School Computers

“Schools Are Ill-Suited to Close the Digital Divide” (Opinion, May 14) affirms my belief that failures of education technology are due to administrators’ failure to provide adequate staff development and support. During the six years of my son’s attendance at an otherwise respected San Diego elementary school, during which time the school constructed and equipped a glossy computer lab, the teachers received zero training in the use of the computers or the Internet. Administrators ensured the teachers’ continuing incapacity by relieving them of all computer responsibilities by staffing the lab with non-certificated and unqualified aides. The school’s capable and motivated children were taught and retaught, on an annual basis, little more than how to use a mouse.

Following my complaint, the misuse of the aides was halted. But instead of properly staffing the computer lab or appropriately training and supporting the teachers, administrators closed the lab and mothballed the nearly $100,000 expenditure for computers. Such mismanagement isn’t the exception in schools, it’s the rule.

BILL HOFFINE

San Diego