Computers Meet Classroom; Classroom Wins

By Larry Cuban

Today, computers and telecommunications are a fact of life almost as basic as electricity. They have altered the daily work of businesses and industry. Yet why is it that with so much talk of school reform and information technologies over the last decade computers are used far less on a daily basis in schools than in other organizations?

The question often generates swift objections. What about the $20 million Quince Orchard High School in Montgomery County, Md., where there are 288 computers for 1,100 students? What about the thousands of elementary and secondary school teachers who have students work together on computers to write, tally figures, draw, and think? And aren't there many experiments under way, such as Apple's Classroom of Tomorrow, and microcomputer laboratories? The answers to all of these questions is that such instances do exist but they are scattered and atypical in the 80,000-plus public schools across the nation where over two million teachers teach over 40 million students.

As an innovation, school use of computers in the 1980's has spread swiftly, widely, and, on occasion, deeply. But the picture is clouded. A few key statistics suggest the broad...