE PROVIDES NEW LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR NATION'S DISADVANTAGED STUDENTS

Two U.S. Department of Education studies show that the E-Rate is helping make significant progress in providing new learning opportunities to the nation's most disadvantaged students.

According to the studies, Empowerment Zone (EZ) schools are taking advantage of the E-Rate program at rates 16 percent higher than similar schools in other communities, and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools raised their participation in the program from 35 percent in the first year of the program to more than 95 percent in the second year.

"Public-private partnerships and grass roots leadership have made a big difference during the first two years of the E-Rate Program," said U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley. "They have helped bring empowerment zone schools and schools serving Indian students into participation in the E-Rate program at rates well above the national average."

Schools located in Empowerment Zones, poorer communities tagged for economic development, and BIA schools serve some of the nation's most disadvantaged students. "E-learning offers new opportunities to learn for many of these students, helping bring them challenging, world class learning resources," Riley said.

The E-Rate is a federal program designed to improve access to the Internet and telecommunications services to schools and libraries by providing discounts. With about $2 billion in annual funding, the E-Rate program is benefiting more than 90 percent of America's public schools and providing Internet access for 30 million children in more than one million classrooms and 47,000 schools and libraries.

Other findings from the reports include:

• All EZ schools that applied for the E-Rate received at lease some funding in the first two years of the program;
• Districts with EZ schools had high levels of applications for internal connections in the first two years of the E-Rate program, even though application rates for these services fell in other districts;
• Schools in EZ communities generally apply for the E-Rate program at a higher rate than similar schools in other communities, even after controlling for poverty and urban location;
• By the second year of the E-Rate program, BIA schools had the highest application rate of any group of schools analyzed and received more than three times the national average in per student funding;
• Total E-Rate commitments to BIA schools rose by a factor of 20, from $300,000 in the first year to more than $6 million in the second year; and
• All BIA schools that applied received at least some funding in the first two years of the program, in comparison to about 98 percent of all schools that applied.

Riley said that for high poverty schools, and small and remote rural schools, obtaining information and the technical assistance to apply for the program can present challenges that could prevent them from taking advantage of the learning resources of the E-Rate. The two studies suggest that public-private partnerships can make a large contribution to helping solve this problem. The two reports, E-Rate and American Indian-Serving Schools: Who Applies and Who Gets Funded? and Empowerment Zones and E-Rate Application Rates, can be obtained at the U.S. Department of Education Web site http://www.ed.gov/Technology/ or the Urban Institute http://www.urbaninstitute.org.