The questions we don't ask

Among the items coming back on this week's Worcester School Committee agenda (on which more to come) is a response to a multi-part (and all over the map) item on technology. This ranges from the entirely non-scientific fear about wifi to a query on the district's plans on expanding access.
One bit referenced is a survey that was sent home to families during the first few weeks of school about technology access, a partner, it seems to a survey that was given to students during school.
We should note that after five years, it would seem time to update the report on technology from 2015, 'though that here and elsewhere is not mentioned. The focus there was updating building access to allow for one to one access, something which curiously still is not planned at the high school level, which would seem to need it most urgently. Also, at that time the district cell phone policy was revised in line with bring your own device, something on which the district still depends, though students now often are disciplined for having their cell phones at hand, even for classwork.
Both the report and the district's digital learning Twitter show the heavy push that has gone on towards teachers using and requiring digital work. That has been so widespread that much of secondary school homework is now online.
But the district has never asked if that was actually possible for families.
We know from elsewhere that it widely is not (also here and here and here and there are many more).
In other words, the requirement came before the provision that meets it, which means the district is not following the state requirement that what is required must be provided (covered in terms of technology here).
The news that 26% of students surveyed do not have access at home--without asking how those that  have it acquire it, note--and that more than half use a cell phone for homework should concern us. It is convenient to assume, as was done in the article covering this report this weekend, that this is a "choice" students make. It is of course the "choice" one makes if one has no other device and no internet access at home.
Having students use cell phones ON DATA to do their homework is charging their families for their homework.
And it is easy for those of us who sit at home with our (self-purchased) laptops and Chromebooks using (self-purchased) home internet access to assume that students can simply go to the library or elsewhere for access. We have 27,000 students in the Worcester Public Schools. If even a tenth of those students need access at a library, we do not have enough. And that's without the opportunity cost of a family needing to figure that sort of access into a family lives that we know, in a district that is predominately low income, frequently mainly speaks languages other than English, and has too little time and money already, and has far too many stressors already.
For a middle class family, adding enough bandwidth to cover the devices and picking up another Chromebook may be manageable; it's what my family did as soon as we had more than one child in secondary school, as it because clear that this was the expectation from the school. Further, we even upgraded one child to a smartphone when it became clear that "get out your phones" was how some teachers are handling the push to go online without a district provision of devices. I have been asked exactly once if we had access at home. And the suggestion that teachers should, by a show of hands, ask who has access at home, puts onus on the students that should not be necessary (who's going to admit that their family cannot afford it?).

Such was my frustration with the survey which came home: it likewise missed the main issue of the Worcester Public Schools right now, that access is expected but not provided.
Families were asked:

• if they barred access--how can I if access is required to complete schoolwork?
• if we limited access--not if we want our children to complete their work
• if we'd like access outside of school at home--when secondary school students regularly complete work late into the night in order to get it done?
• if we wanted the district to provide devices--yes, but ALSO ACCESS
• if we wanted the district to teach us about technology--this is not the greatest need!

We have students who stay up until a parent gets home in the evening late shift to use their parents cell phone ON DATA to do homework which is required BY THE DISTRICT. There is no provision in the family survey for answering questions that give that information.

We have students who have their cell phones taken when an adminstrator walks into a classroom in which the teacher has asked students to use their phones--because the high schools continue to not have one to one access--and confiscates phones that are out. There are no questions that get that information out in the family or student surveys.

We have families that are paying for internet access because it is required by the district that their children have it. There are no questions that allow for that, and the cost, to be provided.

Writing a survey that genuinely elicts the information that is most important requires having room for responses that reject the premise and the framing of the survey; it is always possible that the surveyor got the framing wrong. A short comment section at the end does not do this.

The massive inequity that the district has itself created thus goes undiscovered.

Note that while the issue is not uncommon, this is also one that many districts are themselves solving; there are lots more links for that, too.