Mixed Results for Maine’s Laptop Initiative

In a clear case of emphasizing what is working while de-emphasizing what is not, the State of Maine recently heard that its one-to-one laptop initiative was having enormous impact on student writing scores. Though that issue received enormous publicity in many newspaper outlets, those same articles failed to discuss what the initiative has failed to do. In fact, the technology initiative has had no real impact on the three other major areas of testing, reading, mathematics, or science.

The Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Back in 2002, after intense lobbying from out-going Governor Angus King, Maine instituted its highly publicized middle school one-to-one laptop initiative. Referred to as MLTI (Maine Learning Technology Initiative), the concept was designed to:

…transform Maine into the premiere state for utilizing technology in kindergarten to grade 12 education in order to prepare students for a future economy that will rely heavily on technology and innovation.

That fall, the effort to bridge the digital divide occurring between affluent children and those less fortunate began with the state issuing a laptop to all 7th and 8th grade students and their teachers. In addition, the MLTI provided funding for intense school and teacher training as well as infrastructure dollars to ensure that all classrooms for those students supported wireless technology.

Since that time the state has continued to fund the plan, recently upgrading with a second round of purchases at the same grade levels. Though anecdotal evidence has consistently been offered that the initiative was leading to increased student learning little hard evidence had emerged to justify the expense of the program until now.

MLTI: Creating Better Writers

Two University of Southern Maine Professors compared eighth grade student writing scores from 2000, two years before the initiative, to those in 2005, three years after implementation. According to their research, writing scores have increased by approximately one-third of a standard deviation since the laptop initiative. In layman’s terms, the average student in 2005 outscored two-thirds of the students in the year 2000.

Through extensive secondary analysis, the 2005 scale scores also reveal that the manner in which the laptops are being used during the writing process influences writing performance. The lowest scaled scores correlated directly to those students who reported that they did not use their laptop during writing. In contrast, the highest scaled scores correlated directly with those who reported using their laptops in all phases of the writing process. In terms of raw data, the average student score for those who reported extensive use during the writing process exceeded 75% of the scores from the low use group students.

And what is deemed the most telling statistic, Maine Education Assessment scores for 2005 yielded a 49 percent proficiency rate, a full 20 percent above the 2000 proficiency number of 29 percent.

No Effect on Other Scores

However, the MLTI data is not producing similar results in other test areas. Over the same time period, math scores are unchanged while science scores grew by 2 points. And in perhaps what has to be considered the greatest disappointment, reading scores have dropped three points in that time frame. In terms of those same figures, writing scores have climbed seven points.

Surprisingly one of the professors authoring the study, Dr. David Silvernail, stated he was not surprised that the use of laptops had not led to increased performances on standardized tests. The remark seemed curious at best. At no time had the initiative been suggested as being limited to improving student writing. Instead, the premise had been that the laptops would lead to increased learning for all middle school students, essentially making each middle schooler intellectually stronger even as the laptops made them technologically literate.

Instead, a more appropriate response of support, if one should be forthcoming, would have been to question the use of the laptops by teachers in the other subject areas. Are teachers simply not putting the laptops to use in the other subjects or is it such that teachers are unclear as to how to enhance learning opportunities with the laptop in those other subject areas?

And in what was a troubling trend in the matter, the failure of the laptop initiative to increase learning in other subject areas was simply relegated to a few sentences at the end of the story.