Digital equity: New findings from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

This study examined young children’s differential access to computers in school and home and the varying conditions that affect how children experience computers. The sample con-sists of 9,840 public school children who attended kindergarten and first grade. Lower and higher poverty schools are about equally likely to have computers available for children when they start their formal schooling. However, the findings suggest that the digital gap starts to widen as children move into first grade. Even though children’s access to most computer resources at school increased from kindergarten to first grade, children attending higher poverty schools had significantly fewer computers and software programs available. Young children’s use of computers in their classrooms differed by school poverty status. (Key-words: access, equity, technology, young children.) As computer technology becomes increasingly prevalent throughout society, concerns have been raised about reducing the “digital divide ” between children who are benefiting and those who are being left behind. Initially coined in the mid 1990s to refer to unequal access to information technology (Light, 2001)