A multimillion dollar grant from Bell Atlantic turns inner-city Columbus Middle School into a high-tech mecca... ...while just a few miles away, teacher Barbara Sonek's laptop is P.S. 40's only connection to the info highway

By Robert Pondiscio cross the Hudson River from Manhattan in Union City, New Jersey, Christopher Columbus Middle School sits near the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel--and handles almo st as much traffic. Loaded three years ago with millions of dollars in networking equipment and computers, the school has been hailed ever since as a model 21st century school. An inner-city school with test scores that equal or surpass t hose of many of New Jersey's affluent suburban schools, Columbus has earned its glittering reputation--and a legion of admirers--through innovation and hard work. The main-floor hallway is lined with photos and thank-you notes from vips who have come call ing. Framed press clippings are a testament to the school's status as a media darling. Earlier this year President Bill Clinton visited the school amidst crowded, narrow streets in a poor Cuban-American community known as Havana on the Hudson. The presidential visit confirmed the school's reputation as a scholastic Lourdes, attracting even more visitors to Union City: delegations from China, Germany and Sweden, and from the Natio nal Education Association, are expected before the school year is over. All the attention, however, has proved to be a bit of a distraction. Superintendent of Schools Thomas Highton recently decreed that the school must limit visits from outsiders t o one day a week. Like its namesake, Christopher Columbus Middle School has left the rest of the world far behind. And there is no map for others to follow to catch up. For all the promise of technology in the classroom, putting it to w ork in America's public schools has become an expensive, complicated process. The formula for success varies in different districts, with educators competing fiercely for budgets, grant money and the largesse of private business. More vexingly, some well -heeled districts that can spend lavishly on high-tech gadgetry lack a clear sense of how to teach with it. The common denominator of success stories large and small seems to be the sheer ingenuity of educators who have cobbled together disparate re-sources to purchase equipment, set up training programs and incorporate tech nology into their curriculum. Ready, Fire, Aim! The digital revolution is proceeding rapidly, if somewhat haphazardly, in America's schools. Although an estimated $4 billion has been spent on technology in the past year, computers are still in only 9% of individual classrooms. Quality Education Data, a research firm based in Denver, calculates that the nationwide average of 125 students per computer in the early 1980s has dropped to 9 to 1 in the current school year. Further gains may come more slowly, however, as an increasing percentage of budgets go es to replace older computers that cannot support multimedia or Internet access. Moreover, the spending frenzy too often comes without a clear idea of the best ways to integrate educational technology into the curriculum. "There are stories out there in which teachers are saying, 'We have this stuf f, but we don't know how to use it. We don't have the support,'" says education consultant Dan Morris, who has organized the training of thousands of teachers in 14 states as part of a program run by the US West Foundation and the National Education Association. "There are also stories out there of districts that are afraid to let teachers get the technology because they are worried about kids getting into sites that are inappropriate. But the reality is that the majority of places simply don't have the access or the equipment." US West and other telecommunications giants like PacBell and Bell Atlantic, along with computer manufacturers, have contributed te ns of millions of dollars in computer and networking hardware to the nation's public schools, along with Internet access and training. But with technology spending varying wildly in different states and school districts, Morris concedes, "teachers have to come up with innovative, creative approaches to get technology into their classrooms." Those creative approaches have been impressive and heartwarming. In an echo of the barn raisings of another century, 20,000 volunteers laid 6 million feet of cable in 4,000 schools during "Net Day" ceremonies throughout California last March. Others find it easier to take matters into their own hands. "My one little laptop is the only access my school has to the Internet," says Englewood, Colorado, high school teacher Monte Sutton. "The district at this point is wondering whether we can afford the technology. And if we do spend the money for it, is it going to be used properly?" says Sutton, who decided online-educational opportunities were too rich to pass up. "If we wait until the district provides the hardware, and wait for the teachers to actually learn how to use it well enough to apply it to the classroom, it'll be three or four years down the road." Teaching the Teachers To encourage local initiatives to bring classrooms up to date, President Clinton earlier this year proposed the creation of a $2 billion, five-year Technology Literacy Challenge. To receive funding, states would have to su bmit plans detailing how they would obtain computers, wire their schools, train teachers, and obtain and use educational software. The bill would amount to little more than seed money. The Office of Technology Assessment calculates it will cost $145 billi on to put a computer wired to the Internet on every desk in every classroom in the U.S. Even the more realistic goal of 100 computers per school carries an $8 billion price tag. Furthermore, some experts believe the biggest issue is not equipment or online access but training. "Technology takes care of itself, especially in America," says Dr. Edward Friedman, a professor of management at Steve ns Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. "The biggest bottleneck is implementation, getting people to change behavior, learn new things and put them into practice. That's a long-term effort." Stevens Institute received a grant of nearly $3 million from the National Science Foundation to help 500 New Jersey schools get online. Friedman is now proposing a national "Internet-in -Education Teacher Training Program," which would employ training videos and a nationwide network of community colleges to train 3,500 school-system teams. Those teams would pass on their Internet skills to teachers in their local school districts. Friedm an estimates more than 300,000 teachers, school administrators and librarians could be trained in five years at a cost of less than $100 a person. The program would help close the gap left open by teachers' colleges, some of which have been curiously slow to embrace new technology. "Kids have more technology in their shoes than we ever had," says Bonnie Bracey, a member of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council. "But the regular teacher comes out without any training and without any motivation because there is no state regulation that says technology is a n important part of your training." Columbus Discovers The Computer The challenges of funding, purchasing hardware and training teachers are steep, but the rewards are great, as Christopher Columbus Middle School's remarkable turnaround attests. In 1989 the Union City school system was on the verge of a state takeover. St udent attendance and test scores were abysmal; dropout and transfer rates were far above average. The state required Union City to develop a five-year restructuring plan. A new curriculum for grades K-8 was developed that emphasized cooperative learning. The district also began incorporating technology into the cla ssroom. The major breakthrough came four years ago when Bell Atlantic, looking to test a communications system in an inner city, approached the school district and offered to implement a technology trial at the middle school. The two-year Project Explore began in the fall of 1993. Computers were placed in the homes of all 135 seventh-grade students and their teachers, tied into a local-area network, whi ch allowed students and teachers to communicate with one another at home or in school and to have access to the school's resources at home. Teachers trained on the computer and, in turn, trained the students' parents. The results were nearly miraculous. The student-mobility rate--the number of kids who leave the school--was cut in half; standardized-test scores went through the roof. "If it can be done here, it can be done anywhere" is a frequently heard refrain in Union City. Perhaps so, but Columbus Middle School's breathtaking success makes the plight of similar, less-blessed schools all the more poignant. Back across the Hudson River, Barbara Sonek, a fourth-grade teacher at P.S. 40 in Jamaica, New York, is waging a frustrating but no less inspiring battle to bring the Information Age into her classroom. "We are not wired at all in the school. We have no phone lines in the classrooms or anything hooked up. I use my laptop by hooking in to other people's phone jacks whenever I have the opportunity," she says. Sonek has written several proposals to her district to conduct Internet workshops for teachers, but "it just falls on deaf ears." Despite little support and encouragement, she was making plans recently to have her stud ents speak to their Native American pen pals online. "We will go to someone's office. It's called beg, borrow and steal," says Sonek. "My children only know three blocks from their home, going in either direction. I will do anything to get them to reali ze they are not alone in this world." For educators, the challenge is to take advantage of every available resource. For everyone else, the challenge will be to see to it that teachers like Sonek don't have to go it alone.