Maybe We're Fighting Over The Wrong Vouchers

By Steve Cohen

'It is easier to move a graveyard than change a school." That's the warning my partner roars every time I suggest ways we might extend the e-learning revolution to public education. We're true believers in technology's potential for becoming a powerful educational tool, even at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. But we also believe computers and the Internet are more likely to remain fancy typewriters, inefficient research tools, and classroom babysitters—unless schools start to focus on using technology for teaching as well as learning.

Though schools have spent billions on buying state-of-the art PCs (one for every five students) and wiring classrooms to the Internet (72 percent connected by last year), we're still struggling through a serious education crisis. Despite the highest per capita spending on education in our history— coupled with smaller class sizes, more training for teachers, and a plethora of standards and tests—40 percent of 4th graders and 38 percent of 8th graders still can't read at grade level.

One reason we're in this sorry situation is that e-learning is caught in the cross-fire of the school voucher debate. Both school administrators and teachers' unions appear to be paralyzed, unable to take even the smallest steps to restructure how instruction is delivered, and thus unable to...