Educational Equity
Today’s Digital Divides: Identifying Edtech’s Inequities So All Students Can Thrive

By Maryam Brotine

As an elementary school student in the 1980s, one of the best days of the week was when my class had computer lab time. We’d all quietly march down the hall, single file, into a room that smelled of electricity and hummed with Apple II series computers. There weren’t enough computers for each student, so we’d sit at them in pairs or triples and, if we were lucky, we’d get to play The Oregon Trail. We had learned from previous gameplay, and this time, we’d start with enough oxen, be a carpenter so we could fix the inevitable broken wagon axle, and hope no one got — or died of — dysentery.

Back then, if you said the phrase “digital divide” in the K-12 education sector, you were likely referring to school districts and families that had or lacked digital hardware, like those Apple II series computers. Ten years ago, the phrase “digital divide” still invoked inequities in hardware, but it also included digital connectivity such as broadband, Wi-Fi, or smartboards.

In some ways, the COVID-19 pandemic helped reduce these inequities by forcing districts and communities to invest in digital hardware and connectivity, so teaching could continue when remote learning was the only possibility.

Nowadays, educational technology (edtech) tools are widening additional digital divides that school board members need to understand to break down barriers to equitable student success.

Before we delve into the digital divides, what exactly does “edtech” mean today? As we can see from The Oregon Trail, edtech isn’t new — one could even argue that edtech started with the printing press! What “edtech” currently means depends on whom you ask. The U.S. Department of Education’s former Office of Education Technology (OET), which was eliminated in March 2025 due to an extensive reduction in force, didn’t limit edtech to a particular definition. Instead, the national educational technology plans that OET periodically issued focused on what was considered modern technology at the time, with its initial 1996 plan focusing on technology literacy and its final 2024 plan focusing on digital divides.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that edtech “refers to the integration of technology into educational practices to enhance learning experiences” and it “encompasses tools and resources such as software, online platforms, and digital content aimed at improving teaching methods and student engagement.”

Emily Cherkin, author and founder of The Screentime Consultant, defines edtech as “any digital tool or product used in or for education.”

In contrast, in his book The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning – and How to Help Them Thrive Again, neuroscientist and educator Jared Cooney Horvath defines edtech more narrowly as “student-facing, internet-connected devices.”

Regardless of how it is defined, what’s clear is that edtech is being developed at an unprecedented rate and with exponentially expanded scope, meaning the stakes are higher because its impact isn’t confined to a weekly computer lab. Or, as Horvath puts it, “computer time was limited, contained, and rarely central to our education,” whereas now it’s “a $400 billion mega-industry woven deeply into nearly every aspect of schooling” and “[m]any EdTech platforms openly track personal data, build long-term behavioral profiles, and are deliberately engineered for addiction.”

Add to this incredible commercial pressure for vendors to sell edtech tools without rigorous testing and the allure of edtech to solve complex, persistent educational challenges, and it’s no wonder that districts are compelled to act before analyzing whether specific tools can truly benefit their students or how to implement them effectively and equitably. This is where the digital divides creep in.

According to the OET, there are three digital divides facing schools today: Access, design, and use.

The Digital Access Divide 
In A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design, and Use Divides (January 2024), OET explains the Digital Access Divide as “inequitable access to connectivity, devices, and digital content. The digital access divide also includes equitable accessibility and access to instruction in digital health, safety, and citizenship skills.”

Schools faced this divide before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it continues today. Beyond access to hardware and connectivity, districts should also consider whether edtech tools are physically, visually, auditorily, cognitively, and digitally accessible, as well as accessible in multiple languages.

The Digital Design Divide 
OET describes this divide as “inequitable access to time and support of professional learning for all teachers, educators, and practitioners to build their professional capacity to design learning experiences for all students using edtech.” If some educators are given time to learn about, practice, and build their own edtech literacy, while others are not, then students’ resulting use of edtech will be inequitable. Moreso, you may end up with a hodge-podge of learning designs that vary from classroom to classroom, grade to grade, and school to school.

The Digital Use Divide 
OET defines the Digital Use Divide as “inequitable implementation of instructional tasks supported by technology” and explains that “[o]n one side of this divide are students who are asked to actively use technology in their learning to analyze, build, produce, and create using digital tools” while the other side of the divide has students that are asked to use technology for passive assignment completion, such as through digital worksheets or point-and-click assessments. Oftentimes, students completing passive assignments are from historically marginalized backgrounds. But what if all students in a class are using edtech in a passive manner — is there still an inequity? Yes, because more privileged students can access supplemental support outside of school, e.g., from parents who don’t work in the evenings and can help their children with homework, or from private tutors.

Now that you know what the digital divides are, what can you do about them? Fortunately, OET left detailed recommendations for closing these divides in A Call to Action, and it all starts with a key component in IASB’s first Foundational Principle of Effective Governance: Your district’s vision for student success.

Appendix E, A Guide for District Leaders, in A Call to Action, provides critical questions related to the digital divides that will help your board design strategies to achieve your district’s vision for all students. I encourage you to print and read the full report — it’s packed with useful details and inspirational examples of schools actively closing their digital divides. There’s no chatbot to condense it for you, but your low-tech labor will reap rewards, and hopefully, no one will contract dysentery on your trail to digital equity.

Maryam Brotine, J.D., is Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Services for IASB and the Association’s Associate General Counsel. Links to resources associated with this column can be accessed via iasb.com/journal or email [email protected].