Will Michigan's students be better equipped to perform in the digital age if the schools give them laptop computers? Brian Carpenter of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy doesn't think so - and he's happy to tell you why:
The Michigan Legislature’s plan to equip every public school sixth-grader with a laptop computer — at an initial cost of $39.3 million — is based on dubious premises about technology and education reform...it will be another expensive but spectacular failure to improve the public school system.
House Speaker Rick Johnson...and other legislators hope to engage kids in learning at an age when many are starting to disengage from traditional methods of instruction. Since kids use Xbox and Game Boy at home — the thinking goes — why not equip them with technology at school? Proponents point out that we are living in "the digital age"and that children will be better educated for the job market if we give them more access to technology at school...
The idea that equipping kids with laptops will somehow inspire them to become more engaged in school work has little basis in sound research. Michigan sixth-graders who can’t read at grade level (about two-thirds of them, based on various standardized test data) need instruction in reading, not in surfing the Internet or creating PowerPoint presentations.
Mr. Carpenter's answer to the problems is not digital flexibility, but school flexibility - more school choice that would hold schools accountable for education, rather than allowing them to fritter away money giving laptops to kids who can't read yet.
Do kids with web access and tutoring become better readers? One study suggests so - but that's a far cry from deciding that providing kids with taxpayer-funded laptops will magically solve all their reading problems.
Posted by kswygert at July 29, 2003 04:14 PM