Here’s an eyebrow-raiser: Reading and math scores of middle-school students, especially those from disadvantaged homes, tend to decline once a computer arrives in their homes, according to a study by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Say what?!? Isn’t putting a laptop with high-speed Internet access into every low-income child’s home supposed to close the gap between technology haves and have-nots and boost achievement? Professors Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd say “such efforts would actually widen the achievement gap in math and reading” according to a post on ScientificBlogging.com.
“And it isn’t because they are spending less time on computers, it is that they have not been a generation raised to regard it as a productivity tool and instead see it as a social one. The results might be even more dramatic today, because the cutoff for the study was before Facebook and Twitter took hold.”
The study looked at test scores for more than 150,000 students in North Carolina from 2000 to 2005. “The data allowed researchers to compare the same children’s reading and math scores before and after they acquired a home computer, to compare those scores to those of peers who had a home computer by fifth grade and to test scores of students who never acquire a home computer,” notes the report. “The negative effects on reading and math scores were ‘modest but significant,’ they found.”
Predictably, the study found middle school students mostly used their home computers for socializing and games, and that productive use of computers was higher in homes where Mom and Dad monitored their use. ”In disadvantaged households, parents are less likely to monitor children’s computer use and guide children in using computers for educational purposes,” the study notes.
The study, titled “Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement,” is published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Update: Common sense on this from Larry Ferlazzo.