Middle-level education group endorses King laptop proposal

AUGUSTA – Gov. Angus King’s proposal to equip students with laptops is being endorsed by an education group that represents more than 110 middle schools and 3,000 to 4,000 teachers.

The Maine Association for Middle Level Education said it is backing a state task force’s amended laptop plan. The recommendation is to give schools wireless laptop computers for all seventh- and eighth-graders.

“Nobody asked us to do this,” association Executive Director Wallace Alexander said Tuesday. “We did this because it dealt with an age group we teach. We wanted to add our endorsement for what good it will do.”

The group is asking other education groups to consider endorsing the idea. “This seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Alexander said.

The association is a statewide professional association of teachers, administrators and parents who want quality programs for middle schools. It is based at the University of Maine’s College of Education.

Alexander said the association believes computers are an important educational tool and that providing laptops to students will level the playing field with students across the state. The association also concluded that middle school students can handle the responsibility of caring for the laptops.

Besides, if the money isn’t used for laptops, it likely will be siphoned away and spent on something other than education, Alexander suggested.

The task force was convened last year to study King’s proposal to use interest from $50 million to give all seventh-graders laptops. That got the cold shoulder from lawmakers and residents.

In January the task force recommended that schools own the computers and have them in classrooms for seventh- and eighth-grade students. The students could take computers home by checking them out as they do library books.

If the idea is approved, it would help prepare students for future jobs, since in southern Maine 75 percent of the jobs now require workers to use computers.

“That’s an astounding number compared to 10 years ago,” said John Ripley, King’s spokesman. “It makes you wonder where we’ll be in 10 years.”