Bangor Daily News, Aug. 13

With a lot of help from Apple Computer Corp., ninth-graders in at least 33 Maine school districts will continue learning with the help of laptop computers this fall. It is a temporarily positive outcome to a disappointing process in the last legislative session, but it’s no way to run a revolution in education. For that, the Baldacci administration will try to persuade lawmakers and school districts that the money for laptops exists and just awaits efficient dispersal.

The argument over whether the computers benefit students was renewed this week when the first statewide test scores showed that students using laptops for the writing portion of the tests did better than their peers but otherwise had comparable scores. The laptops had been in use for only three semesters (they were new to their eighth-grade teachers) when the tests were taken, so any conclusions would be premature.

But there is good reason to hope that these learning devices will make for stronger students. Studies and surveys show that students are more likely to do their homework, spend more time studying and present more in-depth projects when they have laptops. Sixth- through eighth-graders throughout Maine use them and, by most accounts, take care of them. …

This is now largely a money problem, a $28 million problem for a high-school program. The Apple laptops, including service, cost $300 each. The state budget currently falls short of this figure by about $300 each. But schools, according to a recent statewide survey, spend $45 million a year for computer technology and related services and the state spends another $10 million for the middle-school laptop program. That is more than enough, says Commissioner Sue Gendron, to fund laptops and some of the current services schools provide. Other services, such as buying individual computers, would become less necessary and, she says, schools may be deciding that in some instances laptops displace textbooks, a further savings.

More than these, however, is LD 1924, the bill that moves the state toward 55 percent of school funding, which would provide more money to almost all schools and make laptops more affordable. The November vote on the 1 percent property tax cap, of course, would change that and likely knock Maine schools backward on technology.

Maine won’t know whether this valuable program will be fully in its high schools until after that vote. But assuming common sense prevails and the measure is defeated, school districts should be willing to examine their technology budgets and review whether funding could exist for laptops. …

After that, the districts might urge lawmakers to settle the state-funding question as early in the next legislative session as they can to allow this program to keep up with the students it is designed to help.

Responding to Charley


Naples (Fla.) Daily News, Aug. 17

We are here to help you. Rest assured every effort is being made. We are working around the clock for you.

So say state and federal officials to the hurting and homeless victims of Hurricane Charley. Those residents of Charlotte, Lee and DeSoto counties have just one question: So where’s the help? How is that “help” finding us shelter or even something to eat? Or a sanitary toilet or a shower?

Though Charley hit only on Friday, the summer’s most sweltering weather since then has pushed them to push for answers…

Even those of us who are not severely victimized by Charley grew weary of bureaucrats’ promises broadcast over the weekend. Press conferences in Tallahassee sounded like lineups of professional circle-talkers. No question brought a straight answer.

Imagine how that fares in the real world far away from air- conditioned offices, next to the remains of mobile homes splayed wide open in 90-degree heat. …

President Bush’s surprise inspection of Charley’s path of destruction and death tempt casting the recovery in a larger, political light: Has U.S. emergency planning become too focused on terrorism, at the expense of natural perils? Here is a chance to prove the skeptics wrong.

More than sport


Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, Aug. 13

All things that celebrate elite achievement have their detractors. …

The Olympics are a case in point. … Naysayers point to drugs and other cheating, the unbridled commercial greed, the corruption of host-city selections, rich countries cherry-picking the athletes of poor nations, the potentially ruinous costs on host cities, the obscene indulgences of some Olympic family members and the invitation to terrorism. … This catalogue of complaints may seem an overwhelming case against the Olympics. It is an uncharitable view. …

The Games are about sport but a lot more, too. They are about individual endeavour and about national aspiration. … They urge us to cheer and applaud the victors and the vanquished regardless of national boundaries. …

… The temptation to dismiss the Games as unnecessarily ritualistic, even quasi-spiritual, misses the point. …

Now that the baton has passed back to … where ancients initiated the traditions 2780 years ago, it would be a pity if that goodwill were to be supplanted in Australia by smug self-satisfaction … intended to compare Athens unfavourably with the Sydney Games. Terrorism left Athens struggling under difficulties not of its making, but the splendid venues have been completed, contrary to predictions of doom, and Greeks need no one’s advice on how to party. …