Maine Department of Education officials continue to negotiate with Apple Computer to keep the highly successful school laptop program moving, but they need help from local school districts if the next class of ninth-graders is to keep learning on this technology. The state’s current effort is commendable and should reassure local school boards that the rewards of making a financial commitment to this program outweigh the risks.

Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said last week that a state-sponsored rental plan was possible if a “critical mass” of school districts agree to a lease-purchase agreement with Apple for the laptops. What constitutes a critical mass was still being negotiated, but the commissioner said she hoped to tell superintendents more at a June 22 meeting.

More to the point, the department intends to return to the Legislature next year with a request for more funding for the program. The level of support for the rental program in the next few weeks will tell the new Legislature how much (or little) schools value the technology. So far, a dozen school districts have said they would enter into their own lease-purchase agreements with Apple.

It would be better for them and for other schools, however, if a lower-cost statewide agreement could be reached if for no other reason than that it maintains the original intent of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, which was to provide this resource to all districts no matter their ability to pay.

That should continue to be the goal. For the last four years, the state’s 30,000 seventh- and eighth-graders have been using Apple iBook computers to learn. Being connected to the worlds of science, literature, mathematics, geography, history and their innumerable permutations from thousands of sources gives Maine students a new way of understanding their subjects.

As they see the possibilities that all this information provides, they can begin to think about new connections and interactions that would never emerge in traditional classrooms. Giving all Maine students this access to understanding through their middle- and high-school years confers an unusual advantage for Maine.

Studies on students who use laptops show that they are more likely to improve their ability for critical thinking and analysis. Their research projects tend to go into more depth and they are more likely to do their homework. Teachers quickly learn to integrate resources from the Internet and students learn to make use of them nearly as fast. One study even showed that students with regular access to computers were less likely to spend time playing computer games than students with only intermittent access.

These benefits don’t eliminate the financial risk of committing to leasing the laptops, but they make the risk more than worthwhile. They make it an obvious choice for school officials eager to improve learning.