School leaders differ on value of laptops

“It was kind of like, ‘Well, it’s about time,’” Lawson recalled.

What is ironic in this technology-dependent age is that the parents weren’t praising a decision to upgrade or expand the laptop program at Liverpool High School; they wanted to phase it out.

Liverpool, a district of nearly 8,000 students near Syracuse, is among perhaps a handful of school districts across the country that are rethinking the wisdom of providing students with their own laptop computers.

For Lawson and other board members, the reasons for the decision were as much pedagogical as financial. Yes, the computers were breaking down too often, adding to maintenance costs, Lawson said. But, more fundamentally, they were actually getting in the way of instruction.

The district tried many times to “tweak” the seven-year-old program to make it work, Lawson said. “But we would keep hearing, over and over again from teachers who were trying to be helpful and improve the program, that the box itself is a distraction to what we’re trying to do in the classroom.”

Students have used the laptops to text-message one another (often in class), download music and videos, and even access pornography. Although the district is continually refining security systems to prevent students from logging on to inappropriate sites, the students always seemed to be one step ahead.

Liverpool’s experience seems at odds with the general trend toward the acquisition of laptop computers. A July 2006 survey of the nation’s top 2,500 school districts predicted that more than half of all student computers will be laptops by 2011, according to a report by the Hayes Connection and the Greaves Group.

At T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., all 2,000 students have laptops, and half the classes are paperless, said Principal Mel Riddile, a former National High School Principal of the Year.

“I see it as a leveling-the-playing-field kind of issue,” said Riddile, who notes that 50 percent of his students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.

“My two children have a computer at home,” he added. “They have all the advantages. I can get tutors for them. I can get them homework support. But here, I need to educate all students.”

With the laptops, students have been able to access reading assignments 24 hours a day, Riddile said. Their reading comprehension has improved, and they’re doing more writing.

“It’s moved from a nicety, to a necessity, to a must in this school year alone,” he said.

But skeptics, like recently elected school board member Scott Newsham, say the Alexandria school system lacks the data to prove the program is successful. An environmental scientist, Newsham agrees that technology is important, but he said the district’s plan for wireless learning is more “aspirational” than research-based.

“I think the big challenge is: How do we integrate that technology into the curriculum so that it lives up to expectations?” Newsham said.

Lawson also favors expanding students’ access to technology, but he said Liverpool’s one-to-one laptop program is preventing it from investing in other technology. Now, part of the $250,000 saved from phasing out the laptop program will go to graphing calculators, he said.

Larry Cuban, a school technology authority and emeritus professor of education at Stanford University, said the handful of districts that have curtailed laptop programs have done so for two reasons: cost, and the absence of clear data showing improved student achievement.

“The lack of sustained evidence that one-on-one computing can produce achievement gains and the constant, nagging intrusion of all kinds of costs surrounding a program make it hard for many districts to continue,” Cuban said.

Indeed, unanticipated costs so hampered the Romoland school district in Southern California that its school board recently voted to phase out its one-to-one laptop program. A low-wealth district where 70 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, Romoland had limited “help desk” capacity for laptops that break down, said Technology Coordinator Gene Garcia.

Basically, Garcia and two interns were responsible for all laptop maintenance and training. “The laptop program pretty much became our whole job,” he said.

The program began in the 2005-06 school year with the district leasing 300 laptops at a cost of $160,000 for sixth-graders. This year, another 300 were leased for the next group of incoming sixth-graders. But with rising maintenance costs, it became impossible to extend the program to a third group of sixth-graders, as originally planned.

The setback does not mean Romoland has turned its back on technology. Garcia said one of his goals for the next school year is to provide teachers with better technology training.