Post secondary education rations opportunity (presumably including the top 10 percent of income earners), suggests Anthony Carnevale of the Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University. He uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study.
Carnevale reports that 82 percent of students from well off families and with high SAT scores complete college.
Fifty two (52) percent of students from well off families with low SAT scores receive higher education diplomas.
Only 44 percent of students from poor families earning high SAT scores complete college.
To the extent that these data remain valid, three questions seem worth examining in order to understand impacts Tablet and other mobile PCs have on learning and social mobility.
1. How do PreK12 teachers ration learning, so that all students who enter college do not complete it nor advance financially as well as socially? More specifically, what influence do these teachers’ instruction have on standardized test scores and post secondary earnings of their students;
2. How do these influences vary across teachers’ instructional styles with and without Tablet and other mobile PCs? and
3. What influences across family incomes and instructional styles do student non-school use of Tablet and other mobile PCs have on college completion and social mobility?
In other words, how do teachers ration students having a fighting chance at higher earning power?
Perhaps the NESI (New Era School Initiative) aLEAP (A Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm) will help refine these questions into hypotheses to test empirically.
Carneville, A. A real analysis of Real Education, Liberal Education, 94:4. (Captured July 17, 2009.)
Heiny, R. A Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm: Abstract. Tablet PC Education Blog. (Captured August 7, 2009.)
Heiny, R. Learning with Tablet PCs Research Agenda: From Facts to Pragmatics. Paper presented at Workshop on the Impact of Pen-Based Technology in Education(WIPTE), West Lafayette, IN, October 17, 2008. (Captured 07-17-09).
U.S. Department of Education. The national education longitudinal study (NELS 1988–2000).
Note: This post prompted by Regnier, P. Why I sweated my toddler’s test: Because a good education equals opportunity and the former feels increasingly out of reach. Money:Special Report, July 2009, p. 98.