Computers in Low-income Households = Little or No Educational Benefit?

Here’s an article with a generalization that goes against the grain of everything most educators believe about access to computers for children from low-income homes. Randall Stross, in “Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality“* (New York Times, 7.9.10), says that studies by economists indicate “little or no educational benefit” is gained.

Stross writes, “Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.” Continue reading