Dive Summary:
- A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, "Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Home Computers on Academic Achievement among Schoolchildren" by Robert W. Fairlie and Jonathan Robinson, found there is no evidence computers can close the socioeconomic achievement gap in the U.S.
- In a bid to discover whether a lack of computers was the root cause of the educational divide in the U.S., researchers distributed computers to 1,123 students in grades 6-10 across 15 schools in Calif. to see how that would affect their results in school.
- The authors of the study discovered their "results indicate that computer ownership alone is unlikely to have much of an impact on short-term schooling outcomes for low-income children” and found that "even though the experiment had a large effect on computer ownership and total hours of computer use, there is no evidence of an effect on a host of educational outcomes, including grades, standardized test scores, credits earned, attendance, and disciplinary actions."
From the article:
Of course, having computers may have non-educational benefits. Basic computer literacy certainly helps in a knowledge economy. But the real problem is that many poor kids never even get a shot at information technology jobs, and the rich-poor gap is only getting worse. The SAT gap has grown 40 percent and college completion has skyrocketed 50 percent since the 1980s.
This means that the likely culprit is far more insidious: the family and environment. I taught at-risk youth for years and saw first-hand how parents who didn’t prioritize college paralyzed their eager children. In my home, it was expected that I go to graduate school before I even knew what it was.
Children without the same expectations have a severe disadvantage, and no gadget is going to fix it.
