Is Spending Money on Technology Worth It?

By Larry Cuban

Count the reasons for continuing investments of money in building a "hard" infrastructure of wiring, servers, and new multimedia machines and a "soft" infrastructure of technical support and professional development. Each reason for spending money has so little evidence to support the investment that it is like buying dot-com stocks that lose money year after year. It is, as Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan once said about the stock market, "an irrational exuberance." What are the reasons for investing in technology in schools? Let's review.

Reason: Making computers available to teachers and students will lead to the integration of technology with curriculum and instruction.

Evidence: Most teachers at all levels remain occasional users or nonusers. Those who are regular users seldom integrate the machines with core...