Tuesday, August 31, 2010
"Common Sense in Education Strikes Again"
I can't decide if people have no common sense, or is it that they don't have enough self-confidence to believe what their instincts are telling them...
Marybeth Hicks writes about it at TownHall.com:
"...the New York Times last week carried an interesting story by Randall Stross titled, "Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality," in which the author previews an upcoming scientific paper on the effects of home computers on the educational outcomes of low-income students.
The study's authors — professors from the University of Chicago and Columbia University — used fieldwork from a Romanian computer voucher program to prove that low-income students who received home computers actually achieved lower test scores than students who applied for, but did not receive, the vouchers.
Here's the part where we could pocket some research grant money: Mr. Stross quotes researcher Ofer Malamud as saying, 'We found a negative effect on academic achievement. I was surprised, but as we presented our findings at various seminars, people in the audience said they weren’t surprised, given their experiences with their school-aged children.'"
