Dive Brief:

• A new contract worth $30 million between Amazon and New York City public schools means the tech giant will be providing e-books to city students for the next three years.
• Amazon will be able to sell e-books and content but not devices, such as their Kindle, through an internal marketplace site aimed at school consumers.
• The new deal is preliminary and could reportedly extend for additional three years for a net worth of $65 million.

Dive Insight:

This new deal signals a shift in the move towards digital texts for K-12 schools. President Obama previously donated 10,000 e-books to underserved students, calling attention to the technology via an initiative called ConnectEd, which aims to help bridge the digital gap that plagues low-income students. Yet e-books and e-reading devices typically require internet access to load texts, and for some schools in rural or sparsely populated areas, device/broadband access issues could arise. 

The federal ConnectEd Initiative hopes to bring high-speed broadband to 99% of schools by 2018 and also comes with numerous deals (such as the FCC's E-rate reforms) to allow low-income schools to cheaply access the Internet. The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) also released an online toolkit that provides resources and advice for districts looking to address the digital divide and increase equity for students who lack internet at home. 

The Digital Learning Equity Act of 2015, co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Peter Welch (D-VT) and David McKinley (R-WV), would quantify the gap between impoverished students and wealthier students in terms of access to technology outside the classroom by funding programs to expand access.