DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 1997          TAG: 9711190009

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

LOG ON WITH CAREVIRGINIA BEACH RESIDENTS WANT MORE COMPUTERS IN THEIR SCHOOLS, BUT OTHER NEEDS SHOULD COME FIRST.

Folks responding to a Virginia Beach public schools survey indicated that they'd like to move computers, and people to fix them, to the top of next year's school spending list.

It sounds like a worthwhile goal, making schoolchildren computer literate. But Monday's Wall Street Journal casts a large shadow of doubt over the usefulness of such spending.

Under the headline ``Hard lessons,'' The Journal warns that computers in the schools are not the panacea educators once believed they would be and in many cases are a downright waste of money - a lot of money.

The article lists a string of major lessons that have been learned by public schools as they raced headlong into computer technology. Virginia Beach would be wise to think long and hard, and do its homework, before committing more public money to computers or putting them at a higher priority than other competing needs.

For instance, experts quoted in The Journal contend that weekly sessions in computer labs are virtually worthless. They suggest that a single computer in the classroom, under the administration of a knowledgeable teacher, is far more valuable than row upon row of computers in a lab.

Which highlights a major problem in computer education: Many teachers do not know how to use computers or teach with them in class. Without trained instruction, the best hardware and software in the world are useless.

Studies show that kids receive maximum benefit from technology when each child has his own PC in the classroom. Dream on. The cost of such an initiative would be astronomical. According to The Journal, it would cost between $40 billion and $100 billion over the next seven years to get even one computer for every five schoolchildren in the country.

Once the money is spent on computers, it is a a race against the clock until the equipment becomes obsolete. And the dream of turning teaching over to computers and saving money on personnel is just that. If anything, computers require more personnel with specialized skills. The Journal reports that most of the computers installed in schools prior to 1994 already need to be replaced.

We recognize the need for schoolchildren to be comfortable with technology and to be computer literate. Keyboarding should be as commonly taught as cursive writing. It would be wonderful it all of the students in Virginia Beach had easy access to school computers and were linked to the Internet.

But a school system that has so many problems - decrepit buildings and unimpressive test scores, to name just two - must clearly prioritize before pouring public money into technology that would be of questionable value.

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