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July 6, 1997
Schools Want Laptops for All,
But Parents Pick Up the BillBy PAMELA MENDELS
hen Jinelle Angeles, a soon-to-be sixth-grader, completed the term at the Mott Hall School in Harlem last month, she left behind desks, blackboards, chalk and other tools of learning. There was one piece of educational equipment, however, that accompanied her home: a laptop computer.
I have not seen this kind of full court press on selling technology to schools by the nation's leaders, both political and corporate, before.
Larry Cuban,
Stanford University
"I'm going to play with it and type and teach my aunt how to use it," says Jinelle. "She has a business and wants one.
Jinelle, like about 10,000 other students in 52 private and public schools in nine states across the United States, is part of an experiment in education. The schools are providing students with laptops bought or leased from Toshiba, and loaded with Microsoft software for spreadsheets, word processing, visual presentations and other uses. Educators at these schools are convinced that the laptops will not only better prepare young people for careers in the computer-dependent workplace of the 21st century, but will boost educational achievement and ensure that all students, regardless of race, sex or family income, will have an equal shot at learning about computers.
Still, the program has raised concerns. The laptops are expensive, typically costing about $1,800, and parents, even in public schools, have been asked to pay or to help pay for them, either through outright purchase or in monthly leasing programs.
Moreover, some educators worry that their computer-enamored peers are over-dazzled by a technology whose academic benefits remain unproved and whose sale is being encouraged by companies that have a major financial interest in seeing widespread computer use in schools.
Images of students with laptops on Toshiba's Education Programs page.
"There is too much of a romance with technology. The technophiles are riding high now," said Larry Cuban, a Stanford University professor, who specializes in the history of technology and schools. He added: "I have not seen this kind of full court press on selling technology to schools by the nation's leaders, both political and corporate, before."
In New York City, two very different kinds of schools are participating in the program, launched as a pilot project last year. Mott Hall School, where a fifth grade class took part in the program, is a public middle school aimed at gifted students who apply to the institution for admission. Located in Harlem, the school serves a population of largely black and Hispanic students, most of whom qualify for free lunches.
Trevor Day School, on the other hand, is one of Manhattan's exclusive private schools, institutions where tuition in upper grades typically runs around $15,000 a year. In the 1996-97 academic year three grades -- fifth, sixth and ninth -- took part in the laptop project.
Despite the major differences in the schools and the populations they serve, officials at both institutions listed similar reasons for participating in the program. One is a conviction that computers have become such an integral part of modern life that students who lack ease with the technology will suffer not only in the workplace but in colleges that increasingly are demanding that students own a computer. They also argue that computer use is so unevenly spread in the population -- even among the affluent -- that a generation of technology haves and have-nots could emerge unless someone steps in.
Anthony S. Amato, superintendent of Community School District 6, which oversees Mott Hall, says that at first he thought the program would be a ludicrous undertaking for his area. Chief among his concerns was safety. He feared that students toting laptops back and forth between home and school in crime-pocked neighborhoods would be choice prey for muggers.
But Amato says he eventually decided that it was precisely because of concerns like crime that poor children are often denied educational equipment they deserve -- equipment that superior schools in the suburbs offer their students. Amato says he also believed that school-provided access to computers was particularly important to his students because unlike their counterparts from wealthier backgrounds, few came from homes with computers. There was an additional advantage to a portable computer: Perhaps not just his students but their families would start learning computer skills.
John H. Dexter, head of school at Trevor Day, was also concerned about equity, but of a different sort: Boys continued to dominate use of computers at the school, and girls continued to shy away from the technology. Dexter says he concluded that the only way to solve the problem was to provide one computer for each student. Laptops, therefore, began to make sense.
Dexter and others also say that the machines have provided some real educational benefits. One is that computers free students from having to perform certain tedious tasks, thus enabling them to focus more on thinking and problem-solving. Janice M. Gordon, the fifth-grade homeroom and English teacher at Mott Hall, says that rewriting is so much easier on a computer than on paper that students can devote more time to essentials like sentence construction and less time to the mechanics of writing out the next draft.
Dexter, who teaches a fifth grade mathematics course, discovered a similar phenomenon in his class. "The students think through the problem emancipated from the weight of computation," he said.
One of the big questions about the laptop program is whether Dexter's and Gordon's observations about the educational pluses of laptops can be backed up by wide-ranging research. Toshiba and Microsoft are now financing a third-party two-year study of the program to evaluate its academic benefits, said Gregory Cygan of Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. in Irvine, Calif. In addition, he said, some of the schools participating in the project are conducting studies of their own.
Cygan also insists that companies are not pushing the technology on schools.
"Educators are smart enough to know that they don't want corporate America coming in and telling them what's appropriate in schools," he said. He also notes that the laptops are being sold at a discount. At retail they would be priced at $2,300 to $2,400.
Nonetheless, the equipment costs a lot more than two pencils and a notebook. Dexter concedes that some parents at his school, skeptical of both the cost and educational value of laptops, initially balked at being required to write out checks approaching $2,000 for gear expected to be outdated in about four years, especially if there were laptop-requiring siblings in the family. Eventually, though, he said, parents saw value in the project, which will be expanded to other classes this fall.
At Mott Hall, Amato knew he could not expect parents from one of the poorer sections of New York City to pay for the equipment, but a financially strapped school system couldn't shoulder the entire cost either. So Amato devised an unusual cost-sharing plan: Parents are splitting the expense with the school district. Each partner pays $35 a month for a package that includes the equipment, insurance and servicing. At the end of the term, the families can buy the laptop for $1.
Even so, Amato was convinced that parents would object. "Nowhere in public schooling had we even looked at the issue of a parent paying for part of the education of their children," he said. "I thought that would be the item that would stop the program."
Amato was surprised, therefore, at what turned out to be the parents' enthusiastic response to the proposal. The program has proved so successful -- no incidents of theft or negligent damage, only one late payment -- that Amato plans to expand it this fall to other schools in the district and to children at a variety of levels of educational achievement. And parents who cannot afford the $35 can apply to a newly established foundation for help, Amato said.
The Mott Hall parents' reaction may have been rooted in part in self interest. Many family members participated in laptop training sessions the school district held for the students' relatives and were themselves interested in learning about computers.
Gordon, the homeroom teacher, describes a mother who works in a factory and is hoping that the laptop will help her step up to an office job. "She sees the laptop not just as an opportunity for her son, but herself," Gordon said.
Related Sites
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- Toshiba Notebooks for Schools
- Microsoft Anytime Anywhere Learning
- New York City Public Schools
- Trevor Day School laptop project
Pamela Mendels at mendels@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.
