Schools Catching Up on Computers

The first year of an ambitious, five-year push to move Los Angeles County schools into the forefront of computer usage nationally has paid its greatest dividend in the area of teacher training, with 2,400 instructors learning how to use advanced technology with their students.

On Tuesday, officials with the Los Angeles County Office of Education released a “report card,” assessing the impact of their partnership with private companies, foundations and school districts to take the county from national laggard to national leader.

And, on the whole, the achievements of the year-old Technology for Learning initiative have been positive. More schools have computers, more of those computers are connected with each other and with the Internet, and more teachers have been trained than just a year ago.

If the county were considered a state, it would now rank 35th in terms of the ratio of students per computer compared to 50th a year ago.

“There’s been a lot of orderly, documented progress that’s been made,” said Donald Ingwerson, county superintendent of schools.

Yet the county still has far to go. A survey conducted by the county found that schools have only one modern computer for every 21 students, far from its goal of one for every eight students.

The county is doing better than the state as a whole, however.

Even though California is the birthplace of the personal computer and is a world leader in such technology-driven fields as biotechnology and motion pictures, its schools provide only one modern computer for every 73 students.

The biggest challenge to changing that, Ingwerson said, is “going to be to influence the power structure to invest more heavily in the future of children.” Government funds alone will not be enough, he said.

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State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, who used the release of the county report card to push her own $11-billion technology plan for schools, said the state and the nation need to mount an effort similar in scale to the building of the interstate highway system.

“It is time the state of California understands the difference between expense and investment,” she said. “A failure to give our kids access to technology amounts to committing national economic suicide.”

Although much of that investment will go to pay for computers, phone lines and software, schools must also be prepared to finance teacher training if they want to make full use of technology to enhance student achievement.

“The demand for training is sky high” among parents and school support staff, as well as from teachers, said Jim Lanich, who heads the technology initiative for the county.

The county provided training for 120 teachers this past year and each of them returned to their school districts and trained 20 more.

But the goal is to train 30,000 teachers by 2000 to use multimedia programs, the Internet and other computer applications.

Kevin Bringuez, a senior at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park, said the shortage of trained teachers and modern computers means he has to scramble. His school has a lab of 60 computers for nearly 3,000 students and few teachers know how to use them.

“It’s difficult to gain knowledge when you don’t have a trained professional to help you,” Bringuez said. He said he picks things up on his own from friends or teachers after school. “[Even] when you do have a trained professional, you have 60 students, so you’re limited in the amount you can achieve,” he said.

Training even a few teachers, however, can be a catalyst for rapid change. Two years ago, the 3,000-student Rosemead School District had no modern computers for its classrooms, few of its teachers had computers at home and not many were comfortable using them on the job.

Then a small state grant to help train teachers touched off a revolution. Now almost every classroom has computers linked to the Internet. The district, in cooperation with Apple Computers, is pouring $500,000 this year into technology for computer labs, and half of Rosemead’s teachers are spending two weeks this summer in front of keyboards receiving training.

The district is now developing plans to train parents and to open its computer labs after school for homework and for parents.

The county’s corporate partners in its technology effort include The Times, which co-sponsored Tuesday’s update session; AT&T;, which donated $750,000 to establish community training centers, and Davidson Software of Torrance, which gave schools in the community $1 million worth of software.

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Plugging In

A year ago, a coalition of businesses, foundations, social agencies and educators launched a five-year effort to bring schools in the county from the bottom 10% to the top 10% nationally in classroom computer use. Here is a sampling from its first report card:

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County State U.S. Goal * Students per computer overall 14 21 9 8 * Students per modern computer 21 73 - - * Computers linked with school or classroom 29% 54% 23% - * Computers linked to other schools 6% 14% 61% 100% * Schools with modems 62% 56% - 100%

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Source: Los Angeles County Office of Education