Reports

The maximum advertised download speeds amongst the most popular service tiers offered by ISPs have increased from 12-30 Mbps in March 2011 (when the program first launched) to 100-300 Mbps in September 2015. These increases are not uniform across access technologies and have been driven primarily by the cable industry, with smaller increases in fiber based systems.  Average DSL speeds have increased only slightly over these years and satellite speeds, over a shorter time interval, have remained constant.

The data presented here are from a large scale, nationally-representative survey of African American youth (ages 11 to 17) and their parents, supplemented and informed by a series of ten focus groups with African American parents and youth across the country (for more information on the demographics of the survey and focus group samples, please see the Methodology).

“The early learning community has been wisely cautious about using technology with our youngest children,” said Libby Doggett, deputy assistant secretary for Policy and Early Learning at the Department of Education. “But technology, when used appropriately with caring adults, can help children learn in new ways–and lessen the growing inequity in our country.”

The findings in this report present positive growth in the area of CS with more principals reporting in Year 2 than in Year 1 that their school offers a CS class with programming or coding. Additionally, the study shows that key concepts, including computational thinking (CT), are being incorporated into classes.