Information Highway Bypassing Many Campuses

While the world launches headlong into the age of the Internet and e-mail, Ventura County students are grounded in classrooms clutching No. 2 pencils and lined paper.

In their quest to bring technology into the classroom, the county’s public schools have fallen behind the nation, with districts stymied by outdated equipment, inadequate training for teachers and little money to bring about change, educators say.

“We haven’t been able to turn out students who are computer literate,” said Bill Studt, superintendent of the Oxnard Union High School District. “When they go out into the world, they are behind the eight ball in terms of being able to compete.”

Although far richer than most counties, Ventura County school districts average just one computer for every 14 students, a figure on par with the state but well off the national ratio of 1 to 10.

The Simi Valley Unified School District’s ratio is one computer for every 35 students while the Fillmore Unified School District logs one computer for every 24 students.

And while local educators are increasing computer stocks, most schools do not have even the primitive electrical cabling needed to link students to other classrooms and the Internet.

Eleven of the 20 local school districts, including wealthy Moorpark Unified, have no wiring at all. The percentage of classrooms wired in the nine other districts ranges from 80% at Hueneme Elementary School District to 2% in the Santa Paula Union High School District.

Even where computers are plentiful, administrators often must deal with teachers who are self-described technophobes--essentially computer illiterate. Other instructors say they have not been given enough training on how to include computers in daily lessons.

Because of these obstacles, students’ access to computers and instruction in their use vary widely among Ventura County school districts and even from one school to the next.

The Hueneme Elementary School District, for instance, has one computer for every three students, while the neighboring Oxnard Union High School District--to which most of the Hueneme students graduate--has a single computer for every 13 students.

But some educators say schools are now trying harder than they have in recent years to update their technology.

For the first time in five years, the state is providing significant dollars for technology and county school officials are busy deciding how best to spend it, said Charles Weis, Ventura County’s superintendent of schools.

“Schools have been in a cut, cut, cut mode for the last eight to 10 years,” Weis said. “So it was difficult to make hardware purchases. But we have some money now and we have to do all we can to catch up.”

County educators say the effort to bring state-of-the-art technology into classrooms is fraught with obstacles. Among them:

* Computer use for most students is confined to 30-minute sessions each week in a lab--some of it spent playing games. Experts say this practice does little more that teach children how to use a keyboard instead of using computers to access and analyze data, skills highly prized by employers.

* Equipment at many schools is antiquated. For instance, the computers in a lab at Redwood Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks are so old that students must use five floppy disks to complete a simple word processing assignment.

* The electrical supply needed to run banks of powerful computers is woefully inadequate at most schools. The county’s 120,000 students are learning in classrooms so ill-equipped that phone jacks needed to link computers to global networks are a rarity.

* Access to the Internet--considered by education leaders to be the most important classroom tool to emerge in decades--is available on a limited basis in 14 school districts, but is nonexistent in six others.

* Only a handful of districts have staff experts whose sole job is to plan, install and keep computers running. The success of technology programs, therefore, often depends on whether a school has a teacher, parent or community volunteer willing to donate hours after school setting up networks and fixing broken machines.

Terence R. Cannings, an associate dean at Pepperdine who specializes in educational technology, likens the current slow response to earlier resistance to new math and calculators in the classroom.

“Schools are always reactive,” Cannings said. “They are always behind the forefront of society and institutions.”

Still, the 20 local districts are making a big push this year to update technology. The state has freed up one-time block grants for technology, and Ventura County’s districts are expecting to spend a combined $6.2-million on the purchase of new computers to replace obsolete machines and install connections to the Internet, budget managers say.

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It is a good start, but there is much more to be done, school officials say. Educators disagree on the best way to distribute computers, but the trend is to move them out of labs and into classrooms.

Many administrators and teachers believe the optimum ratio is one computer for every four to five students.

The county education office estimates it would take at least $75 million to wire and equip each of the county’s classrooms with at least four high-speed computers, a laser printer and Internet access.

A computer powerful enough to run advanced software costs about $2,000, said Ken Prosser, director of school business services for the superintendent of schools office. A high-quality laser printer costs another $1,500, Prosser said.

And the expenses do not end there, he said. For every $1 spent on equipment, schools need to put away another $5 for teacher training, software and upgrades, Prosser said.

Internet access charges continue the toll. Instead of expensive commercial on-line services, however, many school districts--including Briggs, Rio, Pleasant Valley, Oak Park Unified and Ojai Unified--are opting instead to link their computers to a powerful connection at the county superintendent of schools office.

By using the county’s connection, districts can get unlimited access to the Internet for about $200 a year, Prosser said.

“It’s an economy of scale, so the more school sites you have, the lower the cost,” he said.

Even if money were plentiful, school officials say, another hurdle is dispelling antiquated attitudes about learning.

Many parents and educators believe they received a good education without computers and do not see why they are necessary now, officials say. Simi Valley mother Coleen Ary said she does not want to see the teacher-student bond diluted and questions whether children should be cruising the Net instead of doing math drills.

“I still want a child to have a textbook they can look at and carry to school,” Ary said. “I don’t want computers to replace my children having to really master basics like handwriting and spelling.”

Others eye computers suspiciously, wondering whether they are just the latest gimmick to hit education. Richard Clark, a USC professor of educational psychology, said the current computer furor reminds him of the race to put televisions into classrooms during the 1960s and ‘70s.

“There was a huge amount of interest about the benefits of instructional TV,” Clark said. “But do you see a lot of instructional TV in classrooms today? I don’t.”

What’s more, Clark said, research shows that technology alone does not enhance learning. It is the content and the style of instruction, and not the choice of technology, that determines how well a student learns, he said.

Few believe computers will ever replace teachers.

But educators here and across the nation argue that the case in favor of technology is clear. Using computers--particularly those linked to the Internet--turns children into critical thinkers, they say.

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In the dawning Information Age, those who know how to quickly find and download information are at an advantage, Pepperdine’s Cannings said. Studies show that computers promote greater analytic thinking, more synthesis of thought and better communication skills, he said.

Also, Cannings said, 80% of children are visual learners, so a screen that graphically illustrates a concept works well, he said.

At E.O. Green School in the Hueneme elementary district, for instance, science students “build” a bridge on a computer and see how much stress it will take before collapsing.

Computers also allow teachers to customize lessons, moving bright students to a more challenging curriculum and remedial pupils to drills that help them catch up, said Don Merck, director of the state Department of Education’s technology office.

Finally, technology in the classroom is desirable, many educators say, because it is what students will encounter when they enter the work force.

Ventura Unified School District board member John Walker said he is always looking for high school graduates with computer experience in his job as sales manager for GTE in Thousand Oaks.

“One of the first things we ask kids is what they know,” Walker said. “Can they run Lotus or do a spreadsheet? We’re an information-based society. And if we don’t give students the tools necessary to deal in an information-based society, they are going to be left behind.”

School officials say the challenge for Ventura County’s local districts is threefold: finding money to buy expensive technology, making sure teachers are properly trained in how to use it, and keeping the complex machinery running.

The districts in California that are succeeding have one thing in common, Cannings said.

Although they have the same economic pressures facing all California schools, the district’s leaders are committed to bringing technology into the classroom, he said.

And school leaders have maintained that focus year after year, he said. “It takes a combination of resources and vision,” Cannings said. “If you don’t have the vision, nothing much is going to change.”

Teachers cannot take the lead because they are too busy teaching in isolated classrooms, Cannings said. And the state has offered little guidance, he said, pouring millions of dollars into a handful of model technology schools but leaving most to fend for themselves.

But the Hueneme Elementary School District, under the leadership of Supt. Ronald Rescigno, is a good example of what works, said Prosser of the county’s superintendent of schools office.

Although the district got its first big boost of money--$2.5 million over five years--from a state model technology school grant, it continued to pour millions more into technology after that money ran out two years ago, Prosser said.

“They have a leader there who was very technology-minded and he went out and swung the deals that needed to be made,” Prosser said.

The first Hueneme “smart classroom” was built in 1987. Today, the district has 11 high-tech classrooms at its two junior high schools, Blackstock and E.O. Green. The district is recognized as a national leader in the use of educational technology.

For instance, in Mary Schaller’s science class at E.O. Green, students recently studied volcanoes. Most of the 30 students completed self-guided lessons contained on software that was loaded into their personal computer.

A few others had switched to a word processing program that allowed them to write reports. And eighth-grader Jimmy Tallant was browsing an on-line encyclopedia for information on the Krakatau volcano.

“It beats books,” Jimmy said as he used a mouse to click the volcano’s profile into greater detail.

Schaller, who began teaching in 1970, said it took her a year to get used to using computers instead of books. But her students seem to prefer working with computers, she said.

“They stay interested,” Schaller said. “They like this even more than watching a film.”

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Over the past decade, Hueneme’s scores in math, science, reading and history climbed from about the 50th percentile to above the 80th when measured against their state peers.

Researchers also found that the students’ average critical thinking abilities have risen from the 40th to the 80th percentile contrasted with similar districts in California.

While some educators have criticized Hueneme for concentrating its technology into “showrooms,” the district in the past two years has moved to bring more computers with Internet access to nearly all its classrooms.

About 80% of its classrooms are wired to link computers to global networks. School officials project the entire district will be wired by the end of June. Hueneme also provides more computers for students than any other district in Ventura County, with one for every three students.

Officials in the 7,800-student district plan to spend about $1-million this year on wiring, computer upgrades, teacher training and instructional software. That is more than double what the Simi Valley Unified School District, with an enrollment of nearly 18,000, will spend during the current year.

“We try to focus every possible dollar we can on technology,” Rescigno, the superintendent, said.

In contrast with Hueneme’s success, the Simi Valley district has had a much tougher time modernizing.

It has the fewest computers available per student of any Ventura County district. And just 25% of its classrooms have been wired to form computer networks.

Of 19 elementary schools, only two have Internet access, said Lowell Schultze, director of information services. The Internet is also available at one of the city’s two high schools, but there are no connections at any of the four junior high schools, he said.

Computer instruction is largely limited to half-hour sessions in labs or in a few science classrooms where teachers have incorporated them into daily lessons, Schultze said.

Although the district has set aside $400,000 to wire classrooms, buy new computers and upgrade software this year, it is not nearly enough to meet needs in such a large district, Schultze said.

“We haven’t put a nick into what we need,” Schultze said.

But the district is beginning to make progress. The Simi Valley school board recently designated a planned third high school as a technology magnet that will offer advanced computer instruction.

And the board has set an informal goal of placing at least one computer with Internet access in every classroom within the next few years, Schultze said.

It is when districts begin accumulating large stocks of computers, however, that they run into another problem: keeping them running.

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Technical expertise becomes critical when you start setting up networks linking hundreds of computers, said Richard W. Simpson, assistant superintendent of instructional services for the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

His 17,600-student district does not have one person in charge of the more than 1,600 computers spread over 26 schools, Simpson said. Instead, when a computer crashes or a lab blows out, the district relies on teacher “tech-heads” or others with an aptitude for computers to help out.

“There are a lot of good people at school sites who have a vision for technology and who go forward on their own,” he said. “But that is clearly a need that we haven’t met.”

Betsy Kossler, who runs the computer lab at Redwood Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks, knows all about it.

She estimates she donates about five hours a week after school repairing old Apple IIe computers that have gone on the blink, changing ribbons on an outdated printer and answering other teachers’ questions.

If one of the aging Apples needs replacement parts that cost more than a few dollars, she junks the machine, Kossler said.

“These computers are so old they aren’t used for much more than word processing,” she said. “And it’s not worth sending them out for repair.”

Everett Beatty volunteers up to 15 hours a week helping the Oxnard Elementary School District install cables in schools so computers can be linked to the Internet.

Beatty, a telecommunications civilian at the Port Hueneme naval base, decided to give his time after learning that principals and teachers were struggling to set up networks. Two of his stepchildren attend the Oxnard schools, Beatty said.

“There’s a huge gap between what we are offering in schools today and what we ought to be offering in schools,” he said.