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The study develops and tests a new multifaceted district measure, linking prior infrastructure investments to reading, math, and ACT score changes. Greater digital preparedness investment protects against declines overall, but nonmetropolitan and Appalachian areas show weaker benefits, shaped by systemic student challenges revealed in 2021 educator interviews.",{"@graph":69,"@context":114},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/promises-and-limitations-in-district-digital-capacity-for-education-during-covid-19/591325/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/promises-and-limitations-in-district-digital-capacity-for-education-during-covid-19/591325.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"eBook King","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":34},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why do nonmetropolitan and Appalachian areas benefit differently from digital capacity investments?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The study finds these areas do not experience the same benefits as metropolitan counterparts, attributing part of the gap to larger systematic challenges faced by students, discussed through 2021 interviews with educators.","Answer","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":116,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":118,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":120,"site_id":62},591325,1792189135,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":123},{"doc_id":120,"user_id":124,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":125,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":126,"file_id":127,"file_url":128,"file_type":129,"file_size":130,"view_count":34,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":131,"language":132,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":133,"faqs":134,"seo_title":135,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":136,"read_time":137,"preview_page_count":4},962088006270,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_085a072bc5b1113ac321206ff7593b45","AERA Open  \nJanuary-December 2024, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584241303875  \nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2024. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nPromises and Limitations in District Digital Capacity for Education  \nDuring COVID-19  \nEmily E.N. Miller  \nJohns Hopkins University  \nSarah Pedersen  \nMicrosoft Corporation  \nThe roles of technology and education were at the forefront throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This mixed-methods study examines the role of the three levels of the digital divide (i.e., access, capability, and outcomes) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kentucky. We create and analyze a new multifaceted measure of district-level digital capacity to examine the role of prior investments in technological infrastructure and the relationship with student scores in reading, math, and the ACT exam. Increased investment in digital preparedness leading up to the pandemic was protective against decreases in test scores. However, nonmetropolitan and Appalachian areas did not experience the same benefits from their digital capacity investments compared with their metropolitan counterparts. Using interview data from the summer of 2021 with 16 educators predominantly from Appalachian school districts, we discuss why these efforts to bridge the digital divide were hindered by larger, systematic challenges faced by their students.  \nKeywords: achievement, educational policy, instructional technologies, learning environments, poverty, rural education, descriptive analysis, in-depth interviewing, qualitative research, regression analyses, secondary data analysis  \nIntroduction  \nThroughout the COVID-19 pandemic, schools were centers of policy debate. Although 15% of students in the United States attend rural schools (Showalter et al., 2019), there has been little national discourse around COVID-19 policies focused on these districts (Anderson, 2020; Schwartz et al., 2021) . Rural schools face issues similar to their urban counterparts, including disadvantaged student bodies and teacher shortages (Schwartz et al., 2021), struggles with communication, and lack of preparation for remote teaching (Huck & Zhang, 2021), while also having distinct challenges such as transportation, broadband access, and declining enrollment. Despite this, there has been limited research on rural schools and rural–urban comparisons during COVID-19 .  \nIn this paper we use a mixed-methods approach to examine a novel measure of school district digital capacity and readiness prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then we examine how preparedness is associated with changes in test scores. This paper provides insight into the decision-making process to go remote, challenges with implementing policy, and the limitations to digital preparedness in Appalachian Kentucky. Taken together, our findings suggest that although having more preparedness is beneficial, there are limits to  \nwhat district digital capacity can alleviate in nonmetropolitan and Appalachian areas. We end with suggestions to bolster future district and teacher preparedness.  \nLiterature Review  \nEducation research around the world has focused on the digital divide, frequently defined as inequality of access to information and information and communication technology (ICT) (Liu, 2021) . In the 1990s, the terms digital divide or digital inequality referred to access to computers and the internet (Cheshmehzangi et al., 2023) . However, as technology evolved, so did the conceptualizations of the digital divide. Scholars thought of technology access as formative, which is the lack of access to ICT in devices, connectivity, or infrastructure, and substantive, which is a gap in interaction and engagement with ICT. Put another way, others have extended this idea of formative and substantive access to classifying levels of digital ","cbCaigS30L1Yq6I8","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigS30L1Yq6I8","pdf",1013669,17,"English","# Introduction\n# Literature Review\n# Method and Measures\n# Findings and Discussion\n# Implications","[{\"question\":\"Why do nonmetropolitan and Appalachian areas benefit differently from digital capacity investments?\",\"answer\":\"The study finds these areas do not experience the same benefits as metropolitan counterparts, attributing part of the gap to larger systematic challenges faced by students, discussed through 2021 interviews with educators.\"}]","Promises and Limitations in District Digital Capacity for Education During COVID-19 | PDF",1792071600,43]