LEARNING FROM LAPTOPS

With a lot of help from Apple Computer Corp., ninth-graders in at least 33 Maine school districts will continue learning with the help of laptop computers this fall. It is a temporarily positive outcome to a disappointing process in the last legislative session, but it’s no way to run a revolution in education. For that, the Baldacci administration will try to persuade lawmakers and school districts that the money for laptops exists and just awaits efficient dispersal.

The argument over whether the computers benefit students was renewed this week when the first statewide test scores showed that students using laptops for the writing portion of the tests did better than their peers but otherwise had comparable scores. The laptops had been in use for only three semesters (they were new to their eighth-grade teachers) when the tests were taken, so any conclusions would be premature.

But there is good reason to hope that these learning devices will make for stronger students. Studies and surveys show that students are more likely to do their homework, spend more time studying and present more in-depth projects when they have laptops. Sixth- through eighth-graders throughout Maine use them and, by most accounts, take care of them. (Opponents at the beginning of this debate claimed the students would drop the machines into mud puddles. Those students await in vain the lavish apologies they are due.)

This is now largely a money problem, a $28 million problem for a high-school program. The Apple laptops, including service, cost $300 each. The state budget currently falls short of this figure by about $300 each. But schools, according to a recent statewide survey, spend $45 million a year for computer technology and related services and the state spends another $10 million for the middle-school laptop program. That is more than enough, says Commissioner Sue Gendron, to fund laptops and some of the current services schools provide. Other services, such as buying individual computers, would become less necessary and, she says, schools may be deciding that in some instances laptops displace textbooks, a further savings.

More than these, however, is LD 1924, the bill that moves the state toward 55 percent of school funding, which would provide more money to almost all schools and make laptops more affordable. The November vote on the 1 percent property tax cap, of course, would change that and likely knock Maine schools backward on technology.

Maine won’t know whether this valuable program will be fully in its high schools until after that vote. But assuming commonsense prevails and the measure is defeated, school districts should be willing to examine their technology budgets and review whether funding could exist for laptops. It might be a relief to some if their state funding share grows and they don’t have to wait around for lawmakers to decide whether Maine should continue to expand a technology shown to work.

After that, the districts might urge lawmakers to settle the state-funding question as early in the next legislative session as they can to allow this program to keep up with the students it is designed to help.