Meet the woman who will bring back net neutrality – By Marguerite Reardon (CNET) / Nov 19 2021
Jessica Rosenworcel, who is set to become the first woman to head the FCC, will also focus on closing the digital divide.
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of children to attend school via the internet, Jessica Rosenworcel was sounding the alarm about US students who lacked access to broadband.
Rosenworcel, who has served as acting chair of the Federal Communications Commission over the past 10 months, coined the term “homework gap” in a 2014 Miami Herald op-ed to describe families with school-age children who lack broadband access at home and how that lack of access means students couldn’t do homework assigned online. And with that she brought attention to a major problem for families, particularly in low-income and Black and brown communities and in rural areas.
When the pandemic began in the spring of 2020, more than 15 million of the nation’s 50.7 million public school students lacked adequate access to broadband, according to a survey from Common Sense Media. The study also found that about 10% of public school teachers nationwide also didn’t have sufficient internet access for online learning.
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