Computer Lab Earns an ‘A’ at Barrio School

When teachers at Vaughn Street Elementary School walk through the main office hallway to the school grounds, they come face to face with a chart made by computer lab director Grant Halley.

Displaying the chart where all the school’s teachers could see it was Halley’s way of showing his colleagues the dramatic increase in CAP scores that students in the barrio school posted this year.

Reading scores for the Pacoima sixth-graders rose 15 points. Written expression scores increased by 19 points and math scores jumped 31 points.

Halley credits the upturn in test scores to the establishment of a computer lab and a yearlong program that emphasized improving the math skills of fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders.

“What the computer lab did was to give us another dimension to focus on skills,” Halley said. “You can do just so much when you have 30 kids in a classroom and three of those kids need extra help. With the computers, we can zero in on the specific area where a kid needs help.”

About 85% of the Vaughn Street students are Latino, many of whom enter school speaking little or no English. According to the CAP socioeconomic survey, about 80% of the school’s parents are eligible for some type of welfare benefits. And because there are 850 students on a campus built for 694, the school operates on a year-round schedule.

Vaughn Street has 14 Apple computers in its lab, 13 of which were donated by nearby Price Pfister Inc., a plumbing supply company that has “adopted” the school. When a class uses the lab, 14 students are assigned to individual terminals. The rest of the students work with a teacher or a teaching aide who sits at a keyboard connected to a monitor that is large enough for all members of the group to see.

In preparing their students to take standardized math tests, Vaughn Street teachers first taught students the fundamentals of operating the computer. Then they were given a program that flashed math problems on the machine’s screen. A question mark appeared in the space where the answer was to be written. The child then typed in the answer.

Interaction With Computer

If the answer was correct, the computer allowed the child to move on to the next problem. If the answer was wrong, the computer asked the student to review the calculation and answer the question again.

“This way, the child is interacting with the computer and working at his own speed,” Halley said. “They can’t move to the next level until they have mastered the concepts they are working on.”

In addition to improving math scores, working on the computers produced an unexpected result: higher reading scores.

“Before we brought the students into the computer lab, we gave teachers lists of key words that would come while the kids were working with the computers,” Halley said, pointing to a list that included words such as “prompt,” “sequence” and “disk.”

Reading Improves

“As a result of learning the meaning of these words and reading the commands of the computers, the kids improved their reading comprehension,” Halley said. “At least that’s how we interpret the test results.”

Even with the improved scores, Halley says there is still a lot of work to be done. The weekly computer lab sessions have been expanded to include all Vaughn Street school students, and Halley is working with other staff members to develop new computer programs.

“I don’t think we’re ready to break out the champagne and celebrate yet,” Halley said. “But if our scores continue to climb at the same rate they did this year, then in about three years we’ll be ready for that champagne.”