• The Federal Communications Commission is researching policies to address the “homework gap" faced at home by low-income learners who lack affordable broadband and computing devices.
• ​Private sector efforts from Comcast's Internet Essentials to ConnectED and public-private partnerships like ConnectHome have begun to tackle the digital divide as well.
• The Broadband Opportunity Council, a consortium of 27 federal agencies, has launched a rich array of initiatives  to narrow the digital divide in low-income communities.
• On May 19, 2016 a Federal Reserve official announced at the  Net Inclusion Summit that the Fed plans to initiate a national campaign encouraging banks to utilize funds under the Community Reinvestment Act to support digital equity.  (This policy shift came as the direct result of our extended advocacy.) This may eventually open up $100 million to $1 billion annually to narrow the digital divide for low-income learners of all ages. (See this 2016 map of CRA eligible communities.)

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For veteran digital equity advocates, these are heady times, as goals to narrow the digital divide at scale are becoming realizable for the first time. This is, paradoxically, a historic moment when great care is urgently needed to ensure policy makers, banking leaders, philanthropists, and economic development leaders design investments that are sound, research-based, culturally responsive and likely to lead to meaningful gains in educational and economic opportunity.

Those who have undertaken technology investments in schools to improve student learning know that great care and systemic thinking are needed to achieve meaningful impacts.   

​The very real risk is that, without sound guiding principles, those new to digital equity investment will make unsuccessful forays, easily discouraging bank reinvestment officials, economic developers, philanthropists and others from sustaining badly needed long-term investments so vital to economic vitality and social justice.