Task Force Backs Spending $11 Billion on Technology for Schools

California should spend $10.9 billion over the next four years to give every kindergarten-through-12th-grade public school student access to computer technology and the information superhighway, a statewide task force said Wednesday.

This massive expenditure would provide one computer for every four students, a substantial improvement over the current ratio of one for every 73 students--a figure that excludes the outmoded equipment found in many of the state’s 200,000 classrooms.

“You wouldn’t ask 70 kids to share a pencil,” state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin said at a Sacramento news conference to unveil the task force findings. Improving the technological power of California’s schools is “an essential piece of what we must do for all students,” she said.

The task force estimates that about $4 billion of the total amount needed could come from existing state appropriations, private grants and volume purchase discounts. But it said the state would have to turn to other, more controversial methods to finance the bulk of the plan, including an income tax increase, new taxes on items such as videocassettes, surcharges on telecommunications users and bond initiatives.

The steep price tag may make the plan a tough sell in Sacramento, where legislators might face opposition from a tax-weary public for approving some of the revenue-raising proposals.

“It’s a laudable goal,” said Jerry Hayward, a co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education, a nonprofit education policy center, “but it’s difficult to conceive how you would be able to raise that kind of money from one or two sources. There would have to be multiple sources, and those are all very politically unpopular.”

The report issued by the bipartisan, 46-member task force of CEOs, community leaders and educators says that computers and network technologies “more than any other single measure . . . will bolster California’s continuing efforts to right what’s wrong with our public schools.”

The task force also recommended that students and teachers be required to demonstrate proficiency in the use of computers and called for establishing referral services, help lines and other resources to support school technology.

The report drew praise from some education experts, who considered some of the proposed funding solutions to be creative and sensible.

“They are on the right track when they talk about various taxes on these new entities and new users of various kinds of telecommunications,” said Stanford University education professor Mike Kirst. “I can’t think of many other things in schools that say ‘Here is a tax on users and corporations that logically feeds back into your business.’ ”

Others criticized the report, however, saying its recommendations were politically and financially unrealistic and perhaps educationally unwise.

The state is about to pour $771 million into its elementary schools to drastically reduce class size--a bargain struck only after Gov. Pete Wilson agreed to drop his bid for a state income tax cut.

To propose a funding increase 10 times that size for a reform that may be less vital than improving reading instruction or cutting class size raises fundamental questions about the state’s educational priorities, some experts said.

“It’s unfortunately the kind of typical knee-jerk response we have developed--throwing money and technology at a problem, instead of pausing and asking what is the problem and solving it in a more measured way,” said physicist Fritjof Capra of Learning in the Real World, a nonprofit research group in Woodland, Calif., that is funding research on the effects of computers on the intellectual development of children. “Nobody has shown that computers are effective overall in the educational process.”

Eastin’s task force report cited a 1995 review of more than 100 recent studies by the Software Publishers Assn. that showed technology-based instruction significantly improved student performance in English, math, social studies and science. However, that association has a financial stake in the growth of computer use and the task force acknowledged that much of the evidence it cited is anecdotal.

Wilson administration spokesman Sean Walsh called the funding proposals highly unrealistic and said the governor favors private foundation efforts to obtain used computers from businesses and refurbish them for the classroom.

“We don’t pooh-pooh the report outright. We are in concurrence with the need to bring high technology into the classroom,” Walsh said. “But we have to be realistic about what resources can be tapped. We think the public-private partnership is the route to take.”

California currently ranks 45th in the nation in the number of computers per student and 43rd in access to the Internet. The state spends about $3 per student on technology--far below what many other states spend, Eastin said.

Since 1992, Kentucky, for instance, has spent about $83 a year per student in state and local funds to lower its computer-student ratio from 1:154 to 1:9, according to Jim Parks, spokesman for the Kentucky Department of Education. It has committed to spending a total of about $160 per student--or about $500 million--to achieve the goal of one computer for every six students.

Eastin’s proposed technology system would include six to eight network-linked computers in every public school classroom in California.

Eastin and task force members acknowledged that California’s challenge is steep--it has 5 million students, compared to Kentucky’s 600,000. But they contend that the return on the substantial investment they are advocating will be worthwhile.

One study, by the Milken Institute for Job & Capital Formation, estimates a return of $5 for every $1 invested in improving the technology skills of the state’s work force.