one of the argument for forcing kids back to school is that not everyone has good internet access (and equipment) at home.
you know, this is a pathetically EASY problem to solve. damn. its very little money to upgrade peoples' home network plans (a leadership government would declare this an essential utility and mandate ALL citizens have price-capped modern broadband access, but that's for another thread). and its also not much money to provide desktops (not even saying laptops) from even 2 years ago's tech (refurbs, perfectly fine) to those that need them.
there should be plenty of money in the US budget for stuff like this. hey, don't buy 2 or 3 tanks or stuff like that - bingo - money for kids and schools!
then, there is no excuse for 'distance learning wont work'. it does work and it can work.
again, we just don't want the 'poors' to have nice things, so we hold back on the simple solution.
Most suburban middle class and wealthy kids can probably do learning from home just fine. Their families have enough wealth to provide them with the computing equipment and internet access to have a decent learning experience. Washington and Oregon have had virtual academies for 1-12 learning for over a decade now and it works.
However there are multiple reasons some kids will not be able to learn from home. I saw an interview with a special ed teacher who specializes in teaching autistic kids. She said distance learning has been a disaster for most of these kids. The kids lower on the spectrum probably like distance learning better if they have the equipment, but the more severely disabled kids need a human being in the room with them working with them.
Poor kids also aren't able to learn from home for many reasons. Some may have access to broadband internet, but they may not have the equipment at home and giving them the equipment they need might not work because in some households, it would just be stolen. Another thing is that while most middle class and upper class families put a high value on education and will work to tailor the home environment to give the kids space to learn, that isn't true in all poor families (some poor families stress education, but some don't). In the households that don't, the kids are not going to get the space they need to learn.
If you want to see examples of this, either read
Hillbilly Eulogy or watch the season of
The Wire about education. The former is about the chaos of poor small town white kids in Appalachia and the latter is about inner city African American kids, but the chaos both deal with while trying to learn has similarities.
And as you and others touched on, rural internet can be poor. Where my sister lives their only option for broadband is satellite internet and their latencies are 170ms. But that's geostationary, Starlink has the potential to be faster, though you're going to be constantly switching from satellite to satellite which could cause dropped packets and latency. Knowing Elon, he has probably worked that out.
again, the tech is stupid simple to install/upgrade (at the carriers, etc). there are lots of ways to extend broadband; I used to work at an RF networking company that did tower-to-tower data relays for carriers and we had amazing performance and the cost was not outrageous, either. but, well, NO telco wants to spend money. they are more cheap-ass than car companies (and that's saying a lot).
if the feds came down and forced all telcos to act more like utilities, we'd have this solved.
do people not have electricity? not have plumbing and hot and cold running water? sewage? mail deliveries?
why OH WHY is internet not in that catagory?
Politics. Politicians who represent rural areas don't want to see high speed broadband in their areas because people will start getting their news from a wider variety of sources and they won't be locked into cable/satellite news channels that tout messages favorable to them.
Barack Obama kept getting blocked with implementation. Here is just one story. There are stories of his talking about this almost every year of his administration:
President Obama presses for high-speed Internet for rural Americans
