The $100 Distraction DeviceWhy giving poor kids laptops doesn't improve their scholastic performance.
Posted Thursday, June 5, 2008, at 7:03 AM ET
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StumbleUponMalamud and Pop-Eleches chose the Euro 200 program because it solved the apples-to-oranges problem. While Euro 200 didn't exactly hand out computers at random, it came pretty close. The program provided vouchers worth 200 euros (about $240 at the time, nearly $315 today) for computer purchases by poor families with kids. (The income cutoff was $50 per month per household member.) But there weren't nearly enough vouchers to go around. In 2005, for example, nearly 52,000 qualified families applied, but the government had funding for only 27,555 of them. As a result, vouchers were given only to families with incomes below $17 per household member. This means that some of the families that got vouchers—those with, say, incomes between $16 and $17—were basically identical to some of those that didn't (families with $17-$18 incomes). These families all have similar computing aspirations (they all applied to the program) and differ only in which side of the $17 cutoff they happened to sit on. (Economists call this a "regression discontinuity.")
So what happens when good fortune delivers vouchers (and hence computers) into the homes of Romanian youths? Obviously a lot more time logged on to a computer—about seven hours more per week for vouchered versus unvouchered kids. Much of this computer time came at the expense of television-watching: Children in families that received a voucher spent 3.5 fewer hours in front of the tube per week. But computer use also crowded out homework (2.3 hours less per week), reading, and sleep. Less schoolwork translated into lower grades at school—vouchered kids' GPAs were 0.36 grade points lower than their nonvouchered counterparts—and also lower aspirations for higher education. Vouchered kids were 13 percentage points less likely to report an intention to attend college. And, interestingly, vouchered students who were college-bound were not more likely to express interest in majoring in computer science.
When my friends and I figured out how to transform my PET from a learning tool to a proto-video-game console, my parents stepped in to make sure Space Invaders didn't crowd out homework. Where were Romania's parents? The voucher program was specifically designed to help poor households, and their dire financial circumstances meant that these families were probably less able to afford after-school care or otherwise see to it that the computers were used for learning and not just recreation. Indeed, the authors found that when they looked specifically at families with stay-at-home moms who may be more present and able to police computer use, the negative effects of vouchers were greatly reduced.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the lesson from Romania's voucher experiment is not that computers aren't useful learning tools, but that their usefulness relies on parents being around to assure they don't simply become a very tempting distraction from the unpleasantness of trigonometry homework. But this is a crucial insight for those tasked with designing policies to bridge the digital divide. The express intent of Euro 200 was to give a boost to poor kids' educations. Through programs such as One Laptop per Child, governments around the world have similarly committed to purchasing millions of computers to improve computer access for children. But Malamud and Pop-Eleches' results suggest that merely providing access may be more of a curse than a blessing. If we really want to help poor kids, whether in Romania, sub-Saharan Africa, or America's housing projects, we may want to focus on approaches that provide structured, supervised access through after-school programs or subsidies that bring technology into low-income schools. But just giving kids computers? Might as well just ship them PlayStations.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Did the author read the links to One Laptop per Child? Negroponte repeatedly refers to it as an education project, not a computer project, as he is specifically a disciple of the constructionist school of learning at MIT. The upshot of the theory is that the schools should encourage learning as an active enterprise, not a passive one, and part of the goal of the OLPC - again, the main goal - is to have more kids doing in school, and fewer kids listening. This is why the project began dealing directly with Ministries of Education. A core part of the project involves teacher training for use of the laptop in their daily lessons.
There are many legitimate criticisms of OLPC. But the idea that the program doesn't focus sufficiently on "approaches that provide structured, supervised access" is ludicrous. That is the stated *goal* of the program and its distributions include specific interventions to do so.
--katedc
(To reply, click here.)
I agree with the main point in this story, that parental involvement is definitely necessary to help push kids in the right direction when using new technology. This is true for pretty much anything kids can get their hands on. No matter what the device or tool is kids will abuse it for their own enjoyment. Sometimes that abuse is beneficial and sometimes it hurts them as is the case with computers. However the Romanian study, like many other studies, cannot give you a complete picture of the benefits that having a computer bestows upon the user.
I was 12 when my Dad bought us out first computer, a 486 with 8mb of RAM. Before that time I was using a word processor for writing reports. The new computer didn't give me anything new in the way of academics. The internet was just beginning, and writing reports was exactly the same, although now I had a fancy laser printer instead of the Dot matrix style printing of a word processor. I primarily used my computer for games, and AOL connectivity when I finally got my 14.4 modem. I may have even had the same stats that these Romanian kids had with their computer in terms of less time watching tv and doing homework but what the computer did give me was familiarity with the technology and a no fear attitude when it came to discovering all that this new technology had to offer. I learned about file formats and programs to run them by looking at lo-res partially nude pictures of entertainment stars that I received from a friend on a 3.5" floppy. I learned about hardware architecture when my computer crapped out because of a busted power supply. I familiarized myself with DOS and software installation as I made the jump from Windows 3.1 to 95, and I learned about web pages from the horrendous web page builder on AOL...version 3.0.
These are all things that are not measured in a survey but which all contributed to my semi-expertise with computers today, 15 years later. The point is there are benefits that can't be readily measured by a survey, parents, or even the kids that are using the devices that may pop up years from now. Because a kid is playing solitaire and sharing .mp3's on a LAN network and not writing the introduction to his Master's thesis does not mean that the computer is being totally misused. Also, who had the bright idea to ask children if using this computer made them more open to going to college? What kind of answer do you expect to receive from a kid who just found and loves Minesweeper?
--Makinola
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Professor Fisman's extrapolations are based on one study in Romania. He uses the findings from Romania to imply that none of the mentioned programs will work.
A few facts from the post need to be considered. first it is only one study. Earlier studies have shown that computers had BOTH negative and positive effect on "scholastic achievement". The claim that students with free computers GPAs "were 0.36 grade points lower than their nonvouchered counterparts" doesn't seem that serious. In a US school that would mean the students GPA went from a B+ to a B.
Students with computers are easily distracted. We as teachers deal with that everyday. Fisman also states that "...Malamud and Pop-Eleches' results suggest that merely providing access may be more of a curse than a blessing. If we really want to help poor kids, whether in Romania, sub-Saharan Africa, or America's housing projects, we may want to focus on approaches that provide structured, supervised access..."
That "supervised access" is the key to any new tool. It can be the afterschool programs Fisman suggests or parental involvement.
Another key issue when dealing with is the amount of information you are providing to students with Internet access when you provide computers. Will most of them use it to learn? Probably not, but what about the ones that do? What will they accomplish for their community and the world? Fisman's post doesn't deal with this very key issue.
--djbec08
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(6/5)