This is the 21st century, not the 19th. In the19th century you had to cut down trees, use toxic ink and have children remember to take the books home and then back to school. At school you need lockers and locks, places to hide contraband and stuff that should not be at school. In the 21st century all you need is a laptop, tablet or iPAD. We can stop killing trees. Even better, instead of changing whole books when a mistake is found, the webmaster just needs to inconvenience some electrons and change some x’s and o’s and 1’s. No big deal, almost no cost. Now a Kern County school has arrived in the 21st century.
“No longer needing lockers, the school got rid of them. And those laptops? Students leave them lying around common spaces like the library, not worrying about theft because everyone has one. (Though they do have GPS devices in them.)
Rosamond High is part of a school district 70 miles southeast of Bakersfield that gave every student a personal computer this year to use in school and at home.
It’s a unique approach locally designed to bridge the digital divide between students from low-income homes and their more affluent peers.”
Why haven’t the rest of our government schools joined this century?
Photo Courtesy of newfilm.dk, Flickr.
Bridging the digital divide: one school gives every kid a laptop
BY LAUREN FOREMAN, Bakersfield Californian, 10/17/15
Rosamond High Principal Harold Roney recently asked a class of students what they usually have to carry from class to class, in terms of books and binders.
“This,” the students said, pointing to and lifting up 11-inch Lenovo laptops sitting on their desks.
No longer needing lockers, the school got rid of them. And those laptops? Students leave them lying around common spaces like the library, not worrying about theft because everyone has one. (Though they do have GPS devices in them.)
Rosamond High is part of a school district 70 miles southeast of Bakersfield that gave every student a personal computer this year to use in school and at home.
It’s a unique approach locally designed to bridge the digital divide between students from low-income homes and their more affluent peers.
The district, which serves mostly low-income students, found in 2013 that about 17 percent of 781 families surveyed didn’t have access to the Internet.
That’s better, though, than other Internet usage results from around the county.
Data from Scarborough Research, a market research firm, shows that 69 percent of Kern County adults reporting incomes of $25,000 or less were Internet users. That compares to 90 percent of those making at least $75,000 using the Web.
The firm, collecting data between March 2014 and March 2015, tracked the number of participants who used the Internet in the past 30 days. Again, more money equated to more Internet users.
Some Bakersfield City School District numbers tell the same story.
Twice as many students at Downtown School reported having Internet access at home than those at Williams School in east Bakersfield last school year.
Of Williams students — 99 percent of which were socioeconomically disadvantaged — only 36 percent had Internet access in the home. At Downtown — where just 20 percent of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch and/or had parents who didn’t attend college — 96 percent had Internet access at home.
It’s a trend education advocates and school officials have long fought to improve.
Bakersfield school districts have been phasing in more technology, Chromebooks and other personal computing devices for students to share in class in recent years.
But none has accomplished what Roney’s district, Southern Kern Unified, has in terms of giving kids access to technology at home, said Rob Meszaros, spokesman for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools office.
For some local districts, a slow rollout is a deliberate strategy to learn from the mistakes of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which spent millions of dollars getting devices for kids before it had a plan in place to use them.
Other districts say money and a lack of network infrastructure preclude them from doing more.
The southern Kern district not only gives each student a laptop, it replaced two-inch thick hardcover textbooks with electronic ones. They don’t need Internet access at home, Roney said, because their electronic textbooks are downloaded onto hard drives.
Tardiness is down and homework completion rates are up, administrators said.
Students don’t have to stop at lockers to swap out books each period, and they’re using an electronic system that forces them to complete homework before they can go on to the next lesson.
“They have to do their homework,” Roney said.
Bakersfield education advocates said they want to start seeing academic growth and more technology use at local schools, starting with equal access to technology at school and at home.
Nearly 80 percent of Central Valley households bringing in more than $40,000 a year had broadband Internet access at home in 2013, while only 48 percent of homes in the lower income bracket had similar access, according to survey results from the Public Policy Institute.
Erika Brooks, education program manager with the Dolores Huerta Foundation, said some parents are working two jobs; others are working long hours in the fields to provide just enough to cover the basics for their kids, to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.
“For these families, the idea of having a computer at home or Internet access is just a dream,” she said.
Roney said his district decided to do something rather than nothing to give students more access to technology. It used a $1 million grant to free up general fund dollars for electronic devices.
Jeffrey Weinstein, superintendent of the Southern Kern district, said the devices, along with security and curriculum, cost $1.7 million. The school also spent $185,000 for laptops, projectors and interactive boards in classrooms; $105,000 each year to add two technicians; and $365,000 to update the school’s infrastructure to support more technology use.
The $1.7 million cost for about 3,000 students is only slightly less than the $1.8 million KHSD spent getting some 37,000 students new math textbooks this school year.
Rosamond administrators said not just one but several grants allowed them to be able to make that kind of investment, and the district plans to keep applying for grants to sustain and expand its technology program.
Roney said blaming a failure to implement technology on too few education dollars is a cop-out. More money does not always mean better instruction.
Delano school officials could attest to that — and that technology alone doesn’t equal higher test scores.
Juniors in the Delano Joint Union High School District, where about 90 percent of students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, outperformed those in both the larger Kern High School District and the more technologically advanced Southern Kern Unified School District, according to this year’s computer-based state test results.
Delano dministrators credit that success to innovative thinking and educator buy-in that’s been around for years, even before the state started increasing funding for schools serving more disadvantaged students.
Assistant Superintendent James Hay said the district began building its fiber-optic network in the 1990s and hired a network specialist in 2001 before most schools even knew what a network was.
Since then, the Delano high school district has been building its support infrastructure and slowly implementing technology to aid instruction.
Jose Maldonado, learning director of Cesar Chavez High School, said district administrators implemented electronic devices thoughtfully so each student had access to a computer, but not necessarily a personal device.
Teachers were given devices they could use to improve their instruction instead of being dumped a bunch of devices no one knew how to use. They now meet once a week to align instruction to new learning standards, administrators said.
Maldonado said success in the classroom and with technology is about being willing to try new approaches.
“We’re not too afraid of trying things and getting our hands a little dirty,” he said.
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