DIGITAL DIVIDE

By

Beth SchorenContemporary Urban Issues Adriennie Hatten, Ph.D

THE FACTORS: WHO, WHERE & WHAT

WITH NEW COMMITMENTS DEVELOPING

SUGGESTIONS FOR ACHIEVEMENT THAT MEET FOUR UNITED NATIONS GOALS ON SUSTAINABILITY TARGET DATE 2030

This page left blank intentionally

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE TECHNOLOGY GAP

Stanford students believe computer access is not a reality for a vast majority throughout the world. They

believe that in order to benefit economically, politically and socially that one has to be involved in

technology. In their opinion, the digital divide is the gap between economic and racial lines of the

underprivileged poor, elderly and handicapped members of society that do not have access and those

who do have access. Their observation is that college education accounts for 10 times more likely to

have internet access and income over $75,000 amounts to 20 times more likely.

They further recognize Hispanic households are only 50% likely to own computers as opposed to

Caucasian and 2.5 times less likely to use the internet. They recognize that the distribution of wealth is

unbalanced and that the rich become richer “through the power of information” (Digital Divide, p.

Overview). It is their belief that all members of the community should have internet access available to

them just like basic phone service even if government subsidized.

With that in mind, Stanford students believe in bridging the digital divide and share a list of programs that

were in operation but had to be updated. They believe it is important to not only have internet access but

educating the users to prevent misuse especially in e-commerce. Their statistics which gathered from the

National Center for Education Statistics showed a decrease from 1985 to 1995 of women with computer

and information science degrees demonstrating there is also a gender divide (Digital Divide, p. Gender).

The digital divide is more than we anticipated when the internet became accessible to the general public

for e-commerce, education resources, entertainment value and socializing. Because the government has

done such a good job at providing technology resources to the people, what once was considered a

problem area may actually not still be the focus of concern even though there is still a digital divide. What

has been found is that several other areas of disparity have emerged from whence it started being

discussed! Depending on who is doing the study, there are at least three areas in which the digital divide

does still exist. One found on multiple occasions is the great divide between men and women when it

comes to technology and its use for private or public, for education or career. Another digital disparity has

grown between urban and rural areas. When it comes to racial disparity there is no one lineage that falls

2

rapidly behind as many are spoken of.

FACTORS PERTAINING TO WHAT TECHNOLOGY IS AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

The government offers a number of programs to the public through schools and libraries or Universal

Service Administrative Company [USAC], The Department of Education and also Housing and Urban

Development [HUD].

1. The USAC is a website that offers application forms, eligibility and processing for

telecommunications resources for schools and libraries so students and patrons can participate in

internet access. They are eligible for telecommunications service, including local and long

distance, cellular, DSL, T1, T3, satellite services, internet access, internet equipment, and

maintenance. These rules are set up by the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] and

must be used for educational purposes which includes library service to patrons (Schools and

Libraries E-Rate).

2. The U.S. Department of Education - Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education offers state

grant allocations to promote programs to assist adults getting access to basic work skills. Grants

are available to any state eligible agency of public or private that provide literacy service to adults

and families. Also, the America Connects Consortium [ACC] provides a range of technical

assistance for Community Technology Centers [CTC] supported by The National Science

Foundation. The list of Community Technology Center partners is: America Connects

Consortium, SRI International, The Digital Divide Network, 21st Century Community Learning

Centers, Community Access Program (Programs and Initiatives).

3. As a part of President Bill Clinton’s plan to bridge the digital divide the U.S. Housing and Urban

Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo initiated 500 1st yr. 1,000 by 2nd yr. of new Neighborhood

Network learning centers and 10 Cisco Networking Academies for low income and Indian tribes

(HUD Archives: News Releases, 2000).This program covers the cost of a project coordinator,

computer equipment, internet connection, improvements and training.

FACTORS ON HOW THE URBAN AREA IS AFFECTED BY THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Again, the digital divide is based on the level of access to telecommunications and information technology

3

available to people. Even though urban area is always a question because of low income and minority

households there is one rather alarming statistic. When urban is compared to rural, regardless of income,

the urban area is 50% more likely to have internet access than those in the rural area. Even though both

urban and rural areas have access to phones those in rural areas with low income and some minorities

tend to have less actual phone ownership and every income level in rural households have less

computers than in urban homes with only half likely to have internet access on those computers (Falling

Through the Net : Defining the Digital Divide, 1999).

There have been questions posed as to the reasons why rural areas do not use the internet as widely as

their income counterpart in urban area. Some considerations have been given to the cost of infrastructure

to provide the services to rural communities especially if they have to use satellite services. If that is the

belief than the cost may need to be subsidized. (Whitacre, p. 2) With statistical determination on home

and office internet use, rural areas fall shortly behind by 13 and 11 % respectively. Belief behind this

statistic is from older male head of house and lower education but more likely to run a farm. Those

internet users in both areas are considered to be younger males, employed, head of house with children

(Whitacre, pp. 4-5). This age factor is strongly supported by younger persons having been exposed to

technology in school thereby causing a desire to use the internet because of comfort level but then starts

declining after age 28.

FACTORS STILL GROWING IN THE GENDER GAP ON THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

If the digital divide is considered the separation between those who have and those who have not then

what does it say when men use more technology then women. If

public access provides technical skills for a person to compete in a

digital society then why are statistics showing women losing interest

especially when internet usage decreases output expenditures but

increases productivity? One such factor may be fear of science and

technology but also could have a strong influence pertaining to

available financial resources (Bulent Tarman, p. 10). It may also be a factor of frustration.

According to Canadian resources there is a lower number of women in the computer science field. There

4

is belief that this has to do with confidence in pursuing such career. The digital divide has its effect on

gender based on stereotypes, access, instructions and alienation causing lower confidence for women in

computer technology pursuit (McDougall, 2011, p. 310). Research shows that males have greater

confidence and attitudes when using technological devices and women experience more anxiety primarily

because computers are or have been considered to be a man’s world as have been the case in computer

science field of study. (McDougall, 2011, p. 312) This prejudice against women has been present since

their early life in school when using machines and software not to mention a lack of role models. Related

fields in technology continue to lack females because of inadequate instruction, encouragement or

support.

The computer programming field has been virtually nonexistent to females because of apparent difficulty

in implementing subprograms (McDougall, 2011, p. 319). Participation in gaming software and in

mathematical skills has always been lower for females which helps in the programming field. There has

been a great deal more support from peers for males having prior experience than for females trying to

enter in to a technology field. As this acts to bolster male superiority in the field thereby inhibiting female

confidence (McDougall, 2011, p. 321). One area of interest to women thus far has been in website design

which has become virtually nonexistent because of software development that allows a user to create

their own web site. Which again cuts women out of the technology positions.

Just recently there were two prominent women posted about in social media that have done something

significant for technology. On Linkedin, a man by the name of Joe Shenouda currently working for

European Centre for Information Policy and Security [ECLIPS], Cyberpol blogged about the woman

Grace Hopper pictured. He states she was the “most underappreciated

computer scientists ever!” She invented the first compiler which translates

computer language to machine code. He further states that every program you

use and every operating system or server was “made possible by her first

compiler”. The second woman works for CISCO Corporation where she was

given the task of reinventing the Internet. She is Giovanna Carofiglio from Italy

a distinguished engineer who created information-centric networking [ICN] which will replace the original

5

Internet Protocol Suite [TCP/IP] (Reinventing the Internet, 2015).

Stereotypes pertaining to gender bias in the digital divide is primarily a social-cultural one whereby

traditional male jobs have been more technical and female jobs have been more caregiver oriented.

There is also a suspicion that females have more traditional family obligations leaving little time to

develop in the fast pace of technology. Chauvinistic statements were also made by male gender

indicating technology field is a more thinking process that women would be less interested in (McDougall,

2011, pp. 325-6). Our local community statistics show that 2,017 homes are controlled by an unmarried

female with an average of 3.45 children compared to 471 unmarried men with an average of 3.17 children

which shows that single mothers are at a disadvantage in just one community (State & County Quick

Facts - Sandusky, Ohio, n.d.). They need all the advancement they can get.

Personal experience alone allows me to give firsthand acknowledgment of being discouraged in 2012

upon entering an all-male internet security class in college and while discussing a computer related field

of study for personal endeavors. This was disheartening to say the least as I thought that attitude went

out years ago but apparently it has not. This was very discouraging to my confidence as I have a great

deal of personal experience in maintenance and upgrading abilities with computers having owned now 16

different personal computers since 1992 and upgraded at least 9 of them and made three of them from

scratch. Besides the fact that I took Visual Basic back in 1985-6 and self-taught on HTML and CSS codes

with Dreamweaver software and was very good at graphics design. Needless to say, it is hard to imagine

what a young woman might feel like if similar comments would be made to her with having less skills,

knowledge and confidence of their abilities.

FACTORS OF HOUSEHOLD FINANCE WITH THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The factors on the household income demonstrating use of the internet are stronger when a household

uses it for work and steadily grows with income levels, marriage and number of children (Whitacre, p. 7).

Self-employment reasonably increases the need to use internet access for those in rural areas. Those

employed outside the home in urban areas decreases internet use desire because of leisure time

(Whitacre, p. 10). A reasonable factor for children having an impact on increased internet use in homes is

largely due to a program granting laptops to students for home. This program, even though experimental,

6

has shown some promising results especially to low income households (Ladd). The strongest show for

having a computer at home are when the parents have postgraduate education and the lowest percent is

when a parent is a high school dropout.

An interesting financial factor in technology accessed at home is the decrease in cost of activities which is

considered to be a future improvement of living standards (Ladd, p. 12). For instance, accessing research

materials decreases cost assumed for project when it can be accessed from a home internet source

instead of traveling and paying for copies by which to work with. The cost of purchasing computers for

home and paying for internet services decreases or shifts the financial burden around which is why those

with more expendable funds have better access. Hence, the more money you have, the more you can

spend on technology which further opens more savings from the benefit of technology from its ability to

decrease cost. One simple example of a difference between using the internet for a research project can

be the difference between pictures cut out and placed on a poster board vs. printed from an internet

picture and the information researched vastly increases.

FACTORS WITH COMMON CORE STANDARDS AFFECTING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The common core, which is maintained by the Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], is to

maintain mathematics and English standards for all grade levels regardless of where they live. These

standards are researched based for one to be successful in today’s global economy and include higher

order thinking skills. The mathematical standards find international models important to provide clarity

and organized structure. Under the mathematical proficiency method any student should be able to look

for solution to a problem (Mathematics Standards).

If in the case of gender divide the thinking process behind mathematics becomes standardized then

females going through schooling process today should be on par with males. There should be some

hope for females in the future to be more in tune with the thinking process it takes to be tech savvy.

FACTORS IN NEW STANDARDS THAT ROLE OUT OF THE WHITEHOUSE

Part of President Obama’s initiative back in 2009 was to get Congress to act on the old version of

“Elementary and Secondary Education Act” to which they finally responded on December 2, 2015 with a

7

new bill (Miller, 2015). This bill takes away the over testing and the “one-size-fits-all” standards that have

plagued our children and frustrated families. It furthermore, offers to more a “high-quality” preschool

“regardless of zip code” and local educators with responsibility to find a course of action to help anyone

who falls behind (Office of the Press Secretary, 2015). What has taken place is a change to the “No Child

Left Behind” with a bipartisan plan called “Every Student Succeeds Act” [ESSA] that expects every

student have the ability to graduate college and become “career-ready” but not specifying the order. The

best part of this new bill is that it reduces the strict testing proficiency (Office of the Press Secretary,

2015) that I know will make teachers and families both happy. So many families and teachers have stated

that they only teach the tests and that is not healthy.

Biggest potential issues with this change is in regards to the teachers being held accountable for students

falling behind. When looking back at 2012 teacher’s morale sunk to calling off or quitting and other testing

results being posted to show effectiveness thereby causing outrage (Ravitch, 2013). One of the frustrating

things this has done to families is that children are being required to learn some strange mathematics to

which the parents cannot comprehend and causing otherwise intelligent children to be held back. The

mathematical portion is not spelled out in the briefing.

NEW CHANGES TO ADVANCE TECHNOLOGY WITHIN LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL

In December of 2013 local schools in the authors’ locale have made five year plans for supporting

technology to meet globally competitive standards. They are upgrading infrastructure of their technology

equipment including networking and software and servers. They have plans for their classrooms, teachers

and resources to receive state of the art that builds consistency and reliability. The Sandusky school

system has even broken it down further into plans for both Fine Arts and Career Tech with regard to their

five year transformations (Dr. Sanders CEO, 2013).

Another local school, Perkins, only has a template designed and ready to fill out but does not specify any

actual plans towards their improving career-technical programs (Ohio Department of Education, 2006).

This particular school is long been known as having high standards for college bound students. These

changes were mandated by the state which means that other states are also preparing a 5 year plan so

change is on the way.

8

NEW CONCERNS BROUGHT ON BY THE UNITED NATIONS WILL IMPACT

The United Nations [UN] is in their 70th session in September 2015 had a climate agenda for 2030 where

they urged commitment to the “three pillars” which cannot be done without respect for human rights. In

their commitment to make these changes they focused on a “landmark agreement” agenda for

Sustainable Development based on 17 goals (iisd Reporting Services, 2015). They determined that two-

thirds of the population lived in rural areas with agriculture being the primary source of income. So they

set out to focus on non-farming rural activity as important to develop (iisd Reporting Services, 2015). The

end result was to include #1. No Poverty, #4. Quality Education, #5. Gender Equality, and #8. Decent

Work and Economic Growth (United Nations - Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015). These

are only four of the seventeen but are the most important to towards helping resolve the Digital Divide that

is being discussed within.

So with that in mind, a new agenda is on the mind of all countries and with changes being made currently

and also forthwith we can expect floundering from those not willing to abide since the “free world” The

United States of America is not even gender equal and not showing signs of bending. It is however in the

best interest of the United States to comply with these sustainability goals in order to prove through efforts

that meeting these goals improves all people’s rights.

SUGGESTIONS TO ACHEIVEMENT OF DIGITAL DIVIDE GOALS

If the suggestion made by the Stanford students, discussed herein pertaining to bridging the gap by

means of allowing all households to have internet, were adhered to it could be done with some of the

following:

Stanford students suggest [pg. 1] access to internet is much like phones and should be provided

for even if it is by government subsidy (Digital Divide).

A plausible solution to the aforementioned idea has been discussed herein [pg. 2] regarding the

grants available from Universal Service Administrative Company [USAC], The Department of

Education and also Housing and Urban Development [HUD]. Only minor adaptations to the these

policies would have to take place to allow local ISP’s, phone companies or cable companies to

offer services at reduced or free costs to income eligible families.

9

o These resources can be utilized just by making the process operate from the government

down whereby the agency has the list of potential business grant recipients and sends it

out for the application process.

o These agencies can then provide all necessary public disclosure announcement

templates for a variety of media sources to be reached and also the application process

for their consumers to receive this benefit.

The above mentioned can be achieved easily since the land lines for phones are still working just

not being upgraded. Companies that offer phone service like Verizon or even cable companies

can or should be able to get these grants to offer to any customer who fills out an application to

see if they are income eligible.

As a student that takes courses online it makes no sense why there should be an extra fee added

to my course fees for taking an online course. It should be that there is a discount for it not the

other way. Therefore colleges should be seeking this grant money to offer more online courses to

rural area persons interested in pursuing a higher education and it should be awarded.

As a mother, my 19 year old daughter said that she could not afford to go to college, especially

not the one of her choosing because neither her father or I could pay for it and the college fund

her Aunt gave her was still not enough to cover it. So as a result, she is not pursuing a college

degree even though she graduated 6th of her high school graduating class. She was an above

average student with a GPA over 3.9 where she received an Honors Diploma, and achievements

for writing and excelled in math, science and language yet nothing I can say about her future

employment will convince her to pay off loans for an education.

Which brings me to yet another solution to the sustainability goals of the United Nations and

thereby help inadvertently with several of the Digital Divide problems. That would be to offer

education at loan free or reduced based on income of percentage available to pay. If a family is

not able to afford to pay for college how can they afford to pay for a loan? There needs to be an

economic solution to this dilemma.

o While researching this topic it was found that there are currently 11 college that were not

recognizable that offer tuition free classes but you have to pay for other things (Hopkins,

10

2012).

o Another very promising way to take online courses for credits or non-credited courses

and totally free from very well sought after schools. While clicking through links just one

of the schools was John Hopkins University Courseware that offers health and science

that are what they call “snapshot” of what is face to face courses (Colleges and

Universities that Offer Free Courses Online, n.d.).

o If both of these situations with free college is available then everyone can be.

In order to achieve a gender gap goal the world pretty much needs to accept equality more

fervently than at any time in the past. The United Nations has set this as their fifth goal to which

all countries and nations will be attempting this. However, it is not only men who want this

disparity it is also women who believe still that men are the true head of house and do not want

this to change. The reality after pointing out statistics just from Sandusky’s local community that

women are raising families on their own and need the means to provide.

11

Financial factors to consider helping to meet the goals of the digital divide would be to offer

anyone not just families with children and low income a

computer but also furniture allowances. They should

have access to funds for

a computer and desk,

chair and lighting for

each member of the household. The reason for this is that is that

you don’t want to provide a computer that will create unhealthy

study habits such as pictured above left. Instead you want to

create the optimal

environment for family

settings much like was

done in

the

beginning

when

televisions

were just out and all met in one room. So in order to do this so that the entire family gets to

become a healthy part of the knowledge base and have benefits stemming from internet usage

there needs to be the ability to gain access to the necessary tools which herein are construed as

furniture. This allows the parent to participate in the online activity thereby helping to get over

any intimidation factor. Because the Stanford students believe that the rich become richer

“through the power of information” that is all the more reasons that there needs to be financial

provisions for lower income and especially rural folks. In order for them to benefit from the

input/output scenario of the increase in productivity and decreases of output expenditures they

need to have access. If these people have the supplies and tools necessary then it helps to meet

with the standards that the United Nations is asking every country to commit to on #4 which is

Quality Education, and #8 the Decent Work and Economic Growth. Other visual ideas to look at

12

would be this on the left and preferably not the one on the right.

Because the Congress and President Obama have just enacted a new educational bill and the

United Nations has implemented their 17 objectives of sustainability which is supposed to impact

our climate through educating the public and schools have been directed toward 5 year plans for

technology improvements then the last thing that can be stated here is when, what and who is

going to be the ones to make it happen? The

POTENTIAL PROBLEMS NOT RESOLVING THE DIGITAL DIVIVE

While having discussed the disparity of urban to rural internet usage [pg. 2-3] one thing comes to mind

immediately if the sustainability goals set forth by the United Nations are not met. That problem is,

schools from grade school up have computers and one local school, Huron City Schools require

kindergarten students to know how to “operate” a computer. Kindergarten! Got that? So if their parents

do not use a computer but their child learns from the beginning what will then happen between authorities

of a parent over their child? The child will have far greater access to knowledge thereby making them

challenge the authority of their parent. In doing so, this will harm society in that it places the child in the

role of educator to the parent and not the other way around ultimately destroying the parental authority

entirely. Hence, “don’t respect your elders” becomes the norm and not “respect your elders” as it has

always been. This ultimately can destroy our society in and of itself if parents are no longer in charge.

One other significant factor that is potentially a big problem and that is the frustration that comes from

using faulty equipment. As a prolific user of many technical devices this author has experienced an

exorbitant number of faulty equipment. Here are the ones over the last two years:

a refurbished Panasonic smart TV would not even turn on for the salesman after having traveled

4 hours round trip to deliver it to my mother;

a Samsung Galaxy Tab4 broke within 3 months and had to be replaced to which the second one

the battery wore out and had to be replaced by the 8th month and everything was lost;

a brand new Samsung TV had a motherboard go bad within 6 months of purchase and was

replaced;

multiple times my modem from the cable provider had to be replaced because they use

13

refurbished;

a brand new HP Officejet Pro printer had a paper jam to which the back cover had to be removed

but when it was placed back on a tiny metal piece broke off and now it will not even scan let alone

print;

an upgrade RAM that I put in a new pc using a Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB 1866MHz DDR3

was reading at 1333 MHz;

what was worse was the HP computer I purchased for this school year isn’t even fast enough to

operate a photo editing software and most definitely not any games online;

then if that wasn’t enough last school year I purchased a Lenovo laptop with an A10 from AMD

with the top of the line for the date but not a touch screen to which the battery, motherboard,

network and hard drive failed within 6 months and on the third time to go in for repairs it was

replaced but at what time and expense on my part of transferring all the files.

On top of all this, there are compatibility problems with switching from 32bit operating systems

and 64bit and the software and the worst of software problems is that Windows no longer

supports any operating system except 8 and 8.1 and 10. The latter of those has a compatibility

problem with the cloud so you have to manually go in and upload the files which makes switching

computers futile so now I go back to using a thumb drive for storage.

This just goes to show that if I an avid user of technical equipment can get frustrated by these

problems then it will be extremely frustrating for someone just learning how to use the computer and

equipment to understand what is going on. Therefore, is will be necessary to attempt to improve the

quality of technical equipment through the manufacturers or to provide the families with extended

warranty and service to help them overcome this obstacle.

SUMMARIZING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

All in all, there is a digital divide without a doubt but those divided who have and those who have not

have changed over the years and will continue to change as technology and society changes. What used

to be a matter of urban divide because of low income has been subsidized by funded programs primarily

in schools and libraries but now needs to change. This created access for a great number of people

14

because many libraries are in urban areas and now those who do not have access to technology are now

greater in rural areas. This may also change with time as plans are implemented on a continual basis in

order that no one be left behind. However, this falls in line with the United Nations recognizing that two-

thirds of the population resides in rural areas still and are deeply in need of technology advances.

The gender divide for women has been around in the employment arena for a very long time. The digital

divide focused on here pertaining to gender will continue to develop and change as time goes by but ever

slowly. Women are becoming more tech savvy from the use of the simplified products that they use in

social media combined with the new common core standards in mathematics means that the gender

divide will also narrow and flex as time goes by. This also will improve at a much faster pace if the gender

equality set by the United Nations 70th Session is adhered to.

The financial aspect to digital divide will probably always exist to the same extent from beginning to end

because the more money you have the more equipment you can buy to make things easier, hence the

easier things become the more money you can make quicker and the cycle begins over again. The rich

always get richer and they don’t always want to pay for others to have the same access as themselves

otherwise they would not be as rich as they are. Hence lobbyist are employed! Also, the financial aspect

of “decent work” being a commitment for sustainability that the United Nations put forth could be attained

by increasing the technology resources in all rural areas.

So all in all, we need some changes to be implemented in government with regard to simple policy

changes that allows phone, cable and ISP companies to gain access to grant monies for clients. This will

allow the rural divide dissolve and solve a UN objective. Then we need to have “across the board” fair

living wages to make the gender inequality go away which meets not only gender divide but meets the UN

objective on that matter. After that efforts really need to happen regarding faulty equipment. Then

everybody can enjoy the reduced expenditure of energy and increase in productivity in their lives.

REFERENCES

Bulent Tarman, P. (n.d.). The Digital Divide in Education. Retrieved from US Department of Education: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED508213.pdf

15

Colleges and Universities that Offer Free Courses Online. (n.d.). Retrieved from Study.com: http://study.com/articles/Colleges_and_Universities_that_Offer_Free_Courses_Online.html

Digital Divide. (n.d.). Retrieved from Stanford University: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/digital-divide/start.html

Dr. Sanders CEO, D. D. (2013). Sandusky City Schools Five Year Transformation Plan. Sandusky: Sandusky City School.

Falling Through the Net : Defining the Digital Divide. (1999). Retrieved from National Telecommunications and Information Administration [NTIA]: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/ntiahome/digitaldivide/factsheets/rural.htm

Hopkins, K. (2012, June 12). Paying for College - Save Money by Attending Tuition-Free Colleges. Retrieved from U.S.News & World Report - Education: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2012/06/12/save-money-by-attending-tuition-free-colleges

HUD Archives: News Releases. (2000, April 17). Retrieved from US Department of Housing and Urban Development: http://archives.hud.gov/news/2000/pr00-79.html

iisd Reporting Services. (2015, November 25). UNCTAD Proposes Road Map for LDC Rural Economies. Retrieved from ustainable Development Policy & Practices - Tracking the Implementation of the Intergovernmental Sustainable Development Agenda: http://sd.iisd.org/news/unctad-proposes-road-map-for-ldc-rural-economies/

iisd Reporting Services. (2015). UNGA 70 Opening Highlights Agenda 2030, Climate Agreement. Retrieved from Sustainable Development Policy & Practices - Tracking the Implementation of the Intergovernmental Sustainable Development Agenda: http://sd.iisd.org/news/unga-70-opening-highlights-agenda-2030-climate-agreement/

Ladd, J. V. (n.d.). Scaling the Digital Divide. Retrieved from CALDER Urban Institute: http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/1001433-Scaling-the-Digital-Divide-Home-Computer-Technology-and-Student-Achievement.PDF

Mathematics Standards. (n.d.). Retrieved from Common Core State Standards Initiative: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/

McDougall, D. S. (2011). Gender Digital Divide and Challenges in Undergraduate Computer Science Programs. Retrieved from US Department of Education: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ932484.pdf

Miller, L. (2015, December 3). Secretary Duncan: "Finally a Fix to No Child Left Behind". Retrieved from Whitehouse - President Barack Obama: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/12/03/secretary-arne-duncan-finally-fix-to-no-child-left-behind

Office of the Press Secretary. (2015, December 2). Statement by the Press Secretary on House Passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Retrieved from Whitehouse - President Barack Obama: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/03/statement-press-secretary-house-passage-every-student-succeeds-act

Ohio Department of Education. (2006). Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 Local 5-year Performance Plan. Sandusky.

16

Programs and Initiatives. (n.d.). Retrieved from U.S. Department of Education: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/programs.html

Ravitch, D. (2013, August 7). It Started With ‘No Child Left Behind’. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/06/why-blame-the-teachers/it-started-with-no-child-left-behind

Reinventing the Internet. (2015, November 20). Retrieved from CISCO : http://www.cisco.com/c/r/weare/amazing-stories/amazing-people/giovanna-carofiglio.html

Schools and Libraries E-Rate. (n.d.). Retrieved from Universal Service Adminitrative Company: http://www.usac.org/sl/applicants/beforeyoubegin/eligible-services/default.aspx

State & County Quick Facts - Sandusky, Ohio. (n.d.). Retrieved from United States Census Bureau: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/3970380.html

United Nations - Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2015). Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved from Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics

Whitacre, B. a. (n.d.). Understanding the Rural - Urban Digital Divide. Retrieved from http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/19743/1/sp02mi01.pdf

17