Community-wide broadband adoption and student academic achievement

This study examines the relationship between broadband adoption and county-level educational achievement in the US. We employ a novel measure of home broadband subscriptions to explore longitudinal community impacts of broadband adoption on aggregated standardized test scores in math and reading/language arts for students enrolled in 3rd-8th grades. We create a panel of US counties and measure the effect of broadband adoption on student educational achievement by estimating a fixed effect estimator. For the typical student in a county, the main results indicate that higher broadband adoption increases standardized test scores in both math and reading/ language arts. The results are robust to alternate model specifications and an instrumental var-iable approach. Not all students benefit equally from higher rates of broadband adoption, how-ever. We find that Black and Latino (and lower-income students) enjoy higher educational achievement gains compared to their white (and higher-income) student counterparts. The findings highlight the potential role community broadband adoption can have in promoting student educational achievement and reducing disparities within the education system.