Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times recently published an article  entitled:  Computers at Home:  Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality.  The article summarizes three studies by economists that examined the value of providing computers for personal home use to students in low-income areas.  Specifically, the studies concluded:

“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.”

The article referenced three studies conducted in Romania, North Carolina and Texas, all of which had similar findings.

Tony

The full article is available at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/business/11digi.html