Examining State and District Policy and Resource Allocation to Support Digital Learning

ABSTRACT

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many districts sought digital learning solutions to recover from learning loss, improve equity, and prepare for future interruptions. With this paper, we aim to provide information to policymakers and legislators regarding the value of resources needed to successfully implement comprehensive digital learning programing. We focus on the policies and resource allocation decisions made in North Carolina, one of the first states to launch a statewide digital learning initiative. First, we demonstrate the effects of state policy on school practices, then we turn the focus of the paper to how districts and schools allocated resources to implement digital learning. We apply the ingredients method to examine the costs of digital learning during the 2018–2019 school year. We close with recommendations for future policy and resource allocation.

Acknowledgments

We thank the following people for their support and input: Jeni Corn, Verna Lalbeharie, Maria Pitre-Martin, Vanessa Wrenn, Shaun Kellogg, Trip Stallings, Mark Sandberg, the Friday Institute, North Carolina superintendents and school staff, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education, the Golden LEAF Foundation. We thank Reggie Gilliard for providing research assistance. We appreciate the helpful feedback and suggestions shared by conference attendees at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and the Association for Education Finance and Policy. We also appreciate the helpful feedback we received from reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Session Law 2007–323 resulted in $22 million in recurring funds for the support of the School Connectivity Initiative (SCI). Another important part of the provision of high-speed broadband connectivity to all schools in the state is the support of the federal E-rate program. The E-rate program, under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), supports schools and libraries to obtain affordable broadband connectivity and provides discounts ranging from 20% to 90% depending on the level of poverty and urbanicity. Since 2013, North Carolina has qualified for more than 3% of the federal $3.9 billion maximum for E-rate filing funds nationwide. Each year the North Carolina Connectivity Team provides free and comprehensive E-rate training and support services, including filing the E-rate documents as required by law. This support enables district-level personnel to focus more fully on implementation and instruction using digital learning tools and to avoid costly errors on E-rate filing documents.

² For more information about the evolving Digital Learning Competencies for Teachers, see https://www.dpi.nc.gov/districts-schools/districts-schools-support/digital-teaching-and-learning/dtl-standards.

³ NC Legislation added $12 million in recurring funds to the already existing School Connectivity Initiative (SCI), which had $22 million of recurring funds.

⁴ For more information about the Friday Institute of Educational Innovation, visit https://www.fi.ncsu.edu/teams/ncdli/.

⁵ Student economic disadvantage is proxied by student eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch.

⁶ Column (3) models with reading achievement, instead of math, have similar estimates.

⁷ Each of the following recommendations would require nuanced implementation and careful consideration of associated costs at the state and district levels. Organizations like Digital Promise (www.digitalpromise.org) can be a key resource for education leaders, specifically as they consider curated content, device purchases, and leadership development.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina State University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Rebecca Davis is an IES Predoctoral Fellow with support from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305B200035 to the University of Pennsylvania. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Notes on contributors

A. Brooks Bowden

A. Brooks Bowden is an assistant professor in the Education Policy Division at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also serves as the Director of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education and Co-Director of the University of Pennsylvania Predoctoral Training Program in Interdisciplinary Methods for Field-based Research in Education.

Amanda Danks

Amanda Danks is the Associate Director of the Economic Evaluation of Policies and Programs Methods Hub at the American Institutes for Research and an affiliate of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education. Her work focuses on economic evaluations of programs and policies for students with disabilities and child care market rate studies that inform subsidy rate setting. Amanda is a former special educator.

Viviana Rodriguez

Viviana Rodriguez is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and is a research affiliate to the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education. Her research focuses on economics of education, labor economics, cost-effectiveness analysis, and program evaluation.

Haisheng Yang

Haisheng Yang is at Abt Associates. His research interests include educator human capital and equitable housing policies.

Rebecca Davis

Rebecca Davis is a PhD candidate in education policy at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education where she is an IES Predoctoral Fellow and a research assistant at the Center for Benefit Cost-Benefit Studies of Education. Her work focuses on policies and practices that seek to mitigate the material hardships of poverty for children and families. Rebecca is a former public school teacher.