It certainly would have been great if you spent a modest amount of money on this program and saw a big educational bang for the buck," says Goolsbee. "But for researchers it's not surprising that the subsidy did not have this effect, because there is no magic bullet for improving student performance."
Making the Internet Work in Classrooms
Goolsbee and Guryan suggest the next step for studying effects of the E-Rate program would be to figure out why the high rates of Internet adoption have had a minimal impact on student performance.