The George Lucas Educational Foundation last month glowingly reviewed Maine’s progress with its laptop program for seventh- and eighth-graders, pointing out many advantages, including advanced and more meaningful learning experiences, lower absenteeism, etc., that those watching this program have come to expect. But it ends its story on “The Maine Experience” with this unhappy thought: After eighth grade, students revert to stationary, shared computers and lose much of technological ability they had in middle school. Said one Skowhegan eighth- grader, “It’s going to be like going back to kindergarten.”

Politicians are always telling their constituencies that they are leaders in one thing or another, partly out of parochial pride and partly as a way to absorb the glow of the achievement. But former Gov. Angus King really did make this state a leader with his laptops initiative, and other states – Texas, Michigan, Iowa – are looking to Maine’s experience to shape their own programs.

A brief story in State Legislatures magazine this month shows that what once seemed like a nice frill to many – remember the calls to fix every leaky school roof before investing in this technology? – now is more often considered essential. Maine’s positive experience, and the extensive reporting on its experience, should get credit for that.

The early results of Maine’s 18-month-old program conclude not only that seventh-grade teachers find laptops improve attendance and the quality of student work; they also provide a wider range of course materials, allow students to use significantly more up-to-date information and create that most important of all traits: enthusiasm for learning. They are in many ways more important than the textbooks schools would not consider giving up.

And laptops provide equity of information, giving more resources to the state’s poorest schools than any study commission on the problem ever has. Every school with skilled teachers and curious students and electricity, no matter how rich or poor their communities, are on a level playing field with the laptop program. The federal government has noticed this too and last year spent $2.7 billion in support of this and similar technology.

Maine badly needs the kind of creative thinking that got laptops into the schools to devise ways of getting them to follow the eighth-graders to high school. Maine has found an important way to help its students and distinguish itself as a forward-looking state. A lack of state revenue shouldn’t be a sufficient reason to keep this program from growing. It needs a new infusion of creativity as badly as it needs dollars.