The Governors and Their Stone Age Schools

By Thomas C. Boysen

With the chalk in one hand and their backs to the slate board, American teachers' main technology can be said to be Neolithic. They write upon one rock with another.

Stone upon stone, chalk upon slate, our teachers and students trudge into the information age. Hypoallergenic chalk and simulated slate pass for technology innovations in schools stalled near the on-ramps to the information highway. Last year there were 5.5 million computers in schools and 50 million in homes, and the gap is growing. One in 10 school computers has a CD-ROM drive, which is likely to be single speed. One of three home computers has a CD-ROM drive that runs at double speed or better.

Educators and students have not been given the tools to keep current with the rest of their society or to produce the dramatic academic gains that were called for in the 1983 report A Nation at Risk , which were re-emphasized at the national education summit in 1989 and will be reasserted at the governors' summit scheduled for next month. (See Education Week, Feb. 14, 1996.) In those rare cases where educators and students have been given adequate technology, training, and support, classrooms hum with new...