In the spring of 2021, Spectrum Enterprise commissioned the EdWeek Research Center to examine the extent to which school districts were responding by turning to technology partnerships designed to help them pool their resources to serve both acute needs like those caused by the pandemic and also ongoing challenges.
The study took place in two stages. A series of four case studies examined a geographically and chronologically diverse set of technology partnerships between school districts and other agencies and organizations. The case studies included:
- A Northeastern state with a large and well-established partnership dating back to 1995
- A California school district that had partnered with a municipality for more than a decade in an effort to close the digital divide for community members and students
- A large, urban, midwestern school district that turned to a technology partnership to help serve a high- poverty student body with inadequate internet access to learn from home during the pandemic
- A Southern school district that also embraced a partnership to better serve a mixed urban and rural population when the pandemic hit