Despite problems, laptops boost student test scores

The past several years have seen laptop prices plunge to commodity levels at the same time that the explosion in WiFi access has made getting them on the 'Net much easier. That's prompted an explosion of one-to-one student:laptop programs, implemented by everything from individual schools to entire states. Hard data on the effectiveness of these programs, however, has been hard to come by. The most recent issue of The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment is devoted to looking at these programs, and it includes some hard data suggesting that they just might help students handle standardized tests.

There are six papers, all dedicated to looking at different attempts at 1:1 laptop programs at different levels of primary education in the US. A few of those are focused on self-reported surveys of how teachers and students view the programs, however; there are only two that focus on hard numbers obtained via statewide standardized tests. Still, all of the papers emphasize just how difficult it is to compare programs. Finding a nearby school system that isn't running a laptop program but has equivalent demographics and similar test scores to start with can be a real challenge. There's also substantial variation in how the laptop programs are implemented. Different schools devote different resources to training teachers, providing software and other key factors, and may not provide access to the hardware after school hours. The software and training involved may differ between disciplines, as well—the approaches that make laptops an integral part of science education, for example, won't necessarily work in an English class, where things like data entry never come into play.