Wiring Our Children for Success

It seems rare these days to find consensus about anything, let alone of how best to prepare children for the future. But there is an extremely important area of consensus emerging in which parents, the governor, community and business leaders and the state superintendent of public instruction all agree: Children need to be “technology literate” to be prepared for jobs in an increasingly computerized world.

The governor has announced a plan for giving every high school student in California equal access to “go online and get in line with the global competition of the 21st century.” Delaine Eastin, superintendent of public instruction, working with a bipartisan citizen panel, has laid out a blueprint for bringing California schools from the bottom 10% in technology literacy to the top 10%.

The case for technological competency couldn’t be more clear-cut. With two-thirds of all new jobs requiring some knowledge of computers, young people who lack such skills are at a marked disadvantage in their employability and earning power. Workers with computer skills earn 10% to 15% more than workers who lack them. Employers are penalized as well, with California businesses absorbing an estimated $4 billion annually in poor product quality and low productivity because workers lack needed technology skills.

California, despite its reputation as the global capital of advanced telecommunications, ranks dead last among the 50 states in its student-to-computer ratio of 15.6 to 1, compared with the nationwide rate of 9 to 1 (experts recommend four students per computer). California schools lag behind the rest of the country in their access to the Internet and other online learning opportunities.

Technology access and literacy is fast becoming the equity issue of the 1990s. More and more families that can afford to buy computers do so to fill in for what is not available at school. In fact, ownership of home computers is higher for Californians than for the rest of the nation (51% versus 39%). That’s the good news. The bad news is that this leaves low-income children--disproportionately brown and black--behind, typically without access to computer equipment and the training to use it either at school or at home. Of households in California that own a computer, only 12% have annual incomes of less than $20,000. This troubling trend is yet another barrier for low-income communities to surmount, one that threatens to further isolate and divide our neighborhoods and that prevents a large segment of our population from fully participating in what is rapidly becoming an electronic society.

The recent chorus of interest in addressing this challenge from people in high places is good news. What is needed now is for the powerful interests that have a stake in ensuring that our young people become productive citizens join forces to get the job done. Given how far behind the pack California is now, we need to move on several high-leverage, common-sense steps:

* California should commit the funds and staffing to put up-to-date computers in the classrooms of all our schools. We must connect them to the Internet and train teachers and parents to use them imaginatively and wisely.

* California should follow the lead of North Carolina, which has made computer literacy a competency that all students are expected to have and are tested for at regular intervals.

* We should ensure that libraries, community centers, Head Start centers and other neighborhood gathering places can become technology centers that ensure affordable access to computers and telecommunications.

These measures ought to be implemented in a step-wise fashion that we can afford and can carry out well. The governor called for reaching his goal by 2001. That’s a realistic timetable for implementing this comprehensive strategy. The funding sources already have been identified and ought to include both public and private support--more of the positive corporate initiatives we have seen with the statewide Net Day.

Parents, who probably understand better than anyone the value of computer literacy to their children, should be at the forefront of the drive, working with educators, corporate leaders and elected officials to get the job done.