The World Bank issued a note in January 2011 on its evaluation of a two year program in Colombia for the use of computers in schools. The purpose of the program is stated below:
"The program’s stated goal was to train teachers to use computers in specific subjects, with a focus on incorporating the computers into classroom teaching of Spanish and math."
The findings from the study were:
"Students in schools that received the computers and teacher training did not do measurably better on tests than students in the control group. Nor was there a positive effect on other measures of learning."
"Researchers did not find any difference in test scores when they looked at specific components of math and language studies, such as algebra and geometry, and grammar and paraphrase ability in Spanish."
The interesting fact about the study that was overlooked in the report conclusions was:
"About 66 percent of students in schools in the program reported using a computer in the previous week, compared with 41 percent of students in the control group"
No where in the report does the World Bank question the methodology used in Colombia. Instead of questioning whether occassional use of a computer is an effective educational method, the report merely points out that the program showed no positive results. Colombia has long operated computer labs and consistently derived no positive effect on the students from such an approach.
When is a development bank going to tell Colombia to stop wasting money on computer labs and other limited access approaches to computing. Sadly, Inter-American Development Bank is supporting a new bid this month by the Colombian government to expand the computer lab approach with 80,000 additional computers.
As long as development banks continue to support failed methodologies in education there will be no improvement in student performance. It is time for development banks to support either 1:1 computing approaches or online approaches such as Kahn Academy.
The views expressed herein are my personal views and do not reflect the views of any organization with whom I am affiliated.
