access and skill: public and nonprofit institutions (particularly schools, but also libraries and
community centers); social networks for information and informal learning; and employment.
Institutions
The potential effect of public institutions is clearest in regard to the quality of education,
something that measures such as individual educational attainment fail to capture. There are
marked disparities between central city and suburban school districts (Bahl et al. 1992; Bahl
1994). These district-wide inequalities are often exacerbated, however, within the poorest
neighborhoods (Kozol 1991). Investment in technology hardware through the federal E-rate
program has not closed the technology gap in poor urban schools, despite an increase in the
number of computers in poor districts. Students in low-income schools may use technology less
frequently because of insufficient teacher training or the time required to familiarize students
with basic technical skills that more affluent students have acquired at home. More
fundamentally, however, lower levels of student achievement in basic skills such as reading
comprehension affect the development of Internet literacy and technical skills (Bushweller 2001;
Manzo 2001; Trotter 2001).
Poor communities may also lack adequate institutional supports for technology use at
libraries or community centers. Federal grants and non-profit agencies have provided funding
for community technology centers in poor neighborhoods, but such centers are not universally
available, and their operations often rely upon volunteers or unstable funding sources. One study
of Los Angeles conducted by the Tomas Rivera Institute concluded that in many neighborhoods,
the only available resource for public access was the neighborhood library (Trotter 2001).
According to the American Library Association, 95 percent of libraries in the United States offer
public access on at least one computer, and almost half of them provide some type of technical
assistance or training for patrons (Trotter 2001). Yet we know little about the extent or quality of
these computer services, especially in poor communities.
9
Convention