EDUCATION
MAY
1, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 18
A Laptop for Every
Kid
More
schools are convinced they're worth the
cost
BY ELLIN
MARTENS/BLOOMFIELD
Carmen Arace Middle School
is situated in the pastoral town of Bloomfield, Conn., but
four years ago it faced many of the same challenges as
inner-city schools in nearby Hartford: low scores on
standardized tests, dropping enrollment and high rates of
detention. Then the school's hard-driving principal, Delores
Bolton, persuaded her board to shake up the place by buying a
laptop computer for each student and teacher to use, in school
and at home. For good measure, the board provided wireless
Internet access at school. Total cost: $2.5 million.
Now, an hour before classes start, every seat in the
library is taken by students eager to get online. Fifth-grade
teacher Jen Friday talks about sedimentary rocks as students
view them at a colorful website. After school, students on
buses pull laptops from backpacks to get started on homework.
Since the computers arrived, enrollment is up 20%.
Disciplinary suspensions are down 80%. Scores on state
achievement tests are up 35%. Bolton, who is black, is proud
to run "a school with 90% black enrollment that is on the
cutting edge."
Indeed, school systems in rural Maine and New York City are
eager to follow Arace Middle School's example. Governor Angus
King has proposed using $50 million from an unexpected budget
surplus to buy a laptop for all of Maine's 17,000
seventh-graders--and for new seventh-graders each fall. The
funds would create a permanent endowment whose interest would
help buy the computers. The plan, scaled back to $30 million
in a compromise with the legislature, is scheduled to be voted
on this week.
In the same spirit, the New York City board of education
voted unanimously on April 12 to create a school Internet
portal, which would make money by selling ads and licensing
e-commerce sites. The portal will also provide e-mail service
for the city's 1.1 million public school students. Profits
will be used to buy laptops for each of the school system's
87,000 fourth-graders. Within nine years, all students in
grades 4 and higher will have their own computers.
Back in Bloomfield, the school board is seeking federal
grant money to expand its laptop program to high school
students. In the meantime, most of the kinks have been worked
out. Some students were using their computers to goof off or
visit unauthorized websites. But teachers have the ability to
track where students have been on the Web and to restrict
them. "That is the worst when they disable you," says
eighth-grade honors student Jamie Bassell. "You go through
laptop withdrawal." The habit is rubbing off on parents. "I
taught my mom to use e-mail," says another eighth-grader,
Katherine Hypolite. "And now she's taking computer classes.
I'm so proud of her!" END
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