Technology and Achievement: The Bottom Line

Looking back on the 1990s, advocates of education technology can pat themselves on the back. When that decade began, computer-to-student ratios in the United States typically stood at about 1 to 20. Computers rarely appeared in the classroom; instead, they were relegated to central labs that teachers and students visited sporadically. When students did use computers, they were typically learning basic computer skills or programming. Schools rarely, if ever, made computers an integral part of the content-area curriculum.

By the end of the 1990s, however, things had changed. Nearly every U.S. school had faster and more powerful computers than those that large universities had been able to afford only 10 years before, as well as CD-ROM drives and Internet connections. The computer-to-student ratio was down to 1 to 5, and a greater proportion of computers were actually located in classrooms. More teachers had received enough training in technology to feel confident using computers in instruction.