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South Carolina To Give 1 Laptop Per School Child
ruphus13 sends in an OStatic article outlining the plans of the state of South Carolina, inspired by the One Laptop Per Child project, to provide laptops to local elementary school children. "The South Carolina Department of Education and the non-profit Palmetto Project have teamed up to get a laptop in the hands of every elementary school student in South Carolina... The OLPC/SC hopes to distribute as many as 50,000 laptops this spring to eligible students. The effort is underwritten and managed by the Palmetto Project, whose mission is to 'put new and creative ideas to work in South Carolina.' While low-performing school districts with limited resources are a special focus for the OLPC/SC, the group is adamant on one point: There are no free laptops. In order to receive a laptop, children need to give a small monetary donation — the project coordinators say a dollar or two is sufficient."It's not obvious from browsing around the OLPC/SC site what software the XO laptops will be running; but by following links one gets the impression that they will be powered by Linux, not XP.
Obviously, one cannot be sure if it is a good idea or not without real world testing, which hasn't happened yet; but the OLPC project is specifically designed with those concerns in mind.
A great deal of effort in both hardware and software design(ie. mesh networking, robust and easily repaired design, the bitfrost security model, the "school server" mechanism, easy system state restoration tools, etc.) was dedicated to making the cost and complexity of infrastructure and administration as low as possible. The system is designed to be usable without a class of dedicated technicians and network managers. With the mesh stuff, you can cut back substantially on access point density and ethernet cabling. With bitfrost, school server backups, and system state restoration, you can mostly leave administration in the hands to the students, with the option of easily blanking them if the student screws up.
I'm not saying that it is certain to work; but OLPC is designed with exactly those concerns in mind. Also, if a district is currently "low-performing" it already needs a new teaching plan, because the status quo isn't cutting it.
I don't even know where to start...
I agree with your overall assessment of South Carolina, having lived here for the past 15 years. There are clearly cultural issues that need to be overcome before any education initiative will be effective here.
South Carolina is strangely bipolar when it comes to education. The majority of the public schools seem to exist to maintain the status quo, teach to the PACT(1) test (or whatever its replacement is called), and keep the teachers employed through whatever means are leagal. South Carolina spends a very high percentage of taxes on education (as shown on the tax bills for property taxes as well as explained in state income tax booklets) yet we have some of the worst schools in the country. Apparently, Inez Tennebaum, our Secretary of Education for far too long, was publicly ridiculed on TV for her failures and she honestly thought she was doing a good job. Pretty sad, IMHO.
However, South Carolina also has some interesting charter schools - the good ones (e.g. Blythe Academy of Languages in Greenville) are in the wealthier neighbourhoods (no surprises there). There has been a large number of "online" charter schools lately. Unfortunately, the one we experienced with our son was run as effectively as a regular South Carolina public school. (In other words, it was pathetic.) I teach in an on-line program as well as on-campus at a large university, and I thought that the on-line charter school would be a good idea. I still think it could be, if done correctly.
There are many private schools in SC, catering to the wealthy. Some of them have tutions that are more than the state universities. (Surprisingly, some of the state universities in SC are very good, such as Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.)
Homeschooling is tolerated, barely. The majority of homeschoolers I have encountered do it for religious, rather than academic, reasons. We homeschool for academic reasons becasuse the SC schools are so bad. It is against SC law to segregate students (at least in the lower grades) by ability because someone decided it was discriminatory due to the fact that there were disproportionally fewer minority students in the advanced classes. Therefore, rather than look for a reason _why_ there were fewer minority students in the advanced classes they just decided that the practice of allowing gifted students to work at a more challenging pace without being held back by average students was racial discrimination.
I doubt those laptops will go anywhere but to public school kids.
(1) PAlmetto Achievement Test - the state created exam given to children every few years with the reported purpose of determining how well the schools are doing. Unfortunately, the teachers teach to the test instead of educating the children.
I find it interesting that the CAPTCHA for this post is "converse", which, beside its usual meaning, happens to be the name of a very good private all-women's college (Converse College) in Spartanburg, SC.