New Santa Ana High School to Offer a World of Technology

Instead of pen and paper, students at Santa Ana’s future high school may write their compositions on word processors. Instead of going to libraries for research, they may use a computer data base.

Santa Ana’s fourth high school, expected to open for the 1988-89 school year, will be unlike any other in the state, district officials say, because every class, from English to mathematics, will make use of high technology.

Officials of the Santa Ana Unified School District have been traveling throughout the state studying various “high-tech high schools.”

“We’re really on the ground floor of what is truly a unique program in the state,” said Rudy M. Castruita, assistant superintendent.

The new high school, as yet unnamed, will offer fields of study in computer science, engineering, medical services, drafting and electronics as well as other courses, he said.

The school, to be built on Grand Avenue between McFadden and Edinger avenues, will not be a magnet school for students who apply and qualify, but rather a school for students from the surrounding neighborhoods, with some spaces for other Santa Ana area students who show exceptional technical ability.

High-technology companies will be invited to provide lecturers, Castruita said.

School board President Sadie Reid said the board is enthusiastic about the new curriculum as it struggles to fight the district’s reputation for low test scores, caused largely, she said, by a high percentage of immigrants still trying to learn the language.

The program will be different from others, Castruita said, because all departments will have access to computers and will be able to tap into each other’s information. Although some high-technology courses will be required, including a computer literacy class for all ninth-graders, the school will also offer traditional curricula. Although officials don’t know yet how expensive the program will be, Reid said that “you get what you pay for.”

But there are caution signs ahead.

Some computer experts have warned that computers are not a cure-all for education’s ills.

Rob Kling, a professor of information and computer science at UC Irvine, said drawbacks include a lack of high-quality instructional software and the fact that students can’t take their work home. Also, he said, teachers probably don’t have the time or the skills to do the programming themselves.

Kling, who stressed that he had not studied the Santa Ana proposal, said students also may have a tendency to become enamored of the tools themselves. “Many students get fascinated with formatting and pay more attention to the way a computer-written paper looks than its content,” he said.

Terence Cannings, program director of educational computing at Pepperdine University, echoed Kling’s caution against looking at the computer as “a panacea, something that can produce bigger and better students.”

But Cannings, who is a consultant to the Santa Ana district, said he believes the new program can help students move into the computerized workplace.

Vincent San Filippo, a representative of McDonnell Douglas Corp., said it would be interested in providing guest expertise for students at the new high school. The trend toward computers in education is a good one “as long as the whole approach is holistic. . . . It shouldn’t be an idea reserved for an elite group,” he said.