June 6, 2013
Today, President Obama will visit Mooresville Graded School District in Mooresville, NC, to launch the ConnectED initiative. As part of this initiative, the President will call on the Federal Communications Commission to take the steps necessary to build high-speed digital connections to America’s schools and libraries, to ensure that 99% of American students can benefit from these advances in teaching and learning; direct the federal government to make better use of existing funds to get this technology into classrooms and provide teachers with training and support to effectively use it; and call on businesses, states, districts, schools, and communities to support this vision.
This is an important step needed to encourage the reforms necessary to make the E-rate work better for today’s teachers and students. DLN has highlighted both the need for E-rate reform, as well as the model Mooresville has provided in how to reallocate budgets to support the devices students need to participate in digital learning opportunities. Under Dr. Mark Edwards’ leadership, Mooresville’s academic performance catapulted from 109th to the 2nd-highest performing district in the state (while 99th of 115 districts in state funding). At the same time, Mooresville’s graduation rates skyrocketed from 64% to 90% and 3rd grade reading scores jumped to 94% on grade level (African-Americans to 92%; Hispanic students to 91%).
The President’s speech will be streamed live at https://www.whitehouse.gov/live. His remarks are scheduled to begin at 2:55pm EDT.
The press release and fact sheet are now live on the White House website.
6/14 Update: Joint statements from 12 leading digital learning groups on the proposal, including Digital Learning Now!, are available on the White House blog.