May/June 2008

"Equity, Access, and Opportunity"

Despite challenges, more districts adopt one-to-one laptop programs

by Colleen Gillard

Over the last few years, school districts across the country have initiated one-to-one laptop programs. According to a newly released nationwide survey, more than one-fourth of the 2,500 largest U.S. school districts have at least one full grade of students with their own laptops—a figure that is expected to rise to 50 percent within three years. While the largest one-to-one laptop programs are the districtwide program for grades 6–12 in Henrico County, Va., and Maine’s statewide program in middle schools and some high schools, states including Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Florida are also investing in one-to-one computing.

The practical issues involved in implementing these programs are significant, experts say, and so is the expense. In some high-profile cases, districts have canceled programs for either one or the other reason. Nonetheless, many educators believe it’s just a matter of time before laptops are as ubiquitous as lunchboxes in students’ backpacks.

“It’s all about equity, access, and opportunity,” says Claudia Mansfield Sutton, a spokeswoman for the American Association of School Administrators, which co-sponsored the nationwide survey, titled America’s Digital Schools 2008 (ADS08). “If a child can only use the computer lab once or twice a week, how can he or she compete? With a laptop, kids can access [digital] content anytime, anywhere.”

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Small Kids, Big Words

Research-based strategies for building vocabulary from preK to grade 3

by Laura Pappano

Morning meeting begins with—no surprise—the weather. But when preschool teacher Radha Hernandez describes the drenching winter downpour, she doesn’t reach for a rainy day symbol to stick on a calendar. She reaches for words.

“I was curled up under the covers. I was cozy, toasty warm and outside I heard an am-a-a-a-zing thing,” says Hernandez, a founding teacher at Lee Academy, a pilot school in Boston serving children from age three to third grade. “Thunder! Thunder! I heard thunder outside my window. It was a loud, crashing, booming sound.”

The ten children clustered in a horseshoe on the rug (two others will arrive later) perk up. Timmy insists he didn’t hear it. No one believes him, but he stands his verbal ground. “I didn’t want to hear it and so that is why I didn’t listen,” he says.

Molly, who’s four, adds, “I guess he was ignoring it.”

It is, of course, always cute when small kids use big words. But a growing body of research and classroom practice show that building a sophisticated vocabulary at an early age is also key to raising reading success—and narrowing the achievement gap. At schools like Lee Academy, teachers are overcoming the age-old habit of speaking to young children in simplified language and instead deliberately weaving higher-level word choices into preschool and primary grade classrooms. Whether it’s a discussion at morning meeting, informal talk at the block area, or a selection of read-aloud books, teachers are exposing younger children to language that, in many cases, exceeds the vocabulary level of a typical conversation between college graduates.

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The Power of Family Conversation

School and community programs help parents build children's literacy from birth

by Laura Pappano

School matters, but literacy starts at home. Teachers armed with reading contracts and carefully worded missives have long urged parents to read aloud to their children. But now there is a second and perhaps more powerful message: Talk to your kids, too.

Mounting research that links language-rich home environments with reading success and school achievement is driving educators and community groups to target families long before children register for school. In addition to Todd Risley and Betty Hart’s landmark work correlating verbal home environments with future literacy, Catherine E. Snow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and David K. Dickinson, a professor of teaching and learning at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, are assembling data on the impact of early literacy interventions. Their ongoing study of 57 low-income families reveals that home support for literacy markedly influences kindergarten language skills and fourth grade reading comprehension test scores. No wonder those at the leading edge of literacy want to increase the quantity and quality of conversations between parents and children beginning at birth.

“It is really what parents have been doing at home that children have to draw on when they become readers and writers,” says Gail Jordan, associate professor of education at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn., who says children from three to five are “ripe” for engaging in rich language learning.

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