
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 16, 1995                   TAG: 9507150027
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

EDUCATION DIVIDE

A SURE way to widen and harden the already growing gap between haves and have-nots in America is to allow education to remain a two-tier system, offering one sort of schooling for those destined to prosper, another for those on a path to despair and decline.

An example of the divide in public schools is the varying extent to which they are linked, via computer technology, to the outside world.

It isn't simply a matter of not enough computers. According to a recent report by the General Accounting Office, some 75 percent of America's schools report having sufficient supplies of computers and audio-visual equipment on hand.

The problem is that more than half of these schools lack the supporting infrastructure to make full use of the equipment. They aren't able to take advantage of interactive educational television, for example, or hook up to computer networks and the Internet.

Efforts to upgrade infrastructure with modems, fiber-optic lines, computer network cables and the like are ongoing and commendable in places such as Roanoke city schools and the New River Valley.

But across the country, schools' participation in the telecommunications revolution continues to be held back - disproportionately so in less-affluent communities - by an array of cost constraints, lack or inadequacy of training, and psychological barriers among educators.

On top of that, according to the GAO report, some 10 million students, mostly in central cities with large minority populations, continue to attend schools that lack even basic computer resources. Will Newt Gingrich provide them with laptops and the hookups to go along?

by CNB