Public listening sessions on the government’s BEAD program were summarized by Kaptivate, a communications and consulting firm, with slides published on the company’s site. The briefing distills remarks from sessions conducted on February 11 and February 18, centering on how non-deployment funds from BEAD might be used.
Several comments from educators and neuroscientists urged policymakers to steer BEAD savings away from continuing K-12 EdTech experiments. The slides reflect a concern that investments in digital platforms for education have not uniformly yielded the desired academic outcomes.
One slide summarizes a claim that, “As school digitization reached 90%, reading scores dropped and cognitive issues rose, wiping out nearly 50 years of academic gains.” The remark underscores a growing call to reevaluate the balance between digital and traditional instructional methods.
Another thread from the listening sessions suggested transitioning back toward analog curricula and printed materials in some contexts, a stance echoed in the Kaptivate breakdown as a possible policy direction.
Kaptivate credited the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society for recording content at the listening sessions, and noted that the takeaways are available on its website for readers to review in detail.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) oversees BEAD, a $42.45 billion program, and questions about unspent BEAD funds have persisted for months. The Kaptivate analysis does not prescribe policy but highlights areas of discussion that policymakers may weigh as the BEAD program evolves.
