Question: How many schools have access to the Internet?
Answer: In fall 2002, 99 percent of public schools in the United States had access to the Internet. When NCES first started estimating Internet access in schools in 1994, 35 percent of public schools had access. In 2002, no differences in school Internet access were observed by any school characteristics. This is consistent with data reported previously (Kleiner and Farris 2002), which showed that there have been virtually no differences in school access to the Internet by school characteristics since 1999.
- Public schools have made consistent progress in expanding Internet access in instructional rooms, from 3 percent in 1994 to 77 percent in 2000 and 92 percent in 2002.
- In 2002, there were differences in Internet access in instructional rooms by locale. A smaller percentage of instructional rooms were connected to the Internet in city schools (88 percent) than in schools located in towns (96 percent) and rural areas (93 percent).
- In 2002, the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access in public schools was 4.8 to 1, an improvement from the 12.1 to 1 ratio in 1998, when it was first measured.
- However, as in previous years (Kleiner and Farris 2002), there were differences by school characteristics in 2002. For example, the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access was higher in schools with the highest poverty concentration than in schools with the lowest poverty concentration (5.5 to 1 compared with 4.6 to 1). Despite this gap, in schools with the highest poverty concentration, the ratio improved from 6.8 students per computers in 2001 to 5.5 per computer in 2002. The difference between schools with the highest and lowest poverty concentrations in the ratio of students per instructional computer with Internet access decreased from 6.2 students per computer in 1998 to 0.8 students per computer in 2002.
