{"id":224,"date":"2008-08-05T19:49:02","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T19:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ivyrun.com\/wordpress\/2008\/08\/05\/of-test-scores-and-budget-cuts\/"},"modified":"2008-08-05T19:49:02","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T19:49:02","slug":"of-test-scores-and-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=224","title":{"rendered":"Of Test Scores and Budget Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MSNBC <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/25782209\/\">reports<\/a> on Maine&#8217;s laptop program, and the news seems to be pretty positive:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Students scored significantly higher on the writing test despite having to write it by hand.<\/li>\n<li>Attendance is up with students reporting that they liked school better since getting the laptop.<\/li>\n<li>Detentions are down.<\/li>\n<li>Teachers are able to make lessons more personal for students.<\/li>\n<li>Teachers report that students are becoming better at combining information from different sources and expressing their thoughts.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s easier to study real-world problems and dig deeper into concepts.<\/li>\n<li>Students are learning 21st century skills like collaboration and creativity.<\/li>\n<li>Maine feels like it is helping to ease the economic digital divide.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the negative:\u00a0 test scores, besides the writing test, have not changed much. And, as we all know, test scores are really what&#8217;s important:\u00a0 \u201cWhat we need to look at is the broader impact on student improvement,\u201d said Timothy Magner, the director of the Office of Education Technology, a branch of the U.S. Department of Education. \u201cOne of the key metrics is test scores. We\u2019re keenly interested in that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"byLine\"><\/span>So, despite all the successes, the program is going to be judged on one metric, which at least according to one academic, may not be the right one.\u00a0 \u201cWhat you can do on laptops isn\u2019t measured on current standardized tests,\u201d said Mark Warschauer, an education professor at UC Irvine.<\/p>\n<p>And, here&#8217;s the other bad news: Maine would like to expand the program, but budget cuts have made that impossible.\u00a0 So, let&#8217;s see, we seem to have found something that gets kids engaged and helps them learn, but we don&#8217;t have the political will to actually fund it.\u00a0 I&#8217;m reminded of the old saying: it will be a great day when schools get all the money they need, and the air force has to have a bake sale to build a bomber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MSNBC reports on Maine&#8217;s laptop program, and the news seems to be pretty positive: Students scored significantly higher on the writing test despite having to write it by hand. Attendance is up with students reporting that they liked school better since getting the laptop. Detentions are down. Teachers are able to make lessons more personal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=224\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Of Test Scores and Budget Cuts<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[48,2,58],"tags":[106,107,108],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century-skills","category-education","category-politics","tag-laptops","tag-maine","tag-onetoone"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4X3L0-3C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}