Public-private partnership achieves results in North Carolina

For the past ten years, North Carolina has been working toward an ambitious goal: connect all 115 school districts to the education broadband network and provide wi-fi access to all students in all schools by 2018. To achieve this goal, stakeholders from the public and private sectors – educators, nonprofits, politicians, and private companies – had to work together.

A new report – “Strategic Policy Playbook: Driving Innovation in Education for All Students” – summarizes the effort and offers lessons for others. After NC’s General Assembly allocated $22 million to implement the wi-fi initiative, activists and nonprofit leaders engaged AT&T and CenturyLink to support the program. Middle-mile connectivity is provided by the North Carolina Research and Education Network, with the telco companies provide the last-mile infrastructure.

The public-private partnership has been largely successful. All 115 school districts are connected and more than 70 percent of schools are equipped with wi-fi networks that enable digital learning in the classroom, with the final 30 percent to be enabled in the next year.

Read the full report here.

Links:

North Carolina’s Digital Success Story (EdSurge, Aug. 14, 2017)

Strategic Policy Playbook: Driving Innovation in Education for All Students (digiLEARN, June 2017)