All posts tagged: bottom of the economic spectrum

Where Are All the Missing Students?

Where Are All the Missing Students?

In 2006, the School District of Philadelphia, in partnership with Microsoft, opened the School of the Future. The idea was simple enough: Establish a learning environment centered on technology—no textbooks, just laptops and Wi-Fi—that would provide students in relatively poor districts the same benefits that those in wealthier areas enjoyed. The district built a handsome, well-lit building and filled it with state-of-the-art trappings including electronic lockers and Italian-marble bathrooms. It was heralded as a path-defining achievement for public-private partnerships in education. Two years later, Michael Gottfried, now an economist at the University of Pennsylvania but then a graduate student there, was part of a team examining whether such a technological revolution actually made a difference in student achievement. But he soon realized that the technology was somewhat beside the point: “We were talking to a teacher [at the School of the Future] and she said, ‘Here’s the thing, we can talk all you want about smart boards and laptops per student and curriculum moving online, but I have a bigger problem: Half of my class …