Decaying K-12 School Communications Infrastructures Turn to New High Capacity Wireless Networks for Salvation

Because of declining tax bases and increased needs for academic accountability and performance, the days of traditional K through 12 "classroom only" learning are numbered. They are rapidly being replaced by a truly multi-mode combination of self-instruction, specialized out of classroom coaching (often by off-site, higher grade peer tutors), parental monitoring and involvement and specialized "distance learning" curriculum.

All of these faster, more individualized and more efficient teaching tools have one thing in common: They will gobble up connectivity resources, and require delivery of information in places that may have yet to embrace the new format's high speed, high bandwidth demands, whose existing "legacy" systems will be outpaced by them.

Help is being sought in ways that in effect leave behind the costly purchase, rental or construction of traditional "wired" networks in distributed school systems, for a one time, less expensive purchase of a new class of high speed, high dependability wireless local area networks.

For example, a Northern Indiana school system recently eschewed a traditional "land based" leased network and instead installed a licensed wireless gigabit Ethernet (GigE) "point to point" managed services solution. The new system permitted the school system to upgrade capabilities, allowed room for growth, ensured integrity of the system through the use of licensed spectrum, and transferred costs from a model of total ownership to one of purchasing services resulting in tremendous savings. And speed? Well the system transfers data as fast as many traditional wired local area networks within buildings at 100 MB transfer rates. It has allowed them to save on their traditional voice communication costs as well as data, enabling new lower voice over IP (VoIP) technologies that use the same data networks.

While a seemingly technical solution, the fact is that this school system is joining others in looking for new technologies to help them with old problems. Numbers from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that at least 22 states are cutting K-12 and early education. Already, Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina have each cut school aid by an estimated $95 or more per pupil. Rhode Island is eliminating early education funding for 550 children, and Massachusetts is reducing funding for a number of early care programs. And the trend is not stopping at primary education: At least 30 states have implemented cuts to public colleges and universities, resulting in cuts in faculty and staff and tuition increases of 4 percent to 15 percent. Students in Rhode Island and New York are facing mid-year tuition hikes.

So in the end, the question will likely not be whether to use technology to shape education's future, but how. "Cutting the wire' will likely be one of those strategies that will be needed to keep our most important asset, our innovation, alive.