“We Don’t Go on the Computers Anymore!”: How Urban Children Lose in Learning Digital Literacies

Abstract

In this study, we collected and analyzed data to examine the extent to which the achievement gap between urban and suburban children extended to their knowledge of digital literacies. Findings indicated that the suburban children outperformed the urban students in each of the performance areas, and that suburban children reported greater opportunity to learn new literacies in school than the urban children. This study provides further evidence regarding the achievement gap between children in urban and suburban schools and suggests that our schools suffer from a lack of social justice in providing the education that all children need to become 21st-century learners.

Key words:

• achievement gap
• digital literacies
• technology
• urban education