How Idealistic High-Tech Schools Often Fail to Help Poor Kids Get Ahead
The Benefits of Computers and Special Instruction Are Eclipsed by Economic Disadvantage
About a decade ago, as the global economy shuddered, an 11-year-old boy sat at a desk with a laptop computer in the hallway of an experimental school in New York City. I stood with other adults watching the student demonstrate a software program that allowed him to design video games. Between the boy and us, a production crew for a local TV news affiliate was filming for a story on this well-resourced public middle school that had opened two months earlier. The TV crew had moved the boy, the desk, …